Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Mass screening for colorectal cancer in France. Experience in 165,000 people in the department of Calvados].

OBJECTIVES Screening for colorectal cancer is a major public health problem in France as in most developed countries. Several controlled trials are on-going in Europe. The aim of the study was to determine requirements for success of mass-screening for colorectal cancer in France. METHODS A mass-screening program has been conducted between April 1991 and June 1994 in the department of Calvados for 164,364 people aged 45-74 years. The screening test was first proposed by general practitioners and occupational doctors during appointments. Secondly, a postal invitation to obtain the test, free of charge, by doctor or chemist, was sent. RESULTS Global participation rate was 43.4%; 40.2% of tests were distributed during the first phase, 47.1% during the second phase and 12.7% were distributed by a private health institute. Participation was higher for females (47.1%) than males (39.2%) and for urban districts (46.5%) than rural districts (24.4%). In case of positive test, colonoscopy has been more frequently achieved in urban districts and when test has been distributed by a physician. Positivity rate was 2.8%. Positive predictive value was 8.0% for a cancer and 13.5% for an adenoma larger than 1 cm. Because both positivity rate and positive predictive value were higher for males than females and increased with age, rate of cancer or large adenoma screened was almost three times higher for males than females and markedly increased with age. CONCLUSIONS In France, different recruitment methods have to be used to reach a satisfactory participation to a mass-screening campaign. Such a program requires involvement of general practitioners and close coordination between practitioners and health care insurance agencies.
Curcumin-supplemented yoghurt improves physiological and biochemical markers of experimental diabetes

We investigated the effects of prolonged treatment of diabetic rats with curcumin-supplemented yoghurt on the physiological and biochemical changes associated with diabetes mellitus. An established metabolic cage model was used to assess these changes in three groups of streptozotocin-diabetic rats which had been administered, by gavage, curcumin blended into yoghurt in the doses of 30, 60 and 90 mg/kg body weight (BW) per d (groups DC30, DC60, DC90) for 31 d. One group of non-diabetic rats was also treated with 90 mg/kg BW per d curcumin (NDC90). Three control groups of diabetic animals received water (DW), yoghurt (DY) and insulin at 27·78 μmol/d by subcutaneous injection (DI). Also, two groups of non-diabetic animals received water (NDW) and yoghurt (NDY). Groups DI and DC90 exhibited significant falls, relative to DW and DY, in food and water intake, urine volume, glycaemia, urinary urea and glucose, proteinuria, serum TAG and activities of aspartate and alanine aminotransferases, and higher hepatic glycogen and BW. These improvements were greater in DI than in DC90. No difference was observed in the serum levels of total cholesterol or HDL-cholesterol, or in the masses of adipose and muscular tissues, between DC90 and DW or DY. Moreover, the improvements in curcumin-treated rats, relative to DW and DY, were significant and dose-dependent. The NDC90 group also showed no difference from the NDW or NDY groups, in any of the markers for diabetes. In conclusion, curcumin mixed into yoghurt at the highest dose tested exhibited anti-diabetic activity, improving significantly most of the markers assessed in this study.
Towards improving trust in context-aware systems by displaying system confidence

For automatic or context-aware systems a major issue is user trust, which is to a large extent determined by system reliability. For systems based on sensor input which are inherently uncertain or even uncomplete there is little hope that they will ever be perfectly reliable. In this paper we test the hypothesis if explicitly displaying the current confidence of the system increases the usability of such systems. For the example of a context-aware mobile phone, the experiments show that displaying confidence information increases the user's trust in the system.
Interference Modulation Order Detection with Supervised Learning for LTE Interference Cancellation

Blind detection of interference modulation order is studied in this paper. Exploiting the additivity property of cumulants for independent variables, we extend the techniques used in source automatic modulation classification to identify the interference modulation order. Using multi- class support vector machines, we show that accurate prediction performance can be achieved via supervised learning techniques. Three interference scenarios are considered - intra-cell interference, inter-cell interference with and without accurate interference channel estimates. Using numerical evaluation, we show that the proposed technique can be applied for all three scenarios without much degradation in all three cases. Furthermore, the technique is fairly invariant to changes in Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and Interference-to-Signal Ratio (ISR). These results are useful in advanced interference cancellation applications in wireless cellular communications, where the source modulation order is explicitly signaled, but not the interference.
Joint optimization of wrapper generation and template detection

Many websites have large collections of pages generated dynamically from an underlying structured source like a database. The data of a category are typically encoded into similar pages by a common script or template. In recent years, some value-added services, such as comparison shopping and vertical search in a specific domain, have motivated the research of extraction technologies with high accuracy. Almost all previous works assume that input pages of a wrapper induction system conform to a common template and they can be easily identified in terms of a common schema of URL. However, we observed that it is hard to distinguish different templates using dynamic URLs today. Moreover, since extraction accuracy heavily depends on how consistent input pages are, we argue that it is risky to determine whether pages share a common template solely based on URLs. Instead, we propose a new approach that utilizes similarity between pages to detect templates. Our approach separates pages with notable inner differences and then generates wrappers, respectively. Experimental results show that our proposed approach is feasible and effective for improving extraction accuracy.
A Novel Brain-Computer Interface Controller Scheme for Multimedia Control

Due to the revolutionary developments in computer science and electronics, multiple kinds of new controllers are introduced. Such as eye tracking, voice recognition and hand gesture recognition. But these controller scheme still have their drawbacks. In this paper, we proposed an improved brain-computer interface (BCI) controller based on SSVEP. Our scheme provide good accuracy and comfortable user experience.
A New PWL Approximation for the "Self-Adjustable Offset Min-Sum" Decoding with a highly Reduced-Complexity

A new PieceWiseLinear (PWL) function is proposed for the decoding of the Low-Density-Parity-Check (LDPC) code with the Self Adjustable Offset Min-Sum (SAOMS) algorithm. Avoiding the use of the non-linear function f(x) = ln 1 + e j xj in the adjustable offset factor, this linear approximation greatly simplifies the hardware implementation with a little BER performance loss. The proposed solution is new, useful and is successfully tested on decoding regulars (504, 252) and (8000, 4000) LDPC codes. The corresponding Check Node Processing Unit (CNPU) have been designed, described and simulated using Very High Speed integrated circuits Hardware Description language(VHDL). The synthesis results were obtained using an Altera Quartus II software with cyclone II EP2CF896C6 as the target FPGA device. The designed CNPU is fully parallel and flexible to be used for different block length when a regulars (3, 6) LDPC codes are required.
Medial percutaneous hemi-epiphysiodesis improves the valgus tilt of the femoral head in developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) type-II avascular necrosis

Background and purpose — Avascular necrosis (AVN) is a major cause of disability after treatment of developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH), leading to femoral head deformity, acetabular dysplasia, and osteoarthritis in adult life. Type-II AVN is characterized by retarded growth in the lateral aspect of the physis or by premature lateral fusion, which produces a valgus deformity of the head on the neck of the femur. We investigated the effect of medial percutaneous hemi-epiphysiodesis as a novel technique in the treatment of late-diagnosed type-II AVN. Patients and methods — 9 patients (11 hips) with a diagnosis of type-II AVN who underwent medial percutaneous hemi-epiphysiodesis after the surgical treatment for DDH were included in the study. 10 patients (12 hips) with the same diagnosis but who did not undergo hemi-epiphysodesis were chosen as a control group. Preoperative and postoperative articulotrochanteric distances, head-shaft angles, CE (center-edge) angles, and physeal inclination angles were measured. The treatment group underwent medial hemi-epiphysodesis at a mean age of 8 years. The mean ages of the treatment group and the control group at final follow-up were 14 and 12 years respectively. The mean duration of follow-up was 5.7 years in the treatment group and 8.3 years in the control group. Results — Preoperative articulotrochanteric distance, head-shaft angle, and functional outcome at the final follow-up assessment were similar in the 2 groups. However, preoperative and postoperative CE angles and physeal inclination angles differed significantly in the treatment group (p < 0.05). The final epiphyseal valgus angles were better in the treatment group than in the control group (p = 0.05). The treatment group improved after the operation. Interpretation — Medial percutaneous epiphysiodesis performed through a mini-incision under fluoroscopic control is a worthwhile modality in terms of changing the valgus tilt of the femoral head.
Modeling time-to-event (survival) data using classification tree analysis.

RATIONALE, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES Time to the occurrence of an event is often studied in health research. Survival analysis differs from other designs in that follow-up times for individuals who do not experience the event by the end of the study (called censored) are accounted for in the analysis. Cox regression is the standard method for analysing censored data, but the assumptions required of these models are easily violated. In this paper, we introduce classification tree analysis (CTA) as a flexible alternative for modelling censored data. Classification tree analysis is a "decision-tree"-like classification model that provides parsimonious, transparent (ie, easy to visually display and interpret) decision rules that maximize predictive accuracy, derives exact P values via permutation tests, and evaluates model cross-generalizability. METHOD Using empirical data, we identify all statistically valid, reproducible, longitudinally consistent, and cross-generalizable CTA survival models and then compare their predictive accuracy to estimates derived via Cox regression and an unadjusted naïve model. Model performance is assessed using integrated Brier scores and a comparison between estimated survival curves. RESULTS The Cox regression model best predicts average incidence of the outcome over time, whereas CTA survival models best predict either relatively high, or low, incidence of the outcome over time. CONCLUSIONS Classification tree analysis survival models offer many advantages over Cox regression, such as explicit maximization of predictive accuracy, parsimony, statistical robustness, and transparency. Therefore, researchers interested in accurate prognoses and clear decision rules should consider developing models using the CTA-survival framework.
Location Performance Enhancement with Recursive Processing of Time-of-Arrival Measurements

This work deals with the development of pre-filtering techniques for low-cost devices using high data rate communications. Many positioning algorithms have been recently revisited in a centralized architecture scenario, where a cheap mobile sensor is surrounded by N base stations. The overview of the system is composed of two blocks: a smoothing filters and a positioning block. In the smoothing filters block, different algorithms such as smoothing filter, recursive least squares and maximum-likelihood are developed to process multiple time-of-arrival measurements before triangulating the position of the mobile sensor. The positioning algorithms are the Taylor series, direct method and spherical interpolation. All in all, it is shown that the recursive processing of multiple measurements at the input of the positioning algorithm improves not only the accuracy of the triangulated position, but also the robustness of the positioning algorithms. We also explain why the very good results given by the maximum- likelihood should only be seen as a lower-bound of the system.
Joint Diagonalization of Third Order Complex Symmetric Tensors and Application to Blind Separation of Non-Circular Sources

In this communication, we consider the problem of the joint- diagonalization of square complex tensors through a least- squares approach. In particular, this allows us to show that recent joint-diagonalization criteria used in source separation can be seen as based on a least-squares criterion. Using the proposed criteria, we propose a Jacobi-like algorithm for the decomposition of symmetric third order tensors. The above approach is applied to the problem of the separation of statistically independent complex source signals based on higher order statistics. We show how all possible fourth order cumulants can be considered within a common framework to identify the mixing matrix. A link with contrast functions is established. Finally, computer simulations on digital communication signals illustrate the above results.
Levels, Differences and Ecms - Principles for Improved Econometric Forecasting

Unit-root testing can be a preliminary step in model development, an intermediate step, or an end in itself. Some researchers have questioned the value of any unit-root and cointegration testing, arguing that restrictions based on theory are at least as effective. Such confusion is unsatisfactory. Needed is a set of principles that limit and define the role of the tacit knowledge of the model builders. In a forecasting context, we enumerate the various possible model selection strategies and, based on simulation and empirical evidence, recommend using these tests to improve the specification of an initial general vector autoregression model.
PIV Experimental Study on Flow Field near Lateral jet under the Condition of Vegetation

The high-frequency PIV was applied to measure the flow field near the lateral jet under the condition of rigid vegetation and flexible vegetation. Both the Single row vegetation and broadleaf grass were analyzed. The results showed that different vegetation arrangements have different effects on the jet flow field. The vegetation arrangement and vegetation resistance cause significant changes. The changes in flow velocity with changes in water depth displayed “S” type and anti-“S” type distributions, and the flow velocity of free layer was approximately logarithmic. Due to vegetation resistance and jet pressure differences, the lateral jet trajectory in water with vegetation also have different distributions. The lateral jet trajectory in water with broadleaf grass was more likely to bend than in water with rigid vegetation Compared to the influence of two vegetation arrangements on the water flow near the jet, the flexible vegetation has a better deceleration effect on the flow field near the lateral jet.
Optimal fine u-slicing for single-photon-counting pixel detectors

Correspondence e-mail: marcus.mueller@dectris.com The data-collection parameters used in a macromolecular diffraction experiment have a strong impact on data quality. A careful choice of parameters leads to better data and can make the difference between success and failure in phasing attempts, and will also result in a more accurate atomic model. The selection of parameters has to account for the application of the data in various phasing methods or high-resolution refinement. Furthermore, experimental factors such as crystal characteristics, available experiment time and the properties of the X-ray source and detector have to be considered. For many years, CCD detectors have been the prevalent type of detectors used in macromolecular crystallography. Recently, hybrid pixel X-ray detectors that operate in single-photoncounting mode have become available. These detectors have fundamentally different characteristics compared with CCD detectors and different data-collection strategies should be applied. Fine ’-slicing is a strategy that is particularly well suited to hybrid pixel detectors because of the fast readout time and the absence of readout noise. A large number of data sets were systematically collected from crystals of four different proteins in order to investigate the benefit of fine ’-slicing on data quality with a noise-free detector. The results show that fine ’-slicing can substantially improve scaling statistics and anomalous signal provided that the rotation angle is comparable to half the crystal mosaicity. Received 17 June 2011 Accepted 21 November 2011
Proof-Carrying Hardware: Towards Runtime Verification of Reconfigurable Modules

Dynamically reconfigurable hardware combines hardware performance with software-like flexibility and finds increasing use in networked systems. The capability to load hardware modules at runtime provides these systems with an unparalleled degree of adaptivity, but at the same time poses new challenges for security and safety. In this paper, we present proof-carrying hardware (PCH) as a novel approach to reconfigurable system security. PCH takes a key concept from software security, known as proof-carrying code, into the reconfigurable hardware domain. We outline the PCH concept and discuss runtime combinational equivalence checking as a first verification problem applying the concept. We present a tool flow and experimental results demonstrating the feasibility and potential of the PCH approach.
Cosyn: Hardware-software Co-synthesis Of Embedded Systems

Hardware-software co-synthesis is the process ofpartitioning an embedded system specification into hardware andsoftware modules to meet performance, power and cost goals. Inthis paper, we present a co-synthesis algorithm which starts withperiodic task graphs with real-time constraints and produces a low-costheterogeneous distributed embedded system architecturemeeting the constraints. The algorithm has the following features:1) it allows the use of multiple types of processing elements (PEs)and inter-PE communication links, where the links can take variousforms (point-to-point, bus, local area network (LAN), etc.), 2) itsupports both concurrent and sequential modes of communicationand computation, 3) it allows both preemptive and non-preemptivescheduling, 4) it employs the concept of an association array totackle the problem of multi-rate systems (which are commonlyfound in multimedia applications), 5) it uses a scheduler based ondynamic deadline-based priority levels for accurate performanceestimation of a co-synthesis solution, 6) it uses a new taskclustering technique which takes the dynamic nature of the criticalpath, and the existence of multiple critical paths in the task graphinto account, and 7) if desired, it also optimizes the architecture forpower consumption (we are not aware of any other co-synthesisalgorithm that optimizes power). Application of the proposedalgorithm to examples from the literature and real-life telecomtransport systems shows its efficacy.
Using Space-Based Downstream Services for Urban Management in Smart Cities

Data collected through remote sensing (for instance geo-satellite) provides necessary stimulus for developing smart solutions for climate change & public health, energy efficiency and land monitoring in an urban environment. The velocity, variety, volume and veracity of high resolution data produced by geo-satellites provide big opportunity for planning and decision making in a smart city context. However, processing and integrating remote sensing data with auxiliary data sources require proper data management and elastic computational resources to derive necessary information intelligence (or knowledge) for decision making. This paper presents prototype of selected Decumanus services and highlights strengths & weaknesses of climate change, energy efficiency and land monitoring applications for the different European cities. The analysis of the early results indicate that the amount of computation resources required to process data for above applications make cloud computing a suitable technology but also face challenges in adopting it due to its recency, impact on green computing and reluctance to transform from legacy computing systems to new paradigms like cloud computing. We critically discuss these challenges and suggest possible solutions.
A dexterous humanoid five-fingered robotic hand

This paper presents a new developed multisensory five-fingered dexterous robot hand : the DLR/HIT Hand II. The hand has an independent palm and five identical modular fingers, each finger has three DOFs and four joints. All the actuators and electronics are integrated in the finger body and the palm. By using powerful super flat brushless DC motors, tiny harmonic drives and BGA form DSPs and FPGAs, the whole fingerpsilas size is about one third smaller than the former finger in the DLR/HIT Hand I. By using the steel coupling mechanism, the phalanx distalpsilas transmission ratio is exact 1:1 in the whole movement range. At the same time, the multisensory dexterous hand integrates position, force/torque and temperature sensors. The hierarchical hardware structure of the hand consists of the finger DSPs, the finger FPGAs, the palm FPGA and the PCI based DSP/FPGA board. The hand can communicate with external with PPSeCo , CAN and Internet. Instead of extra cover, the packing mechanism of the hand is implemented directly in the finger body and palm to make the hand smaller and more human like. The whole weight of the hand is about 1.5 Kg and the fingertip force can reach 10N.
A flexible LDPC decoder architecture supporting two decoding algorithms

In this paper a programmable and area-efficient decoder architecture supporting two main stream decoding algorithms for any Block-LDPC codes is presented. The novel decoder can be configured to decode in either TPMP or TDMP decoding mode according to different Block-LDPC codes. To verify our proposed architecture, a flexible LDPC decoder which supports IEEE 802.16e is implemented using a 0.13um CMOS process with a total area of 6.3 mm2 and maximum clock frequency of 260 MHz. The estimated comsumption is 270 mW when operates at 125 MHz and 1.2V supply.
The dinB Operon and Spontaneous Mutation in Escherichiacoli

ABSTRACT Apparently conflicting data regarding the role of SOS-inducible, error-prone DNA polymerase IV (DinB) in spontaneous mutation are resolved by the finding that mutation is reduced by a polar allele with which dinB and neighboring yafN are deleted but not by two nonpolar dinB alleles. We demonstrate the existence of a dinB operon that contains four genes, dinB-yafN-yafO-yafP. The results imply a role for yafN, yafO, and/or yafP in spontaneous mutation.