Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long‐Term Variability of Markers of Bone Turnover in Postmenopausal Women and Implications for Their Clinical Use: The OFELY Study

Bone marker variability has raised concern for its use in individual patients. Serum osteocalcin (formation) and CTX (resorption) were measured every year for 4 years in 268 postmenopausal women. Seventy percent to 80% of women classified as having high bone turnover at baseline were similarly classified by the same methods 4 years later.
An fMRI study of canonical and noncanonical word order in German

Understanding a complex sentence requires the processing of information at different (e.g., phonological, semantic, and syntactic) levels, the intermediate storage of this information and the unification of this information to compute the meaning of the sentence information. The present investigation homed in on two aspects of sentence processing: working memory and reanalysis. Event‐related functional MRI was used in 12 healthy native speakers of German, while they read sentences. Half of the sentences had unambiguous initial noun‐phrases (masculine nominative, masculine accusative) and thus signaled subject‐first (canonical) or object‐first (noncanonical) sentences. Noncanonical unambiguous sentences were supposed to entail greater demand on working memory, because of their more complex syntactic structure. The other half of the sentences had case‐ambiguous initial noun‐phrases (feminine gender). Only the second unambiguous noun‐phrase (eighth position in the sentences) revealed, whether a canonical or noncanonical word order was present. Based on previous data it was hypothesized that ambiguous noncanonical sentences required a recomputation of the sentence, as subjects would initially commit to a subject first reading. In the respective contrasts two main areas of brain activation were observed. Unambiguous noncanonical sentences elicited more activation in left inferior frontal cortex relative unambiguous canonical sentences. This was interpreted in conjunction with the greater demands on working memory in the former condition. For noncanonical ambiguous relative to canonical ambiguous sentences, an activation of the left supramarginal gyrus was revealed, which was interpreted as a reflection of the reanalysis‐requirements induced by this condition. Hum Brain Mapp, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
28.3THz bowtie antenna integrated rectifier for infrared energy harvesting

The design, fabrication and characterization of an asymmetric 28.3 THz antenna integrated rectifier (rectenna) using Au/Al2O3/Pt is presented. The rectenna design comprises a sharp tip bowtie antenna and a tunneling Metal-insulator-Metal (MIM) diode. The design benefits from the geometric field enhancement around the nano tips of the bowtie antenna. Simultaneous optimization of the antenna's length and flare angle resulted in a relative intensity enhancement of 104 for a 10 nm gap. In order to benefit from the field enhancement, the THz diode is realized through the overlap of the bowtie sharp tips exactly at the hot spot. Dissimilar electrodes are used to allow THz signals rectification at zero bias, which is critical for energy harvesting applications. The rectenna exhibits a zero bias responsivity of 10 A/W.
The Effect of Fitness Function Design on Performance in Evolutionary Robotics: The Influence of a Priori Knowledge

Fitness function design is known to be a critical feature of the evolutionary-robotics approach. Potentially, the complexity of evolving a successful controller for a given task can be reduced by integrating a priori knowledge into the fitness function which complicates the comparability of studies in evolutionary robotics. Still, there are only few publications that study the actual effects of different fitness functions on the robot's performance. In this paper, we follow the fitness function classification of Nelson et al. (2009) and investigate a selection of four classes of fitness functions that require different degrees of a priori knowledge. The robot controllers are evolved in simulation using NEAT and we investigate different tasks including obstacle avoidance and (periodic) goal homing. The best evolved controllers were then post-evaluated by examining their potential for adaptation, determining their convergence rates, and using cross-comparisons based on the different fitness function classes. The results confirm that the integration of more a priori knowledge can simplify a task and show that more attention should be paid to fitness function classes when comparing different studies.
Comparison of Control Approaches For Tracking Control of a 3 DOF Parallel Robot: Experimental Results

In this paper, to study the effect of different control approaches on improving trajectory tracking accuracy for a 3 degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar parallel robot, we tested two synchronized-type controllers: PI-type synchronized control and adaptive synchronized (A-S) control; and conventional PID control and adaptive control. Here PID control and PI-type synchronized control are dynamic model-free while the adaptive control and A-S control are dynamic model-based. Because of the closed-loop kinematic chain mechanism of the experimental planar parallel robot used in this study, trajectory tracking control of this robot may be treated as a synchronization problem, and consequently, use of the synchronized control approaches can substantially improve the trajectory tracking performance of the robot end-effector compared with approaches without synchronization. Through conducting experiments on an experimental 3-DOF P-R-R type planar parallel robot by using the four control approaches, the above claims are demonstrated.
Plausibilistic Entropy and Anonymity

A common approach behind measuring anonymity is that the larger the anonymity set is the higher the degree of anonymity it supports. Our approach builds upon this intuition proposing a very general and yet precise measure for security properties. Introduced in a paper accepted for ARES 2013 conference, plausibilistic entropy promises to offer an expressive and cost effective solution for quantifying anonymity. This article focuses on a detailed side-by-side comparison between plausibilistic entropy and Shannon entropy and underlines a promising level of compatibility between the two of them. Towards the end we present our vision on how to define a measure for anonymity based on plausibilistic entropy and how such a definition can be employed to serve practical purposes.
Tasting quality: the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic cues

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the respective influences of price and country of origin (COO), as extrinsic cues, on consumer evaluations of product quality when all intrinsic cues are experienced through sensory (taste) perception.Design/methodology/approach – Taste‐testing experiments were conducted (n = 263) using Brie cheese as the test product and a 3(COO) × 3(price) × 3 (fat content) conjoint analysis fractional factorial design.Findings – Price was clearly found to be the most important attribute contributing to perception of Brie quality, followed by fat content. COO also exerted a substantial influence on respondents’ evaluation. In the case of this sensory experiment, reliance on the extrinsic cues tested was found to remain extremely robust even when all intrinsic cues (through sensory experience) were available for respondent evaluation when objective product quality was manipulated to three differing levels.Research limitations/implications – The research presents a number of limita.
Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation Open Access Error Mapping Controller: a Closed Loop Neuroprosthesis Controlled by Artificial Neural Networks

Background: The design of an optimal neuroprostheses controller and its clinical use presents several challenges. First, the physiological system is characterized by highly inter-subjects varying properties and also by non stationary behaviour with time, due to conditioning level and fatigue. Secondly, the easiness to use in routine clinical practice requires experienced operators. Therefore, feedback controllers, avoiding long setting procedures, are required.
Will GDP Growth Increase Happiness in Developing Countries?

This paper asks what low-income countries can expect from growth in terms of happiness. It interprets the set of available international evidence pertaining to the relationship between income growth and subjective well-being. Conforming to the Easterlin paradox, higher income always correlates with higher happiness, except in one case: whether national income growth yields higher well-being is still hotly debated; essentially, the question is whether the correlation coefficient is "too small to matter". The explanations for the small correlation between income growth and subjective well-being over time appeal to the nature of growth itself (e.g. negative side-effects such as pollution), and to the psychological importance of relative concerns and adaptation. The available evidence contains two important lessons: income comparisons do seem to affect subjective well-being even in very poor countries; however, adaptation may be more of a rich country phenomenon. Our stand is that the idea that growth will increase happiness in low-income countries cannot be rejected on the basis of the available evidence. First, cross-country time-series analyses are based on aggregate measures, which are less reliable than individual ones. Second, development is a qualitative process that involves take-offs and thresholds. Such regime changes are eye-visible through the lens of subjective satisfaction measures. The case of Transition countries is particularly impressive in this respect: average life satisfaction scores closely mirror changes in GDP for about the first ten years of the transition process, until the regime becomes more stable. If subjective measures of well-being were made available in low-income countries, they would certainly help measuring and monitoring the different stages and dimensions of the development process.
A single proline substitution is critical for the thermostabilization of Clostridium beijerinckii alcohol dehydrogenase

Analysis of the three‐dimensional structures of three closely related mesophilic, thermophilic, and hyperthermophilic alcohol dehydrogenases (ADHs) from the respective microorganisms Clostridium beijerinckii (CbADH), Entamoeba histolytica (EhADH1), and Thermoanaerobacter brockii (TbADH) suggested that a unique, strategically located proline residue (Pro100) might be crucial for maintaining the thermal stability of EhADH1. To determine whether proline substitution at this position in TbADH and CbADH would affect thermal stability, we used site‐directed mutagenesis to replace the complementary residues in both enzymes with proline. The results showed that replacing Gln100 with proline significantly enhanced the thermal stability of the mesophilic ADH: ΔT 1/260 min = + 8°C (temperature of 50% inactivation after incubation for 60 min), ΔT 1/2CD = +11.5°C (temperature at which 50% of the original CD signal at 218 nm is lost upon heating between 30° and 98°C). A His100 → Pro substitution in the thermophilic TbADH had no effect on its thermostability. An analysis of the three‐dimensional structure of the crystallized thermostable mutant Q100P‐CbADH suggested that the proline residue at position 100 stabilized the enzyme by reinforcing hydrophobic interactions and by reducing the flexibility of a loop at this strategic region. Proteins 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Characterizing Application Execution using the Open Community Runtime

Exascale and extreme-scale systems impose fundamental new requirements on software to target platforms with severe energy, data movement and resiliency constraints within and across nodes, and large degrees of homogeneous and heterogeneous parallelism and locality within a node. These challenges have led to the exploration of a diverse range of many-core processor architectures and memory hierarchies for future systems, that differ quite dramatically from current systems. As a result, there is still a lack of consensus as to what the main tenets should be for the execution model and low-level runtime system in future architectures. The Open Community Runtime (OCR) was created to engage the broader community of software and hardware researchers in identifying these underlying principles. While there is broad support for including dynamic task parallelism as one of the pillars of future execution models, there is currently little agreement on what else should be included. OCR proposes an approach to complete this picture by adding events and relocatable data-blocks as two additional pillars to build on, and shows how the three concepts (tasks, events, data blocks) can be combined in very general ways to support a wide range of higher-level programming constructs. In this paper, we focus on the use of OCR for application characterization. Despite the fact that the development of OCR is still at an early stage, we are fortunate that a large number of applications have already been implemented using the OCR APIs. We study the behavior of OCR implemenPermission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. RESPA ’15 Austin, Texas USA Copyright 2015 ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX . $15.00. tations of these applications to gain insights into task durations, data block sizes, and access patterns. These insights can provide feedback to both application developers (on how to redesign algorithms for OCR-like execution models) and to hardware designers (to optimize for common characteristics of tasks, events and data blocks).
SCRUM and Productivity in Software Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

Background: Agile methods have increasingly attracted interest in the Software Industry. SCRUM is currently one of the most studied agile method, because of both its novelty and the assumption that SCRUM is able to improve project productivity. Objective/Method: This article describes a systematic literature review, which aims to find scientific evidence of the correlation between the use of SCRUM and productivity in Software Projects. Results/Conclusion: Among 274 primary studies, this research selected 28 papers presenting strong evidence on the research questions. According to these results, the relation between SCRUM and productivity may be positive.
Personalized and adaptive navigation based on multimodal annotation

Although much effort is spent in developing navigation systems for pedestrians, many users with special needs are mostly excluded due to a lack of appropriate geographical data such as landmarks, waypoints, or obstacles. Such data is necessary for computing suitable routes because the best route might not be the shortest or fastest one. In this paper, the concept of multimodal annotation of geographical data for adaptive and personalized navigation is described. Direct input by the user is combined with data derived from the observation of the user's LOM-Modality (Location, Orientation, Movement) to annotate geographical data. Based on this data and data åderived from other users of the same user group, suitable routes even in unknown territory can be calculated.
Colour , usability and security : a case study

The use of colour in user interfaces is extensive. It is typically a usability issue, and has rarely caused any security concerns. In this ar ticle, we show that the use of colours in the design of CAPTCHA, a standard security techn ology that has found widespread applications in commercial websites, can have inter esting but critical implications on both security and usability. © 2010 University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Printed and published by the University of Newcastl e upon Tyne, Computing Science, Claremont Tower, Claremont Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, England. Bibliographical details AHMAD EL, A.S. , YAN, J Colour, usability and security: a case study [By] A.S. El Ahmad, J. Yan Newcastle upon Tyne: University of Newcastle upon T y e: Computing Science, 2010. (University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Computing Scienc e, Technical Report Series, No. CS-TR-1203)
Accounting Quality and Catastrophic Market Events

Market crashes are rare events with catastrophic consequences. Both the degree of information asymmetry and the risk premium associated with it increase on these days. This should affect equity prices. The increase in information asymmetry also reduces the liquidity at a time when it is particularly valued by investors. If accounting quality reduces the uncertainty concerning firms’ value, the effect of catastrophic market events on both prices and liquidity should also be mitigated. Consistent with this prediction, I find that the price of firms with better accounting quality drops less during market crashes than the price of firms with worse quality. This result is not explained by a greater sensitivity to the Fama-French three factors by firms with low accounting quality. In addition, for most stocks, liquidity and intra-day price volatility deteriorate but this is exacerbated for firms with low accounting quality. These different effects are both statistically and economically significant.
Ambient User Interfaces to Building Data

The paper presents the work on “Multi-Modal Ambient User Interfaces” pursued by Intracom Telecom (ICOM) in the frame of the FP6 project I3CON. This work involves the development of integrated user interfaces allowing location and context aware operation of the mobile system including methods and tools for their implementation for Building Service Operative applications. A generic object browser was developed enabling of browsing building automation objects in real-time as well as static building database objects and properties using standard data communication protocols. Fixed and mobile terminals are supported with necessary adaptation of the information to the particular characteristics of the terminal devices, user groups and the location of the user. User friendly multimodal user interfaces were developed to allow hands-free intuitive operation of a mobile system with little or no need for manual operation or control.
Simple Information Extraction (SIE): A Portable and Effective IE System

This paper describes SIE (Simple Information Extraction), a modular information extraction system designed with the goal of being easily and quickly portable across tasks and domains. SIE is composed by a general purpose machine learning algo-rithm (SVM) combined with several customizable modules. A crucial role in the architecture is played by Instance Filtering, which allows to increase efﬁciency without reducing effectiveness. The re-sults obtained by SIE on several standard data sets, representative of different tasks and domains, are reported. The experiments show that SIE achieves performance close to the best systems in all tasks, without using domain-speciﬁc knowledge.
MORSE: A general model to represent structured knowledge

In this paper, a model to represent knowledge (MORSE) that abstracts the structure of an automatic system is presented. This model is able to represent several ways of human reasoning, structured knowledge, execution strategies of an automatic system and many models presented in different works, such as hierarchical fuzzy controllers, cascade correlation neural networks architecture, decision trees, multilayer perceptrons, etc. Finally, thanks to the high level of abstraction of MORSE, the automatic systems specified by means of this model, have been classified in terms of their general features. This classification could allow a designer of systems to choose the best model of an automatic system to solve a problem. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Building social capital for inclusive education: insights from Zanzibar

The concept of social capital provided a helpful framework in which to describe the development of a pilot programme to promote inclusive education within Zanzibar. This had involved 20 schools and was supported by an international donor working through a local non-governmental organisation in partnership with the Ministry of Education. Evaluative interviews were conducted with over 30 stakeholders as part of a video production describing the programme. Thematic content analysis identified four main themes that underpinned the programme's success, namely: parents, local communities, community-based rehabilitation and health services, and schools. Within each theme, there were various examples of the three processes posited for building social capital: bonding, bridging and linking. By contrast, some of these themes and processes have been less emphasised in more affluent countries, where greater reliance has been placed on financial capital to fund additional resources within schools and educational systems. As this approach becomes no longer sustainable, greater attention will need to be paid to the creation of social capital in attaining more inclusive schools.
Crude versus case-mix-adjusted control charts for safety monitoring in thyroid surgery

Introduction Patient-safety monitoring based on health-outcome indicators can lead to misinterpretation of changes in case mix. This study aimed to compare the detection of indicator variations between crude and case-mix-adjusted control charts using data from thyroid surgeries. Methods The study population included each patient who underwent thyroid surgery in a teaching hospital from January 2006 to May 2008. Patient safety was monitored according to two indicators, which are immediately recognisable postoperative complications: recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy and hypocalcaemia. Each indicator was plotted monthly on a p-control chart using exact limits. The weighted κ statistic was calculated to measure the agreement between crude and case-mix-adjusted control charts. Results We evaluated the outcomes of 1405 thyroidectomies. The overall proportions of immediate recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy and hypocalcaemia were 7.4% and 20.5%, respectively. The proportion of agreement in the detection of indicator variations between the crude and case-mix-adjusted p-charts was 95% (95% CI 85% to 99%). The strength of the agreement was κ=0.76 (95% CI 0.54 to 0.98). The single special cause of variation that occurred was only detected by the case-mix-adjusted p-chart. Conclusions There was good agreement in the detection of indicator variations between crude and case-mix-adjusted p-charts. The joint use of crude and adjusted charts seems to be a reasonable approach to increase the accuracy of interpretation of variations in outcome indicators.
Learning Recurrent Neural Networks with Hessian-Free Optimization

In this work we resolve the long-outstanding problem of how to effectively train recurrent neural networks (RNNs) on complex and difficult sequence modeling problems which may contain long-term data dependencies. Utilizing recent advances in the Hessian-free optimization approach (Martens, 2010), together with a novel damping scheme, we successfully train RNNs on two sets of challenging problems. First, a collection of pathological synthetic datasets which are known to be impossible for standard optimization approaches (due to their extremely long-term dependencies), and second, on three natural and highly complex real-world sequence datasets where we find that our method significantly outperforms the previous state-of-the-art method for training neural sequence models: the Long Short-term Memory approach of Hochreiter and Schmidhuber (1997). Additionally, we offer a new interpretation of the generalized Gauss-Newton matrix of Schraudolph (2002) which is used within the HF approach of Martens.