Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of the application techniques of self-adhesive resin cements on the interfacial integrity and bond strength of fiber posts to dentin

ABSTRACT Objective: To evaluate the influence of an application technique of a glass-fiber post using self-adhesive resin cements on the push-out bond strength and the presence of bubbles in the root thirds. The cements were either applied according to the manufacturer's instruction or using a commercial delivering system (Centrix), at which the cement pastes were collected and applied after manipulation. Material and Methods: Self-adhesive resin cements (RelyX U200/3M ESPE-U200; Maxcem Elite/Kerr-MAX; Clearfil SA Cement/Kuraray-CSA) and a conventional cement (RelyX ARC/3M ESPE-ARC) were used to cement a post and applied either based on the manufacturer's instructions or using a Centrix syringe to deliver the cements directly onto the post of choice, or directly into canal. The roots were scanned with a micro-computed tomography (μCT) and then sectioned into nine 1-mm thick slices for a push-out bond strength test. The μCT images showed the percentage of bubbles in the root thirds (cervical, medium, and apical). Data were analyzed with three-way ANOVA/Tukey (α=0.05). Results: Triple interaction was not significant (p>0.05). The interaction “material” vs “root third” was not significant. A significant interaction was observed between “material” vs “application technique” (p<0.05). For ARC, U200, and MAX, significantly lower percentages of bubbles were observed when the Centrix syringe delivered the cements. Equivalent percentages of voids were observed for CSA, irrespective of the application technique (p>0.05). Significantly higher bond strength was observed when the self-adhesive resin cements were applied using the Centrix delivery system, in comparison with the manufacturer's instructions (p<0.05). Bond strength varied with the root third: cervical>medium>apical (p<0.05). No correlations were found between the bond strength and voids. Conclusions: Bond strength and voids are negatively influenced by the conventional application technique for luting fiber posts. The delivery system (Centrix) seems to produce better results when cementing fiber posts.
Improvement tourism competitiveness using hybrid fuzzy MCDM

Numerous studies have focused on measuring tourism competitiveness. However, few studies have attempted to identify strategies for improving tourism competitiveness, preventing decision makers from obtaining valuable cues for making accurate decisions to improve competitiveness. This study thus explores strategies for improving tourism competitiveness using a new hybrid fuzzy MCDM model combined with FDANP (fuzzy DEMATEL-based ANP). An empirical case is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of a new hybrid fuzzy MCDM model combining FDANP and VIKOR for evaluating tourism competitiveness to identify competitiveness gaps and explore strategies for improving tourism competitiveness based on the influential relation map. Decision makers should increase the priority of the cause criteria in advance, to successfully create a high tourism competitiveness to achieve the aspired/desired levels.
Is Area Yield Insurance Competitive with Farm Yield Insurance

This article compares risk reduction from MPCI and GRP crop insurance contracts. The analysis extends and improves on the existing area-yield insurance literature in four important respects. First, the geographical scope greatly exceeds that of previous work. Second, unlike previous efforts, the area is not assumed to consist only of those farms included in the analysis. Third, the analysis is based on the actual GRP indemnity function rather than the area-yield indemnity function commonly used in the literature. Fourth, the analysis avoids the questionable assumption that GRP scale can be optimized at the individual farm level. Even with a number of conservative assumptions favoring MPCI relative to GRP, results indicate that at least for some crops and regions GRP is aviable alternative to MPCI.
COP9 signalosome components play a role in the mating pheromone response of S. cerevisiae

A family of genetically and structurally homologous complexes, the proteasome lid, Cop9 signalosome (CSN) and eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3, mediate different regulatory pathways. The CSN functions in numerous eukaryotes as a regulator of development and signaling, yet until now no evidence for a complex has been found in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We identified a group of proteins, including a homolog of Csn5/Jab1 and four uncharacterized PCI components, that interact in a manner suggesting they form a complex analogous to the CSN in S. cerevisiae. These newly identified subunits play a role in adaptation to pheromone signaling. Deletants for individual subunits enhance pheromone response and increase mating efficiency. Overexpression of individual subunits or a human homolog mitigates sst2‐induced pheromone sensitivity. Csi1, a novel CSN interactor, exhibits opposite phenotypes. Deletants also accumulate Cdc53/cullin in a Rub1‐modified form; however, this role of the CSN appears to be distinct from that in the mating pathway.
Performance evaluation of TCP in IEEE 802.16 networks

An important application for the IEEE 802.16 technology (also called WiMAX) it to provide high-speed access to the Internet where the transmission control protocol (TCP) is the core transport protocol. In this paper we study through extensive simulation scenarios, the performance characteristics of five representative TCP schemes, namely TCP New Reno, Vegas, Veno, Westwood and BIC, in WiMAX networks, under the conditions of correlated wireless errors, asymmetric end-to-end capabilities and link congestion. The target is to evaluate how the above conditions would affect the TCP congestion control, and suggest the best schemes to be employed in WiMAX Networks.
FBK-irst : A Multi-Phase Kernel Based Approach for Drug-Drug Interaction Detection and Classification that Exploits Linguistic Information

This paper presents the multi-phase relation extraction (RE) approach which was used for the DDI Extraction task of SemEval 2013. As a preliminary step, the proposed approach indirectly (and automatically) exploits the scope of negation cues and the semantic roles of involved entities for reducing the skewness in the training data as well as discarding possible negative instances from the test data. Then, a state-of-the-art hybrid kernel is used to train a classifier which is later applied on the instances of the test data not filtered out by the previous step. The official results of the task show that our approach yields an F-score of 0.80 for DDI detection and an F-score of 0.65 for DDI detection and classification. Our system obtained significantly higher results than all the other participating teams in this shared task and has been ranked 1st.
An Equilibrium Model of an Imperfect Electricity Market

Electricity generators in most deregulated markets simultaneously operate in both financial (contract) and physical (spot) markets. Decisions in each of these markets are not mutually exclusive, and in the case of imperfectly competitive scenarios generating companies can use their market power to influence spot and contract prices. A model of oligopolistic market equilibrium is presented where the relationship between physical and financial markets is based on the impact spot prices and the variance of spot prices have on contract demand. Risk averse consumers are assumed to maximise a mean-variance utility in purchasing contracts, while risk neutral generators face uncertain input costs and compete with Cournot conjectures in the physical market. Results are presented that show incentives exist for generators to amplify cost variations/uncertainties in their quantity bids, in order to extract higher contract prices out of consumers.
Expression of Trefoil Factor 1 in the Developing and Adult Rat Ventral Mesencephalon

Trefoil factor 1 (TFF1) belongs to a family of secreted peptides with a characteristic tree-looped trefoil structure. TFFs are mainly expressed in the gastrointestinal tract where they play a critical role in the function of the mucosal barrier. TFF1 has been suggested as a neuropeptide, but not much is known about its expression and function in the central nervous system. We investigated the expression of TFF1 in the developing and adult rat midbrain. In the adult ventral mesencephalon, TFF1-immunoreactive (-ir) cells were predominantly found in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc), the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and in periaqueductal areas. While around 90% of the TFF1-ir cells in the SNc co-expressed tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), only a subpopulation of the TH-ir neurons expressed TFF1. Some TFF1-ir cells in the SNc co-expressed the calcium-binding proteins calbindin or calretinin and nearly all were NeuN-ir confirming a neuronal phenotype, which was supported by lack of co-localization with the astroglial marker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). Interestingly, at postnatal (P) day 7 and P14, a significantly higher proportion of TH-ir neurons in the SNc co-expressed TFF1 as compared to P21. In contrast, the proportion of TFF1-ir cells expressing TH remained unchanged during postnatal development. Furthermore, significantly more TH-ir neurons expressed TFF1 in the SNc, compared to the VTA at all four time-points investigated. Injection of the tracer fluorogold into the striatum of adult rats resulted in retrograde labeling of several TFF1 expressing cells in the SNc showing that a significant fraction of the TFF1-ir cells were projection neurons. This was also reflected by unilateral loss of TFF1-ir cells in SNc of 6-hydroxylase-lesioned hemiparkinsonian rats. In conclusion, we show for the first time that distinct subpopulations of midbrain dopaminergic neurons express TFF1, and that this expression pattern is altered in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease.
Pollen Limitation in the Alpine: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract Pollen limitation (PL) is thought to be an important factor driving the evolution of floral traits in alpine plants. However, results of pollen supplementation experiments in alpine plants do not always show high levels of PL, and a general review of the importance of PL on alpine-plant reproduction is needed. We assessed to what extent alpine plants are pollen limited, and whether the intensity of PL differs between alpine and lowland species. Moreover, we assessed whether or not PL of alpine species depends on their reproductive system and, finally, whether the outcome of PL studies depends on whether supplemental-pollination was done at the whole-plant level or within a subset of available flowers. We performed both classical and phylogenetic meta-analysis. Our results show that alpine plants are pollen limited. However, PL did not differ significantly between alpine and lowland species. In the alpine, self-incompatible and self-compatible species show similar levels of PL. We did not find differences in PL between different manipulation levels. These results will help understand the real importance of PL of seed production in the alpine. We identify gaps in our knowledge of PL in the alpine that could serve to guide future directions of research in this field.
A Comparison Study of Data Cache Schemes Exploiting Reuse Information in Multiprocessor Systems

Recent cache research has mainly focused on designs for splitting the first-level data cache. Although the underlying goal of all cache schemes is to exploit data localities, the means to this end vary widely between different schemes. One important set of schemes appearing in the open literature makes use of the reuse information. Performance results presented in the open literature are usually given for uniprocessor systems. Because of the current scale of integration and the advances in technology, a large amount of research has been concentrated on symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs); specifically, on SMPs integrated in a single chip. We feel that it is worthwhile studying the impact of such cache schemes on SMPs. A previous block management analysis in uniprocessor systems has been performed. This paper studies the impact on a SMP system of three schemes that have appeared in the literature and make use of the reuse information. Speedup is included in the results that are obtained for one, two and four processors, running a subset of the SPLASH-2 benchmark suite. One scheme split the cache according to the criterion of data locality (NTS), while the others use counters to estimate data localities (Filter and Filter-swap schemes). Results show that the Filter scheme presents the best block management and it is, at least, equivalent to a conventional cache of 25KB (with one processor). Furthermore, the effectiveness of the management improves as the number of processors increases, which seems to be the current trend.
Developing a lean design for Six Sigma through supply chain methodology

The six-sigma systems can promote the enterprise competitive ability, such as pursuing cost improvement, promoting quality, the customer’s satisfaction and valid strategy performance. This paper explored the synergies resulting from the combination of state-of-the art quality initiatives, lean and design for Six Sigma, and develop an integrated SCOR with lean and design for Six Sigma methodologies for their applications to service process improvement and design/or resign. We used the concepts of strength and weaknesses of supply chain operations, lean, and design for six-sigma, for developing a lean design for six-sigma through supply chain model. We discussed a lean and design for Six Sigma through supply chain methodology.
Interactive Robot Education

Aimed at on-board robot training, an approach hybridizing active preference learning and reinforcement learning is presented: Interactive Bayesian Policy Search (IBPS) builds a robotic controller through direct and frugal interaction with the human expert, iteratively emitting preferences among a few behaviors demonstrated by the robot. These preferences allow the robot to gradually refine its policy utility estimate, and select a new policy to be demonstrated, after an Expected Utility of Selection criterion. The paper contribution is on handling the preference noise, due to expert's mistakes or disinterest when demonstrated behaviors are equally unsatisfactory. A noise model is proposed, enabling a resource-limited robot to soundly estimate the preference noise and maintain a robust interaction with the expert, thus enforcing a low sample complexity. A proof of principle of the IBPS approach, in simulation and on-board, is presented.
Open Access Research Article Effectiveness of the Introduction of a Chronic Care Model-based Program for Type 2 Diabetes in Belgium

Background: During a four-year action research project (2003-2007), a program targeting all type 2 diabetes patients was implemented in a well-defined geographical region in Belgium. The implementation of the program resulted in an increase of the overall Assessment of Chronic Illness Care (ACIC) score from 1.45 in 2003 to 5.5 in 2007. The aim of the follow-up study in 2008 was to assess the effect of the implementation of Chronic Care Model (CCM) elements on the quality of diabetes care in a country where the efforts to adapt primary care to a more chronic care oriented system are still at a starting point. Methods: A quasi-experimental study design involving a control region with comparable geographical and socioeconomic characteristics and health care facilities was used to evaluate the effect of the intervention in the region. In collaboration with the InterMutualistic Agency (IMA) and the laboratories from both regions a research database was set up. Study cohorts in both regions were defined by using administrative data from the Sickness Funds and selected from the research database. A set of nine quality indicators was defined based on current scientific evidence. Data were analysed by an institution experienced in longitudinal data analysis. Results: In total 4,174 type 2 diabetes patients were selected from the research database; 2,425 patients (52.9% women) with a mean age of 67.5 from the intervention region and 1,749 patients (55.7% women) with a mean age of 67.4 from the control region. At the end of the intervention period, improvements were observed in five of the nine defined quality indicators in the intervention region, three of which (HbA1c assessment, statin therapy, cholesterol target) improved significantly more than in the control region. Mean HbA1c improved significantly in the intervention region (7.55 to 7.06%), but this evolution did not differ significantly (p = 0.4207) from the one in the control region (7.44 to 6.90%). The improvement in lipid control was significantly higher (p = 0.0021) in the intervention region (total cholesterol 199.07 to 173 mg/dl) than in the control region (199.44 to 180.60 mg/dl). The systematic assessment of long-term diabetes complications remained insufficient. In 2006 only 26% of the patients had their urine tested for micro-albuminuria and only 36% had consulted an ophthalmologist. Conclusion: Although the overall ACIC score increased from 1.45 to 5.5, the improvement in the quality of diabetes care was moderate. Further improvements are needed in the CCM components delivery …
Robust saliency propagation based on random walks

A variety saliency detection methods have been based on the background prior knowledge. Nevertheless, some image patches connected to the image boundary are foreground noise. In this paper, we propose a saliency detection algorithm which propagates coarse saliency based on robust background prior set via random walks. First, we get the robust background prior set from the initial background set which is made up by all image patches connected to the image boundary, and compute a coarse saliency map through summation of global contrast between image patch in complement set of robust background prior set and image patch in robust background set. Second, we get foreground prior set by segmenting the coarse saliency via adaptive threshold, and propagate foreground prior set via random walks. Propagated foreground prior set is integrated by Bayesian inference model and resulting a saliency map. Third, we update saliency map by hypergraph and integrate current saliency and updated saliency by weighted mean summation. Finally, results from multi-scale saliency maps are integrated by pixel-wise weighted summation. Experimental result shows that our approach outperforms state-of-art approaches on two public available dataset.
Using Support Vector Machines to Enhance the Performance of Bayesian Face Recognition

In this paper, we first develop a direct Bayesian-based support vector machine (SVM) by combining the Bayesian analysis with the SVM. Unlike traditional SVM-based face recognition methods that require one to train a large number of SVMs, the direct Bayesian SVM needs only one SVM trained to classify the face difference between intrapersonal variation and extrapersonal variation. However, the additional simplicity means that the method has to separate two complex subspaces by one hyperplane thus affecting the recognition accuracy. In order to improve the recognition performance, we develop three more Bayesian-based SVMs, including the one-versus-all method, the hierarchical agglomerative clustering-based method, and the adaptive clustering method. Finally, we combine the adaptive clustering method with multilevel subspace analysis to further improve the recognition performance. We show the improvement of the new algorithms over traditional subspace methods through experiments on two face databases - the FERET database and the XM2VTS database
Genome-wide assessment of population structure and genetic diversity and development of a core germplasm set for sweet potato based on specific length amplified fragment (SLAF) sequencing

Sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam. , is an important food crop that is cultivated worldwide. However, no genome-wide assessment of the genetic diversity of sweet potato has been reported to date. In the present study, the population structure and genetic diversity of 197 sweet potato accessions most of which were from China were assessed using 62,363 SNPs. A model-based structure analysis divided the accessions into three groups: group 1, group 2 and group 3. The genetic relationships among the accessions were evaluated using a phylogenetic tree, which clustered all the accessions into three major groups. A principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the accessions were distributed according to their population structure. The mean genetic distance among accessions ranged from 0.290 for group 1 to 0.311 for group 3, and the mean polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0.232 for group 1 to 0.251 for group 3. The mean minor allele frequency (MAF) ranged from 0.207 for group 1 to 0.222 for group 3. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed that the maximum diversity was within accessions (89.569%). Using CoreHunter software, a core set of 39 accessions was obtained, which accounted for approximately 19.8% of the total collection. The core germplasm set of sweet potato developed will be a valuable resource for future sweet potato improvement strategies.
Frequency-Shift Zero-Forcing Time-Varying Equalization for Doubly Selective SIMO Channels

This paper deals with the problem of designing linear time-varying (LTV) finite-impulse response zero-forcing (ZF) equalizers for time- and frequency-selective (so-called doubly selective) single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channels. Specifically, relying on a basis expansion model (BEM) of the rapidly time-varying channel impulse response, we derive the canonical frequency-domain representation of the minimal norm LTV-ZF equalizer, which allows one to implement it as a parallel bank of linear time-invariant filters having, as input signals, different frequency-shift (FRESH) versions of the received data. Moreover, on the basis of this FRESH representation, we propose a simple and effective low-complexity version of the minimal norm LTV-ZF equalizer and we discuss the relationships between the devised FRESH equalizers and a LTV-ZF equalizer recently proposed in the literature. The performance analysis, carried out by means of computer simulations, shows that the proposed FRESH-LTV-ZF equalizers significantly outperform their competitive alternative.
Scales for rating psychotic and psychotic-like experiences as continua.

Although psychotic symptoms are usually viewed as dichotomous events, both patients and nonpatients often report isolated psychotic experiences as well as psychotic-like experiences, the latter being attenuated versions of psychotic experiences. College students, previously identified as probably at high risk for psychosis, were interviewed using a modified Schedule for Affecting Disorders and Schizophrenia--Lifetime Version (SADS L). Eighty types of deviant experiences reported in the interviews fell into six categories: transmission of one's own thoughts, passivity experiences, thought withdrawal, voice and other auditory experiences, aberrant beliefs, and visual experiences. The 80 types of experience were rated on deviancy by six expert judges (coefficient alpha of raters = .94). The median ratings of the six judges were used to construct a manual. Two pairs of raters used the manual to rate excerpts of interview and obtained reliabilities of . 78 and . 81. This manual should be useful in evaluation of psychotic-like experiences, especially in studies of individuals believed to be at high risk for future development of clinical psychosis.