Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The ENDOTRIAL study: a spontaneous, open-label, randomized, multicenter, crossover study on the efficacy of sildenafil, tadalafil, and vardenafil in the treatment of erectile dysfunction.

INTRODUCTION The three effective, commercially available drugs for the treatment of erectile dysfunction-sildenafil, vardenafil, and tadalafil-inhibit the same substrate, the erectolytic enzyme phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5). Although there are pharmacological differences between these three compounds, few comparative studies have been conducted to date. AIM The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of sildenafil, tadalafil, and vardenafil in a randomly assigned 8-week fixed regimen. METHODS This was a spontaneous, open-label, randomized, multicenter, crossover study where the patients were randomized to receive sildenafil 50 mg, sildenafil 100 mg, tadalafil 20 mg, or vardenafil 20 mg. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The primary outcome included the posttreatment analysis of erectile function domains of the abridged International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF5+1). The secondary objectives included the analysis of peak-systolic velocities (PSVs), end-diastolic velocities (EDVs), and resistive index (RI), and the estimate of the percentage of men with normal penile hemodynamic parameters after each treatment. RESULTS In all groups of patients taking sildenafil 50 mg, sildenafil 100 mg, tadalafil 20 mg, and vardenafil 20 mg at a frequency reflecting the common treatment regimens in real life, there was a statistically significant baseline-to-end point improvement in subjective perception of erectile function measured by IIEF5+1. When the four groups were compared, the treatments were not different in modifying IIEF5+1 and penile flow parameters. However, the within-group analysis showed that PSV improved in the sildenafil 50 mg group and that PSV together with RI significantly ameliorated in patients receiving 100 mg of sildenafil. Regression analysis confirmed an independent effect of sildenafil on hemodynamic efficacy parameters. CONCLUSIONS An overall equivalence was demonstrated in the subjective perception of treatment benefits for all the PDE5i tested. However, sildenafil, in a dose-dependent manner, was the unique PDE5i able to ameliorate some of the penile flow parameters within the 8-week treatment period. These findings should be interpreted conservatively because of the observational nature of the study.
Pre collision detection system for pedestrian safety based on HOL

Pedestrian detection is an important task in intelligent video surveillance systems. In this work, we propose a system aimed to detect pedestrians from images. Our approach begins by extracting feature's object and classify them by a Support Vector Machine in order to detect the presence of a pedestrian. We adopt a new image descriptor called Histograms of Oriented Laplacian (HOL), which extract the most relevant image features. The method is developed and validated with the experimental results to evaluate the approach's efficiency against other descriptors.
Highly Ionized High-Velocity Clouds toward PKS 2155–304 and Markarian 509

To gain insight into four highly ionized high-velocity clouds (HVCs) discovered by Sembach et al., we have analyzed data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) for the PKS 2155-304 and Mrk 509 sight lines. We measure strong absorption in O VI and column densities of multiple ionization stages of silicon (Si II, III, and IV) and carbon (C II, III, and IV). We interpret this ionization pattern as a multiphase medium that contains both collisionally ionized and photoionized gas. Toward PKS 2155-304, for HVCs at -140 and -270 km s-1, respectively, we measure log N(O ) = 13.80 ± 0.03 and log N(O ) = 13.56 ± 0.06; from Lyman series absorption, we find log N(H ) = 16.37 and 15.23. The presence of high-velocity O VI spread over a broad (100 km s-1) profile, together with large amounts of low-ionization species, is difficult to reconcile with the low densities, ne ≈ 5 × 10-6 cm-3, in the collisional/photoionization models of Nicastro et al., although the HVCs show a similar relation in N(Si IV)/N(C IV) versus N(C II)/N(C IV) to that of high-z intergalactic clouds. Our results suggest that the high-velocity O VI in these absorbers does not necessarily trace the warm-hot intergalactic medium but instead may trace HVCs with low total hydrogen column density. We propose that the broad high-velocity O VI absorption arises from shock ionization, at bow shock interfaces produced from infalling clumps of gas with velocity shear. The similar ratios of high ions for HVC Complex C and these highly ionized HVCs suggest a common production mechanism in the Galactic halo.
Can offloading save energy for popular apps?

Offloading tasks to cloud is one of the proposed solutions for extending battery life of mobile devices. Most prior research focuses on offloading computation, leaving communication-related tasks out of scope. However, most popular applications today involve intensive communication that consumes a significant part of the overall energy. Hence, we currently do not know how feasible it is to use offloading for saving energy in such apps. In this paper, we first show that it is possible to save energy by offloading communication-related tasks of the app to the cloud. We use an open source Twitter client, AndTweet, as a case study. However, using a set of popular open source applications, we also show that existing apps contain constraints that have to be released with code modifications before offloading can be profitable, and that the potential energy savings depend on many communication parameters. We therefore develop two tools: the first to identify the constraints and the other for fine-grained communication energy estimation. We exemplify the tools and explain how they could be used to help offloading parts of popular apps successfully.
Direct Surface Fitting

In this paper, we propose a new method for estimating the shape of a surface from visual input. Assuming a parametric model of a surface, the parameters best explaining the perspective changes of the surface between different views are estimated. This is in contrast to the usual approach of fitting a model into a 3-D point cloud, generated by some previously calculated local correspondence matching method. The main ingredients of our approach are formulas for a perspective mapping of parametric 3-D surface models between different camera views. Model parameters are estimated using the Hooke-Jeeves optimization method, which works without the derivative of the objective function. We demonstrate our approach with models of a plane, a sphere and a cylinder and show that the parameters are accurately estimated.
Securing OpenSSL against Micro-Architectural Attacks

This paper presents a version of the 2 k -ary modular exponentiation algorithm that is secure against current methods of side-channel analysis that can be applied to PCs (the so-called micro-architectural attacks). Some optimisations to the basic algorithm are also proposed to improve the efficiency of an implementation. The proposed algorithm is compared to the current implementation of OpenSSL, and it is shown that the proposed algorithm is more robust than the current implementation.
Brittle and ductile deformation in a zone of rapid uplift: Central Southern Alps, New Zealand

Schists exposed in the central Southern Alps, New Zealand, 1–5 km east of the Alpine fault zone, have been rapidly uplifted during the late Cenozoic. A regionally consistent sequence of mesoscopic structures discordant to the schistosity is recognized extending backward in time from recent brittle displacements of deglaciated surfaces through structures exhibiting brittle-ductile transitional behaviour to ductile deformational features. Kinematic analysis of these structures gives consistent principal subhorizontal shortening directions similar to the present day principal horizontal shortening direction, indicating their relation to late Cenozoic uplift of the Southern Alps. Analysis of deformed veins suggests a minimum shortening strain of about 50% perpendicular to the foliation. The veins crosscut upright mesoscopic to macroscopic folds which commonly develop high-strain zones on their limbs. Within such zones a strong stretching lineation plunges gently SW, approximately perpendicular to the stretching lineation in the mylonites along the Alpine fault. The folds and high-strain zones do not appear to be related to late Cenozoic uplift but may have originated during an earlier phase of dominantly strike-slip motion. Fluid inclusion studies give depth-temperature estimates of around 3 km and 285°C for the development of the brittle structures and 6–8 km at 310°–350°C for the brittle-ductile transition. The deformed veins show evidence of extensive fluid infiltration during the later phases; data from fluid inclusions and metamorphic assemblages give an estimate of 15–20 km and 400°–450°C for their deformation. These data, combined with uplift rates determined by other studies, allow the construction of a depth-temperature-time path which indicates nearly isothermal decompression associated with rapid uplift. A shallow brittle-ductile transition (6–8 km) is consistent with numerical modeling of thermal and mechanical behavior of the crust during rapid uplift associated with continental collision and with the presence of high heat flow in the area. Because of the small temperature change over a large amount of decompression, pressure may be an important factor in controlling the depth of the brittle-ductile transition. The marked temperature drop above the brittle-ductile transition is thought to be enhanced by the influence of convection as an effective cooling mechanism.
Effects of Rainfall, Vegetation, and Microtopography on Infiltration and Runoff

Apparent, or effective, infiltration rates on grassland hillslopes vary with rainfall intensity and flow depth because of the interaction between rainfall, runoff, and vegetated microtopography. The higher parts of the microtopography are occupied by greater densities of macropores and therefore have much greater hydraulic conductivities than the intervening microdepressions. On short hillslopes and plots the apparent infiltration rate is simply the spatial average of the saturated and unsaturated conductivities of this surface. The proportion of the surface which is saturated and the value to which the unsaturated conductivity is raised depends on the rainfall intensity. On longer hillslopes the downslope increase in flow depth in microtopographic depressions progressively inundates more permeable, vegetated mounds so that the hydraulic conductivity of a greater proportion of the surface is raised to its saturated value. For this reason the apparent infiltration rate increases downslope, even in the absence of spatial trends in any of the surface characteristics that affect infiltration. Apparent, or effective, infiltration rate depends on hillslope length. Consequently, steady state discharge does not increase linearly with distance downslope. These two fundamental relationships between infiltration, rainfall intensity, and runoff are analyzed on the basis of sprinkling-infiltrometer measurements and a mathematical model.
The physical basis of glacier volume-area scaling

Ice volumes are known for only a few of the roughly 160,000 glaciers worldwide but are important components of many climate and sea level studies which require water flux estimates. A scaling analysis of the mass and momentum conservation equations shows that glacier volumes can be related by a power law to more easily observed glacier surface areas. The relationship requires four closure choices for the scaling behavior of glacier widths, slopes, side drag and mass balance. Reasonable closures predict a volume-area scaling exponent which is consistent with observations, giving a physical and practical basis for estimating ice volumes. Glacier volume is insensitive to perturbations in the mass balance scaling, but changes in average accumulation area ratios reflect significant changes in the scaling of both mass balance and ice volume.
Molecular epidemiology of human cancer: contribution of mutation spectra studies of tumor suppressor genes.

that are important in: (a) the oligomerization and nuclear localization of the p53 protein (reviewed in Refs. 93-96); (b) the recognition of DNA damage (97, 98); (c) the negative regulation of p53 binding to promoter sequences; (d) the transcription of p53-transactivated genes (99); and (e) the induction of apoptosis (100). Laboratory studies have shown that at least two point mutations in the NH2 terminus of p53 are required to inhibit its transcriptional transactivity (92); therefore, deletions and inser tions are a more detrimental mutagenic mechanism than single point mutations for disrupting these NH2-terminal and COOH-terminal func tional domains.
A Note on Sequential Rule-Based POS Tagging

Brill's part-of-speech tagger is defined through a cascade of leftmost rewrite rules. We revisit the compilation of such rules into a single sequential transducer given by Roche and Schabes (Comput. Ling. 1995) and provide a direct construction of the minimal sequential transducer for each individual rule.
In Utero and Lactational TCDD Exposure Increases Susceptibility to Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction in Adulthood.

Benign prostatic hyperplasia, prostate cancer, and changes in the ratio of circulating testosterone and estradiol often occur concurrently in aging men and can lead to lower urinary tract (LUT) dysfunction. To explore the possibility of a fetal basis for the development of LUT dysfunction in adulthood, Tg(CMV-cre);Nkx3-1(+/-);Pten(fl/+) mice, which are genetically predisposed to prostate neoplasia, were exposedin uteroand during lactation to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD, 1 μg/kg po) or corn oil vehicle (5 ml/kg) after a single maternal dose on 13 days post coitus, and subsequently were aged without further manipulation, or at 8 weeks of age were exposed to exogenous 17 β-estradiol (2.5 mg) and testosterone (25 mg) (T+E2) via slow release subcutaneous implants.In uteroand lactational (IUL) TCDD exposure in the absence of exogenous hormone treatment reduced voiding pressure in adult mice, but otherwise had little effect on mouse LUT anatomy or function. By comparison, IUL TCDD exposure followed by exogenous hormone treatment increased relative kidney, bladder, dorsolateral prostate, and seminal vesicle weights, hydronephrosis incidence, and prostate epithelial cell proliferation, thickened prostate periductal smooth muscle, and altered prostate and bladder collagen fiber distribution. We propose a 2-hit model whereby IUL TCDD exposure sensitizes mice to exogenous-hormone-induced urinary tract dysfunction later in life.
An Implantable Optical Stimulation Delivery System for Actuating an Excitable Biosubstrate

The use of light-activated modulation techniques, such as optogenetics, is growing in popularity for enabling basic neuroscience research. It is also being explored for advancing more applied applications like therapeutic neuromodulation. However, current hardware systems are generally limited to acute measurements or require external tethering of the system to the light source. This paper presents an implantable prototype for use in techniques that modulate neurological state through optically-activated channels and compounds. The prototype system employs a three chip custom IC architecture to manage information flow into the neural substrate, while also handling power dissipation and providing a chronic barrier to the tissue interface. In addition to covering the details of the IC architecture, we discuss system level design constraints and solutions, and in-vitro test results using our prototype system with an optogenetic model. Potential technical limitations for the broader adoption of these techniques will also be considered.
Uncertainty training and decoding methods of deep neural networks based on stochastic representation of enhanced features

Speech enhancement is an important front-end technique to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) in noisy environments. However, the wrong noise suppression of speech enhancement often causes additional distortions in speech signals, which degrades the ASR performance. To compensate the distortions, ASR needs to consider the uncertainty of enhanced features, which can be achieved by using the expectation of ASR decoding/training process with respect to the probabilistic representation of input features. However, unlike the Gaussian mixture model, it is difficult for Deep Neural Network (DNN) to deal with this expectation analytically due to the nonlinear activations. This paper proposes efficient Monte-Carlo approximation methods for this expectation calculation to realize DNN based uncertainty decoding and training. It first models the uncertainty of input features with linear interpolation between original and enhanced feature vectors with a random interpolation coefficient. By sampling input features based on this stochastic process in training, DNN can learn to generalize the variations of enhanced features. Our method also samples input features in decoding, and integrates multiple recognition hypotheses obtained from the samples. Experiments on the reverberated noisy speech recognition tasks (the second CHiME and REVERB challenges) show the effectiveness of our techniques.
Design World: A TestBed for Dialogue

A theory of communication between autonomous agents should make testable predictions about which communicative behaviors are collaborative, and provide a framework for determining the features of a communicative situation that affect whether a behavior is collaborative. The results presented here are derived from a two-phase empirical method. First, we analyze a corpus of naturally-occurring problem-solving dialogues in or(ler to identify potentially collaborative commu
Differences between versions of UML diagrams

This paper addresses the problem of how to detect and visualise differences between versions of UML documents such as class or object diagrams. Our basic approach for showing the differences between two documents is to use a unified document which contains the common and specific parts of both base documents; the specific parts are highlighted. The main problems are (a) how to abstract from modifications done to the layout and other (document type-specific) details which are considered irrelevant; (b) how to deal with structural changes such as the shifting of an operation from one class to another; (c) how to reduce the amount of highlighted information. Our approach is based on the assumption that software documents are modelled in a fine-grained way, i.e. they are stored as syntax trees in XML files or in a repository system, and that the version management system supports fine-grained data. Our difference computation algorithm detects structural changes and enables their appropriate visualisation. Highlighting can be restricted on the basis of the types of the elements and on the basis of the revision history, e.g. only changes which occurred during a particular editing session are highlighted.
Multilevel Z-source inverter based SVC algorithm

This paper suggests a new switching algorithm for multilevel Z-source inverter. The proposed switching algorithm is based on space vector control (SVC), and employs cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter, which generates a voltage vector with very low harmonic distortion and reduced switching frequency. Use of Z-network in this topology causes more reliability and bucking or boosting capability of output voltage. This algorithm allows the inverter to generate a wide range of output voltage with different THD, where proper state should be selected for determined voltage among different states. The performance of proposed inverter and switching algorithm are validated with simulation results using MATLAB/SIMULINK software.
From Autonomic to Self-Self Behaviors: The JADE Experience

Autonomic computing enables computing infrastructures to perform administration tasks with minimal human intervention. This wrap-up paper describes the experience we gained with the design and use of Jade---an architecture-based autonomic system. The contributions of this article are, (1) to explain how Jade provides autonomic management of a distributed system through an architecture-based approach, (2) to explain how we extended autonomic management from traditional self behaviors such as repairing or protecting a managed system to self-self behaviors where Jade also fully manages itself as it manages any other distributed system, (3) to report on our experience reaching self-self behaviors for two crucial autonomic properties, repair and protection.
Communicating Java Threads

The incorporation of multithreading in Java may be considered a significant part of the Java language, because it provides udimentary facilities for concurrent programming. However, we belief that the use of channels is a fundamental concept for concurrent programming. The channel approach as described in this paper is a realization of a systematic design method for concurrent programming in Java based on the CSP paradigm. CSP requires the availability of a Channel class and the addition of composition constructs for sequential, parallel and alternative processes. The Channel class and the constructs have been implemented in Java in compliance with the definitions in CSP. As a result, implementing communication between processes is facilitated, enabling the programmer to avoid deadlock more easily, and freeing the programmer from synchronization and scheduling constructs. The use of the Channel class and the additional constructs is illustrated in a simple application.
Parsimonious Language Models for a Terabyte of Text

The aims of this paper are twofold. Our first aim is to compare results of the earlier Terabyte tracks to the Million Query track. We submitted a number of runs using different document representations (such as full-text, title-fields, or incoming anchor-texts) to increase pool diversity. The initial results show broad agreement in system rankings over various measures on topic sets judged at both Terabyte and Million Query tracks, with runs using the full-text index giving superior results on all measures, but also some noteworthy upsets. Our second aim is to explore the use of parsimonious language models for retrieval on terabyte-scale collections. These models are smaller thus more efficient than the standard language models when used at indexing time, and they may also improve retrieval performance. We have conducted initial experiments using parsimonious models in combination with pseudo-relevance feedback, for both the Terabyte and Million Query track topic sets, and obtained promising initial results.
Fine Grained Artificial Development for Body-Controller Coevolution of Soft-Bodied Animats

We apply the concept of multicellular development to evolve bodies and controllers of soft-bodied animats, evaluated within simulated physics environment. Growth of an embryo is driven by a neural network-like controller in every cell. We show how, through an evolutionary process, this simple approach produces rich and complex morphologies of animats made of hundreds of cells and exhibiting life-like gaits without centralized control. We discuss design decisions and issues that needed addressing to make evolution of moving bodies possible and investigate how some of these decisions impact quality of obtained solutions. We then show how the system allows us to evolve animats that optimize both for distance and the use of actuating material. Finally, we demonstrate how it can be used to evolve developmentally plastic individuals, whose genomes encode more than one phenotype, each adapted to a different type of environment.