Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predicting Changes in Affective States using Neural Networks

Knowledge of patients affective state could prove to be crucial for health-care professionals in both diagnosis and treatment, however, this requires patients to report how they feel. In practice the sampling rate of affective states needs to be kept low, in order to ensure that the patients can rest. Furthermore using traditional methods of measuring affective states, is not always possible, e.g. patients can be incapable of verbal communications. In this study we explore the prediction of peoples self-reported affective state by measuring multiple physiological signals. We use different Neural networks (NN) setups and compare with different multiple linear regression (MLR) setups for prediction of changes in affective states. The results showed that NN and MLR predicted the change in affective states with accuracies of 91.88% and 89.10%, respectively.
Non-Parametric Testing of classes of transformations

In this paper we consider two independent iid samples X1;::::;Xm and Y1;::::;Yn; a given class of functions ⁄; and perform the test † H0: There exists ‚ 2 ⁄ such that ‚(Y1) has the same distribution as X1. † H1: non H0. We present tests of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov type and smooth alternatives based on Von Mises calculus. Algorithms for some particular cases are provided. Our procedure may be seen as a previous step to any rank test for difierences in location or scale, since for these tests one assumes that the difierence between the distribution of the two samples is only due to a transformation of a given type (translation, change of scale).
A rationally designed combined treatment with an alphavirus-based cancer vaccine, sunitinib and low-dose tumor irradiation completely blocks tumor development

The clinical efficacy of therapeutic cancer vaccines remains limited. For effective immunotherapeutic responses in cancer patients, multimodal approaches capable of both inducing antitumor immune responses and bypassing tumor-mediated immune escape seem essential. Here, we report on a combination therapy comprising sunitinib (40 mg/kg), single low-dose (14 Gy) tumor irradiation and immunization with a therapeutic cancer vaccine based on a Semliki Forest virus vector encoding the oncoproteins E6 and E7 of human papillomavirus (SFVeE6,7). We previously demonstrated that either low–dose irradiation or sunitinib in single combination with SFVeE6,7 immunizations enhanced the intratumoral ratio of antitumor effector cells to myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs). On the basis of these results we designed a triple treatment combinatorial regimen. The trimodal sunitinib, low–dose irradiation and SFVeE6,7 immunization therapy resulted in stronger intratumoral MDSC depletion than sunitinib alone. Concomitantly, the highest levels of intratumoral E7-specific CD8+ T cells were attained after triple treatment. Approximately 75% of these cells were positive for the early activation marker CD69. The combination of sunitinib, low-dose tumor irradiation and SFVeE6,7 immunization dramatically changed the intratumoral immune compartment. Whereas control tumors contained 0.02 E7-specific CD8+ T cells per MDSC, triple treatment tumors contained more than 200 E7-specific CD8+ T cells per MDSC, a 10,000-fold increased ratio. As a result, the triple treatment strongly enhanced the immunotherapeutic antitumor effect, blocking tumor development altogether and leading to 100% tumor-free survival of tumor-bearing mice. This study demonstrates that this multimodal approach elicits superior antitumor effects and should be considered for clinical applications.
An improved global motion estimation for practical objection detection

This paper has presented an improved global motion estimation and complement for practical object detection. This algorithm can deal with the camera shift, rotation and scaling by using the affine model. And the two dimension motion estimation results of choosing the special blocks can be used to compute the parameter of affine model. The two dimension motion estimation can uses the former frame motion information as initialization for search. It is full-concluded the temporal redundancy. Then the algorithm has detail steps to remove the unsuitable black motion estimation and compute the parameters. Because it can accurate complement the global motion this algorithm can well be used in moving object detection and segmentation. As well as it is a fast algorithm, as a result it can be used in real-time system. Though the simulation, this algorithm can get perfect result.
Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Agricultural Development

Learning from successes in agricultural development is now more urgent than ever. Progress in feeding the world’s billions has slowed, while the challenge of meeting future food needs remains enormous and is subject to new uncertainties in the global food and agricultural systems. In the late 1950s around a billion people were estimated to go hungry every day. Scientists, policymakers, farmers, and ordinary people initiated a concerted push to boost agricultural production and productivity in developing countries. Great strides were also made in improving the quality of food and the ability of vulnerable people to access food needed for survival. All these efforts have done more than just feed millions. They have also demonstrated that agriculture can be a key driver of growth and development for many of the world’s poorest countries.
New method for chemical characterization of polymer materials in industrial devices : AFM-IR with FIB sample preparation

We have applied AFM-IR to characterize the chemical structure of polyimide film near the interface with a copper substrate as a model system of an industrial device. AFM-IR requires sample preparation of slicing a sample to be a thin film before its measurement. We have adopted FIB processing as the sample preparation method because a microtome is difficult to slice the cupper substrate. From the comparison between the spectra obtained by traditional FT-IR-ATR, AFM-IR with microtome preparation and FIB processing, we conclude that the damage on polyimide due to ion beam irradiation is so negligible as to characterize the chemical structure of polyimide. We have found the production of carboxylate near the interface by AFM-IR spectral measurement. Furthermore, we have succeeded in visualizing the distribution of carboxylate with a spatial resolution of a few hundreds nanometers which has been difficult to be achieved by a traditional microscopic IR spectroscopy. AFM-IR in conjunction with FIB processing is a useful and promising tool for nanometer scale characterization of chemical structure of polymer materials in organic/inorganic composites such as micro-structured semiconductor devices.
A nine variable probabilistic macroeconomic forecasting model

This model extends one originally constructed by Robert Litterman in 1980 and used continuously since then to prepare quarterly forecasts. The current version is 3 variables larger than Litterman’s original model, and it now allows time variation in coefficients, predictable time variation in forecast error variance, and non-normality in disturbances. Despite this elaboration the model in a sense has just 12 parameters free to fit the behavior of 9 variables in 9 equations. The paper reports the model structure and summarizes some aspects of its recent forecasting performance.
Association between Dietary Vitamin C Intake and Risk of Prostate Cancer: A Meta-analysis Involving 103,658 Subjects

We attempted to systematically determine the association between dietary intake of vitamin C and risk of prostate cancer. PubMed and Embase were searched to obtain eligible studies published before February 2015. Cohort or case-control studies that reported the relative risk (RR)/odds ratio (OR) estimates with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between vitamin C intake and prostate cancer risk were included. Eighteen studies regarding dietary vitamin C intake were finally obtained, with a total of 103,658 subjects. The pooled RR of prostate cancer for the highest versus the lowest categories of dietary vitamin C intake was 0.89 (95%CI: 0.83-0.94; p = 0.000) with evidence of a moderate heterogeneity (I2 = 39.4%, p = 0.045). Meta-regression analysis suggested that study design accounted for a major proportion of the heterogeneity. Stratifying the overall study according to study design yielded pooled RRs of 0.92 (95%CI: 0.86-0.99, p = 0.027) among cohort studies and 0.80 (95%CI: 0.71-0.89, p = 0.000) among case-control studies, with no heterogeneity in either subgroup. In the dose-response analysis, an inverse linear relationship between dietary vitamin C intake and prostate cancer risk was established, with a 150 mg/day dietary vitamin C intake conferred RRs of 0.91 (95%CI: 0.84-0.98, p = 0.018) in the overall studies, 0.95 (95%CI: 0.90-0.99, p = 0.039) in cohort studies, and 0.79 (95%CI: 0.69-0.91, p = 0.001) in case-control studies. In conclusion, intake of vitamin C from food was inversely associated with prostate cancer risk in this meta-analysis.
A 2.4 GHz 0.18-µm CMOS Class E single-ended power amplifier without spiral inductors

This paper describes the design of a 2.4-GHz CMOS Class E single-ended power amplifier (PA) for wireless applications in TSMC 0.18-µm CMOS technology. The Class E PA proposed in this paper realizes all inductors with bondwires for the higher quality factor to increase PA performance and to reduce chip size. The single-ended topology is employed because most existing components designed to be driven by PAs are single-ended. The cascode topology with a self-biasing technique is used to prevent device stress and to decrease the requirement for additional bond pads. The measurement results indicate that the PA delivers 19.2 dBm output power and 27.8% power added efficiency with 3.3-V power supply into a 50 Ω load. The chip area is 0.37 mm2.
Towards Systems That Care: A Conceptual Framework based on Motivation, Metacognition and Affect

This paper describes a Conceptual Framework underpinning “Systems that Care” in terms of educational systems that take account of motivation, metacognition and affect, in addition to cognition. The main focus is on motivation, as learning requires the student to put in effort and be engaged, in other words to be motivated to learn. But motivation is not the whole story as it is strongly related to metacognition and affect. Traditional intelligent educational systems, whether learner-centred or teacher-centred in their pedagogy, are characterised as having deployed their intelligence to assist in the development of the learner's knowledge or skill in some domain. They have operated largely at the cognitive level and have assumed that the learner is already able to manage her own learning, is already in an appropriate affective state and also is already motivated to learn. This paper starts by outlining theories of motivation and their interactions with affect and with metacognition, as developed in the psychological and educational literatures. It then describes how such theories have been implemented in intelligent educational systems. The first part of the Conceptual Framework develops the notion of a partial hierarchy of systems in terms of their pedagogic focus. These range from traditional, cognitively intelligent systems, essentially concerned with cognition up to “Systems that Care”. Intermediate classes of system include Metacognitively Intelligent systems, Affectively Intelligent systems and Motivationally Intelligent systems. The second part of the Conceptual Framework is concerned with the design of systems. This is characterised in terms of (i) the kinds of diagnostic input data (such as the learner's facial expression offering clues as to her demeanour) and (ii) the repertoire of tactical and strategic pedagogic moves (such as offering encouragement), applicable at different levels of the hierarchy. Attention is paid to metacognition, meta-affect and meta-motivation covering the capability of both the learner and the educational system to understand, reason about and regulate cognition, affect and motivation. Finally, research questions and areas of further work are identified in theory development, the role of the meta levels, and design considerations.
MIMO-SAR and the orthogonality confusion

This paper reviews radar architectures that employ multiple transmit and multiple receive channels to improve the performance of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems. These advanced architectures have been dubbed multiple-input multiple-output SAR (MIMO-SAR) in analogy to MIMO communication systems. Considerable confusion arose, however, with regard to the selection of suitable waveforms for the simultaneous transmission via multiple antennas. In this paper, it is shown that the mere use of orthogonal waveforms is insufficient for the desired performance improvement in view of most SAR applications. As a solution to this fundamental MIMO-SAR problem we had previously suggested to exploit the special data acquisition geometry of a side-looking imaging radar equipped with multiple receiver channels in addition to appropriately designed waveforms transmitted by multiple antennas. Here, we extend this approach to a more general set of radar waveforms with special correlation properties that satisfy a short-term shift-orthogonality condition. We show that the echoes from simultaneously transmitted pulses can be separated if the short-term shift orthogonality is combined with digital beamforming on receive in elevation. This enables the implementation of a fully functional MIMO-SAR without correlation noise leakage for extended scattering scenarios.
Patronage and Political Stability in Africa

Political conflict across Africa is often linked to the pervasive use of patronage in retaining control of the state. However, few sources of data have been available to systematically examine the relationship between a leader’s patronage strategies and the likelihood of an extraconstitutional change in power. This article employs ministerial appointments to the cabinet as a proxy for changes in the size of a leader’s patronage coalition. With time-series cross-section data on 40 African countries, this study shows that the size of cabinets varies systematically according to regime type, resource constraints, ethnic fractionalization, and total population. It then shows that African leaders extend their tenure in office by expanding their patronage coalition through cabinet appointments. A proportional hazards model of regime duration indicates that cabinet expansion lowers the probability of a leader’s being deposed through a coup. The appointment of one additional minister to the cabinet lowers a leader’s coup risk by a greater extent than does a 1-percentage-point increase in economic growth.
Pregnancy outcomes in women with juvenile idiopathic arthritis: a population-based study.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to describe pregnancy outcomes among women with JIA. METHODS Women who gave birth in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, were linked to hospital discharge records from 2000 to 2010. Women with an ICD-10-AM code of M08 or M09 in the hospital records were considered to have JIA. Logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios for pregnancy outcomes and the lack of independence in study outcomes for multiple pregnancies in the same woman was taken into account using generalized estimating equations. RESULTS During the study period, 601,659 women had 941,496 births. Of these births, 78 births could be attributed to 50 women with JIA. Of 78 JIA pregnancies, 53 (68%) were delivered by either Caesarean section (n = 40, 51%) or instrumental delivery (n = 13, 17%); compared with other women, those with JIA had significantly higher rates of pre-eclampsia, postpartum haemorrhage and severe maternal morbidity. Compared with other infants, those with mothers with JIA were more likely to be born prematurely, but were not at increased risk of being small for gestational age, requiring neonatal intensive care, having a low Apgar score at 5 min or severe neonatal morbidity. CONCLUSION Infants of women with JIA did not have an increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes. Intensive obstetric care might be required during pregnancy for women with JIA given the increased risk of maternal morbidity.
Implementation of QKD in 802.11 Networks

It is the fact that wireless networks have become one of the most widely used communication systems in the world. However, providing secure communication for wireless networks has become one of the prime concerns. Quantum cryptography, namely Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), offers the promise of unconditional security. In this paper, we shall extend our previous research work to a new method of integrating quantum cryptography for key distribution in 802.11 wireless networks. Our contributions, based on our previous results [1], are as follows: (1) showing how QKD can be implemented in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks (2) introducing a novel method that takes the advantage of mutual authentication features offered by some EAP variants of 802.1X Port-Based Network Access Control (PBNAC) (3) presenting a new code titled Quantum Message Integrity Code (Q-MIC) that provides mutual authentication between the two communication parties and its implementation.
ChipOS based grid computing

Grid computing technology has become the most popular and mature way of distributed computing recently. At the same time, embedded system and System-on-Chip(SoC) architecture are becoming commonly used in calculation area, because of the low design cost and extensible architecture. These new technology provides a noval way to construct grid computing infrustructure with embedded system on SoC. This paper presents a dual OS architcture to establish a grid computing infrustructure, with a on-chip OS named ChipOS to provide grid computing tasks dispatching and the general purpose operating system to deal with normal computing tasks. This dual OS grid computing architecture is proved an effective task dispatching platform for grid computing.
Discriminating clinical features of heart failure with preserved vs. reduced ejection fraction in the community.

AIMS Heart failure (HF) is a major public health burden worldwide. Of patients presenting with HF, 30-55% have a preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF) rather than a reduced ejection fraction (HFREF). Our objective was to examine discriminating clinical features in new-onset HFPEF vs. HFREF. METHODS AND RESULTS Of 712 participants in the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) hospitalized for new-onset HF between 1981 and 2008 (median age 81 years, 53% female), 46% had HFPEF (EF >45%) and 54% had HFREF (EF ≤45%). In multivariable logistic regression, coronary heart disease (CHD), higher heart rate, higher potassium, left bundle branch block, and ischaemic electrocardiographic changes increased the odds of HFREF; female sex and atrial fibrillation increased the odds of HFPEF. In aggregate, these clinical features predicted HF subtype with good discrimination (c-statistic 0.78). Predictors were examined in the Enhanced Feedback for Effective Cardiac Treatment (EFFECT) study. Of 4436 HF patients (median age 75 years, 47% female), 32% had HFPEF and 68% had HFREF. Distinguishing clinical features were consistent between FHS and EFFECT, with comparable discrimination in EFFECT (c-statistic 0.75). In exploratory analyses examining the traits of the intermediate EF group (EF 35-55%), CHD predisposed to a decrease in EF, whereas other clinical traits showed an overlapping spectrum between HFPEF and HFREF. CONCLUSION Multiple clinical characteristics at the time of initial HF presentation differed in participants with HFPEF vs. HFREF. While CHD was clearly associated with a lower EF, overlapping characteristics were observed in the middle of the left ventricular EF range spectrum.
Effectiveness of code contribution: from patch-based to pull-request-based tools

Code contributions in Free/Libre and Open Source Software projects are controlled to maintain high-quality of software. Alternatives to patch-based code contribution tools such as mailing lists and issue trackers have been developed with the pull request systems being the most visible and widely available on GitHub. Is the code contribution process more effective with pull request systems? To answer that, we quantify the effectiveness via the rates contributions are accepted and ignored, via the time until the first response and final resolution and via the numbers of contributions. To control for the latent variables, our study includes a project that migrated from an issue tracker to the GitHub pull request system and a comparison between projects using mailing lists and pull request systems. Our results show pull request systems to be associated with reduced review times and larger numbers of contributions. However, not all the comparisons indicate substantially better accept or ignore rates in pull request systems. These variations may be most simply explained by the differences in contribution practices the projects employ and may be less affected by the type of tool. Our results clarify the importance of understanding the role of tools in effective management of the broad network of potential contributors and may lead to strategies and practices making the code contribution more satisfying and efficient from both contributors' and maintainers' perspectives.
Automated Proof of Resistance of Denial of Service Attacks Using Event with Theorem Prover

The huge damage of denial of service attacks in security protocols attracts researchers’ attention and effort to analysis, verification and prevention of denial of service attacks. In order to model resistance of denial of service attacks, firstly, we extend applied pi calculus from both adversary context and processes aspects; secondly, the first computer-aided method of resistance of denial of service attacks based on event is proposed from the angle of state in security protocols by us; finally, the analysis using ProVerif indicates that JFK protocol is against of denial of service attacks but IEEE 802.11 i four-way handshake protocol is not, and simultaneously, a new denial of service attack is firstly detected , together with methods to prevent it in IEEE 802.11 i four-way handshake protocol .
On the Detection of Policy Conflicts in Interdomain Routing

The dynamic policy routing model (DPR) was re- cently introduced to explicitly model the dynamics of policy routing. DPR extends the formalism of the stable paths problem with discrete synchronous time to capture the propagation of path changes in any dynamic network using a structure called the causation chain. In this work, we extend DPR by introducing several novel structures, namely, causation fences and policy digraphs that provide further insight into how the dynamics of policy routing manifest in the network. Using our extensions to DPR, we solve a fundamental problem: policy conflict detection. We show how the root cause of any cycle of routing update messages, under any routing policy configuration, can be precisely inferred as either a transient route flap or a policy conflict. We also develop SAFETYPULSE, a token-based distributed algorithm to detect policy conflicts in any dynamic network. SAFETYPULSE has several novel characteristics, namely, it is privacy preserving, computationally efficient and provably correct.