Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Multigrid Solver for Aerodynamic Applications by

Results are presented from the development of a high-order discontinuous Galerkin finite element solver using p-multigrid with line Jacobi smoothing. The line smoothing algorithm is presented for unstructured meshes, and p-multigrid is outlined for the nonlinear Euler equations of gas dynamics. Analysis of 2-D advection shows the improved performance of line implicit versus block implicit relaxation. Through a mesh refinement study, the accuracy of the discretization is determined to be the optimal O(hp+1) for smooth problems in 2-D and 3-D. The multigrid convergence rate is found to be independent of the interpolation order but weakly dependent on the grid size. Timing studies for each problem indicate that higher order is advantageous over grid refinement when high accuracy is required. Finally, parallel versions of the 2-D and 3-D solvers demonstrate close to ideal coarse-grain scalability. Thesis Supervisor: David L. Darmofal Title: Associate Professor
Fusing radar and vision for detecting, classifying and avoiding roadway obstacles

This paper describes an integrated MMW radar and vision sensor system for autonomous on-road navigation. The radar sensor has a range of approximately 200 metres and uses a linear array of receivers and wavefront reconstruction techniques to compute range and bearing of objects within the field of view. It is integrated with a vision based lane keeping system to accurately detect and classify obstacles with respect to the danger they pose to the vehicle and to execute required avoidance maneuvres.
Access to CD4 Testing for Rural HIV Patients: Findings from a Cohort Study in Zimbabwe

Background CD4 cell count measurement remains an important diagnostic tool for HIV care in developing countries. Insufficient laboratory capacity in rural Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently mentioned but data on the impact at an individual patient level are lacking. Urban-rural discrepancies in CD4 testing have not been quantified to date. Such evidence is crucial for public health planning and to justify new yet more expensive diagnostic procedures that could circumvent access constraints in rural areas. Objective To compare CD4 testing among rural and urban HIV patients during the first year of treatment. Methods Records from 2,145 HIV positive adult patients from a Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) HIV project in Beitbridge, Zimbabwe, during 2011 and 2012 were used for a retrospective cohort analysis. Covariate-adjusted risk ratios were calculated to estimate the effects of area of residence on CD4 testing at treatment initiation, six and 12 months among rural and urban patients. Findings While the proportion of HIV patients returning for medical consultations at six and 12 months decreased at a similar rate in both patient groups, CD4 testing during consultations dropped to 21% and 8% for urban, and 2% and 1% for rural patients at six and 12 months, respectively. Risk ratios for missing CD4 testing were 0.8 (95% CI 0.7-0.9), 9.2 (95% CI 5.5-15.3), and 7.6 (95% 3.7-17.1) comparing rural versus urban patients at treatment initiation, six and 12 months, respectively. Conclusions CD4 testing was low overall, and particularly poor in rural patients. Difficulties with specimen transportation were probably a major factor underlying this difference and requires new diagnostic approaches. Our findings point to severe health system constraints in providing CD4 testing overall that need to be addressed if effective monitoring of HIV patients is to be achieved, whether by alternative CD4 diagnostics or newly-recommended routine viral load testing.
First Experiences With a Wearable Multisensor Device in a Noninvasive Continuous Glucose Monitoring Study at Home, Part II: The Investigators’ View

Background: Extensive past work showed that noninvasive continuous glucose monitoring with a wearable multisensor device worn on the upper arm provides useful information about glucose trends to improve diabetes therapy in controlled and semicontrolled conditions. Method: To test previous findings also in uncontrolled conditions, a long term at home study has been organized to collect multisensor and reference glucose data in a population of 20 type 1 diabetes subjects. A total of 1072 study days were collected and a fully on-line compatible algorithmic routine linking multisensor data to glucose applied to estimate glucose levels noninvasively. Results: The algorithm used here calculates glucose values from sensor data and adds a constant obtained by a daily calibration. It provides point inaccuracy measured by a MARD of 35.4 mg/dL on test data. This is higher than current state-of-the-art minimally invasive devices, but still 86.9% of glucose rate points fall within the zone AR+BR. Conclusions: The multisensor device and the algorithmic routine used earlier in controlled conditions tracks glucose changes also in uncontrolled conditions, although with lower accuracy. The examination of learning curves suggests that obtaining more data would not improve the results. Therefore, further efforts would focus on the development of more complex algorithmic routines able to compensate for environmental and physiological confounders better.
An implicit finite difference method for drainage basin evolution

In drainage basin evolution models the implementation of sediment transport and sediment balance is constrained by numerical instabilities. In order to overcome these difficulties an implicit finite difference method is proposed. The method simultaneously adjusts the elevation at each node of the numerical grid, is unconditionally stable, and significantly reduces the computational time. The performance of the method is tested and briefly discussed with a numerical example.
Retrieval Orientation and the Control of Recollection

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were employed to investigate whether recognition test items are processed differently according to whether they are used to probe memory for previously studied words or pictures. In each of two study-test blocks, subjects encoded a mixed list of words and pictures, and then performed a recognition memory task with words as the test items. In one block, the requirement was to respond positively to test items corresponding to studied words, and to reject both new items and items corresponding to the studied pictures. In the other block, positive responses were made to test items corresponding to pictures, and items corresponding to words were classified along with the new items. ERPs elicited during the test phase by correctly classified new items differed according to whether words or pictures were the sought-for modality. This finding was interpreted as a neural correlate of the different retrieval orientations adopted when searching memory for words versus pictures. Relative to new items, correctly classified items studied in both target modalities elicited robust, positive-going old/new effects. When pictures were targets, test items corresponding to studied words also elicited large effects. By contrast, when words were targets, old/ new effects were absent for the items corresponding to studied pictures. These findings were interpreted as evidence that, in some circumstances, adoption of an appropriate retrieval orientation permits retrieval cues to be employed with a high degree of specificity.
The Occasioning and Structure of Conversational Stories

Orientation What do we mean by a story? Recent usage has turned almost everything, even the non-verbal, into a narrative. For example, Ochs and Capps (1996) have a remarkably inclusive definition of narratives of personal experience as “verbalized, visualized, and/or embodied framings of a sequence of actual and possible life events. ” The absence of a common guiding framework has led to the blossoming of criteria by different narrative researchers for identifying their respective units of study. When one looks for personal experience stories in natural conversations, the most striking fact is that they are not always clearly recognizable by traditional narrative-internal criteria such as the presence of a protagonist and events creating conflict, reference to events in the past, presence of a climactic complicating action, or closure of the storyline with a resolution. Further, the onset of conversational stories does not always clearly demarcate the narrative segment from the preceding talk. Some stories are explicitly introduced into the ongoing conversation with a preface like “do you remember when. ” or “did I tell you about. ,” or are elicited by instructions to tell a story. But as one listens to children’s talk or talk between adults, there appear to be many marginal cases.
Complex Treatment of the Patients with Alzheimer?s Disease Using Stem Cell Preparations Including Extracted Fetal Stem Cells

Objective: The principal aim of this study was to evaluate effectiveness of combined therapy method with inclusion of the standard protocol of treatment using medicines along with application of separated fetal stem cells (FSCs). Higher efficacy of treatment of the patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is defined as a technical value of our complex therapy. Material and Methods: We performed a comparative study of the groups of patients including women and men aged from 50 to 85 years who were presented with diagnostic criteria of Alzheimer’s type dementia by DSM- IV-TR, NINCDS-ADRDA as well as study of the patients with confirmed diagnosis of AD in accordance with ICD-10-CM suffering from mild and moderate-to-severe stages of dementia by CDR and MMSE scales. Along with standard treatment by use of stable doses of medicines our patients were administered FSCs suspensions containing stem cells extracted from the tissues of fetal liver and brain (human cadaveric fetuses of 7-12 weeks gestation) which were acquired as a result of medical abortion due to social and family planning reasons. Results: In a process of the comparative study the results we received emphasize treatment significance and advantages of complex therapy method compared to standard treatment used as isolated therapy for AD patients suffering from mild-to-moderate dementia. The suggested method of complex treatment is safe and contributes to improved cognitive functions as well as increased daily activities among such a group of AD patients (p<0.05). Conclusion: Use of preparations with extracted FSCs in complex treatment of the AD patients with mild and moderate grades of dementia has been proven to be safe and effective method of therapy which contributed to better cognitive functions and increased everyday activity among patients with AD.
Evaluating access to a child-oriented poverty alleviation intervention in rural South Africa1

Background: In April 1998, the South African government introduced the child-support grant as a poverty-alleviation measure to support the income of poor households and enable them to care for the child. Aims: This research aimed to measure equity of access to applications for the child-support grant in an area characterized by poverty. Three questions were addressed: (i) How does socioeconomic status affect the probability of a household applying for a child-care grant? (ii) What household and caregiver characteristics are associated with child-care-grant application? (iii) What barriers to access are experienced by households that do not apply for the child-care grant? Methods: The study population of 6,725 households with at least one age-eligible child was drawn from the Agincourt field site, a rural sub-district of South Africa. Data used were obtained from health and demographic surveillance, a child-grant questionnaire, and a household-asset survey. Descriptive cross-tabulations and multivariate logistic regression were used in the analysis. Results: Although these grants are intended as a pro-poor intervention, the poorest households are less likely to apply for grants than those in higher socioeconomic bands. Households in lower socioeconomic bands experienced barriers in accessing grants; these related to lack of official documentation, education level of the caregiver and household head, and distance from government service offices. Conclusions: Enhancing access will require improved provision of birth certificates and identity documents, efficient coordination and service provision from a range of rural government offices, and creative methods of communication.
An Approximate Subgame-Perfect Equilibrium Computation Technique for Repeated Games

This paper presents a technique for approximating, up to any precision, the set of subgame-perfect equilibria (SPE) in repeated games with discounting. The process starts with a single hypercube approximation of the set of SPE payoff profiles. Then the initial hypercube is gradually partitioned on to a set of smaller adjacent hypercubes, while those hypercubes that cannot contain any SPE point are gradually withdrawn. Whether a given hypercube can contain an equilibrium point is verified by an appropriate mixed integer program. A special attention is paid to the question of extracting players' strategies and their representability in form of finite automata.
Determination of Feature Hierarchy from Gabor and SIFT Features for Face Recognition

This paper shows how the most important features can be selected from the face so that the performance of any face recognition engine can be improved by matching only the maximally distinguishable features. Creating an automated face recognition system that can duplicate human performance in recognizing a face is one of the key goal of computer vision researchers. So, it is necessary that computational researchers should know the key findings from a facial image. Here the feature hierarchy in accordance with importance to recognize a face is used in our Face Recognition system and it is observed that the performance have been improved drastically after selecting the mostly contributing feature set.
Voice activity detection in degraded speech using excitation source information

This paper proposes a method for detection of voiced regions from speech signals collected in noisy environment. The proposed method is based on the characteristics of excitation source of speech production. The degraded speech signal is processed by linear prediction analysis for deriving the linear prediction residual. Hilbert envelope of the linear prediction residual is processed using covariance analysis to obtain coherentlyadded covariance signal. The periodicity property of the coherently added covariance signal is exploited to detect the voiced regions using autocorrelation analysis. The performance of the proposed voice activity detection algorithm is evaluated under different noise environments and at different levels of degradation.
The Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison: data and modeling protocols for Phase 1 (v1.0)

Abstract. We present protocols and input data for Phase 1 of the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison, a project of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP). The project includes global simulations of yields, phenologies, and many land-surface fluxes using 12–15 modeling groups for many crops, climate forcing data sets, and scenarios over the historical period from 1948 to 2012. The primary outcomes of the project include (1) a detailed comparison of the major differences and similarities among global models commonly used for large-scale climate impact assessment, (2) an evaluation of model and ensemble hindcasting skill, (3) quantification of key uncertainties from climate input data, model choice, and other sources, and (4) a multi-model analysis of the agricultural impacts of large-scale climate extremes from the historical record.
A New Metastability Immune Warning Detection Using Edge Detector and Resilient Circuit

In this paper, a new metastability immune warning detection flipflop (FF) is proposed, which consists of an edge detector, a warning window creator, and a caution detector along with a resilient circuit. The delayed data are monitored during the warning window to flag a warning signal before the data enter the erroneous zone. In this scheme, the warning window is self-governing of input clock frequency and hence is suitable for frequency scaling application. A resilient circuit test-chip is implement with timing-error detection and recovery circuits to eliminate the clock frequency protector band from dynamic supply voltage and temperature variations as well as to exploit path- activation probability for maximizing throughput. Two error-detection sequential circuits are introduced to preserve the timing-error detection ability of preceding EDS designs while lowering clock energy and removing datapath metastability.
A BP neural network text categorization method optimized by an improved genetic algorithm

The back propagation(BP) neural network is widely used for text categorization and could achieve high performance. However, the greatest disadvantage of this network is its long training time. The genetic algorithm is often used to generate useful solutions for optimization. In this paper we combined the genetic algorithm and the back propagation neural network for text categorization. We use the genetic algorithm to optimize weights of connections in the back propagation neural network instead of back-propagating. At the same time, we improved the genetic algorithm to increase its efficiency. Through this method, we overcome the traditional disadvantage of the BP neural network. Our experiments show that our method outperforms the traditional method for text categorization.
Next Generation Sequencing of miRNAs – Strategies, Resources and Methods

miRNAs constitute a family of small RNA species that have been demonstrated to play a central role in regulating gene expression in many organisms. With the advent of next generation sequencing, new opportunities have arisen to identify and quantify miRNAs and elucidate their function. The unprecedented sequencing depth reached by next generation sequencing technologies makes it possible to get a comprehensive miRNA landscape but also poses new challenges for data analysis. We provide an overview of strategies used for miRNA sequencing, public miRNA resources, and useful methods and tools that are available for data analysis.
The Song Is You

Research suggests that musical preferences are linked to personality, but this research has been hindered by genre-based theories and methods. We address this limitation using a novel method based on the actual attributes that people perceive from music. In Study 1, using 102 musical pieces representing 26 genres and subgenres, we show that 38 perceived attributes in music can be organized into three basic dimensions: arousal, valence, and depth. In Study 2 (N = 9,454), we show that people’s preferences for these musical attributes reflected their self-ratings of personality traits. Importantly, personality was found to predict musical preferences above and beyond demographic variables. These findings advance previous theory and research and have direct applications for the music industry, recommendation algorithms, and health-care professionals.
Initial Measurements of Black Hole Spin in GX 339–4 from Suzaku Spectroscopy

We report on a deep Suzaku observation of the stellar-mass black hole GX 339–4 in outburst. A clear, strong, relativistically shaped iron emission line from the inner accretion disk is observed. The broadband disk reflection spectrum revealed is one of the most sensitive yet obtained from an accreting black hole. We fit the Suzaku spectra with a physically motivated disk reflection model, blurred by a new relativistic line function in which the black hole spin parameter is a variable. This procedure yielded a black hole spin parameter of a = 0.89 ± 0.04. Joint modeling of these Suzaku spectra and prior XMM-Newton spectra obtained in two different outburst phases yields a spin parameter of a = 0.93 ± 0.01. The degree of consistency between these results suggests that disk reflection models allow for spin measurements that are not strongly biased by scattering effects. We suggest that the best value of the black hole spin parameter is a = 0.93 ± 0.01 (statistical) ± 0.04 (systematic) . Although preliminary, these results represent the first direct measurement of nonzero spin in a stellar-mass black hole using relativistic line modeling.
A conserved Polϵ binding module in Ctf18-RFC is required for S-phase checkpoint activation downstream of Mec1

Defects during chromosome replication in eukaryotes activate a signaling pathway called the S-phase checkpoint, which produces a multifaceted response that preserves genome integrity at stalled DNA replication forks. Work with budding yeast showed that the ‘alternative clamp loader’ known as Ctf18-RFC acts by an unknown mechanism to activate the checkpoint kinase Rad53, which then mediates much of the checkpoint response. Here we show that budding yeast Ctf18-RFC associates with DNA polymerase epsilon, via an evolutionarily conserved ‘Pol ϵ binding module’ in Ctf18-RFC that is produced by interaction of the carboxyl terminus of Ctf18 with the Ctf8 and Dcc1 subunits. Mutations at the end of Ctf18 disrupt the integrity of the Pol ϵ binding module and block the S-phase checkpoint pathway, downstream of the Mec1 kinase that is the budding yeast orthologue of mammalian ATR. Similar defects in checkpoint activation are produced by mutations that displace Pol ϵ from the replisome. These findings indicate that the association of Ctf18-RFC with Pol ϵ at defective replication forks is a key step in activation of the S-phase checkpoint.
Positions Are Defined on the Input:Evidence from Repairs in Child Phonology

As defined in (1), these constraints have a crucial property in common with positional markedness constraints (e.g., Itô, Mester & Padgett 1995, Walker 2001, 2005, Zoll 1996, 1998): they both define the key position P relative to the output. This is unsurprising in the case of markedness constraints, given that violations of markedness constraints are, by definition, assessed solely against output candidates. The rationale for defining positions against the output is less clear, however, in the case of positional faithfulness. Input-output correspondence constraints (McCarthy & Prince 1995) make reference to both the input and output strings in assessing violations, raising the possibility that positions might instead be defined with respect to the input, as in (2). I will refer to this alternative definition of positional faithfulness as “input-based”.
A Culminating Advance in the Theory and Practice of Data Fusion, Filtering, and Decentralized Estimation 1 Covariance Intersection Working Group (ciwg)

Covariance Intersection (CI) is a major advance over the Kalman Filter for estimation, ltering, and data fusion applications. Covariance Intersection is more general in that it permits the fusion of estimates whose degree of correlation is unknown without imposing distribution assumptions such as known error bounds. Past researchers have always assumed that correlation information is necessary and have concluded, based on this assumption, that a wide variety of important real world problems are intractable. Covariance Intersection makes all of these problems not only tractable, but simple and eecient enough to support real time processing requirements. This report summarizes information on CI provided by members of the Covariance Intersection Working Group (CIWG).