Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coronary artery magnetic resonance angiography

Coronary magnetic resonance angiography (coronary MRA) continues to advance rapidly from both a technical and clinical perspective. Coronary MRA has benefited directly from improvements in spatial resolution, contrast definition, and advances in motion correction, which have furthered its routine use in evaluating coronary artery bypass grafts and anomalous coronary arteries. Work in refining the techniques for more accurate identification of coronary artery disease (CAD) continues, with advances in navigator‐gated and breath‐hold motion correction techniques, novel k‐space strategies (e.g., spiral and radial k‐space filling), development and application of intravascular contrast agents, and imaging at higher field strengths. Ultimately, these developments may lead to the routine application of coronary MRA as a screening tool for CAD. This article reviews the development of coronary MRA, discusses the requirements and tools necessary for optimal visualization of the coronary arteries, and describes the application of coronary MRA to acquired and congenital CAD. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2004;19:686–709. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
When Do Customers Get What They Expect? Understanding the Ambivalent Effects of Customers’ Service Expectations on Satisfaction

Extant research established that customers’ expectations play an ambivalent role in the satisfaction formation process: While higher expectations are more difficult to meet and thus cause dissatisfaction, they simultaneously increase satisfaction via customers’ perceived performance owing to a placebo effect. However, to date, knowledge is scarce on the question under which conditions either the positive or negative effect of expectations on satisfaction prevails. Building on information processing theory, the authors hypothesize that an essential contingency of the indirect, placebo-based effect is the degree to which customers are able and motivated to process a service experience. Three studies with a total of over 4,000 customers in different service contexts provide strong evidence for this hypothesis. Thus, managers are well advised to provide a realistic or even understated prospect if the service context favors customers’ ability or motivation to evaluate. Conversely, if customers are neither able nor motivated to evaluate the service, increasing customer expectations represents a viable strategy to enhance satisfaction. Relatedly, if customers hold low service expectations, managers should foster customers’ ability and motivation to evaluate the service. In contrast, if service expectations are high, managers may benefit from reducing the likelihood that customers overly focus on the service performance.
Highlighting Techniques for Real Entities in Augmented Reality

One fundamental task in Augmented Reality is to highlight specific real world entities or small areas in the userâs view. For this purpose, a total of 9 novel highlighting techniques were designed and implemented. For comparison, they are complemented by two conventional techniques often used in practice. This paper presents the techniques and evaluates them based on a user study in which 23 participants were asked questions concerning the degree of attention as well as disturbances caused by the highlighting techniques. The user study revealed that particle systems are a successful tool to effectively draw attention to a highlighted entity without causing annoying distractions.
Risk Management in Business – The Foundation of Performance in Economic Organizations

A world marked by rapid changes of the economic, financial, political and social environment, a world ruled by uncertainty is subject to the emergence of increasingly higher risks, affecting the process of economic development of world economy. The increasingly frequent manifestation of unforeseen events caused high interest for research in the risk identification, quantification and prevention at the microeconomic level. In this context, risk management can be considered the art of taking decisions in an uncertain environment, on the background of the identification, quantification, analysis and management of the risks which affect an organization.
Effects of User IT Capabilities and Organized Big Data Analytics on Competitive Advantage

In the age of big data, it becomes important to develop capabilities for utilizing information technology (IT) in order to take advantage of the potential of data for business objectives. While users have received attention in many ways, we note that the capability literature has focused more on the IT supply side. We argue that user capabilities have moved to an integral position in firm competitive advantage, and call them “User IT Capabilities” (UIC). A survey was conducted to collect data from Japanese organizations, and a total valid sample of 1,170 respondents involved in big data use was extracted. The findings show the effect of UIC on the performance of big data analytics and firm competitiveness, mediated by the variable of organized big data analytics (OBDA). The direct effects are shown to be valid irrespective of company size, although the levels of UIC and OBDA are higher in larger firms.
Allogeneic marrow grafting for treatment of aplastic anemia.

Eleven of twenty-four patients with severe aplastic anemia given marrow grafts from HLA-identical siblings between October 1970 and March 1973 are alive with normal marrow function and continued evidence of engraftment 3–5 yr later. Ten have been leading normal lives with no immunosuppressive or other drug therapy since day 100 postgrafting. One has had chronic graft-versus-host disease of the skin which is now slowly improving with no therapy. He returned to full-time employment in the summer of 1975. The long-term well-being of almost half of our initial patients emphasizes the importance of marrow transplantation for the treatment of severe aplastic anemia.
The Demand for Local Public Health Services: Do Unified and Independent Public Health Departments Spend Differently?

Objective: To identify the factors affecting the demand for local public health services and to compare the spending patterns of independent and unified public health departments. Data Sources/Study Setting: Cross-sectional data for 2004 from various public health departments in Connecticut. Study Design: Uses probit analysis to examine the factors affecting the consolidation of public health departments. These results help correct for sample selection bias in the estimation of the demand for local public health services using multiple regression analysis. A simulation technique determines how much each independent public health department would be expected to spend upon joining a unified public health district. Data Collection: Data obtained from various government sources in Connecticut. Ninety-two of the municipalities participated in 18 different unified public health districts whereas 77 municipalities operated independent health departments. Principal Findings: Wealthier municipalities are less likely to consolidate health departments. Population and income differences among municipalities inhibit consolidation. The tax-share elasticity of the demand for local public health is approximately −1.28 and the income elasticity equals 0.27. Little difference in spending is found between unified and independent public health departments. Conclusions: Given that differences among communities inhibit the formation of public health districts, higher levels of government may have to offer financial inducements for communities to voluntarily join a district. The relatively large tax-share elasticity means that matching intergovernmental grants have the potential of stimulating the demand for local public health. An independent public health department is unlikely to experience a sharp spike in taxes upon joining a public health district.
Quality Improvement of a Variable Speed Drive in V/f Mode - Numerical Evaluation of Crucial Influences

Undesired secondary effects occurring at inverter-fed squirrel cage induction motors are investigated by a transient two-dimensional finite element analysis with coupled electrical circuits. Calculated time-dependent numerical courses are compared to measured ones. A novel and deeper insight into the invoked harmonic spectrum of the electrical stator current and the mechanical torque at the rotating shaft is given.
Incremental Polygonization of Implicit Surfaces

This paper describes an incremental polygonization technique for implicit surfaces built from skeletal elements. Our method is dedicated to fast previewing in an interactive modeling system environment. We rely on an octree decomposition of space combined with Lipschitz conditions to recursively subdivide cells until a given level of precision is reached and converge to the implicit surface. We use a trilinear interpolation approximation of the field function to create a topologically consistent tessellation characterized by an adjacency graph. Our algorithm aims at updating the mesh locally in regions of space where changes in the potential field occurred. Therefore, we propose an octree inflating and deflating strategy to preserve the octree structure as much as possible and to avoid useless or redundant computations. Timings show that our incremental algorithm dramatically speeds up the overall polygonization process for complex objects.
Reliability of Multidimensional Substance Abuse Treatment Matching

SUMMARY For meaningful adoption, the Patient Placement Criteria (PPC) of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) will need adequate interrater reliability. In a decision analysis of the original PPC, we reduced potential sources of unreliability, mapped question items from clinical research instruments to each decision point, and programmed the item map as a computerized structured interview. Then, target videotapes from eight substance dependent adults who had been distributed by the algorithm into three levels of care (LOC) were independently scored by four raters who were blind as to ASAM LOC. The intraclass correlation coefficient for ASAM LOC assignment was . 77. For all but two subscales of component instruments, values were above . 70 and significant, indicating high interrater reliability. With these methods, excellent reliability is possible for complex decision trees, making it possible to improve the validity of the ASAM Criteria and similar complex hierarchical clinical protocols.
Enterprise data management in mixed workload environments

Enterprise applications are presently built on a 20year old data management infrastructure that was designed to meet a specific set of requirements for OLTP systems. In the meantime, enterprise applications have become more sophisticated, data set sizes have increased, requirements on the freshness of input data have been strengthened, and the time allotted for completing business processes has been reduced. To meet these challenges, enterprise applications have become increasingly complicated to make up for short-comings in the data management infrastructure. This paper outlines the characteristics of enterprise application with regards to the underlying data management layer. We also propose a database design perfectly fit to the demanded requirements of enterprise applications.
DME Detection using LBP Features

A system for detecting Diabetic Macular Edema (DME) using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) volumes is presented. In preprocessing stage noise removal and flattening of scans is done which is followed by Local binary pattern feature extraction. The extracted features are then classified using linear support vector machine classifier. The proposed system achieved an specificity and sensitivity of 100% and 86.67% respectively. General Terms Pattern Recognition, Digital Image Processing, Computer Vision
Moving traffic object retrieval in H.264/MPEG compressed video

Moving object retrieval technique in compressed domain plays an important role in many real-time applications, e.g. Vehicle Detection and Classification. A number of retrieval techniques that operate in compressed domain have been reported in the literature. H.264/AVC is the up-to-date video-coding standard that is likely to lead to the proliferation of retrieval techniques in the compressed domain. Up to now, few literatures on H.264/AVC compressed video have been reported. Compared with the MPEG standard, H.264/AVC employs several new coding block types and different entropy coding method, which result in moving object retrieval in H.264/ AVC compressed video a new task and challenging work. In this paper, an approach to extract and retrieval moving traffic object in H.264/AVC compressed video is proposed. Our algorithm first Interpolates the sparse motion vector of p-frame that is composed of 4*4 blocks, 4*8 blocks and 8*4 blocks and so on. After forward projecting each p-frame vector to the immediate adjacent I-frame and calculating the DCT coefficients of I-frame using information of spatial intra-prediction, the method extracts moving VOPs (video object plan) using an interactive 4*4 block classification process. In Vehicle Detection application, the segmented VOP in 4*4 block-level accuracy is insufficient. Once we locate the target VOP, the actual edges of the VOP in 4*4 block accuracy can be extracted by applying Canny Edge Detection only on the moving VOP in 4*4 block accuracy. The VOP in pixel accuracy is then achieved by decompressing the DCT blocks of the VOPs. The edge-tracking algorithm is applied to find the missing edge pixels. After the segmentation process a retrieval algorithm that based on CSS (Curvature Scale Space) is used to search the interested shape of vehicle in H.264/AVC compressed video sequence. Experiments show that our algorithm can extract and retrieval moving vehicles efficiency and robustly.
Changes in the quality of life in severely disabled people following provision of powered indoor/outdoor chairs

Purpose : To determine the benefits for patients who received an electric powered inoor/outdoor chair (EPIOC) and to quantify their perceived changes to their quality of life. Method : Community-based cohort study of all patients provided with an EPIOC over 4 months; and followed up about 3 months later in a community served by a regional wheelchair service in North West London (population about 3.1 million) using the EuroQol EQ-5D with visual analogue scales for each of the five dimensions of the EQ-5D. Results : Sixty-four wheelchair users were assessed initially and 51 completed follow up. Chair users showed no significant improvement in health state as measured by the EQ-5D after EPIOC provision. The visual analogue scales (VASs) indicated that, although perceived overall health state, independence and social life did not appear to improve, the dimensions of mobility, quality of life and pain/discomfort improved significantly on provision of an EPIOC. Conclusion : EPIOC users reported significant improvements in several important aspects of their lives; not just in mobility (as expected) but also in reduction of pain and discomfort. The use of VASs provided a more holistic set of outcome measures that demonstrate quality of life benefits beyond that of health state alone.
Adaptation of Acoustic Models in Joint Speaker and Noise Space Using Bilinear Models

SUMMARY We present the adaptation of the acoustic models of hidden Markov models (HMMs) to the target speaker and noise environment using bilinear models. Acoustic models trained from various speakers and noise conditions are decomposed to build the bases that capture the interaction between the two factors. The model for the target speaker and noise is represented as a product of bases and two weight vectors. In experiments using the AURORA4 corpus, the bilinear model outperforms the linear model.
Cross sections for the formation of69Znm,gand71Znm,gin neutron induced reactions near their thresholds: Effect of reaction channel on the isomeric cross-section ratio

Excitation functions were measured for the reactions Ge(n,a) Zn, Ga(n,p)Zn, Zn(n,2n)Zn, Ge(n,a)Zn, and Ga(n,p)Zn over the neutron energy range of 6.3–12.4 MeV. Quasimonoenergetic neutrons in this energy range were produced via the H(d,n)He reaction using a deuterium gas target at the Ju ̈lich variable energy compact cyclotron. Use was made of the activation technique in combination with high-resolution HPGe-detector gay spectroscopy. In a few cases low-level bcounting was also applied. In order to decrease the interfering activities in those cases, either radiochemical separations were performed or isotopically enriched targets were used. For most of the reactions, the present measurements provide the first consistent sets of data near their thresholds. From the available experimental data, isomeric cross-section ratios were determined for the isomeric pair Zn in (n,a), (n,p), and (n,2n) reactions, and for the pair Zn in (n,a) and (n,p) reactions. Nuclear model calculations using the code STAPRE, which employs the Hauser-Feshbach ~statistical model ! and exciton model ~precompound effects ! formalisms, were undertaken to describe the formation of both isomeric and ground states of the products. The calculational results on the total ( n,a), (n,p), and (n,2n) cross sections agree fairly well with the experimental data. The experimental isomeric cross-section ratios, however, are reproduced only approximately by the calculation. For both the isomeric pairs investigated, the isomeric cross-section ratio in the ( n,p) reaction is higher than in other reactions.
Registering-Helices and-Strands Using Backbone C

The possible occurrence of a novel helix terminating structural motif in proteins involving a stabilizing short COH. O interaction has been examined using a dataset of 634 non-homologous protein structures (<2.0 Å). The search for this motif was prompted by the crystallographic characterization of a novel structural feature in crystals of a synthetic decapeptide in which extension of a Schellman motif led to the formation of a COH. O hydrogen bond between the T-4 C H and the T 1 CAO groups, where T is the helix terminator adopting a left handed ( L) conformation. More than 100 such motifs with backbone conformation superposing well with the peptide examples were identified. In several examples, formation of this motif led to an approximately antiparallel arrangement of a helical segment with an extended -strand. Careful examination of these examples suggested the possibility of registering antiparallel arrangement of helices and strands by means of backbone COH. O interactions with a regular periodicity. Model building resulted in the generation of idealized and motifs, which can then be generalized to higherorder repetitive structures. Inspection of the antiparallel motif revealed a significant propensity for Ser, Glu, and Gln residues at the T-4 position resulting in further stabilization using an O. HON sidechain–backbone hydrogen bond. Modeling studies revealed ready accommodation of serine residues along the helix face that contacts the strand. The theoretically generated folds correspond to “open” polypeptide structures. Proteins 2003;51:167–171. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Simulation of THz photoconductive antennas loaded by different metallic nanoparticles

In this paper, we study the effect of different metallic nanoparticles loaded in the gap of a silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) photoconductive antenna. Three different metals (Au, Ag, and Al) are considered as the material of the nanostructures which were loaded in the gap of a silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) photoconductive antenna as a THz source. The whole structure has been simulated to obtain the generated photocurrent. More than 132% improvement in photocurrent is demonstrated when using Al nanostructures.
Thermal conductivity of water-filled single-wall carbon nanotubes

The thermal conductivities of water-filled single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are calculated using non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulation method. The simulation temperature ranges from 200K to 600K, and the SWNT length ranges from 5nm to 17.5nm. The length-dependence and temperature-dependence of the thermal conductivity of water-filled SWNTs is investigated. It is indicated that the thermal conductivity of water-filled SWNTs increases with increasing the tube length (from 5nm to 17.5nm) at all temperature and reaches the maximum at 300K and then decrease with the increasing temperature above 300K. The thermal conductivity of SWNTs filled with water is lower than that of the empty SWNTs at the same temperature.
The Fall of One, the Rise of Many A Survey on Multi-Biometric Fusion Methods

Increasing operational and security demands changed biometrics by shifting the focus from single to multi-biometrics. Multi-biometrics are mandatory in the current context of large international biometric databases and to accommodate new emerging security demands. Our paper is a comprehensive survey on multi-biometrics, covering two important topics related to the multi-biometric ﬁeld: fusion methods and security. Fusion is a core requirement in multi-biometric systems, being the method used to combine multiple biometric methods into a single system. The fusion section surveys recent multi-biometric schemes categorized from the perspective of fusion method. The security section is a comprehensive review of current issues, such as sensor spooﬁng, template security, and biometric encryption. New research trends and open challenges are discussed, such as soft, adaptive contextual-based biometrics. Finally, an implementation blueprint for a multi-biometric system is presented in the form of a list of questions to be answered when designing the system.
A simple analytical threshold voltage model of nanoscale single-layer fully depleted strained-silicon-on-insulator MOSFETs

For the first time, a simple and accurate analytical model for the threshold voltage of nanoscale single-layer fully depleted strained-silicon-on-insulator MOSFETs is developed by solving the two-dimensional (2-D) Poisson equation. In the proposed model, the authors have considered several important parameters: 1) the effect of strain (in terms of equivalent Ge mole fraction); 2) short-channel effects; 3) strained-silicon thin-film doping; 4) strained-silicon thin-film thickness; and 5) gate work function and other device parameters. The accuracy of the proposed analytical model is verified by comparing the model results with the 2-D device simulations. It has been demonstrated that the proposed model correctly predicts a decrease in threshold voltage with increasing strain in the silicon thin film, i.e., with increasing equivalent Ge concentration. The proposed compact model can be easily implemented in a circuit simulator
P-sounder : an airborne Pband Pband Pband ice sounding radar

This paper presents the top-level design of an airborne, P-band ice sounding radar under development at the Technical University of Denmark. The ice sounder is intended to provide more information on the electromagnetic properties of the Antarctic ice sheet at P-band. A secondary objective is to test new ice sounding techniques, e.g. polarimetry, synthetic aperture processing, and coherent clutter suppression. A system analysis involving ice scattering models confirms that it is feasible to detect the bedrock through 4 km of ice and to detect deep ice layers. The ice sounder design features a digital signal generator, a microstrip antenna array, a conventional RF-architecture with a central transmitter, four receivers, and internal calibration loops. In 2008 the first data acquisition campaign will take place in Greenland.