Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The role of the champion in telehealth service development: a qualitative analysis

Summary Telehealth ‘champions’ are enthusiastic individuals who initiate and promote the uptake of telehealth services. Their role and impact was investigated as part of a qualitative study into the uptake and sustainability of telehealth services in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 39 individuals who had been involved in the establishment and operations of 37 diverse telehealth services throughout Australia. A grounded theory analysis was carried out. The results indicated that most services were initiated by champions (25 of the 37). The champions appeared to have three main roles: enthusiastic promotion of telehealth, acting as legitimators, and relationship building. Champions were capable of keeping small scale services operating, but the services were vulnerable to cessation when they lost interest or moved on. As long as participation in telehealth remains optional, the role of the champion will be an important factor in continued operations.
Coordination of Overcurrent Relays Using Genetic Algorithms and Unconventional Curves

This paper proposes an alternative that mitigates the lack of sensitivity of overcurrent relays in highly interconnected power systems, i.e. reduce the operating time and increase their ability to detect fault conditions. From the inverse time characteristic equation, standardized by the IEEE, seeking to provide the protection with greater flexibility, the use of unconventional inverse time curves is proposed, considering each adjustment of the equation as a degree of freedom. The optimal settings for the coordination problem are obtained by the implementation of one of the evolutionary computing methods, the genetic algorithms. Furthermore, different levels of the load current are considered for each system, simulating actual behavior.
Patient and Spouse Expectations of and Reactions to Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion (CSII) Therapy: Case Report

Six insulin-dependent women with diabetes and their spouses were assessed (1) prior to continuous subcutaneous insulin infu sion (CSII) therapy, and (2) three months after implementation of CSII therapy. The pre-CSII interviews revealed that both patient and spouse were interested in the positive emotional conse quences of improved metabolic control. How ever, patients were most interested in the personal benefits of metabolic stabilization, whereas spouses were more con cerned about potential improvement of the marital relationship. Post- CSII interviews showed that most fears regarding CSII therapy expressed in the pre-CSII interview were not realized, but many unanticipated negative and positive responses to treatment were experienced.
HLA‐DRB1, ‐DQA1 and ‐DQB1 Alleles and Haplotypes in First‐Generation Pakistani Immigrants in Norway

Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) polymorphisms among immigrants from Pakistan have not been well investigated. Immigration to Norway started in the late 1960s for working purposes. From 1975, immigration was mainly for marriages and family reunion. When recruiting couples for a birth cohort study, we ended up with 65.5% of the 374 parents genotyped being closely related. This was also reflected in that 21% of newborns were homozygotes for their DRB1‐DQA1‐DQB1 genotype. For being able to study HLA class II genes frequencies among unrelated individuals, we had to exclude 195 of the parents from data analysis. High‐resolution typing for the DRB1 locus, low/intermediate for the DQA1 locus and resolution genotyping for the DQB1 locus were performed in all the 179 parents and their newborns from the Punjab province of Pakistan. We identified 25 DRB1, nine DQA1 and 14 DRB1 alleles in the 179 unrelated parents included in our analysis. The most frequent alleles were DRB1*03:01:01 (15.9%) and DRB1*07:01:01 (15.9%), DQA1*01:03 (22.1%) and DQB1*02:01:01 (26.0%). Forty‐one haplotypes were identified, including DRB1*13:02:01‐DQA1*01:02‐DQB1*06:03:01, not earlier reported. Supported by the few earlier reports on Pakistani groups living in Pakistan, it appears that alleles found among those living in Norway are of Indo‐European or mixed ethnic origin. This study provides the first comprehensive report of HLA class II alleles and haplotypes in Norwegian Pakistani immigrants. When the unrelated parents were compared with all parents genotyped, there were, however, no significant differences in allele frequencies, confirming that consanguineous marriages are usual in Pakistan.
Detection and Localization of Viruses in Human Fetal Intestinal Organ Cultures by Immunofluorescence

Viral antigens from viruses belonging to four different viral groups were detected directly in human fetal intestinal organ cultures by the application of immunofluorescent techniques. The time of appearance and the cellular localization of fluorescent-stainable antigen varied with the type of virus under investigation. After infection with adenovirus or with adeno-associated virus, fluorescent-stainable antigen was seen in the epithelial cells of the explants, though no light microscopic changes could be observed. In infection with herpes simplex virus and echovirus, fluorescence was noted in both the epithelium and the lamina propria, along with histological changes throughout the organ culture. These techniques offer promise for the investigation of possible viral agents implicated in gastrointestinal disease.
Online Influence Maximization under Independent Cascade Model with Semi-Bandit Feedback

We study the online influence maximization problem in social networks under the independent cascade model. Specifically, we aim to learn the set of "best influencers" in a social network online while repeatedly interacting with it. We address the challenges of (i) combinatorial action space, since the number of feasible influencer sets grows exponentially with the maximum number of influencers, and (ii) limited feedback, since only the influenced portion of the network is observed. Under a stochastic semi-bandit feedback, we propose and analyze IMLinUCB, a computationally efficient UCB-based algorithm. Our bounds on the cumulative regret are polynomial in all quantities of interest, achieve near-optimal dependence on the number of interactions and reflect the topology of the network and the activation probabilities of its edges, thereby giving insights on the problem complexity. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first such results. Our experiments show that in several representative graph topologies, the regret of IMLinUCB scales as suggested by our upper bounds. IMLinUCB permits linear generalization and thus is both statistically and computationally suitable for large-scale problems. Our experiments also show that IMLinUCB with linear generalization can lead to low regret in real-world online influence maximization.
Architecture of GPP based, scalable, large-scale C-RAN BBU pool

The concept of C-RAN is attractive for both academic and industry to bring innovative ideas for advanced wireless processing and reduce cost directly in mobile infrastructure. C-RAN could be one of direction of future mobile infrastructure, however, to achieve the goal of C-RAN is quite challenging, since it's domain specific cloud computing technology, in which real-time processing and huge amount of antenna data make it more difficult than traditional cloud computing. In the paper, together with the load analysis of C-RAN, one of GPP (e.g. x86) based C-RAN architecture is proposed targeted to scalable, large-scale BBU pool. The design philosophy is to efficiently reduce computation cost and power consumption by allocating computation/switch resource fitting the traffic need.
An antigenic peptide produced by reverse splicing and double asparagine deamidation

A variety of unconventional translational and posttranslational mechanisms contribute to the production of antigenic peptides, thereby increasing the diversity of the peptide repertoire presented by MHC class I molecules. Here, we describe a class I-restricted peptide that combines several posttranslational modifications. It is derived from tyrosinase and recognized by tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes isolated from a melanoma patient. This unusual antigenic peptide is made of two noncontiguous tyrosinase fragments that are spliced together in the reverse order. In addition, it contains two aspartate residues that replace the asparagines encoded in the tyrosinase sequence. We confirmed that this peptide is naturally presented at the surface of melanoma cells, and we showed that its processing sequentially requires translation of tyrosinase into the endoplasmic reticulum and its retrotranslocation into the cytosol, where deglycosylation of the two asparagines by peptide-N-glycanase turns them into aspartates by deamidation. This process is followed by cleavage and splicing of the appropriate fragments by the standard proteasome and additional transport of the resulting peptide into the endoplasmic reticulum through the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP).
An algorithm for simultaneous motion estimation and scene segmentation

We present an algorithm that simultaneously performs motion estimation and scene segmentation in image sequences. This algorithm improves upon the traditional approach of using the motion estimates that are obtained separately as input for scene segmentation. Based on the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) criterion, the interdependence of constraints for motion estimation and scene segmentation are expressed in a Gibbs distribution. The solution is obtained based on the highest confidence first (HCF) and iterated conditional mode (ICM) optimization methods. Experimental results suggest that this algorithm is of potential use for low-bit rate video coding. <<ETX>>
Localisation and Handwriting Recognition

This report discusses several general aspects of text localisation and handwriting recognition. In particular, we consider their applications to extraction and recognition of numerals written on Giro forms. For text localisation, we investigate the problem of extracting text printed or written inside boxes on forms. We review a number of representative methods for solving this problem, describe the implementation of one of them, and present some experimental results obtained on real data. For handwriting recognition, we rst present the general methodology, including a new approach called perturbation method. Then we explain how the general methodology is applied to three subproblems in handwriting recognition, namely, the recognition of isolated numerals, that of numeral strings, and the recognition of cursively handwritten words drawn from a small lexicon. Experimental results show that our systems are either equivalent to or better than state-of-the-art systems. CR
f-GANs in an Information Geometric Nutshell

Nowozin \textit{et al} showed last year how to extend the GAN \textit{principle} to all $f$-divergences. The approach is elegant but falls short of a full description of the supervised game, and says little about the key player, the generator: for example, what does the generator actually converge to if solving the GAN game means convergence in some space of parameters? How does that provide hints on the generator's design and compare to the flourishing but almost exclusively experimental literature on the subject? In this paper, we unveil a broad class of distributions for which such convergence happens --- namely, deformed exponential families, a wide superset of exponential families --- and show tight connections with the three other key GAN parameters: loss, game and architecture. In particular, we show that current deep architectures are able to factorize a very large number of such densities using an especially compact design, hence displaying the power of deep architectures and their concinnity in the $f$-GAN game. This result holds given a sufficient condition on \textit{activation functions} --- which turns out to be satisfied by popular choices. The key to our results is a variational generalization of an old theorem that relates the KL divergence between regular exponential families and divergences between their natural parameters. We complete this picture with additional results and experimental insights on how these results may be used to ground further improvements of GAN architectures, via (i) a principled design of the activation functions in the generator and (ii) an explicit integration of proper composite losses' link function in the discriminator.
Public Insurance Expansions and Smoking Cessation Medications

We study the effect of public insurance on smoking cessation medication prescriptions and financing. We leverage variation in insurance coverage generated by recent Affordable Care Act expansions to Medicaid. We estimate differences-in-differences models using administrative data on the universe of Medicaid-financed prescriptions sold in retail and online pharmacies 2011-2017. Our findings suggest that these expansions increased Medicaid-financed smoking cessation prescriptions by 34%. This increase reflects new medication use and a shift in payment from private insurers and self-paying patients to Medicaid. Adjusting our estimate for changes in financing implies that Medicaid expansion lead to a 24% increase in new medication use.
Role of domains 4 and 5 in elongation factor G functions on the ribosome.

Elongation factor G (EF-G) is a large, five domain GTPase that catalyses the translocation of the tRNAs on the bacterial ribosome at the expense of GTP. In the crystal structure of GDP-bound EF-G, domain 1 (G domain) makes direct contacts with domains 2 and 5, whereas domain 4 protrudes from the body of the molecule. Here, we show that the presence of both domains 4 and 5 is essential for tRNA translocation and for the turnover of the factor on the ribosome, but not for rapid single-round GTP hydrolysis by EF-G. Replacement of a highly conserved histidine residue at the tip of domain 4, His583, with lysine or arginine decreases the rate of tRNA translocation at least 100-fold, whereas the binding of the factor to the ribosome, GTP hydrolysis and P(i) release are not affected by the mutations. Various small deletions in the tip region of domain 4 decrease the translocation activity of EF-G even further, but do not block the turnover of the factor. Unlike native EF-G, the mutants of EF-G lacking domains 4/5 do not interact with the alpha-sarcin stem-loop of 23 S rRNA. These mutants are not released from the ribosome after GTP hydrolysis or translocation, indicating that the contact with, or a conformational change of, the alpha-sarcin stem-loop is required for EF-G release from the ribosome.
Analysis of Time Series with Wavelets

A financial time series analysis method based on the theory of wavelets is proposed. It is based on the transformation of data of the series in the corresponding wavelet coefficients and in the analysis of the latter, which represent the local characteristics of the series better. In particular, an algorithm for short term previsions is defined.
Once Bitten: New Evidence on the Link between IMF Conditionality and IMF Stigma

While the consequences and effectiveness of IMF conditionality have long been the focus of research, the possible negative impact of IMF conditionality on countries’ willingness to ask for an IMF programme – often termed ‘IMF stigma’ – has recently received attention particularly from policy circles. In this paper we investigate how countries' past experience with the IMF and their peers’ experience with the IMF affect their likelihood of entering a subsequent IMF arrangement. Our results indicate that, even when controlling for the success of past programmes, a country is less likely to approach the IMF for help if in the past it experienced an above-average number of disbursement-relevant conditions. We find hardly any impact of peers’ experience, except for Asian countries. JEL Classification: F33, F53, F55, H87
Whatever Happened to Object-Centered Representations?

David Marr's approach to the study of vision has been tremendously influential. However, the approach proposes the goal of computing invariant shape descriptions from image-based information, a task that appears implausible, given the tremendous variation that can occur between images displaying a single object. Theorists in the field of three-dimensional object recognition have rejected the approach of computing object-centered representations, and instead propose representations of objects from the perspective of a viewer. If object-centered descriptions of objects exist in the brain, they are more likely to underlie motor interaction with objects rather than visual object understanding.
Identifying and investigating factors which affect sow productivity in UK and Irish pig herds

Increasing litter size in sows is accompanied by a rise in the number of unviable piglets at birth which limits the potential output of modern sows. Understanding sow and dietary characteristics that influence reproductive performance and developing nutritional strategies to improve piglet survival and growth to weaning will abate the negative impacts of high litter sizes. Therefore, this study took two approaches: 1. Use of historical data from two research sites to quantify the association between sow or dietary characteristics during gestation and resulting reproductive performance and 2. Two separate feeding trials to determine the effect of salmon oil, vitamin D3 inclusion level in gestation diets and salmon oil and dietary energy regimen in lactation on piglet viability and growth to weaning. Sow live-weight and back-fat depth in late gestation were found to be important for subsequent reproductive performance. Current recommended digestible energy intakes during gestation were found to be appropriate for the modern genotype, however, current amino acid requirements should be increased for gestating sows. Salmon oil inclusion in gestation and lactation diets increased the proportion of omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids in samples while increased dietary vitamin D3 level during gestation improved sow and piglet vitamin D3 status, but the growth performance of piglets was not improved as a result. From this thesis it can be concluded that the transfer of n-3 fatty acids and vitamin D3 from sow feed to the offspring is effective via placental transfer and milk secretions, but this did not improve performance. This conflicts with other work and further research is needed to clarify the associated biological pathways and mechanisms to explain these inconsistencies.
Responding in a test of decision-making under risk is under moderate genetic control in the rat.

BACKGROUND Risk-taking, measured with laboratory tasks such as the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART), is associated with real-life manifestations of risky behaviors, which may be an important component of inherited liability to alcohol use disorders. To identify genomic factors that influence these traits, the current study (i) characterized performance of a rodent version of the BART in multiple inbred rat strains, (ii) tested the degree to which performance was under genetic control, (iii) explored sex differences in performance, and (iv) evaluated the risk-taking behavior of F1 progeny of high-risk- and low-risk-taking strains to examine modes of inheritance. METHODS Male and female rats (N = 100) from 5 inbred strains (Wistar-Furth, Fischer-344, Lewis, Spontaneously Hypertensive, Brown Norway) and Wistar-Furth × Fischer-344 hybrids were tested in the rat-BART, as well as in tests of locomotor activity, sucrose preference, and general motivation. RESULTS About 55% of the variance in risk-taking behavior was attributable to heritable factors. The Fischer-344 strain was the most risk-taking and the most variable in responding. The mating of low-risk-taking Wistar-Furth and Fischer-344 rats produced progeny that behaved most like the Fischer-344 strain. Consistent with prior research in this laboratory (Jentsch et al., 2010), all rats were sensitive to changes in both risk and reinforcement parameters in the rat-BART; rats decreased voluntary risk-taking in the face of increasing risk and increased lever pressing when reinforcement probabilities were reduced. CONCLUSIONS Our results endorse a moderately heritable pattern of risk-taking behavior in rats. The behavior of the hybrid progeny suggests a polygenic model with most gene effects transmitted by mode of dominant inheritance. The identification of high-risk and low-risk strains allows for isolation of quantitative trait loci associated with task performance and for probing the relationships between risk-taking and dimensions of alcohol use disorders.
Data fusion in remote sensing: examples

Remotely sensed data provided information on Earth phenomena in different modalities, spectrally, spatially and temporally inhomogeneous. But all this set of data proposes different representations of the same physical environment. How to handle these different representations, how to extract the best of a combination of them? Data fusion is one of the answers to the best possible use of this set of remotely sensed data. In this paper, the general definition of Data fusion in the field of remote sensing as defined by a panel of European experts of the domain is reminded and some winning applications of Data fusion in Earth Observation domain are exposed. Different examples are proposed, mainly based on the fusion of satellite images from different modalities. The variety of examples proposed enhances the wild range of potential applications benefiting from data fusion in the Earth Observation domain. Benefits of using data fusion in this domain are stressed.
Dynamic Command Scheduling for Real-Time Memory Controllers

Memory controller design is challenging as real-time embedded systems feature an increasing diversity of real-time and non-real-time applications with variable transaction sizes. To satisfy the requirements of the applications, tight bounds on the worst-case execution time (WCET) of memory transactions must be provided to real-time applications, while the lowest possible average execution time must be given to the rest. Existing real-time memory controllers cannot efficiently achieve this goal as they either bound the WCET by sacrificing the average execution time, or are not scalable to directly support variable transaction sizes, or both. In this paper, we propose to use dynamic command scheduling, which is capable of efficiently dealing with transactions with variable sizes. The three main contributions of this paper are: 1) a back-end architecture for a real-time memory controller with a dynamic command scheduling algorithm, 2) a formalization of the timings of the memory transactions for the proposed architecture and algorithm, and 3) two techniques to bound the WCET of transactions with both fixed and variable sizes, respectively. We experimentally evaluate the proposed memory controller and compare both the worst-case and average-case execution times of transactions to a state-of-the-art semi-static approach. The results demonstrate that dynamic command scheduling outperforms the semi-static approach by 33.4% in the average case and performs at least equally well in the worst case. We also show the WCET is tight for transactions with fixed and variable sizes, respectively.