Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Noninvasive ventilation to prevent respiratory failure after extubation in high-risk patients*

Objective:Compared with standard medical therapy (SMT), noninvasive ventilation (NIV) does not reduce the need for reintubation in unselected patients who develop respiratory failure after extubation. The goal of this study was to assess whether early application of NIV, immediately after extubation, is effective in preventing postextubation respiratory failure in an at-risk population. Design:Multiple-center, randomized controlled study. Setting:Multiple hospitals. Patients:Ninety-seven consecutive patients with similar baseline characteristics, requiring >48 hrs of mechanical ventilation and considered at risk of developing postextubation respiratory failure (i.e., patients who had hypercapnia, congestive heart failure, ineffective cough and excessive tracheobronchial secretions, more than one failure of a weaning trial, more than one comorbid condition, and upper airway obstruction). Interventions:After a successful weaning trial, the patients were randomized to receive NIV for ≥8 hrs a day in the first 48 hrs or SMT. Primary outcome was the need for reintubation according to standardized criteria. Secondary outcomes were intensive care unit and hospital mortality, as well as time spent in the intensive care unit and in hospital. Measurements and Main Results:Compared with the SMT group, the NIV group had a lower rate of reintubation (four of 48 vs. 12 of 49; p = .027). The need for reintubation was associated with a higher risk of mortality (p < .01). The use of NIV resulted in a reduction of risk of intensive care unit mortality (−10%, p < .01), mediated by the reduction for the need of reintubation. Conclusions:NIV was more effective than SMT in preventing postextubation respiratory failure in a population considered at risk of developing this complication.
Control of Planar Rigid Body Sliding with Impacts and Friction

In this paper, we continue our investigations into robotic air hockey by studying the problem of controlling the trajectory of a puck subject to impacts. Impacts are modeled using the Routh two-dimensional impact model, which incorporates the effects of spin and friction. Using this model, we derive an explicit mapping between preimpact and postimpact velocities of the puck as a function of the velocities of the impacting objects and the coefficients of restitution and friction. We will see that this mapping depends fundamentally on whether or not relative sliding between the objects occurs throughout the duration of the impact event, or terminates during the impact. We then present results on planning of puck trajectories and control of the puck through impacts with a mallet or striker, which is essentially the problem of inverting the mapping between preimpact and postimpact velocities. Our results confirm the intuitive notion that a large coefficient of friction between the mallet and puck, and between the puck and table walls, enhances the ability to control puck motion through impacts.
A new model for the determination of copper losses in transformer windings with arbitrary conductor distribution under high frequency sinusoidal excitation

Magnetic components (inductors and transformers), when present in power electronics converters, consist undoubtedly, along with the semiconductor switches, the main power loss contribution. This fact emerges the necessity of having some easily applicable tools for their effective resistance accurate calculation. The up to now widely used relative theoretical or empirical formulas have been extracted under assumptions or experimental conditions that invalidate their results over several application cases. Some lately released computer aided analyses, though useful, do not make it to escape from the strictly bounded logic and assumptions on which the previous formulas were based. In this paper a new expression for the calculation of high frequency copper losses in transformer and inductor coils with round conductors, more general than the existent models and without any of the traditionally imposed assumptions and limitations, is proposed and established by finite element analysis (FEA) and measurement results. No complicated tables with coefficient numerical values are necessary and the final formula extracted is simple and ready to use. Additional to this work, a comparison between the results determined by the existent theoretical analyses and FEA clarifies their discrepancy over specific ranges of the several parameters involved.
Estimation of Monotone Treatment Effects in Network Experiments

ABSTRACT Randomized experiments on social networks pose statistical challenges, due to the possibility of interference between units. We propose new methods for finding confidence intervals on the attributable treatment effect in such settings. The methods do not require partial interference, but instead require an identifying assumption that is similar to requiring nonnegative treatment effects. Network or spatial information can be used to customize the test statistic; in principle, this can increase power without making assumptions on the data-generating process. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
A computational model for predicting local distortion visibility via convolutional neural network trainedon natural scenes

A crucial requirement for modern image coding is the ability to accurately and efficiently predict the local visibility of coding artifacts. Such predictions could help guide the allocation of bits or the determination of quality for each spatial region. This paper presents a convolutional-neural-network-based (CNN-based) model to predict local distortion visibility in natural scenes. Although CNNs have recently emerged as a powerful tool for many computer vision applications due to its deep learning abilities and computational efficiency, CNNs have never been tested for predicting continuous values such as visibility thresholds. We optimized the model's parameters on our recently published large dataset on local masking in natural scenes [Alam et al., Journal of Vision, 2014]. Testing results demonstrate that our CNN-based model: (1) can indeed succeed in this task; (2) can more accurately predict thresholds than modern gain-control-based models; (3) is competitive in terms of prediction accuracy with a gain-control model tuned to the same dataset; and (4) is significantly more computationally efficient than modern gain-controls models.
Nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) and depression: cause or effect?

BACKGROUND Both nausea and vomiting and depression are common conditions affecting women during pregnancy. Several studies have linked depression with nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP); however, researchers were unable to determine whether depression was caused by NVP or by a pre-existing condition. OBJECTIVE To determine whether NVP is associated with depression in women with no history of depression prior to pregnancy. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS This was a prospective, observational, longitudinal study. Women with no diagnosis of depression who contacted The Motherisk Program prior to becoming pregnant or were at < 6 weeks gestation were enrolled in the study. Each woman was interviewed at 8, 11, 18, 30 weeks gestation and at 6-18 weeks post-partum. At each interview, we administered the EDPS, Wellbeing and PUQE questionnaires and analyzed the data for correlation between depression and NVP. RESULTS Data were analyzed obtained from 57 women. There were five EPDS scores ≥13 (one at baseline and two each at weeks 8 and 11) considered indicative of depression and 11 cases with PUQE scores ≥7, indicative of moderate-high severity of NVP. We did not find an association between high PUQE scores and high EPDS scores and conversely, there was no relationship between high EPDS scores and high PUQE scores. CONCLUSION No association between depressive symptoms and NVP was observed; however, our sample size was very small and further studies could be done with a larger population of pregnant women.
Making long-term memories in minutes: a spaced learning pattern from memory research in education

Memory systems select from environmental stimuli those to encode permanently. Repeated stimuli separated by timed spaces without stimuli can initiate Long-Term Potentiation (LTP) and long-term memory (LTM) encoding. These processes occur in time scales of minutes, and have been demonstrated in many species. This study reports on using a specific timed pattern of three repeated stimuli separated by 10 min spaces drawn from both behavioral and laboratory studies of LTP and LTM encoding. A technique was developed based on this pattern to test whether encoding complex information into LTM in students was possible using the pattern within a very short time scale. In an educational context, stimuli were periods of highly compressed instruction, and spaces were created through 10 min distractor activities. Spaced Learning in this form was used as the only means of instruction for a national curriculum Biology course, and led to very rapid LTM encoding as measured by the high-stakes test for the course. Remarkably, learning at a greatly increased speed and in a pattern that included deliberate distraction produced significantly higher scores than random answers (p < 0.00001) and scores were not significantly different for experimental groups (one hour spaced learning) and control groups (four months teaching). Thus learning per hour of instruction, as measured by the test, was significantly higher for the spaced learning groups (p < 0.00001). In a third condition, spaced learning was used to replace the end of course review for one of two examinations. Results showed significantly higher outcomes for the course using spaced learning (p < 0.0005). The implications of these findings and further areas for research are briefly considered.
Mobile agents' authentication using a proposed light Kerberos system

A mobile agent is a program that is issued either by a human user or an application to travel over a network autonomously to either gather information or perform some computation. However its many benefits, mobile agent technology resulted in new significant security threats from both malicious agents and hosts. This paper introduces novel efficient and light security framework for mobile agent environment based on Kerberos system. The proposed framework aims at reducing the usual overhead resulting inside the Kerberos system by using 2-layer software that accomplishes the work of the hardware components. Besides, it reduces the required hardware which means low cost and high speed communication compared to traditional Kerberos system.
Extended Formulations for Online Linear Bandit Optimization

On-line linear optimization on combinatorial action sets (d-dimensional actions) with bandit feedback, is known to have complexity in the order of the dimension of the problem. The exponential weighted strategy achieves the best known regret bound that is of the order of $d^{2}\sqrt{n}$ (where $d$ is the dimension of the problem, $n$ is the time horizon). However, such strategies are provably suboptimal or computationally inefficient. The complexity is attributed to the combinatorial structure of the action set and the dearth of efficient exploration strategies of the set. Mirror descent with entropic regularization function comes close to solving this problem by enforcing a meticulous projection of weights with an inherent boundary condition. Entropic regularization in mirror descent is the only known way of achieving a logarithmic dependence on the dimension. Here, we argue otherwise and recover the original intuition of exponential weighting by borrowing a technique from discrete optimization and approximation algorithms called `extended formulation'. Such formulations appeal to the underlying geometry of the set with a guaranteed logarithmic dependence on the dimension underpinned by an information theoretic entropic analysis.
Hybrid Clustering by Integrating Text and Citation Based Graphs in Journal Database Analysis

We propose a hybrid clustering strategy by integrating heterogeneous information sources as graphs. The hybrid clustering method is extended on the basis of modularity based Louvain method. We introduce two different approaches, graph coupling and graph fusion. The weights of these combined graphs are optimized with the criterion of maximizing the Average Normalized Mutual Information(ANMI). The methods are applied to obtain structural mapping of large scale Web of Science (WoS) journal database by integrating attribute based textual information and relation based citation information. From the experimental, the proposed graph combination scheme is compared with individual graph clustering, spectral clustering and Vector Space Model(VSM) based clustering methods.
Loss of connexin45 causes a cushion defect in early cardiogenesis.

At around embryonic day 9, the primitive heart of a mouse embryo undergoes spectacular alterations within 24 hours. We created mice harboring an nls-lacZ gene in place of connexin45, which encodes the only known gap junction protein in the primitive heart before embryonic day 9, using the Cre-loxP system. Connexin45-deficient mice died of heart failure at around embryonic day 10. They initiated heart contractions, but conduction block appeared within 24 hours after the first contractions. Their cardiac walls displayed an endocardial cushion defect, while the cardiac jelly was present. These abnormalities were caused by impairment of the epithelial-mesenchymal transformation of the cardiac endothelium. Activation of the cardiac endothelium depended on the presence of the connexin45 gap junctions since signaling through Ca(2+)/calcineurin and NF-ATc1 (originally named NF-ATc) was disrupted in the mutant hearts. These results indicate a requirement for gap junction channels during early cardiogenesis and hence implicate connexin45 in congenital heart diseases. http://www. biologists.com/Development/movies/dev4369.html
Antecedent occipital alpha band activity predicts the impact of oculomotor events in perceptual switching

Oculomotor events such as blinks and saccades transiently interrupt the visual input and, even though this mostly goes undetected, these brief interruptions could still influence the percept. In particular, both blinking and saccades facilitate switching in ambiguous figures such as the Necker cube. To investigate the neural state antecedent to these oculomotor events during the perception of an ambiguous figure, we measured the human scalp electroencephalogram (EEG). When blinking led to perceptual switching, antecedent occipital alpha band activity exhibited a transient increase in amplitude. When a saccade led to switching, a series of transient increases and decreases in amplitude was observed in the antecedent occipital alpha band activity. Our results suggest that the state of occipital alpha band activity predicts the impact of oculomotor events on the percept.
Assessing Early Intervention Provider Needs: Insights From One State

A statewide needs assessment was conducted with early interventionists to gather information on perceived professional development (PD) needs. Across 3 years, 4,455 early interventionists responded to an online survey. Data were analyzed for reported needs on PD topics in seven broad areas related to early intervention processes and content. Differences were found on the basis of participants' geographical location, years of experience working in early intervention, and professional discipline. Results revealed that respondents in one geographical location of the state, and respondents with fewer years of early intervention experience, reported statistically significant higher PD needs for six of the seven topical areas. Implications for future needs assessments, PD, and research are discussed.
Spectrotemporal Processing in Spectral Tuning Modules of Cat Primary Auditory Cortex

Spectral integration properties show topographical order in cat primary auditory cortex (AI). Along the iso-frequency domain, regions with predominantly narrowly tuned (NT) neurons are segregated from regions with more broadly tuned (BT) neurons, forming distinct processing modules. Despite their prominent spatial segregation, spectrotemporal processing has not been compared for these regions. We identified these NT and BT regions with broad-band ripple stimuli and characterized processing differences between them using both spectrotemporal receptive fields (STRFs) and nonlinear stimulus/firing rate transformations. The durations of STRF excitatory and inhibitory subfields were shorter and the best temporal modulation frequencies were higher for BT neurons than for NT neurons. For NT neurons, the bandwidth of excitatory and inhibitory subfields was matched, whereas for BT neurons it was not. Phase locking and feature selectivity were higher for NT neurons. Properties of the nonlinearities showed only slight differences across the bandwidth modules. These results indicate fundamental differences in spectrotemporal preferences - and thus distinct physiological functions - for neurons in BT and NT spectral integration modules. However, some global processing aspects, such as spectrotemporal interactions and nonlinear input/output behavior, appear to be similar for both neuronal subgroups. The findings suggest that spectral integration modules in AI differ in what specific stimulus aspects are processed, but they are similar in the manner in which stimulus information is processed.
Window-based susceptance models for large-scale RLC circuit analyses

Due to the increasing operating frequencies and the manner in which the corresponding integrated circuits and systems must be designed, the extraction, modeling and simulation of the magnetic couplings for final design verification can be a daunting task. In general, when modeling inductance and the associated return paths, one must consider the on-chip conductors as well as the system packaging. This can result in an RLC circuit size that is impractical for traditional simulators. In this paper we demonstrate a localized, window-based extraction and simulation methodology that employs the recently proposed susceptance (the inverse of inductance matrix) concept. We provide a qualitative explanation for the efficacy of this approach, and demonstrate how it facilitates pre-manufacturing simulations that would otherwise be intractable. A critical aspect of this simulation efficiency is owed to a susceptance-based circuit formation that we prove to be symmetric positive definite. This property, along with the sparsity of the susceptance matrix, enables the use of some advanced sparse matrix solvers. lye demonstrate this extraction and simulation methodology on some industrial examples.
Epistemic Practices In Adults And Adolescents

Being epistemically responsible requires an appreciation for both the power and the limitations of human knowledge, forming and adjusting one’s beliefs in a way that is responsive to the right criteria. Epistemic responsibility is needed among the populace as well as the elite for a functional democracy. It is also crucial for the understanding of science. However, without clear, shared norms of how best to form, adjust, and justify beliefs, we cannot hold each other epistemically accountable. In this dissertation, I explore how adolescents and adults conceive of the best practices for forming beliefs. Chapter 1 asks what criteria for belief people take as legitimate, and how that affects their scientific beliefs. Chapter 2 examines epistemological reasoning in adolescence, focusing on appreciation for objective epistemic strategies and epistemic limitations. Chapter 3 explores adolescents’ cognitive norms and capacity to engage in epistemically responsible thinking, conceived here as thinking that is actively open-minded. These questions are explored using a mixed method approach, utilizing both surveys and interviews in each chapter. Surveys allow data collection from large and diverse samples. Qualitative interviews allow us to observe reasoning and justification more directly, adding nuance and illustrating thought processes. The results reveal serious disagreement concerning what constitutes epistemic responsibility, especially with respect to what counts as a legitimate reason for belief (Chapter 1). However, there is room for optimism; the majority of adolescents demonstrated the crucial building blocks for a sophisticated epistemology (Chapter 2) and norms of actively open-minded thinking (Chapter 3). We need to leverage these existing good epistemic norms and elements of understanding, especially in the young. It is my hope that this dissertation will further this goal. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Psychology First Advisor Jonathan Baron
Oxazolone Colitis: A Murine Model of  T Helper Cell Type 2 Colitis Treatable with Antibodies to Interleukin 4

In this study we describe oxazolone colitis, a new form of experimental colitis. This model is induced in SJL/J mice by the rectal instillation of the haptenating agent, oxazolone, and is characterized by a rapidly developing colitis confined to the distal half of the colon; it consists of a mixed neutrophil/lymphocyte infiltration limited to the superficial layer of the mucosa which is associated with ulceration. Oxazolone colitis is a T helper cell type 2 (Th2)-mediated process since stimulated T cells from lesional tissue produce markedly increased amounts of interleukin (IL)-4 and IL-5; in addition, anti–IL-4 administration leads to a striking amelioration of disease, whereas anti–IL-12 administration either has no effect or exacerbates disease. Finally, this proinflammatory Th2 cytokine response is counterbalanced by a massive transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) response which limits both the extent and duration of disease: lesional (distal) T cells manifest a 20–30-fold increase in TGF-β production, whereas nonlesional (proximal) T cells manifest an even greater 40–50-fold increase. In addition, anti–TGF-β administration leads to more severe inflammation which now involves the entire colon. The histologic features and distribution of oxazolone colitis have characteristics that resemble ulcerative colitis (UC) and thus sharply distinguish this model from most other models, which usually resemble Crohn's disease. This feature of oxazolone colitis as well as its cytokine profile have important implications to the pathogenesis and treatment of UC.
DSP-Based Sensorless Speed Control of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor using Sliding Mode Current Observer

In this paper, experimental results of 3-phase permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) sensorless speed control are presented. To estimate the rotor position, a sliding mode current observer (SMCO) was implemented. This observer estimates the back emfs of the motor in the stationary reference frame using only the measured voltages and currents of the motor. These emfs were utilized to obtain the rotor position. The speed of the motor was calculated by differentiating the rotor position angle. The stability of the proposed SMCO was verified using Lyapunov method to determine the observer gain. The saturation function was adopted in order to reduce the chattering phenomenon caused by the SMCO. A vector control method was employed to achieve the sensorless drive system. The control application was developed in C/C++ language and implemented using the Texas Instruments TMS320LF2812 digital signal processor (DSP). This new processor enables intelligent control for motors. We used to test the drive the MCK2812 which is a professional development kit available from Technosoft Company. The theoretical finding is validated with experimental results that show the effectiveness of the real-time implementation.