Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mixing Strategies for Density Estimation

General results on adaptive density estimation are obtained with respect to any countable collection of estimation strategies under Kullback-Leibler and squared L 2 losses. It is shown that without knowing which strategy works best for the underlying density, a single strategy can be constructed by mixing the proposed ones to be adaptive in terms of statistical risks. A consequence is that under some mild conditions, an asymptotically minimax-rate adaptive estimator exists for a given countable collection of density classes; that is, a single estimator can be constructed to be simultaneously minimax-rate optimal for all the function classes being considered. A demonstration is given for high-dimensional density estimation on [0, 1] d where the constructed estimator adapts to smoothness and interaction-order over some piecewise Besov classes and is consistent for all the densities with finite entropy.
Materials and noncoplanar mesh designs for integrated circuits with linear elastic responses to extreme mechanical deformations

Electronic systems that offer elastic mechanical responses to high-strain deformations are of growing interest because of their ability to enable new biomedical devices and other applications whose requirements are impossible to satisfy with conventional wafer-based technologies or even with those that offer simple bendability. This article introduces materials and mechanical design strategies for classes of electronic circuits that offer extremely high stretchability, enabling them to accommodate even demanding configurations such as corkscrew twists with tight pitch (e.g., 90° in ≈1 cm) and linear stretching to “rubber-band” levels of strain (e.g., up to ≈140%). The use of single crystalline silicon nanomaterials for the semiconductor provides performance in stretchable complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits approaching that of conventional devices with comparable feature sizes formed on silicon wafers. Comprehensive theoretical studies of the mechanics reveal the way in which the structural designs enable these extreme mechanical properties without fracturing the intrinsically brittle active materials or even inducing significant changes in their electrical properties. The results, as demonstrated through electrical measurements of arrays of transistors, CMOS inverters, ring oscillators, and differential amplifiers, suggest a valuable route to high-performance stretchable electronics.
Mortality Associated with Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease in Older Women

Background Current guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) recommend diabetes as a CVD risk equivalent. However, reports that have examined the risk of diabetes in comparison to pre-existing CVD are lacking among older women. We aimed to assess whether diabetes was associated with a similar risk of total and cause-specific mortality as a history of CVD in older women. Methodology/Principal Findings We studied 9218 women aged 68 years or older enrolled in a prospective cohort study (Study of Osteoporotic Fracture) during a mean follow-up period of 11.7 years and compared all-cause, cardiovascular and coronary heart disease mortality among 4 groups: non-diabetic women with and without existing CVD, diabetic women with and without existing CVD. Mean (SD) age of the participants was 75.2 (5.3) years, 3.5% reported diabetes and 6.8% reported existing CVD. During follow-up, 5117 women died with 36% from CVD. The multivariate adjusted risk of cardiovascular mortality was increased among both non-diabetic women with CVD (hazard ratio (HR) 2.32, 95% CI: 1.97–2.74, P<0.001) and diabetic women without CVD (HR 2.06, CI: 1.62–2.64, P<0.001) compared to non-diabetic women without existing CVD. All-cause, cardiovascular and coronary mortality of non-diabetic women with CVD were not significantly different from diabetic women without CVD. Conclusions/Significance Older diabetic women without CVD have a similar risk of cardiovascular mortality compared to non-diabetic women with pre-existing CVD. The equivalence of diabetes and CVD seems to extend to older women, supporting current guidelines for cardiovascular prevention.
Patterns of Audio-Visual Consumption: The Reflection of Objective Divisions in Class Structure

The heterogeneous behaviour of Spanish audio-visual audiences could be encapsulated into five classes: (1) television fans, (2) occasional film-goers, (3) light film-goers, (4) film fans, and (5) audio-visual fans. When the five clusters of audio-visual consumers were analysed according to a set of sociocultural indicators, they appeared ordered as listed above, from downscale to upscale audiences, giving support to Bourdieu's homology thesis. Accordingly, the media orientations of each type of audience also differed: upscale audiences used the media for tension release (entertainment) and for integrative-status purposes and downscale audiences, for integrative-social and cognitive reasons (education and information). All in all, the results suggest that the five clusters of audio-visual consumption found reflected the objective divisions in the class structure that the sociology of culture proposes.
Mattis dementia rating scale (DRS) normative data for the brazilian middle-age and elderly populations

OBJECTIVE To expand norms for the Mattis Dementia Rating Scale (DRS) for the Brazilian middle-age and elderly populations. METHODS The DRS was administered to 502 individuals without cognitive deficits, 312 women and 190 men, aged 50 years or over and with educational level ranging from 0 to 13 years or more. The sample was composed of subjects who participated in other studies, from Caeté (Minas Gerais state), Ribeirão Preto (São Paulo state) and São Paulo (São Paulo state). Participants were divided into four schooling groups (illiterate, 1 to 4 years, 5 to 12 years and 13 years or more). The subjects were divided into four groups according to age (50 to 60, 61 to 70, 71 to 80, and 80 years or over). RESULTS Normative data for DRS scores are expressed as percentile values. The group with lowest schooling and subjects older than 80 years had the worst scores. CONCLUSION As expected, age and education were strongly correlated with DRS scores. Illiterates and older old individuals performed worse than the other groups. These data might help to improve the accuracy of the diagnosis of cognitive impairment and dementia in Brazilian middle-age and elderly populations.
Glutathione cycle in stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by chronic inflammation and oxidant/antioxidant imbalance. Glutathione is the most abundant cellular low‐molecular weight thiol and the glutathione redox cycle is the fundamental component of the cellular antioxidant defence system. Concentration of total glutathione and catalytic activities of glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase were determined in peripheral blood of patients (n = 109) and healthy subjects (n = 51). Concentration of total glutathione in patients was not changed in comparison to healthy controls. However, we found statistically significant difference between patients with moderate and severe disease stages. Glutathione reductase activity was increased, while glutathione proxidase activity was decreased in the patients with COPD, when compared to healthy controls. We found no significant difference in glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase activities between stages. Patients who smoked had lower concentration of total glutathione compared with former smokers and never‐smoking patients. Lung function parameters were inversely associated with glutathione level. Evidence is presented for differential modulation of glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase activities in peripheral blood of patients with stable COPD. We suppose that in addition to glutathione biosynthesis, glutathione reductase‐dependent regulation of the glutathione redox state is vital for protection against oxidative stress. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An Experimental Approach to Evaluate Methods to Detect Scale Recalibration

Measured change to assess the effectiveness of an organizational intervention program may be a function of behavioral change, scale recalibration, and concept redefinition. A number of techniques including the Ideal Scale Approach have been proposed to detect change due to scale recalibration. A methodology is proposed for the manipulation of scale recalibration so that these detection methods can be experimentally evaluated. An illustration of the use of this methodology to evaluate an adaptation of the Ideal Scale Approach is presented.
Analytical evaluation of inductances for induction machine with dynamic eccentricity using MWFA and FE methods

An analytical procedure for computing the inductances of an induction machine in presence of dynamic eccentricity fault is presented. The proposed method is based on the modified winding function approach and takes into consideration harmonics in the winding and the inverse air-gap functions. Results obtained by the analytical method are compared to these calculated by finite elements (FE) method and satisfactory match was found between them. Also, the developed equations allow a considerable saving of computing time compared to the finite element method, in particular when they are considered in the dynamic simulation of the induction machine.
Regulation of centrosome movements by Numb and the Collapsin Response Mediator Protein during Drosophila sensory progenitor asymmetric division

Asymmetric cell division generates cell fate diversity during development and adult life. Recent findings have demonstrated that during stem cell divisions, the movement of centrosomes is asymmetric in prophase and that such asymmetry participates in mitotic spindle orientation and cell polarization. Here, we have investigated the dynamics of centrosomes during Drosophila sensory organ precursor asymmetric divisions and find that centrosome movements are asymmetric during cytokinesis. We demonstrate that centrosome movements are controlled by the cell fate determinant Numb, which does not act via its classical effectors, Sanpodo and α-Adaptin, but via the Collapsin Response Mediator Protein (CRMP). Furthermore, we find that CRMP is necessary for efficient Notch signalling and that it regulates the duration of the pericentriolar accumulation of Rab11-positive endosomes, through which the Notch ligand, Delta is recycled. Our work characterizes an additional mode of asymmetric centrosome movement during asymmetric divisions and suggests a model whereby the asymmetry in centrosome movements participates in differential Notch activation to regulate cell fate specification.
Chapter IV: Studies of Learning in the School Setting

Instead of attempting to review the variety of classroom learning research relevant to all the goals of educational research workers, the purpose of this chapter is to focus on approaches and perspectives which reflect primary emphasis on the goal of explanation of classroom learning, emphasizing developments in classroom observation systems and matters of general methodology, i.e., the conceptual frameworks and the research strategies within which classroom learning research is conducted. The basic reason for this emphasis on general methodology is the belief that difficulties with problems of general methodology are partly responsible for the history of disappointing results from classroom research. According to this belief, the conceptual frameworks of classroom research somehow have not been optimum for developing the specific concepts, theories, methods, techniques, and explanations of classroom learning. An important opportunity for interdisciplinary research characterized by larger scope and a more systematic attack on classroom learning problems was provided by a number of research and development centers and regional laboratories funded by the U.S. Office of Education. The application of other disciplines to classroom learning problems continued, as illustrated by the Stanford conferences on learning and the educational process; the highlights of the 1964 conference were reported in Krumboltz (1965). Boocock (1966) reviewed research in the sociology of learning, including the effects of classroom structure and techniques, the school system as a whole, student peer groups, and social groups outside the school system. Philosophical analyses of the concepts of teaching, learning, and related concepts reduced some of the conceptual confusion in this set of concepts central to the educational process. Perhaps most important, additional classroom observation systems were developed, reflecting a growing recognition of the potential of tape recordings for determining more rigorously the influence on classroom learning of a variety of factors such as teaching, atmosphere, and especially language. Although the presentation is even more terse than is customary in REVIEW chapters, the reviewer's main intent is that the reader will capture enough of the sense of the presentation to decide what material is most relevant to his own research, or to evaluate the present status of
Cancer risk after cyclophosphamide treatment in idiopathic membranous nephropathy.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Cyclophosphamide treatment improves renal survival in patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy. However, use of cyclophosphamide is associated with cancer. The incidence of malignancies in patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy was evaluated, and the cancer risk associated with cyclophosphamide use was estimated. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS, & MEASUREMENTS Patients who attended the clinic were included prospectively from 1995 on. A crude incidence ratio for the occurrence of malignancy was calculated. Incidence ratios were subsequently standardized to potential confounders. Latency between cyclophosphamide therapy and the occurrence of cancer was estimated by stratifying for time since the start of treatment. Finally, Poisson regression was used to obtain a multiple adjusted incidence ratio and investigate the dose-response relationship between cyclophosphamide and cancer. RESULTS Data were available for 272 patients; the mean age was 51 years, and 70% of the patients were men. Median follow-up was 6.0 years (interquartile range=3.6-9.5), and 127 patients were treated with cyclophosphamide. Cancer incidence was 21.2 per 1000 person-years in treated patients compared with 4.6 per 1000 person-years in patients who did not receive cyclophosphamide, resulting in crude and adjusted incidence ratios of 4.6 (95% confidence interval, 1.5 to 18.8) and 3.2 (95% confidence interval, 1.0 to 9.5), respectively. CONCLUSION Cyclophosphamide therapy in idiopathic membranous nephropathy gives a threefold increase in cancer risk. For the average patient, this finding translates into an increase in annual risk from approximately 0.3% to 1.0%. The increased risk of malignancy must be balanced against the improved renal survival.
what are nurseries for?

Communities in the UK are seeing a sustained shift in the balance of care of babies and the youngest children from families to nurseries, with a particular emphasis being placed on early learning. Yet a basic question of whether nurseries should be modelled on the intimacy and spontaneity of family interactions or the more professional and planned interactions of school has remained largely unaddressed. The assumption has been that the multiple tasks now expected of nursery, including education, child care, health promotion, family support and child protection, can be integrated together, and much attention has been given to this. Much less attention has been given to the way different staff respond to these different conceptions of roles and tasks and how they interact with the personal and professional priorities and concerns of the staff themselves. Using the conceptual framework of `primary task' taken from the organization studies literature, the article explores the interplay of these different and competing tasks through an intensive nursery case study. The article concludes that recognition and understanding of both professional and personal tasks and how they align or conflict is important to our understanding of the behaviours and responses of children and adults in the nursery system.
“It’s Not Like Normal School”: The Role of Prior Learning Contexts in Adult Learning

This article explores the ways in which prior experiences in formal learning contexts influence adult learners’ views of their current context. Using interview data from five women participating in a General Educational Development program, this study suggests that these learners’ constructions of previous learning contexts function as “screens” between the learner and the learning. Contextual features of current learning contexts may pass easily through a learner’s screen, may be a misfit creating ambivalence and tension, or may exceed the boundary of the screen’s frame. The outcomes of each situation are discussed and an argument is made for conscious examination of the screen.
Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative II: the Vicenza conference

The process of tackling all of the issues related to acute renal failure began with the initial focus on its dialytic management (Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative I: the New York conference), because this required urgent attention. However, it was clear from the start that the entire issue of acute renal failure, including its definition, epidemiology inside and outside of the intensive care unit, the animal models used to develop new interventions, the issue of fluid therapy, the application of information technology to its care, the choice of appropriate physiologic goals for phase I and phase II studies, and the need to define appropriate clinical goals for large, randomized, clinical trials, required systematic attention. Accordingly, the second Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative conference in Vicenza, Italy, was organized, and its goals and rationale are presented in this report.
Full-duplex multichannel communication: real-time implementations in a general framework

In this combustion, we embed full-duplex multichannel communication interfaces for tele-presence systems into a general framework. On the reproduction side, we consider a wide range of multichannel acoustic rendering techniques including traditional stereophony, '5.1' systems, and wave field synthesis using loud speaker arrays for sound immersion. On the recording side, microphone arrays are discussed for capturing clean desired signals with spatial information. Based on this general framework, real-time implementations of such full-duplex multichannel communication systems are then described. We combine wave field synthesis with multichannel acoustic echo cancellation and adaptive beamforming and discuss a real-time implementation on standard desktop and laptop PCs.
Deconstructing the ‘Social Bath’: Help with Bathing at Home for Older and Disabled People

Assistance with bathing at home for older and disabled people has long been an area of service tension and ambiguity. Lying across the principal faultline of community care, that of the medical/social divide, it is at the heart of current debates over welfare provision. But exploring the meaning of the ‘social bath’, as it is termed in the field, also challenges some of the traditional ways in which community care has been described and analysed particularly within the discipline of social policy. Bathing involves the negotiation of intimacy and the management of the body, and as such entails aspects of being and of social exchange that have not traditionally been part of the standard, rather rationalistic and disembodied account of social policy. Part of the aim of the paper is to redress this omission. The article explores and deconstructs the three axes within which the ‘social bath’ is defined. The first is the boundary between the medical and the social; and the article outlines the complex and shifting ways, both institutional and ideological, in which this boundary is constructed. The second axis concerns the social meaning of the tasks themselves; and the paper explores recent historical and sociological literature concerning the body, washing, touching and nakedness. The third axis relates to the site where these practices take place: the home. The article explores the significance of home and the power that resides in private and domestic space as opposed to the public medical space of the ward or nursing home.
Prototype Classification: Insights from Machine Learning

We shed light on the discrimination between patterns belonging to two different classes by casting this decoding problem into a generalized prototype framework. The discrimination process is then separated into two stages: a projection stage that reduces the dimensionality of the data by projecting it on a line and a threshold stage where the distributions of the projected patterns of both classes are separated. For this, we extend the popular mean-of-class prototype classification using algorithms from machine learning that satisfy a set of invariance properties. We report a simple yet general approach to express different types of linear classification algorithms in an identical and easy-to-visualize formal framework using generalized prototypes where these prototypes are used to express the normal vector and offset of the hyperplane. We investigate non-margin classifiers such as the classical prototype classifier, the Fisher classifier, and the relevance vector machine. We then study hard and soft margin classifiers such as the support vector machine and a boosted version of the prototype classifier. Subsequently, we relate mean-of-class prototype classification to other classification algorithms by showing that the prototype classifier is a limit of any soft margin classifier and that boosting a prototype classifier yields the support vector machine. While giving novel insights into classification per se by presenting a common and unified formalism, our generalized prototype framework also provides an efficient visualization and a principled comparison of machine learning classification.
Endoscopic treatment of post-liver transplantation anastomotic biliary stricture: systematic review and meta-analysis.

CONTEXT Biliary strictures after liver transplantation are recognized as its Achilles' heel. The strictures are classified in anastomotic and ischemic or non-anastomotic biliary strictures, and they figure among the most common complications after liver transplantation. There are some treatment options including balloon dilation, the placement of multiple plastic stents and the placement of self-expandable metal stents and all of them seem to have good results. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature concerning the results of the endoscopic treatment of anastomotic biliary strictures after liver transplantation. METHODS A systematic review of the literature was performed on the management of anastomotic biliary strictures post- orthotopic liver transplantation. The Medline-PubMed, EMBASE, Scielo-LILACS, and Cochrane Databases were electronically searched from January 1966 to April 2013. RESULTS No well-designed randomized controlled trial was found. Most studies were retrospective or prospective comparisons in design. One study (86 patients) compared the endoscopic and the percutaneous accesses. The sustained clinical success rates were similar but the treatment duration was longer in the percutaneous group access. Two studies (56 patients) compared balloon dilation with balloon dilation and multiple plastic stents. There were no differences concerning sustained clinical success and complication rates. CONCLUSIONS Balloon dilation is as effective as balloon dilation plus multiple plastic stenting for the resolution of the anastomotic biliary strictures. Well-designed randomized trials are still needed to compare balloon dilation versus multiple plastic stenting versus metallic stenting.