Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of medication adherence among adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus in three Malaysian public health clinics: a cross-sectional study

Medication adherence (MA) in adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) is associated with improved disease control (glycated hemoglobin, blood pressure, and lipid profile), lower rates of death and diabetes-related complications, increased quality of life, and decreased health care resource utilization. However, there is a paucity of data on the effect of diabetes-related distress, depression, and health-related quality of life on MA. This study examined factors associated with MA in adults with T2D at the primary care level. This was a cross-sectional study conducted in three Malaysian public health clinics, where adults with T2D were recruited consecutively in 2013. We used the 8-item Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS-8) to assess MA as the main dependent variable. In addition to sociodemographic data, we included diabetes-related distress, depressive symptoms, and health-related quality of life as independent variables. Independent association between the MMAS-8 score and its determinants was done using generalized linear models with a gamma distribution and log link function. The participant response rate was 93.1% (700/752). The majority were female (52.8%), Malay (52.9%), and married (79.1%). About 43% of patients were classified as showing low MA (MMAS-8 score <6). Higher income (adjusted odds ratio 0.90) and depressive symptoms (adjusted odds ratio 0.99) were significant independent determinants of medication non-adherence in young adults with T2D. Low MA in adults with T2D is a prevalent problem. Thus, primary health care providers in public health clinics should focus on MA counselling for adult T2D patients who are younger, have a higher income, and symptoms of depression.
Influence of Reward on Corticospinal Excitability during Movement Preparation

Current models of decision making postulate that action selection entails a competition within motor-related areas. According to this view, during action selection, motor activity should integrate cognitive information (e.g., reward) that drives our decisions. We tested this hypothesis in humans by measuring motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) in a left finger muscle during motor preparation in a hand selection task, in which subjects performed left or right key presses according to an imperative signal. This signal was either obvious or ambiguous, but subjects were always asked to react as fast as possible. When the signal was really indistinct, any key press was regarded as correct, so subjects could respond “at random” in those trials. A score based on reaction times was provided after each correct response, and subjects were told they would receive a monetary reward proportional to their final score. Importantly, the scores were either equitable for both hands or favored implicitly left responses (rewardneutral and rewardbiased blocks, respectively). We found that subjects selected their left hand more often in the rewardbiased than in the rewardneutral condition, particularly after ambiguous signals. Moreover, left MEPs were larger, as soon as the signal appeared, in the rewardbiased than in the rewardneutral conditions. During the course of motor preparation, this effect became strongest following ambiguous signals, a condition in which subjects' choices relied strongly on the reward. These results indicate that motor activity is shaped by a cognitive variable that drives our choices, possibly in the context of a competition taking place within motor-related areas.
Evaluating Computer-Communication Systems using Infinite-State Stochastic Petri Nets

For modelling and evaluating the performance of modern computer communication systems, quasi-birth-and-death models (QBDs) can often be used. For such QBDs, a variety of highly efficient numerical solution algorithms have been developed. For models of practically relevant size though, the specification of QBDs at the state level is cumbersome or practically infeasible. To overcome this problem, we advocate the use of a high-level model specification technique that hides the QBD from the modeller. To that purpose we propose a formalism based on an extended class of stochastic Petri nets (SPNs), the so-called infinite-state SPNs (iSPNs). Secondly, we present the software tool Spn2Mgm, which provides support for system-oriented modelers to specify and solve iSPN performance models. The derivation of the underlying QBD, its solution via one of the five supported methods and the computation of relevant performance measures is completely transparent for the tool user. The third part of this paper is devoted to a comparison study of the most efficient algorithms currently available for the steady-state solution of QBD models. As Spn2Mgm provides an efficient implementation of these algorithms, we can easily perform a comparison based on a very large case study. In our comparison, we both focus on the computational speed and the accuracy of the algorithms.
Legal Issues Surrounding Monitoring During Network Research (Invited Paper)

This work was motivated by a discussion that two of the coauthors (computer science professors) had with the other coauthor (a law professor and a former computer crime Trial Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice), in which it was pointed out that some of the network measurements that the computer scientists were thinking of making might potentially violate Federal laws. Several Federal laws prohibit or restrict network monitoring and the sharing of records of network activity. These laws are designed to protect online privacy. They apply both to private parties and government agents, although the details vary depending on who is doing the monitoring. The most important thing to note is that none of these laws contain any specific exceptions or safe harbors for scientific or academic research. The laws are complex, but they follow a basic pattern. First, certain types of network monitoring and data access are prohibited. People who violate the prohibitions may be sued by the people whose privacy they invade and potentially prosecuted and convicted of federal crimes (i.e., misdemeanor and felony convictions). In this paper, we will examine these laws and consider what they might mean for the network measurement community. Although we focus on U.S. Federal Law, we also highlight general trends and approaches in state and international laws that impact network researchers. We will examine the steps commonly taken in prior research in network measurement to respect user privacy, and we will compare those approaches to the evolving legal rules. We will also consider whether legislative reform is needed, describe steps that researchers might take when pursuing such work in light of the legal rules, and propose future technical and policy-related steps the community can take to focus more attention on user privacy.
The Fibonacci Number of a Grid Graph and a New Class of Integer Sequences

Given a grid graph G of size mn, we study the number i(m; n) of independent sets in G, as well as b(m; n), the number of maximal such sets. It turns out that the initial cases b(1; n) and b(2; n) lead to a Padovan and a Fibonacci sequence. To determine b(m; n) for m > 2 we present an adaptation of the transfer matrix method, well known for calculating i(m; n). Finally, we apply our method to obtain explicit values of b(m; n) for m = 3; 4; 5 and provide the corresponding generating functions.
Random Forest DBSCAN for USPTO Inventor Name Disambiguation

Name disambiguation and the subsequent name conflation are essential for the correct processing of person name queries in a digital library or other database. It distinguishes each unique person from all other records in the database. We study inventor name disambiguation for a patent database using methods and features from earlier work on author name disambiguation and propose a feature set appropriate for a patent database. A random forest was selected for the pairwise linking classifier since they outperform Naive Bayes, Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Conditional Inference Tree, and Decision Trees. Blocking size, very important for scaling, was selected based on experiments that determined feature importance and accuracy. The DBSCAN algorithm is used for clustering records, using a distance function derived from random forest classifier. For additional scalability clustering was parallelized. Tests on the USPTO patent database show that our method successfully disambiguated 12 million inventor mentions within 6.5 hours. Evaluation on datasets from USPTO PatentsView inventor name disambiguation competition shows our algorithm outperforms all algorithms in the competition.
The Prevalence and Psychological Costs of Household Violence by Family Members Against Women With Disabilities in Cambodia

Women with disabilities (WWDs) are at triple jeopardy due to the combined risks associated with gender, disability, and violence. Not only are WWDs marginalized socially but the violence against them in their own homes is largely neglected in domestic violence research. Evidence from developing countries is particularly sparse. A cross-sectional survey conducted in Cambodia found rates of violence by household members besides intimate partners were significantly higher among WWDs than non-disabled women. This violence engendered increased levels of psychological distress and higher rates of physical injury but low rates of disclosure to health workers and other formal sources of potential support. Community-based strategies are recommended to radically change social and cultural attitudes, beliefs, and responses to WWDs who are victims of household violence to reduce negative social reactions toward them and to make it safer for them to disclose and receive psychosocial, legal, and other necessary support for this underreported type of violence.
Optimizing the DRAM refresh count for merged DRAM/logic LSIs

In merged DRAM/logic LSIs, the DRAM portion could suffer from shorter data retention time because of heat and noise caused by the logic portion. Frequent refreshes increase power consumption. Also, they disturb normal DRAM accesses leading to performance degradation. In order to overcome this problem, we propose several DRAM refresh architectures. The basic idea is to eliminate unnecessary DRAM refreshes. We have estimated the DRAM refresh count in executing benchmark programs under several architecture models. As a result, in the most effective combination of the architectures, we have obtained more than 80% reduction against a conventional DRAM refresh architecture for most benchmark programs. In addition to it, even when we have taken normal DRAM access into account, we have obtained more than 50% reduction for several benchmarks.
Electroencephalography and Music Therapy: On the Same Wavelength?

Particularly due to its temporal resolution, electroencephalography (EEG) has proved to be a feasible tool to study music perception and cognition. Consistent with the growing impact of neuroscientific research in music within the last two decades, the application of electrophysiological parameters has become more interesting for music therapy as well. This article offers an overview of electro- physiological basics and principles of EEG recording. Further, it reviews some electrophysiological studies on music perception. Eventually, it focuses on the results of EEG studies in participants with depression: clinically relevant reductions in depression and anxiety parameters are accompanied by lasting changes in resting EEG, that is, significant absolute power increases at left frontotemporal alpha and theta waves. The implications for future developments in research and clinical practice of music therapy are discussed.
Application of Membrane Bioreactors in the Preliminary Treatment of Early Planetary Base Wastewater for Long‐Duration Space Missions

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) are the preferred technology for the preliminary treatment of Early Planetary Base Wastewater (EPBW) because of their compact configuration and promising treatment performance. For long‐duration space missions, irreversible membrane biofouling resulting from the strong attachment of biomass and the formation of biofilms are major concerns for the MBR process. In this study, a MBR was operated for 230 days treating synthetic EPBW. The reactor demonstrated excellent treatment performance, in terms of chemical oxygen demand removal and nitrification. Filtration resistance is mainly caused by concentration polarization, reversible fouling, and irreversible fouling. Analysis of the microbial communities in the planktonic and corresponding sessile biomass suggested that the microbial community of the planktonic biomass was significantly different from the one of the sessile biomass. This study provides valuable information for the development of the water reuse component in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (Washington, D.C.) Advanced Life Support system for long‐term space missions.
The psychopathology of insight

About insight as a psychiatric problem little has been written; but in many places more or less casual evidence may be met with of prevalent notions which seem loose or ill-founded. In order to clear the ground a formal and necessarily incomplete essay is offered as a basis for further clinical study. Insight is not a word of plain and single meaning. For a Gestalt psychologist it is an act or an ability to effect a direct configuration, a connected whole which is evident in the meaningful reaction to a stimulusstructure. Spearman seems to mean by it the quality in consciousness that attaches to belief based on adequate (self-experienced) evidence. In ordinary speech it refers to the quality by which we penetrate into the essence of things or happenings. In psychiatry, it is none of these things. Where its meaning is not assumed to be self-evident – and vague; or restricted to delusions, in which ex hypothesi it is impaired, it is said to cover “the amount of realization the patient has of his own condition” – a quantitative relative judgment by the physician, expressed in such terms as “total lack of insight”, “little real insight”; or a, often implicitly all-or-
Validation of k-Nearest Neighbor Classifiers

—This paper presents a method to compute probably approximately correct error bounds for-nearest neighbor classi-fiers. The method withholds some training data as a validation set to bound the error rate of the holdout classifier that is based on the remaining training data. Then, the method uses the validation set to bound the difference in error rates between the holdout clas-sifier and the classifier based on all training data. The result is a bound on the out-of-sample error rate for the classifier based on all training data.
Using Genetic Algorithms in Computer Vision: Registering Images to 3D Surface Model

This paper shows a successful application of genetic algorithms in computer vision. We aim at building photorealistic 3D models of real-world objects by adding textural information to the geometry. In this paper we focus on the 2D–3D registration problem: given a 3D geometric model of an object, and optical images of the same object, we need to ﬁnd the precise alignment of the 2D images to the 3D model. We generalise the photo-consistency approach of Clarkson et al. who assume calibrated cameras, thus only the pose of the object in the world needs to be estimated. Our method extends this approach to the case of uncalibrated cameras, when both intrinsic and extrinsic camera parameters are unknown. We formulate the problem as an optimisation and use a genetic algorithm to ﬁnd a solution. We use semi-synthetic data to study the eﬀects of diﬀerent parameter settings on the registration. Additionally, experimental results on real data are presented to demonstrate the eﬃciency of the method.
Real-Time Simulation Technologies for Power Systems Design, Testing, and Analysis

This task force paper summarizes the state-of-the-art real-time digital simulation concepts and technologies that are used for the analysis, design, and testing of the electric power system and its apparatus. This paper highlights the main building blocks of the real-time simulator, i.e., hardware, software, input-output systems, modeling, and solution techniques, interfacing capabilities to external hardware and various applications. It covers the most commonly used real-time digital simulators in both industry and academia. A comprehensive list of the real-time simulators is provided in a tabular review. The objective of this paper is to summarize salient features of various real-time simulators, so that the reader can benefit from understanding the relevant technologies and their applications, which will be presented in a separate paper.
Genetic requirements for mycobacterial survival during infection

Despite the importance of tuberculosis as a public health problem, we know relatively little about the molecular mechanisms used by the causative organism, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, to persist in the host. To define these mechanisms, we have mutated virtually every nonessential gene of M. tuberculosis and determined the effect disrupting each gene on the growth rate of this pathogen during infection. A total of 194 genes that are specifically required for mycobacterial growth in vivo were identified. The behavior of these mutants provides a detailed view of the changing environment that the bacterium encounters as infection proceeds. A surprisingly large fraction of these genes are unique to mycobacteria and closely related species, indicating that many of the strategies used by this unusual group of organisms are fundamentally different from other pathogens.
Cervical Facet Joint Injections in the Neck and Shoulder Pain

The effects from cervical facet joint injections in those patients who have been complaining cervical zygapophyseal joint pain were compared. The patients were diagnosed originally as myofascial pain syndrome (MPS), cervical herniated nucleus pulposus (HNP), and whiplash-associated disorders (WAD). Patients with the zygapophyseal joints pain of C5-6 and C6-7 were classified by their pain origin as MPS, HNP, and WAD. All patients had been undergone cervical zygapophyseal joints injections with the mixture of lidocaine and triamcinolone unilaterally or bilaterally through the posterior approach under C-arm imaging guide. The therapeutic effects were compared with reduction of numeric rating scale (NRS) of pain before and immediately after blockade and symptom-free periods in each group after 12 months. Symptom durations before injections were 16.1±9.6, 4.6±1.9 and 4.1±1.1 months in each MPS, HNP, and WAD groups. The reductions of NRS immediately after the blockade among the three groups were not different. However, the symptom-free duration after blockade lasted longer in the HNP group than the other two groups. In patients with cervical zygapophyseal pain syndromes, the analgesic effect from cervical facet joint blocks lasted longer in cervical HNP than MPS or WAD.
Swedish early communicative development inventories: words and gestures1

This study describes the typical course and variability in major areas of communicative development for 228 Swedish-speaking children between 8 and 16 months of age. The assessments were made by parental reports with the Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventories (SECDI) using a semi-longitudinal design. Age-based norms for understanding of phrases, vocabulary comprehension, vocabulary production and use of gestures are described at the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile levels. More lexical verbs were found among the first words in comprehension than in production. An extensive variability within individuals in onset and development was found for the assessed skills. The individual differences proved to be stable over 4–6 months. No gender differences were found for comprehension of phrases, total gestures, vocabulary compre-hension, or for vocabulary production. Strong, unique associations were found between total gestures and vocabulary comprehension and between vocabulary comprehension and vocabulary production. In contrast, no unique association was found between gestures and vocabulary production. The results generally concur with those reported for English-speaking American children by Fenson et al. (1993, 1994).
The Affective Brain : Novel insights into the biological mechanisms of motivation and emotion

Affective neuroscience is a new emerging doctrine in the brain sciences, which studies the neurobiological correlates of motivation and emotion. The research reported in this thesis starts with discussing empirical studies on the lateralized involvement of the prefrontal cortex in affective processing. Next, the involvement of the parietal cortex, the cerebellum and their functional connectivity to the prefrontal cortex in affective processing will be examined. In addition, it will be argued that motivation and emotion are implemented in multiple and functionally interconnected brain regions. Furthermore, a heuristic working model will be presented, which does not only provide a theoretical basis for testing new hypotheses in affective neuroscientific research, but also for the clinical application of magnetic brain stimulation in the treatment of depression. The current thesis provides novel insights into the biological mechanisms of affectie processing, evidenced from electrophysiological, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, endocrinological and behavioral studies.
High Speed Comparators for Analog-To-Digital Converter

High speed devices such as ADC, operational amplifier are of great importance and for this high speed application, a major thrust is given towards low power methodologies. Minimization in power consumption in these device can be achieved by smaller feature size processes. Dynamic comparator are being used in today's A/D converters extensively because of their speed , lesser power dissipation , zero static power consumption and full-swing digital level output voltage in shorter time duration. Back to back inverter in these dynamic comparator provides positive feedback mechanism which convert a smaller voltage difference in full scale digital level output. A pre-amplifier based comparator can amplify a small input voltage difference to a large enough voltage to overcome the latch offset voltage and reduce the kickback noise. However the pre- amplifier based comparator suffer large static power consumption as well as reduced intrinsic gain with the reduction of the drain to source resistance due to continuous technology scaling. Keyword: Comparators ,High speed Analog-to-digital converter ,Regenerative comparator.
Engagement: A Defining Characteristic of the University of Tomorrow

Drawing from the work and findings of the Kellogg Commission on the Future of State and Land-Grant Universities, this article makes the case for looking at university involvement with the sponsoring society in a new way, a way that emphasizes the creation of partnerships and interconnections with all elements of the society. As envisioned by the Kellogg Commission, the notion of "engagement" goes beyond traditional extension and outreach by requiring a sharing of knowledge and resources in order to serve society in a more effective manner. Engagement with others will not be an option for universities of tomorrow, be they public or private-it will be a defining characteristic.