Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of Ear Splint Therapy for Ear Deformities

Objective To present our experience with ear splint therapy for babies with ear deformities, and thereby demonstrate that this therapy is an effective and safe intervention without significant complications. Methods This was a retrospective study of 54 babies (35 boys and 19 girls; 80 ears; age ≤3 months) with ear deformities who had received ear splint therapy at the Center for Torticollis, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Ajou University Hospital between December 2014 and February 2016. Before the initiation of ear splint therapy, ear deformities were classified with reference to the standard terminology. We compared the severity of ear deformity before and after ear splint therapy by using the physician's ratings. We also compared the physician's ratings and the caregiver's ratings on completion of ear splint therapy. Results Among these 54 babies, 41 children (58 ears, 72.5%) completed the ear splint therapy. The mean age at initiation of therapy was 52.91±18.26 days and the treatment duration was 44.27±32.06 days. Satyr ear, forward-facing ear lobe, Darwinian notch, overfolded ear, and cupped ear were the five most common ear deformities. At the completion of therapy, the final physician's ratings of ear deformities were significantly improved compared to the initial ratings (8.28±1.44 vs. 2.51±0.92; p<0.001). There was no significant difference between the physician's ratings and the caregiver's ratings at the completion of ear splint therapy (8.28±1.44 vs. 8.0±1.61; p=0.297). Conclusion We demonstrated that ear splint therapy significantly improved ear deformities in babies, as measured by quantitative rating scales. Ear splint therapy is an effective and safe intervention for babies with ear deformities.
A Three-Dimensional Microdisplacement Sensing System Based on MEMS Bulk-Silicon Technology

For the dimensional measurement and characterization of microsized and nanosized components, a three-dimensional microdisplacement sensing system was developed using the piezoresistive effect in silicon. The sensor was fabricated using microelectromechanical system bulk-silicon technology, and it was validated using the finite element method. A precise data acquisition circuit with an accuracy of 20 μV was designed to obtain weak voltage signals. By calibration, the sensing system was shown to have a sensitivity of 17.29 mV/μm and 4.59 mV/μm in the axial and lateral directions, respectively; the nonlinearity in these directions was 0.8% and 1.0% full scale, respectively. A full range of 4.6 μm was achieved in the axial direction. Results of a resolution test indicated that the sensing system had a resolution of 5 nm in the axial direction and 10 nm in the lateral direction.
MODELLING THE DEMAND FOR EMERGING MARKET ASSETS

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the aggregate international demand schedule for emerging market (EM) securities as an asset class. The standard â€˜push-pullâ€™ model of capital flows is modified by reference to recent work on portfolio choice in the context of credit rationing leading to a simultaneous equation model that determines EM yield and capital flows together. Interaction effects include lagged flows and yields to reflect herding and asset bubbles, with a time-varying risk aversion variable affecting yields and flows. This model is then tested on monthly data for US bond purchases, using the General-to-Specific Approach (GETS) to find significant variables, lags, and shock dummies for yield spread and bond flows separately; followed by a Full Information Maximum Likelihood (FIML) estimation of the two equations together. The results are robust and give a very good fit for both yields and flows, contributing a valuable insight into the dominant impact of short-term shifts in the demand schedule on emerging markets.
Polytopic Approximation of Explicit Model Predictive Controllers

A model predictive control law (MPC) is given by the solution to a parametric optimization problem that can be precomputed offline, which provides an explicit map from state to input that can be rapidly evaluated online. However, the primary limitations of these optimal 'explicit solutions' are that they are applicable to only a restricted set of systems and that the complexity can grow quickly with problem size. In this paper we compute approximate explicit control laws that trade-off complexity against approximation error for MPC controllers that give rise to convex parametric optimization problems. The algorithm is based on the classic double-description method and returns a polyhedral approximation to the optimal cost function. The proposed method has three main advantages from a control point of view: it is an incremental approach, meaning that an approximation of any specified complexity can be produced, it operates on implicitly-defined convex sets, meaning that the prohibitively complex optimal explicit solution is not required and finally it can be applied to any convex parametric optimization problem. A sub-optimal controller based on barycentric interpolation is then generated from this approximate polyhedral cost function that is feasible and stabilizing. The resulting control law is continuous, although non-linear and defined over a non-simplical polytopic partition of the state space. The non-simplical nature of the partition generates significantly simpler approximate control laws, which is demonstrated on several examples.
The immunohistochemistry and toluidine blue roles for Helicobacter pylori detection in patients with gastritis.

BACKGROUND Helicobacter pylori, which is associated with many upper gastrointestinal diseases, is found in half of the population of the world. Several special stains and immunohistochemistry stain for H. pylori are available. The need for and usefulness of immunohistochemical (IHC) technique has been debated for years. Toluidine blue is a simple stain for microbiological studies and is easily available in laboratories. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare hematoxylin and eosin (H&E), Giemsa and toluidine blue staining with immunehistochemistry for detection of H. pylori in patients with gastritis and also to correlate the results of these staining methods with pathological grading. METHODS We reviewed 54 consecutive gastric biopsy specimens stained by H&E and Giemsa as well as by toluidine blue and immunohistochemistry stains for H. pylori. RESULTS H. pylori was positively identified by IHC in 43 (79.63%) patients, while positive samples were found in 18 (33.33%), 24 (44.44%) and 33 (61.11%) patients using H&E, Giemsa and toluidine blue staining methods. Our results showed that classical histological staining methods are not sensitive enough to identify low numbers or coccoid forms of organism, while toluidine blue and immunohistochemistry play an important role in detection of H. pylori infection. CONCLUSION Toluidine blue has been proved to be much more reliable than H&E and Giemsa in detection of H. pylori. In addition, in post treatment biopsies and in biopsies with unexplained chronic active gastritis without histological evidence of H. pylori should have immunohistochemistry done to detect possible low density or coccoid form of organisms.
Using Structured Queries for Keyword Information Retrieval

An increasingly important class of keyword search tasks are those where users are looking for a specific piece of information buried within a few documents in a large collection. Examples include searching for someone’s phone number, the schedule for a meeting, or a package tracking URL, within a personal email collection. We refer to such tasks as “precision-oriented search tasks”. While modern information extraction techniques can be used to extract the concepts involved in these tasks (persons, phone numbers, schedules, etc.), since users only provide keywords as input, the problem of identifying the documents that contain the information of interest remains a challenge. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem based on the concept of automatically generating “interpretations” of keyword queries. Interpretations are precise structured queries, over the extracted concepts, that model the real intent behind a keyword query. We formalize the notion of interpretations and address the challenges in identifying the most likely interpretations for a given keyword query. We validate the benefits of our approach by presenting results both from a user study and experimental comparisons against an alternative approach.
A generalized soft water acidification model

A generalized soft water acidification model has been developed. The enhanced trickle-down (ETD) model is driven by precipitation, evaporation, acidity, sulfate, and chloride loading time series daily input data. The hydrologic component simulates snowmelt, interflow, overland flow, groundwater flow, frozen ground processes, seepage, and evapotranspiration. Physicochemical and biological processes that affect the alkalinity or sulfate balance and are included in the formulation are cation exchange, chemical weathering, sulfate sorption, and sulfate reduction. The system of 20 ordinary differential equations is solved by using a variable time step fourth-order predictor-corrector numerical scheme. Shown here is calibration of the ETD model for two lakes in the Adirondack Park of New York. ETD is relatively simple and requires limited input data, and yet it accounts for the predominant hydrologic and biochemical processes of the ecosystem.
Push broom microwave radiometer observations of surface soil moisture in Monsoon '90

The push broom microwave radiometer (PBMR) was flown on six flights of the NASA C-130 to map the surface soil moisture over the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service Walnut Gulch experimental watershed in southeastern Arizona. The PBMR operates at a wavelength of 21 cm and has four horizontally polarized beams which cover a swath of 1.2 times the aircraft altitude. By flying a series of parallel flight lines it was possible to map the microwave brightness temperature (TB), and thus the soil moisture, over a large area. In this case the area was approximately 8 by 20 km. The moisture conditions ranged from very dry, 15%, after a heavy rain. The rain amounts ranged from less than 10 mm to more than 50 mm over the area mapped with the PBMR. With the PBMR we were able to observe the spatial variations of the rain amounts and the temporal variation as the soil dried. The TB values were registered to a Universal Transverse Mercator grid so that they could be compared to the rain gage readings and to the ground measurements of soil moisture in the 0- to 5-cm layer. The decreases in TB were well correlated with the rainfall amounts, R2 = 0.9, and the comparison of Tg with soil moisture was also good with an R2 of about 0.8. For the latter, there was some dependence of the relation on location, which may be due to soil or vegetation variations over the area mapped. The application of these data to runoff forecasts and flux estimates will be discussed.
Acoustic behavior of sedimentary rocks: Geologic properties versus Poisson's ratios

Velocity transforms are essential for the extraction of geologic information from seismic reflection data sets and/or predicting porosity from wireline logging data. Most commonly used transforms, like the Wyllie time average equation, the Raymer modified time-average equation, and the Gardner equation are all based on empirical relationships extracted from relatively small, “clean” mono- and bimineral and mostly siliciclastic data sets and generally fail to explain the acoustic relationships within multimineral data sets. To extract globally significant relationships between geologic and acoustic parameters, more than 2800 plug measurements were collected. More than two-thirds of the data were our own measurements; the others were from the literature. This data set covers nearly all sedimentary environments and mixtures of those as well as the entire range in petrophysical properties.
The bin-covering technique for thresholding random geometric graph properties

We study the emerging phenomenon of ad hoc, sensor-based communication networks. The communication is modeled by the geometric random graph model G(n, r, ℓ) where n points randomly placed within [0, ℓ]d form the nodes, and any two nodes that correspond to points at most distance r away from each other are connected. We study fundamental properties of G(n, r, ℓ) of interest: connectivity, coverage, and routing-stretch. Our main contribution is a simple analysis technique we call bin-covering that we apply uniformly to get first known, (asymptotically) tight thresholds for each of these properties. Typically, in the past, geometric random graph analyses involved sophisticated methods from continuum percolation theory; on contrast, our bin-covering approach is discrete and very simple, yet it gives us tight threshold bounds. The technique also yields algorithmic benefits as illustrated by a simple local routing algorithm for finding paths with low stretch. Our specific results should also prove interesting to the networking community that has seen a recent increase in the study of geometric random graphs motivated by engineering ad hoc networks.
OBGene: Optimal barcode generator for NGS experiments

We are addressing a fundamental problem in the selection of optimal sets of DNA barcodes to be used in multiplexing of samples in a next-generation sequencing (NGS) through an optimization framework called OBGene. We define a constrained-optimization setting whose cost function and constraints utilize the notion of Hamming distance between barcodes and the experimental requirements, respectively. We consider diverse possible constraints that might be imposed by a practitioner; for example, maximum distance between barcodes, balanced list, and a desired limit for the GC-content. Owing to the size of the search space, we propose to use a stochastic search algorithm, ICA, to find the global optima of the cost function. As a numerical example, we provide a list of 20 barcodes through the simulation.
Ground-penetrating radar and microwave tomography to evaluate the crack and joint geometry in historical buildings: some examples from Chania, Crete, Greece

Diagnostics of historical buildings is crucial for the definition of a reliable restoration project or in the study of the seismic behaviour of a building. This was one of the objectives of the international project 'Advanced techniques for Seismic RISK Reduction in Mediterranean Archipelago Regions' (SE RISK). In particular, in the framework of the project, the present work is concerned with the exploitation of GPR for the inspection of two historical buildings of Crete Island, Greece, the Prefecture of Chania and Venizelo's House. In particular, the surveys aim at gaining information about the structure of the floors fracture areas and structural joint zones via high-resolution measurements thanks to the use of a 1500 MHz nominal centre frequency antenna. With regard to the Prefecture of Chania, the specific aim of the survey was to detect and localize fracture areas and joint zones thanks to a scanning line acquired orthogonally to the 'defects visible' at the surface of the floors. In Venizelo's House, the aim was to detect and localize fracture areas in the stone masonry.Besides the classical time data processing, a microwave tomography based approach was applied to the data. The comparison between the two approaches has shown that the results of both the procedures are in good agreement suggesting both the reliability of the standard processing routine and the new microwave approach. In addition, the microwave tomographic approach provides more detailed and higher resolution images allowing an easier data interpretation. The microwave tomographic approach also offers the advantage of performing an automatic procedure, thus mitigating the risk of introducing subjective elements as in the case of the classical approach.
[The temporal lobe].

The temporal lobe is structurally divided into the superior, middle, inferior and medial gyri. The superior temporal gyrus comprises the primary auditory cortex, while nearby temporal regions function in higher level auditory processing, including speech and language. Inferior temporal regions are involved in higher level visual processing. Associated regions include the fusiform gyrus (involved in face processing) and the parahippocampal gyrus, which processes scenes. The medial temporal lobe comprises the hippocampus and is thought be involved in the formation and propagation of memory.
Simultaneous Identification of Multiple LTI Plants Using Multiple Models, Switching and Tuning

The multiple models, switching, and tuning methodology is used in this paper to identify simultaneously multiple linear time-invariant (LTI) plants. Two model assignment strategies are also presented. These strategies cause the models to organize themselves so that at any given instant only one model adapts to each plant. The choice of the assignment strategy and the performance criteria play an important role in the manner of both the convergence and the switching between models.
Monte Carlo model-space noise adaptation for speech recognition

We describe a Monte Carlo method for model-space noise adaptation of Gaussian mixture models (GMMs). This method combines a single-Gaussian noise model with the GMM speech model to produce an adapted model. It is similar to Parallel Model Combination or model-space Joint, except that it applies to spliced and projected MFCC features rather than to MFCC plus dynamic features. We demonstrate the necessity of reestimating the noise using both the silence and speech frames rather than just estimating it from silence frames, and obtain improvements on a matched test set without added noise using a system that includes all standard adaptation techniques.
Earthquake Ruptures with Strongly Rate-Weakening Friction and Off-Fault Plasticity, Part 1: Planar Faults

Abstract Observations demonstrate that faults are fractal surfaces with deviations from planarity at all scales. We study dynamic rupture propagation on self-similar faults having root mean square (rms) height fluctuations of order 10 -3 to 10 -2 times the profile length. Our 2D plane strain models feature strongly rate-weakening fault friction and off-fault Drucker–Prager viscoplasticity. The latter bounds otherwise unreasonably large stress concentrations in the vicinity of bends. Our choice of a cohesionless yield function prevents tensile stress states and thus fault opening. A consequence of strongly rate-weakening friction is the existence of a critical background stress level above which self-sustaining rupture propagation, in the form of self-healing slip pulses, first becomes possible. Around this level, at which natural faults are expected to operate, ruptures become extremely sensitive to fault roughness and exhibit substantial fluctuations in rupture velocity. Except for shallow inclinations of the maximum compressive stress to the fault (less than about 20°), the fluctuations are anticorrelated with the local fault slope. These accelerations and decelerations of the rupture, together with naturally emerging slip heterogeneity, excite waves of all wavelengths and result in ground acceleration spectra that are flat at high frequency, consistent with observed strong motion records.
Maintaining Connectivity in a Scalable and Robust Distributed Environment

This paper describes a novel peer-to-peer (P2P) environment for running distributed Java applications on the Internet. The possible application areas include simple load balancing, parallel evolutionary computation, agent-based simulation and artificial life. Our environment is based on cutting-edge P2P technology. We introduce and analyze the concept of long term memory which provides protection against partitioning of the network. We demonstrate the potentials of our approach by analyzing a simple distributed application. We present theoretical and empirical evidence that our approach is scalable, effective and robust.
An improved parameterization for sulfuric acid-water nucleation rates for tropospheric and stratospheric conditions

[1] In this paper we present parameterized equations for calculation of sulfuric acid–water critical nucleus compositions, critical cluster radii and homogeneous nucleation rates for tropospheric and stratospheric conditions. The parameterizations are based on a classical nucleation model. We used an improved model for the hydrate formation relying on ab initio calculations of small sulfuric acid clusters and on experimental data for vapor pressures and equilibrium constants for hydrate formation. The most rigorous nucleation kinetics and the thermodynamically consistent version of the classical binary homogeneous nucleation theory were used. The parameterized nucleation rates are compared with experimental ones, and at room temperature and relative humidities above 30% they are within experimental error. At lower temperatures and lower humidities the agreement is somewhat poorer. Overall, the values of nucleation rates are increased compared to a previous parameterization and are within an order of magnitude compared with theoretical values for all conditions studied. The parameterized equations will reduce the computing time by a factor 1/500 compared to nonparameterized nucleation rate calculations and therefore are in particular useful for large-scale models. The parameterized formulas are valid at temperatures between 230.15 K and 305.15 K, relative humidities between 0.01% and 100%, and sulfuric acid concentrations from 104 to 1011 cm−3. They can be used to extrapolate the classical results down to 190 K. The parametrization is limited to cases where nucleation rates are between 10−7 and 1010 cm−3s−1, and the critical cluster contains at least four molecules.
Thermal stress simulation and temperature crack control for RCCD during construction period

In the light of the temperature crack problem of the construction of RCCD during cold winter season, the authors have analyzed the dam cracking site and the cracking mechanism. Pointed out that the early autogenous volume deformation and temperature difference between inside and outside of the bedding concrete and the temperature difference of basis concrete are the main reasons resulted in the crack. The basic theories of temperature field and stress field of concrete and 3D FEM are used to calculate and simulate the construction process for a RCCD, and the temperature control measures of cooling pipe for the controlling influence of temperature field are analyzed. The results show that the temperature control and crack prevention methods of internal water cooling combined with the moderate surface insulation not only can reduce the temperature difference between inside and outside of the structure, but also can reduce the temperature difference of the structural basis, it has a good crack effect. This approach also has a certain engineering application prospects.