Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The histomorphologic changes at the saphenofemoral junction in varicosis of the greater saphenous vein.

BACKGROUND Insufficiency of the greater saphenous vein starts at its junction with the femoral vein, so that the histomorphologic changes at the saphenofemoral junction are of special interest. METHOD In this study we examined which histologic changes occur in the vein walls 5 cm distal to the junction of the greater saphenous vein into the femoral vein and whether these changes correlate to the clinical severity of venous disease. For this the morphologic changes of 28 venous specimens were described qualitatively and the two layers of the media were measured at their thickest and thinnest points. RESULTS The three-layered structure of the vessel wall with intima, media and adventitia was destroyed in 21% of the cases, the intima and media were fused into one another due to loss of the membrana elastica interna. In 93% the intima was thickened at circumscribed areas. Sprouting of capillaries into the intima was found only if varicosis lasted for longer than 15 years. Aneurysms were found in 29% of the specimen. In part of severe aneurysms the media was completely missing. The thickness of the circular muscle layer of the media varied more than that of the longitudinal muscle layer (difference between minimal and maximal thickness 400 +/- 130 microM compared to 190 +/- 90 microM). With increasing clinical severity of the chronic venous insufficiency the difference between minimal and maximal thickness of the circular muscle layer increased (330 +/- 90 microM at stage I according to Widmer, 490 +/- 130 at stage III). CONCLUSION The coexistence of muscular hypertrophy and atrophy in varicose veins is regarded by us as a reaction to altered perfusion and pressure in the veins. Considering the frequently severe damage to the veins, indication for a vein sparing therapy has to be viewed with care.
Work Performance Among Australians With Depression and Anxiety Disorders: A Population Level Second Order Analysis

At a population level, little is known about how anxiety and depression impact on work performance. We investigated the first and second order correlates of work accomplishment and care taken at work among people with International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision, affective and anxiety disorders in comparison to healthy community residents. Australian Bureau of Statistics multistage sampling strategies obtained a household sample of 37,580 working age individuals. A secondary analysis was conducted using multiple binary logistic regression. The first order correlates of work performance were the extent of employment restrictions, mental health status, age, sex, and whether or not treatment was received. At the second order level, the effects of mental health status on work performance depended on age, sex, and receiving treatment. The effect of employment restrictions on work performance depended on age and sex only.
Crystal structure of (E)-4-{1-[2-(carbamothioyl)hydrazin-1-ylidene]ethyl}phenyl 4-methylbenzoate

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, C17H17N3O2S, consists of two independent molecules, A and B, with different conformations: in molecule A, the dihedral angles between the central benzene ring and the pendant tolyl and carbamothioylhydrazono groups are 71.12 (9) and 5.95 (8)°, respectively. The corresponding angles in molecule B are 50.56 (12) and 26.43 (11)°, respectively. Both molecules feature an intramolecular N—H⋯N hydrogen bond, which closes an S(5) ring. In the crystal, molecules are linked by N—H⋯O, N—H⋯S and C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, generating a three-dimensional network.
Year : 2012 Dopamine , affordance and active inference

The role of dopamine in behaviour and decision-making is often cast in terms of reinforcement learning and optimal decision theory. Here, we present an alternative view that frames the physiology of dopamine in terms of Bayes-optimal behaviour. In this account, dopamine controls the precision or salience of (external or internal) cues that engender action. In other words, dopamine balances bottom-up sensory information and top-down prior beliefs when making hierarchical inferences (predictions) about cues that have affordance. In this paper, we focus on the consequences of changing tonic levels of dopamine firing using simulations of cued sequential movements. Crucially, the predictions driving movements are based upon a hierarchical generative model that infers the context in which movements are made. This means that we can confuse agents by changing the context (order) in which cues are presented. These simulations provide a (Bayes-optimal) model of contextual uncertainty and set switching that can be quantified in terms of behavioural and electrophysiological responses. Furthermore, one can simulate dopaminergic lesions (by changing the precision of prediction errors) to produce pathological behaviours that are reminiscent of those seen in neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. We use these simulations to demonstrate how a single functional role for dopamine at the synaptic level can manifest in different ways at the behavioural level. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi. 1002327 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: http://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-62420 Published Version Originally published at: Friston, K J; Shiner, T; FitzGerald, T; Galea, J M; Adams, R; Brown, H; Dolan, R J; Moran, R; Stephan, K E; Bestmann, S (2012). Dopamine, affordance and active inference. PLoS Computational Biology, 8(1):e1002327. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi. 1002327 Dopamine, Affordance and Active Inference Karl J. Friston*, Tamara Shiner, Thomas FitzGerald, Joseph M. Galea, Rick Adams, Harriet Brown, Raymond J. Dolan, Rosalyn Moran, Klaas Enno Stephan, Sven Bestmann 1 The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, Queen Square, London, United Kingdom, 2 Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience and Movement Disorders, University College London Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London, United Kingdom
Independent Metabolic Syndrome Variants Predict New-Onset Coronary Artery Disease

OBJECTIVE Any combination of metabolic abnormalities may constitute the metabolic syndrome (MetS), conferring coronary artery disease (CAD) risk, but the independent effect of different combinations on CAD onset remains unknown. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Healthy adult siblings (n = 987) of premature CAD (<60 years) case subjects were followed for 9.8 ± 3.8 years. Baseline MetS variables (insulin sensitivity index, waist circumference, systolic blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides) were recombined into five principal components (PC1–5), and risk factor–adjusted proportional hazards for CAD onset of median-dichotomized PCs were estimated. RESULTS The significant hazard ratios were as follows: for PC1 (all abnormalities except blood pressure) 1.66 (P = 0.036), PC2 (high blood pressure levels, high HDL cholesterol) 1.71 (P = 0.016), and PC4 (low HDL cholesterol, high insulin sensitivity, low triglycerides) 2.0 (P = 0.001). Traditionally defined MetS had a hazard ratio of 1.32 (P = 0.18). CONCLUSIONS Independent MetS variants identified by PC analysis may explain metabolic mechanisms that increase CAD risk better than the presence of traditional MetS.
Efficient Certification Path Discovery for MANET

A Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is characterized by the lack of any infrastructure, absence of any kind of centralized administration, frequent mobility of nodes, network partitioning, and wireless connections. These properties make traditional wireline security solutions not straightforwardly applicable in MANETs, and of course, constitute the establishment of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in such networks a cumbersome task. After surveying related work, we propose a novel public key management scheme using the well-known web-of-trust or trust graph model. Our scheme is based on a binary tree formation of the network's nodes. The binary tree structure is proved very effective for building certificate chains between communicating nodes that are multihops away and the cumbersome problem of certificate chain discovery is avoided. We compare our scheme with related work and show that it presents several advantages, especially when a fair balancing between security and performance is desirable. Simulations of the proposed scheme under different scenarios demonstrate that it is effective in terms of tree formation, join and leave occurrences, and certificate chain establishment.
Low-Rank Decomposition Model for Adaptive Identification of Similar Neighboring Pixels in Hyperspectral Images

In many hyperspectral image processing tasks such as classification, unmixing, and target detection, jointly using the pixels in an image patch can generally improve the performance. In this letter, we propose using a low-rank decomposition model to analyze the image patch. The image patch is decomposed into the sum of a low-rank matrix, a sparse matrix, and a bounded matrix using a convex optimization technique. In the obtained low-rank matrix, the pixels that are similar to the central pixel in the image patch would be codirectional to it. We applied the proposed model in the collaborative hyperspectral image classification to evaluate its performance. Experimental results on a real hyperspectral scene demonstrate that using only the similar neighboring pixels in the collaborative hyperspectral image classification can effectively improve the performance, and the classification performance is not sensitive to the image patch size.
SingaKids-Mandarin: Speech Corpus of Singaporean Children Speaking Mandarin Chinese

We present SingaKids-Mandarin, a speech corpus of 255 Singaporean children aged 7 to 12 reading Mandarin Chinese, for a total of 125 hours of data (75 hours of speech) and 79,843 utterances. This corpus is phonetically balanced and detailed in human annotations, including phonetic transcriptions, lexical tone markings, and proficiency scoring at the utterance level. The reading scripts span a diverse set of utterance styles, covering syllable-level minimal pairs, words, phrases, sentences, and short stories. We analyze the acoustic properties of Singaporean children. We also observe that while the lack of the neutral tone is the same for Singaporean adults and children, the phonetic pronunciation patterns in these two age groups differ: although Singaporean adults tend to front their retroflex, nasal, and palatal consonants, Singaporean children show both fronting and backing in these consonants. For future work, we plan to develop computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) systems with SingaKids-Mandarin.
ELASTIC CALCULATIONS OF LIMITING MUD PRESSURES TO CONTROL HYDRO- FRACTURING DURING HDD

A pump utilizing a shape memory alloy member which is connected to electric terminals to be contracted by the supply of electric power for lowering a piston, the piston mounted to slidably move within a cylinder to thereby introduce a fluid into the cylinder is raised by a biasing force of a bias spring to externally discharge the fluid introduced in the cylinder. The pump has a simple structure which is light and easily repaired and maintained.
Recent advances in software measurement (abstract and references for talk)

Most of the early work was empirical, i.e., collecting da ta and trying t o postulate models based upon the da ta [Akiyama71], [Basili&Zelkowitz77], [Belady&Lehman7G], [Boehm73], [Endres75], [Walston&Felix77], [Wolverton74]. Some of the work involved the postulation of a metric or even model tha t tried to explain the nature of the process or product [Boehm,Brown&Lipow76], [Elshoff76], [Fuer&Folkes79], [Halstead771, [McCabe76], [Musa75], [Putnam78]. Measurement was also used for evaluating the hypotheses in controlled experiments, [Basili&Reiter79], [Cur tis791, [Gannon&Horning75], [Sackman,Erikson&GrantG3] and occasionally was promoted as an integral par t of the software development process [Basili&Turner75].
Effects of child care prices on women's labor force participation in Russia

The paper models household demand for child care, mothers' labor force participation, and working hours, in Russia. The model estimates the effects of the price of child care, mother's wage, and household income on household behavior and well-being. The theoretical model yields several predictions. To test these, reduced-form models of the discrete and continuous household choices are estimated jointly using the method of Semi-Parametric Full Information Maximum Likelihood. This method controls for the error term correlations across outcomes, and the correlation of the error terms which is the result of the panel structure of the data. The results of the analysis indicate that mothers' labor force participation and working hours are responsive to the price of child care and hourly wages. The simulations presented in this paper show that family allowances - intended as a means of reducing poverty - do not have a significant effect on the household choice of child care arrangements. Replacing family allowances with child care subsidies may have a strong positive effect on women's labor force participation and thus can be effective in reducing poverty.
Proposal to use pentoxifylline and Lyprinol therapy for chronic inflammatory diseases

Our research group read with enthusiasm the article by Whitehouse recently published in this journal (Whitehouse, 2004). He proposed the therapeutic use of pentoxiphylline (PTX) associated with Lyprinol for a few chronic inflammatory diseases. PTX reduces the production of TNF-α and Lyprinol, a mussel extract, inhibits lipoxygenase. He showed clear evidence of the usefulness of this association in experimental models of animal “chronic” inflammatory disease. There was a clear synergism with the two agents. Whitehouse lists a series of benefits of this combination compared with present therapeutic approaches. In the last decade, our laboratory pioneered the understanding of the contribution of cytokines to the development of inflammatory pain. We described (in rats and mice) a cascade of hypernociceptive cytokines which starts with TNF-α and ends with IL-1β and KC (CINC) releasing prostanoids and sympathomimetic amines, respectively (Cunha et al., 1992, 2005; Poole et al., 1999). Recently we have shown that TNF-α released by inflammatory stimuli was inhibited by PTX (Vale et al., 2004) or thalidomide (Ribeiro et al., 2000), inhibition that was strictly related with anti-nociception. On the other hand, we described in two series of experiments of persistent or “chronic” inflammatory tests that in the late phase the importance of prostaglandins for the development of hypernociception was overshadowed by the participation of lipoxygenase metabolites (Tonussi and Ferreira, 1999; Canetti et al., 2001; Cunha et al., 2003). Thus, our experiments fully support Whitehouse’s proposal to introduce the combination of PTX and Lyprinol for therapy of some chronic diseases. This combined therapy is certainly of lower cost than engineered TNF-α antibodies or
Using Player Type Models for Personalized Game Design - An Empirical Investigation

Personalized games should provide a better player experience than one-size-fits-all games. As a method for personalization, player type models have been discussed recently. Player type models would be useful tools in the personalization of games, if they have a relationship to the players’ experience of specific game mechanics. However, this relationship has never been empirically investigated. To close this gap, we examine whether player types—as a specific appearance of personality traits—can significantly and reliably predict player experience. We investigate the predictive power of two player types (Mastermind, Seeker) of the BrainHex player type model. Results of a field study (n = 51) with a mobile game prototype tailored to the two player types Mastermind and Seeker suggest that player type models still need improvement: Player type scores do not significantly predict player experience of according game mechanics. We discuss possible explanations and a way to design personalized games that adapt to users gaming preferences with player type models.
Sequence and structure alignment of paramyxovirus hemagglutinin-neuraminidase with influenza virus neuraminidase

A model is proposed for the three-dimensional structure of the paramyxovirus hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) protein. The model is broadly similar to the structure of the influenza virus neuraminidase and is based on the identification of invariant amino acids among HN sequences which have counterparts in the enzyme-active center of influenza virus neuraminidase. The influenza virus enzyme-active site is constructed from strain-invariant functional and framework residues, but in this model of HN, it is primarily the functional residues, i.e., those that make direct contact with the substrate sialic acid, which have identical counterparts in neuraminidase. The framework residues of the active site are different in HN and in neuraminidase and appear to be less strictly conserved within HN sequences than within neuraminidase sequences.
A confidence interval for Pr(X < Y) - Pr(X > Y) estimated from simple cluster samples.

Distribution-free confidence intervals based on Somers' d (a simple function of the Mann-Whitney U statistic) are developed for Pr(X < Y) - Pr(X > Y), where X and Y are the ranks of any two observations from two independent populations. The approach accommodates a complex sampling design, and explicit formulas are given for simple cluster sampling. The method also accommodates simple progressive left- and right-censoring. The accuracy of the interval is shown to improve when the tanh-1 transform is used. A bootstrap solution was tried and did not perform as well as the proposed solution.
How Can We Train Leaders if We Do Not Know What Leadership Is?

Views of leadership that focus on the traits andbehaviors of the leader are commonly used to developtraining programs. Although these leadership trainingprograms have some application, they suffer from several problems. First, there is no reasonableagreement on what traits or behaviors are leadershiptraits or behaviors. Second, there is no way todifferentiate what makes a good leader from what makes an effective manager or an effective person.And third, people who emerge from these trainingprograms rarely become what anyone might define as goodleaders. A view of leadership as a community development process is explored as an alternative totraditional leadership approaches, and its implicationsfor training and education are discussed.
Distributed mobile cloud computing: A multi-user clustering solution

Edge computing through local mobile cloud computing platforms is a key enabler for coping with the ever increasing data traffic requirements. A key enabler for this technology is the awaited ultra-dense deployment of radio access points for future 5G networks. Local cloud platforms allow maintaining a scalable network design by jointly managing local radio and computational resources. The Fog, a platform with rich services, introduces distributed intelligence at the edge of the network where entities such as radio access points form a local computing resources pool. In this paper, we address the problem of radio access points clustering for fog computing applications. We focus on the multi-user case where the local cloud resources are to be shared by several devices. We propose a novel clustering algorithm in which management functionalities are split into two layers: centralized and decentralized. The proposed strategy compromises centralized optimality with decentralized distribution intelligence for faster and less complex decision making. We compare, through simulations, the performance of the proposed algorithm to centralized and decentralized strategies, and show how it can achieve good quality of experience.
Neuro-fuzzy network approach for modeling submicron MOSFETs: application to MOSFET subcircuit simulation

A neuro-fuzzy network approach is developed to model the nonlinear behavior of submicron metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). The proposed model is trained and implemented as a MOSFET in a software environment. The training data are obtained through various simulations of a MOSFET Berkeley short channel insulated-gate field-effect transistor model 3 (BSIM3) in HSPICE, and the trained model is utilized to simulate the MOSFET device. The obtained result shows good and noticeable agreement between the numerical result of the original model in HSPICE and the neuro-fuzzy approach in the device and subcircuit modeling.
Flexural vibration behavior of piezoelectric heterogeneous bimorph beams

Bending oscillations of piezoelectric bimorph beams are effective sound sources in gases or fluids, and, therefore, of practical interest. On the basis of the piezoelectric constitutive relations and the elastodynamic equations, the differential equation of flexural vibrations of thin rectangular piezoelectric heterogeneous bimorph beams, consisting of a piezoelectric layer glued onto an elastic substrate, is derived. The piezoelectric layer is polarized in thickness direction and can be excited to thickness vibrations by an electric alternating current voltage applied to electrodes covering the upper and lower surface of the layer. This causes an oscillating transverse contraction in the piezoelectric layer but not in the substrate, and, thus, generates flexural vibrations of the beam. The differential equation is solved analytically for beams of finite length with both ends free, one clamped and one free end, as well as for both ends clamped. Their vibration behavior in viscous fluids is considered. For a piezo-ceramic composite layer joined to a steel plate vibrating in air and in water, the analytical results are evaluated numerically as function of frequency.
Klotho as a regulator of oxidative stress and senescence

Abstract The klotho gene functions as an aging-suppressor gene that extends life span when overexpressed and accelerates aging-like phenotypes when disrupted in mice. The klotho gene encodes a single-pass transmembrane protein that binds to multiple fibroblast growth factor (FGF) receptors and functions as a co-receptor for FGF23, a bone-derived hormone that suppresses phosphate reabsorption and vitamin D biosynthesis in the kidney. In addition, the extracellular domain of Klotho protein is shed and secreted, potentially functioning as a humoral factor. The secreted Klotho protein can regulate multiple growth factor signaling pathways, including insulin/IGF-1 and Wnt, and the activity of multiple ion channels. Klotho protein also protects cells and tissues from oxidative stress, yet the precise mechanism underlying these activities remains to be determined. Thus, understanding of Klotho protein function is expected to provide new insights into the molecular basis for aging, phosphate/vitamin D metabolism, cancer and stem cell biology.
Privacy Preserving Intersection of Neighbor Sets Exploiting Cross Checking Capability in a Peer to Peer Social Network Service

Due to the privacy concerns on the data generated by the users, Peer to Peer Social Network Services are getting popular these days because the data is kept in a distributed manner. In some cases, the list of neighbors of a node should be kept private, too. However, for some applications, we may need to compute the list of common neighbors between two nodes without revealing the whole list of neighbors. In this paper, we propose a Bloom filter based approach to compute the intersection of neighbors between two nodes in SNSes. We exploit the cross-checking property enabled by the neighbor relationships to simplify the computation while getting more accurate results. Our proposed method can get a near perfect intersection with mostly zero or one false common neighbors. Furthermore, the Bloom filter can successfully hide the neighbor information from attackers. We show the performance through numerical analysis and extensive simulations.