Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
User acceptance of multifunctional smart cards

The introduction of smart cards in the Austrian public sector has been discussed since the late 1980s. Public organisations including the national health insurance institute and the national citizen registration office are in the conceptual phase of the introduction. One of the pilot projects was the roll-out of the multifunctional student ID card to the students of the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU Vienna) in autumn 2000. To assess the pilot and to gain insight into further projects, it is necessary to investigate the students’ point of view and their acceptance of the WU smart card. Furthermore it would be interesting to gain knowledge about the integration of further functionalities such as payment services or health insurance data. In this paper, which is a co-operation of three departments at the WU Vienna, we want to give a report on the current status of the research project focused on investigating the issues affecting the introduction of new functionalities of the multifunctional student ID card at the WU Vienna. While the research reported here is still at an early stage of analysis, we have already gained significant findings on students’ attitude towards usage of current as well as of potential extended functionalities of the student ID card. The main focus of our research is to gain knowledge about the general students’ acceptance. The data collection was carried out through an online questionnaire and the data analysis was based on a sample of 417 students. Evaluating the findings of the first phase of our research project, we have been able to draw implications for the next stage of our investigation.
A Statistical Approach to Automatic Heart Segmentation and Modelling from Multiple Modalities

In this work, we consider a statistical approach to the fully automatic segmentation of heart walls from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and the reconstruction of three-dimensional models from other modalities. The method is based on utilizing a Markov random fields (MRF) model that provides powerful opportunities for noise suppressing and, at the same time, for an accurate contour preserving segmentation. Implementing local statistics on pixel neighbourhoods makes possible the detecting weak borders, that are even not detected by observation. The process is followed by the active appearance modelling to reduce the oversegmentation. Further, the statistical shape database can be used for 3D reconstruction of complete heart models from data derived by using other image acquisition techniques, like cardiac ultrasound. This approach was evaluated on a set of degraded phantom data.
A flexible feature matching for automatic face and facial feature points detection

An automatic face and facial feature points (FFPs) detection system is proposed. A face is represented as a graph where the nodes are placed at facial feature points (FFPs) labeled by their Gabor features and the edges describe their spatial relations. An innovative flexible feature matching is proposed to perform features correspondence between models and the input image. This matching model works like a random diffusion process in the image space by employing the locally competitive and globally corporative mechanism. The system works nicely on the face images under complicated background, pose variations and distorted by facial accessories. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by its implementation on a face identification system.
Interactive Whiteboards in Brazilian's Primary School: New Barriers

This article focuses on presenting the results from the research Barreiras para implementacao da Lousa Digital Interativa: um estudo de caso, thus contributing to the systematization of knowledge about the implementation of this didactic-pedagogic resource. Starting from the set of barriers listed in the BECTA report of the 2004, we have elaborated a panorama composed of the barriers, their main characteristics and whether they occur in the context of the Brazilian school being studied. The field study consisted of an analysis of available hardware and software, interviews with the principal and teachers, as well as direct observation in the classrooms. As a result, we will present an analysis of the barriers in the aforementioned report which were found in the Brazilian context. Furthermore, two new barriers emerge in Brazilian public schools.
Risk of second primary colorectal cancer among colorectal cancer cases: A population-based analysis

Background: Patients with history of colorectal cancer (CRC) are at increased risk for developing a second primary colorectal cancer (SPCRC) as compared to the general population. However, the degree of risk is uncertain. Here, we attempt to quantify the risk, using data from the large population-based California Cancer Registry (CCR). Materials and Methods: We analyzed the CCR data for cases with surgically-treated colon and rectal cancer diagnosed during the period 1990-2005 and followed through up to January 2008. We excluded those patients diagnosed with metastatic disease and those in whom SPCRC was diagnosed within 6 months of the diagnosis of the primary CRC. Standardized incidence ratios (SIR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to evaluate risk as compared to the underlying population after taking into account age, sex, ethnicity, and time at risk. Results: The study cohort consisted of 69809 cases with colon cancer and 34448 with rectal cancer. Among these patients there were 1443 cases of SPCRCs. The SIR for developing SPCRC was higher in colon cancer survivors (SIR=1.4; 95% CI: 1.3 to 1.5) as compared to the underlying population. The incidence of SPCRC was also higher in females (SIR=1.5; 95% CI: 1.3 to 1.6) and Hispanics (SIR=2.0; 95% CI: 1.7 to 2.4) with primary colon cancer. The SIR for developing an SPCRC was higher only among those whose initial tumor was located in the descending colon (SIR=1.6; 95% CI: 1.3 to 2.0) and proximal colon (SIR=1.4; 95% CI: 1.3 to 1.6). Conclusions: Our results confirm that CRC patients, especially females and Hispanics, are at a higher risk of developing SPCRC than the general population. Differential SPCRC risk by colorectal tumor subsite is dependent on gender and ethnicity, underscoring the heterogeneous nature of CRC.
Predicting Postsurgery Nasal Physiology with Computational Modeling

Introduction High failure rates for surgical treatment of nasal airway obstruction (NAO) indicate that better diagnostic tools are needed to improve surgical planning. This study evaluates whether computer models based on a surgeon’s edits of presurgery scans can accurately predict results from computer models based on postoperative scans of the same patient using computational fluid dynamics. Study Design Prospective study. Setting Academic medical center. Methods Three-dimensional nasal models were reconstructed from computed tomographic scans of 10 patients with NAO presurgery and 5 to 8 months postsurgery. To create transcribed-surgery models, the surgeon digitally modified the preoperative reconstruction in each patient to represent physical changes expected from surgery and healing. Steady-state, laminar, inspiratory airflow was simulated in each model under physiologic, pressure-driven conditions. Results Transcribed-surgery and postsurgery model variables were statistically different from presurgery variables at α = 0.05. Unilateral nasal resistance and airflow were not statistically different between transcribed-surgery and postsurgery models, but bilateral resistance was significantly different. Cross-sectional average pressures in transcribed surgery trended with postsurgery. Transcribed-surgery prediction errors of postsurgery bilateral resistance were within 10% to 20% and 20% to 30% in 5 and 4 subjects, respectively. Prediction errors for unilateral resistance were <10%, 10% to 20%, and 20% to 30% in 1, 2, and 4 subjects, respectively. Conclusions Computational models with modifications mimicking actual surgery and healing have the potential to predict postoperative outcomes. However, software to effectively translate virtual surgery steps into computational models is lacking. The ability to account for healing factors and the current limited virtual surgery tools are challenges that need to be overcome for greater accuracy.
Asynchronous regulation of service speed in inventory-production systems with time-varying positive demand

This paper deals with an inventory-production system in which raw parts are transformed into processed parts, in order to satisfy a time-varying positive demand over a given time horizon. The production resource is capacitated whereas the inventory is unbounded; the external demand is known and is expressed as a piecewise constant function changing at asynchronous time instants. The objective is to find the optimal service speed pattern, assumed to be a piecewise constant function, which minimizes setup, production, and holding costs; hence, the decisions concern both the values of the service speed and the (asynchronous) time instants at which it changes. The optimization problem defined for this class of systems has a parametric structure and includes both nonlinear and combinatorial aspects. In the paper, some structural properties of any optimal solution are firstly proven, and then a solution procedure that allows finding an optimal solution in polynomial times is provided.
Plasma membrane Ca2+‐ATPase 1 is required for maintaining atrial Ca2+ homeostasis and electrophysiological stability in the mouse

The role of plasma membrane Ca2+‐ATPase 1 (PMCA1) in Ca2+ homeostasis and electrical stability in atrial tissue has been investigated at both organ and cellular levels in mice with cardiomyocyte‐specific deletion of PMCA1 (PMCA1cko) The PMCA1cko hearts became more susceptible to atrial arrhythmic stress conditions than PMCA1loxP/loxP hearts. PMCA1 deficiency alters cellular Ca2+ homeostasis under both baseline and stress conditions. PMCA1 is required for maintaining cellular Ca2+ homeostasis and electrical stability in murine atria under stress conditions.
Microwave dephosphorisation of high phosphorus iron ores of the Aswan region, Egypt : developing a novel process for high phosphorus iron ore utilization

There is a rapidly increasing demand for iron resources with the fast-paced development of the iron and steel industry. For this reason, the iron and steel industry is facing the risk of a raw material shortage. Deposits of high-phosphorus iron ores are widely spread worldwide, but the use of these deposits in industry is limited owing to the high phosphorus content, which affects the cost of the iron making process and the quality of the produced steel. For the utilization of high phosphorus oolitic iron ore, many hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical processes have been proposed. However, these methods have disadvantages, such as causing environmental pollution, not being cost-effective, being overly time consuming and having low iron recovery. The aims of this present work are to study the possibility of the usage of microwave treatment to remove phosphorus from high phosphorus iron ore on a laboratory scale. This objective can be obtained through a combination of microwave pretreatment and physical separation methods. The findings into the microwave treatment of high phosphorus iron ore are quite promising. The results have indicated that microwave heating increase liberation, improves magnetic properties and reduces the processing time of iron ore. The results of ultrasound treatment showed that a significant increase in iron grade and a reduction in phosphorus content of the product can be obtained. The results indicate that microwave pretreatment should be considered as a factor significantly affecting the result of ultrasonic treatment. Depending on the sample texture and degree of phosphorus liberation, more than 59 % phosphorus removal can be obtained.
Development of a verbal inhibitory control task for Cantonese speakers

Previous research has indicated normal English speaking controls were subject to proactive interference (PI) with manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness of distance between probes and list-items (Hamilton & Martin, 2007). We aimed at replicating results to Cantonese participants using negative probe test and to investigate if variation in writing and phonological system would inflict differential inhibitory processing. Relative to the English precedent, healthy participants showed concurrent ability to inhibit irrelevant information when probes are related to previous list. PI was significant on same list trials with semantically-related conditions, but not when they are phonologically-related. Such differential results provided important implications for language specificity where phonological processing units are shorter in Cantonese with mix of consonant-vowel-tone combinations than at individual phonemic level in English (Wong & Chen, 2009). Word frequency, regularity and use of visual strategies may also enhance recognition latency based on familiarity and level of activation during lexical processing.
StarBED and SpringOS: large-scale general purpose network testbed and supporting software

New technologies for the Internet should be evaluated on environments dedicated to experiments, in order to avoid influences to critical services on the Internet. Generally software simulation and small testbed using real nodes are used to satisfy these requirements. There are several stages in developing new technologies, however, and these technologies may not satisfy requirements for all stages.We pointed the gap between the Internet and environment for experiment, especially in aspects of scale, complexity and reality. We proposed and implemented StarBED which is a testbed based on lots of actual nodes, in order to build large-scale, complex and realistic environments for experiments. StarBED consists of 512 PCs and switches which connect these PCs. The PCs on StarBED are designed to run 10 virtual PCs on a physical PC. It enables to build a topology for experiments using up to 5120 nodes. It is difficult to manage and control such a lot of nodes. We also designed and implemented SpringOS, which is a supporting software for making experiments. SpringOS makes the topology and drives the scenario for experiment according to the user's configuration automatically.Many experiments were performed on StarBED, and this shows StarBED's effectiveness.
Area-efficient area pad design for high pin-count chips

This paper presents an area pad layout method to efficiently reduce the space required for interconnection pads and pad drivers. Unlike peripheral pads, area pads use only the top metal layer and therefore allow active circuitry to be laid out underneath. With identical functional elements grouped together, a group of pad drivers share the same well and can be placed tightly together. The use of silicided diffusion reduces the well contact to diffusion contact spacing requirement. By taking advantage of this spacing requirement and using serpentine gate layout, a driver's size can be effectively reduced without reducing the driving capacity. An embedded multicomputer router interface chip has been implemented using these techniques and has achieved 554 pads in a 9 mm/spl times/6 mm chip with a 0.8 /spl mu/m single-poly 3-metal N-well CMOS process.
Endovascular Treatment of a Patient with Arteriovenous Malformation in the Parotid Region

This report describes a rare case of a patient with arteriovenous malformation in the parotid region that received endovascular treatment. A 44-year-old female who presented with cardiac murmur in the left neck on close examination was referred to our hospital. Physical findings included left jugular vein distention, swelling of the left neck, and vascular murmur on auscultation. Cervical magnetic resonance imaging revealed flow voids in dilated vessels in the left parotid region. Angiography showed a high flow shunt between the dilated external carotid artery and the external jugular vein. The patient was diagnosed as having AVM in the parotid region due to AVM localization, and endovascular treatment was performed for the AVM. The postoperative course was uneventful and no recurrence occurred for five years postoperatively. AVMin the parotid region may develop in association with trauma or it may have a genetic predisposition. There are presently many reports on direct shunts. However, the AVM is generally a single channel shunt and some studies have reported that endovascular treatment is effective for the AVM. In the present patient, endovascular treatment was suitable because the AVM consisted of a single channel and the shunt site could be easily identified.
Signals in the Silence: Models of Implicit Feedback in a Recommendation System for Crowdsourcing

We exploit the absence of signals as informative observations in the context of providing task recommendations in crowdsourcing. Workers on crowdsourcing platforms do not provide explicit ratings about tasks. We present methods that enable a system to leverage implicit signals about task preferences. These signals include types of tasks that have been available and have been displayed, and the number of tasks workers select and complete. In contrast to previous work, we present a general model that can represent both positive and negative implicit signals. We introduce algorithms that can learn these models without exceeding the computational complexity of existing approaches. Finally, using data from a high-throughput crowdsourcing platform, we show that reasoning about both positive and negative implicit feedback can improve the quality of task recommendations.
Grant-Free Radio Access for Short-Packet Communications over 5G Networks

Radio access management plays a vital role in delay and energy consumption of connected devices. The radio access in existing cellular networks is unable to efficiently support massive connectivity, due to its signaling overhead. In this paper, we investigate an asynchronous grant-free narrowband data transmission protocol that aims to provide low energy consumption and delay, by relaxing the synchronization/reservation requirement at the cost of sending several packet copies at the transmitter side and more complex signal processing at the receiver side. Specifically, the timing and frequency offsets, as well as sending of multiple replicas of the same packet, are exploited as form of diversities at the receiver-side to trigger successive interference cancellation. The proposed scheme is investigated by deriving closed-form expressions for key performance indicators, including reliability and battery-lifetime. The performance evaluation indicates that the scheme can be tuned to realize long battery lifetime radio access for low-complexity devices. The obtained results indicate existence of traffic load regions, where synchronous access outperforms asynchronous access and vice versa.
DETERMINING THE MAGNITUDE OF TREATMENT EFFECTS IN STRENGTH TRAINING RESEARCH THROUGH THE USE OF THE EFFECT SIZE

In order to improve the applicability of research to exercise professionals, it is suggested that researchers analyze and report data in intervention studies that can be interpreted in relation to other studies. The effect size and proposed scale for determining the magnitude of the treatment effect can assist strength and conditioning professionals in interpreting and applying the findings of the strength training studies.
Detecting Canopy Water Status Using Shortwave Infrared Reflectance Data From Polar Orbiting and Geostationary Platforms

Various canopy water status estimates have been developed from recent advances in Earth Observation (EO) technology. A promising methodology is based on the sensitivity of shortwave infrared (SWIR) reflectance to variations in leaf water content. This study explores the potential of SWIR-based canopy water status detection from geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) data as compared to polar orbiting environmental satellite (POES)-based moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. The EO-based SWIR water stress index (SIWSI) is evaluated against in situ measured canopy water content indicators at a semi-arid grassland savanna site in Senegal 2008. Daily SIWSI from both MODIS and SEVIRI data show an overall inverse relation to Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) throughout the growing season. SIWSI observations from SEVIRI are furthermore sensitive to short-term variations of in situ measured plant water content indicators when aboveground biomass increases from 500 to 900 gm-2 (LAI ≈ 1-2). MODIS SIWSI observations in contrast do not covary with in situ measured moisture indicators. Spatio-temporal trend analyses performed on SEVIRI SIWSI during a dry period within the growing season support these findings. These results suggest that the combined advantage of an improved temporal resolution and a fixed viewing angle potentially makes the SEVIRI sensor an interesting complementary data source to POES data for SWIR-based canopy water status and stress monitoring in a semi-arid environment.
Cognitive models of geographical space

This paper reviews research in geographical cognition that provides part of the theoretical foundation of geographical information science. Freestanding research streams in cognitive science, behavioural geography, and cartography converged in the last decade or so with work on theoretical foundations for geographical information systems to produce a coherent research community that advances geographical information science, geographical information systems, and the contributing fields and disciplines. Then, we review three high-priority research areas that are the topics for research initiatives within the NCGIA's Project Varenius. Other topics consider but ranked less important at this time are also reviewed.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) detection of synovitis and bone lesions of the wrists and finger joints in early-stage rheumatoid arthritis: comparison of the accuracy of plain MRI-based findings and gadolinium-diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid-enhanced MRI-based findings

ObjectiveTo explore whether synovitis and bone lesions in the wrists and finger joints visualized by plain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based findings correspond exactly or not to those judged by gadolinium-diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (Gd-DTPA)-enhanced MRI-based findings.MethodsMagnetic resonance imaging of the wrists and finger joints of both hands were examined in 51 early-stage rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients whose median disease duration from the onset of articular manifestations to entry was 5 months, by both plain (T1 and short-time inversion recovery images) and Gd-DTPA-enhanced MRI (post-contrast fat-suppressed T1-weighted images) simultaneously. We focused on 15 sites per hand, to examine the presence of synovitis and bone lesions (bone edema and bone erosion). Gd-DTPA-enhanced MRI-based findings were considered “true” lesions, and we evaluated the accuracy of plain MRI-based findings in comparison to Gd-DTPA-enhanced MRI-based findings.ResultsSynovitis, judged by plain MRI-based findings, appeared as false-positive at pretty frequency; thus, the specificity, positive predictive value and accuracy of the findings were low. The rate of enhancement (E-rate) in false-positive synovitis sites was significantly low compared with true-positive synovitis sites where Gd-DTPA enhancement appears. In contrast to synovitis, the false-positivity of bone lesions, judged by plain MRI-based findings, was very low compared with Gd-DTPA-enhanced MRI-based findings.ConclusionSynovitis judged by plain MRI-based findings is sometimes considered false-positive especially in sites where synovitis is mild. However, plain MRI is effective in identifying bone lesions in the wrist and finger joints in early-stage RA.