Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Survival following lower-limb amputation in a veteran population.

GOAL We sought to describe the common demographic and comorbid conditions that affect survival following nontraumatic amputation. METHODS Veterans Administration hospital discharge records for 1992 were linked with death records. The most proximal level during the first hospitalization in 1992 was used for analysis. Demographic information (age, race) and comorbid diagnosis (cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and renal disease) were used for Kaplan-Meier curves to describe survival following amputation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Death. RESULTS Mortality risk increased with advanced age, more proximal amputation level, and renal and cardiovascular disease, and decreased for African Americans. No increased risk for persons with diabetes was noted in the first year following amputation but the risk increased thereafter. A higher risk of mortality in the first year was noted for renal disease, cardiovascular disease, and proximal amputation level. CONCLUSION Survival following lower-limb amputation is impaired by advancing age, cardiovascular and renal disease, and proximal amputation level. Also, a small survival advantage is seen for African Americans and those with diabetes.
Experimental determination of CT point spread function anisotropy and shift-variance

The authors propose an experimental method to quantitatively assess the shift-variance and anisotropy of commercial CT scanners. A custom phantom consisting of 89 wires arranged in concentric circles was built for this purpose. A separable Gaussian model, expressed in a polar coordinate system, is proposed along with the corresponding estimation method. The estimated model parameters provide the quantitative information sought. The authors conclude that the scanner presents a rotating blur, i.e., that the PSF is independent of angular position when expressed in a polar coordinate system, and that the PSF shape broadens more quickly in the tangential direction than along the radial axis. Both of these observations agree with theoretical studies.
Integrating identity-based cryptography in IMS service authentication

Nowadays, the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a promising research field. Many ongoing works related to the security and the performances of its employment are presented to the research community. Although, the security and data privacy aspects are very important in the IMS global objectives, they observe little attention so far. Secure access to multimedia services is based on SIP and HTTP digest on top of IMS architecture. The standard deploys AKA-MD5 for the terminal authentication. The third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) provided Generic Bootstrapping Architecture (GBA) to authenticate the subscriber before accessing multimedia services over HTTP. In this paper, we propose a new IMS Service Authentication scheme using Identity Based cryptography (IBC). This new scheme will lead to better performances when there are simultaneous authentication requests using Identity-based Batch Verification. We analyzed the security of our new protocol and we presented a performance evaluation of its cryptographic operations
Sentic API: A Common and Common-Sense Knowledge API for Cognition-Driven Sentiment Analysis

The bag-of-concepts model can represent semantics associated with natural language text much better than bags-of-words. In the bagof-words model, in fact, a concept such as cloud_computing would be split into two separate words, disrupting the semantics of the input sentence. Working at concept-level is important for tasks such as opinion mining, especially in the case of microblogging analysis. In this work, we present Sentic API, a common-sense based application programming interface for concept-level sentiment analysis, which provides semantics and sentics (that is, denotative and connotative information) associated with 15,000 natural language concepts.
Fluoride mobilizes intracellular calcium and promotes Ca2+ influx in rat proximal tubules.

In the renal proximal tubule, external Ca2+ ([Ca2+]o) is required for parathyroid hormone to elevate cytosolic Ca2+ ([Ca2+]i). However, other hormones increase [Ca2+]i in the absence of [Ca2+]o. These differences may arise from a diversity of signal transduction pathways acting on external and internal Ca2+ pools. However, Ca2+ influx may be necessary to expedite and maintain the rise of [Ca2+]i for a period after the initial surge. In this study, F- was used to probe the roles of intracellular Ca2+ mobilization, Ca2+ influx, and phosphoinositide (PI) hydrolysis on the surge of [Ca2+]i in rat proximal tubules. In the presence of external Ca2+; 1-20 mM F- evoked incremental rises of [Ca2+]i in tubules loaded with aequorin. Whereas 10 mM F- increased [Ca2+]i in the absence of [Ca2+]o, the time constant for the [Ca2+]i surge was increased. These findings are consistent with a role of Ca2+ influx on the effect of F- on [Ca2+]i. Indeed, 10 mM F- also enhanced the uptake of 45Ca2+, and promoted Ca2+ influx in aequorin- and fura-2-loaded, Ca(2+)-deprived tubules. In tubules, F- also activated PI hydrolysis with a time course that paralleled Ca2+ mobilization. The effect of F- on [Ca2+]i was not altered when the 39-kDa pertussis toxin substrate was inactivated with the toxin. This G protein was most likely Gi, because prostaglandin E2, an activator of Gi in tubules, dissociated the pertussis toxin-sensitive protein. The results support the notion that activation of a signal-transduction complex, the F- substrate, causes Ca2+ influx, mobilizes internal Ca2+, and activates PI hydrolysis in rat proximal tubules. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Pulsed laser deposition of hafnium oxide on quartz substrate

In this paper, we report the experimental investigation of optical properties of HfO2 (hafnium oxide) thin films grown on quartz substrates by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method [1]. Cold pressed powders of hafnium oxide (HfO2 98% - Aldrich Chem. Co.) were used as the target for deposition process. The transparent quartz substrate was heated up to temperature in the range between 200 and 600 °C. Optical properties of the films were investigated by transmittance in the ultra-violet, visible and near infrared range and photoluminescence spectroscopy. We measure the photo-luminescence spectra and dynamics of luminescence process [2]. The PL spectra contained one strong maximum at 385 nm and the peak intensity decreases rapidly with increasing temperature. Optical properties are closely related to the structure of the hafnium oxide thin films.
A Functional Neuroimaging Analysis of the Trail Making Test-B: Implications for Clinical Application

Recent progress has been made using fMRI as a clinical assessment tool, often employing analogues of traditional “paper and pencil” tests. The Trail Making Test (TMT), popular for years as a neuropsychological exam, has been largely ignored in the realm of neuroimaging, most likely because its physical format and administration does not lend itself to straightforward adaptation as an fMRI paradigm. Likewise, there is relatively more ambiguity about the neural systems associated with this test than many other tests of comparable clinical use. In this study, we describe an fMRI version of Trail Making Test-B (TMTB) that maintains the core functionality of the TMT while optimizing its use for both research and clinical settings. Subjects (N = 32) were administered the Functional Trail Making Test-B (f-TMTB). Brain region activations elicited by the f-TMTB were consistent with expectations given by prior TMT neurophysiological studies, including significant activations in the ventral and dorsal visual pathways and the medial pre-supplementary motor area. The f-TMTB was further evaluated for concurrent validity with the traditional TMTB using an additional sample of control subjects (N = 100). Together, these results support the f-TMTB as a viable neuroimaging adaptation of the TMT that is optimized to evoke maximally robust fMRI activation with minimal time and equipment requirements.
Fractional permissions without the fractions

Fractional permissions are a popular approach to reasoning about programs that use shared-memory concurrency. Abstractly, they provide a way of managing that either multiple readers or one writer thread can access a resource concurrently. Concretely, specification using fractional permissions typically requires the user to pick concrete mathematical values for partial permissions, making specifications overly verbose, tedious to write, and harder to adapt and re-use. This paper contributes a flexible and expressive specification methodology for supporting fractional permissions while allowing the user to work at the abstract level of read and write permissions. The methodology is flexible and modular, and has been implemented in the verification tool Chalice.
Author Verification Using Syntactic N-grams: Notebook for PAN at CLEF 2015

This paper describes our approach to tackle the Author Verification task at PAN 2015. Our method builds a representation of an author’s style by using the information contained in dependency trees. This information is represented as syntactic n-grams and used to conform a vector space. Using unsupervised machine learning approach, each instance is associated to the correponding author using the Jaccard distance. In this paper, we describe the features that were used and the employed unsupervised machine learning algorithm.
Low Complexity Iterative Receiver Design for Sparse Code Multiple Access

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is one of the most promising methods among all the non-orthogonal multiple access techniques in the future 5G communication. Compared with some other non-orthogonal multiple access techniques, such as low density signature, SCMA can achieve better performance due to the shaping gain of the SCMA code words. However, despite the sparsity of the code words, the decoding complexity of the current message passing algorithm utilized by SCMA is still prohibitively high. In this paper, by exploring the lattice structure of SCMA code words, we propose a low-complexity decoding algorithm based on list sphere decoding (LSD). The LSD avoids the exhaustive search for all possible hypotheses and only considers signal within a hypersphere. As LSD can be viewed a depth-first tree search algorithm, we further propose several methods to prune the redundancy-visited nodes in order to reduce the size of the search tree. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can reduce the decoding complexity substantially while the performance loss compared with the existing algorithm is negligible.
Amplify-and-Forward MIMO Y Channel: Power Allocation Based Signal Space Alignment

In this paper, we propose a power allocation based signal space alignment for analog network coding (SSA-ANC) scheme for the MIMO Y channel with amplify-and-forward (AF) strategy. The specific SSA- ANC scheme to achieve the maximum degrees is discussed first, with an emphasize on the design of the precoding vectors. Then, we propose a suboptimal algorithm called OMAC to optimize the power allocation at three users aiming at maximizing the sum rate of the MIMO Y system with zero-forcing (ZF) receiver. It is shown that the proposed power allocation algorithm is a convex optimization problem and therefore a global optimal solution can be obtained. Numerical results show that the OMAC algorithm can achieve improvement in sum rate performance compared to the non-optimization case.
Counteracting the enzymatic activity of dipeptidylpeptidase 4 for potential therapeutic advantage, with an emphasis on cord blood transplantation

Dipeptidylpeptidase (DPP) 4, also known as CD26, is an enzyme present on the surface of a number of different cell types. It is also found within cells and as a soluble protein in body fluids. It can specifically truncate proteins at the penultimate N-terminus residue for some amino acids, such as alanine, proline, serine, and perhaps others. DPP4 has been implicated in regulating the in vitro and in vivo functional activities of a number of hematopoietically active molecules, and this information, along with that on inhibition of DPP4, has been studied in efforts to enhance hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), hematopoiesis after stress in mouse models, and in the clinical setting of single-unit cord blood (CB) HCT. This article reviews the current status of this compound's effects on regulatory proteins, the field of CB HCT, a potential role for modulating DPP4 activity in enhancing single-unit CB HCT in adults, and future aspects in context of other cellular therapies and the area of regenerative medicine.
Concept Building with Non-Hierarchical Relations Extracted from Text - Comparing a Purely Syntactical Approach to a Semantic one

In this paper, we introduce Semantic Lattice (SemLat), a method that allows the construction of concept lattices from lexicalsemantic information extracted from PropBank-style labelled texts. We apply SemLat to Tourism and Finances domain texts from Wikicorpus 1.0 through case studies that are examined in detail. We compare conceptual structures generated by SemLat, that makes use of semantic relations, to structures generated from purely syntactic relations. We intrinsically evaluate the structures using a semantic-similarity based structural measure. We also analyse, in a qualitative approach, the contribution of semantic roles in concept formation. We claim that conceptual structures generated by SemLat produce richer concepts as they provide intentional descriptions that are more informative, from a semantic point of view.
Direction of Arrival Estimation for Nonuniform Planar Array Based on Piecewise Interpolation Method

The problem of direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation by using spectral search for a non-uniform planar array is addressed. New search methods for DOA estimation based on piecewise interpolation are proposed. The relationships between these methods and Fourier-Domain (FD) root-MUSIC are discussed. The proposed methods are based on dividing the multiple signal classiflcation (MUSIC) null-spectrum function into a number of equal subintervals. These subintervals are interpolated by using low-degree polynomials. Piecewise interpolation methods based on elementary functions are used to reduce the required computations of MUSIC null-spectrum function. This property reduces the computational complexity compared with line-search methods for DOA estimation. The Cramer Rao Lower Bound (CRB) is used as a benchmark to check the accuracy and validity of the proposed methods.
Estimation of the surface free energy of polymers

A method for measuring the surface energy of solids and for resolving the surface energy into contributions from dispersion and dipole-hydrogen bonding forces has been developed. It is based on the measurement of contact angles with water and methylene iodide. Good agreement has been obtained with the more laborious γc method. Evidence for a finite value of liquid-solid interfacial tension at zero contact angle is presented. The method is especially applicable to the surface characterization of polymers.
An end-to-end recognizer for in-air handwritten Chinese characters based on a new recurrent neural networks

In-air handwriting is becoming a new human-computer interaction way. It is a challenging task to accurately recognizing in-air handwritten Chinese characters. In this paper, we present an end-to-end recognizer for in-air handwritten Chinese characters by using recurrent neural networks (RNN). Compared with the existing methods, the proposed RNN based methods does not need to explicitly extract features and directly take a sequence of dot locations as input. We have made two aspects of modifications on traditional RNN for improving the recognition accuracy. Concretely, the sum-pooling is performed on the states of each hidden layers, and a faster convergence in training can be obtained. Additionally, an assistant objective function is introduced into the conventional loss function, which brings a slight increase of performance. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, the experiments are carried out on the IAHCC-UCAS2016 datasets to compare ours with other state-of-art methods. The experimental results show that the proposed RNN model has a fairly high recognition accuracy for in-air handwritten Chinese characters.
The Neuromuscular Qualities of Higher- and Lower-Level Mixed-Martial-Arts Competitors.

PURPOSE To determine whether the maximal strength, impulse, and power characteristics of competitive mixed-martial-arts (MMA) athletes differ according to competition level. METHODS Twenty-nine male semiprofessional and amateur MMA competitors were stratified into either higher-level (HL) or lower-level (LL) performers on the basis of competition grade and success. The 1-repetition-maximum (1RM) squat was used to assess lower-body dynamic strength, and a spectrum of impulse, power, force, and velocity variables were evaluated during an incremental-load jump squat. In addition, participants performed an isometric midthigh pull (IMTP) and 1RM bench press to determine whole-body isometric force and upper-body dynamic strength capabilities, respectively. All force and power variables were expressed relative to body mass (BM). RESULTS The HL competitors produced significantly superior values across a multitude of measures. These included 1RM squat strength (1.84 ± 0.23 vs 1.56 ± 0.24 kg BM; P = .003), in addition to performance in the incremental-load jump squat that revealed greater peak power (P = .005-.002), force (P = .002-.004), and velocity (P = .002-.03) at each load. Higher measures of impulse (P = .01-.04) were noted in a number of conditions. Average power (P = .002-.02) and velocity (P = .01-.04) at all loads in addition to a series of rate-dependent measures were also superior in the HL group (P = .005-.02). The HL competitors' 1RM bench-press values approached significantly greater levels (P = .056) than the LL group's, but IMTP performance did not differ between groups. CONCLUSIONS Maximal lower-body neuromuscular capabilities are key attributes distinguishing HL from LL MMA competitors. This information can be used to inform evidenced-based training and performance-monitoring practices.
Mechanics of short fibre thermoplastic based composites containing UHMWPE interlayers: a preliminary investigation

FEM has been applied to analyse the influence of interlayers on the stress distribution around cylindrical fibres in an elastic matrix. This being part of a research programme aiming to enhance the energy absorption characteristics of composites by means of interlayers from materials exhibiting high ductility under plane strain conditions, e. g. UHMWPE. The theoretical model is based on the Galerkin weighted residual finite element in conjunction with a "penalty approach". The advantage of this method for polymer composites is in its ability to cope very effectively with non-linear systems. Glass microscope slides were initially used to develop a technique for bonding the ductile layers on to glass and polyamides respectively, as well as to provide simple verifications of the applicability of the aforementioned model. Further experiments were carried out on glass fibres coated with UHMWPE from a xylene solution, in order to evaluate the applicability of the above technique and of the theoretical model in actual composite systems. Although great difficulties were encountered in achieving a well bonded uniform coating on the glass fibres the results have confirmed the viability of the approach: The impact strength of compression moulded glass reinforced Nylon plaques, measured with an instrumented falling weight apparatus was increased up to 400% with a corresponding loss in flexural modulus of only 10-15%. The ductile nature of the interfacial failure between fibres and matrix was also confirmed by SEM examination of fractured specimens. Thermal analysis results, especially from DMA indicate that an UHMWPE interlayer substantially increases the tan 8 of the short fibre composite over a wide temperature range, albeit with some reduction in modulus. There was good agreement between the flexural modulus results obtained from DMA tests and those obtained using 3 point bending at room temperature.
DecreaseKeys are expensive for external memory priority queues

One of the biggest open problems in external memory data structures is the priority queue problem with DecreaseKey operations. If only Insert and ExtractMin operations need to be supported, one can design a comparison-based priority queue performing O((N/B)lgM/B N) I/Os over a sequence of N operations, where B is the disk block size in number of words and M is the main memory size in number of words. This matches the lower bound for comparison-based sorting and is hence optimal for comparison-based priority queues. However, if we also need to support DecreaseKeys, the performance of the best known priority queue is only O((N/B) lg2 N) I/Os. The big open question is whether a degradation in performance really is necessary. We answer this question affirmatively by proving a lower bound of Ω((N/B) lglgN B) I/Os for processing a sequence of N intermixed Insert, ExtraxtMin and DecreaseKey operations. Our lower bound is proved in the cell probe model and thus holds also for non-comparison-based priority queues.
Focused sonographic examination of the heart, lungs and deep veins in an unselected population of acute admitted patients with respiratory symptoms: a protocol for a prospective, blinded, randomised controlled trial

Introduction Patients admitted to hospital with acute respiratory symptoms remain a diagnostic challenge for the emergency physician. The use of focused sonography may improve the initial diagnostics, as most of the diseases, commonly seen and misdiagnosed in patients with acute respiratory symptoms, can be diagnosed with sonography. The protocol describes a prospective, blinded, randomised controlled trial that aims to assess the diagnostic impact of a pragmatic implementation of focused sonography of the heart, lungs and deep veins as a diagnostic modality in acute admitted patients with respiratory symptoms. Methods and analysis The primary outcome of the study is the number of patients with a correct presumptive diagnosis within 4 h of admission to the emergency department. The patient is randomised to either an intervention or a control group. In the intervention group, the usual initial diagnostic work up is supplemented by focused sonographic examination of the heart, lungs and deep veins of the legs. In the control group, usual diagnostic work up is performed. The χ2 test, alternatively the Fischer exact test will be used, to establish whether there is a difference in the distribution of the total number of patients with a correct/incorrect ‘4 h’ presumptive diagnosis in the control group and in the intervention group. Ethics and dissemination This clinical trial is performed according to the Declaration of Helsinki and has been approved by the Regional Scientific Ethical Committee for Southern Denmark and the Danish Data Protection Agency. The results of the trial will be published according to the CONSORT statement with the extension for pragmatic trials. The results of the trial will be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal regardless of the outcome. Trial registration number This study is registered at http://clinicaltrials.gov, registration number NCT01486394.