Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Testing the predictability of the Cyprus Stock Exchange: the case of an emerging market

A systematic investigation of the effect of different neural network architecture alternatives for predicting the future course of stock prices in the Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) market is conducted. This market exhibited an abrupt increase in the general index price during the last year, thus forming a very interesting case for research purposes. The influence of various economic and political factors, from both the local and the international scene, have also been examined. The main conclusion drawn is that the CSE market is governed by unique conditions which when properly modeled can yield successful predictions.
Sarcomas and sarcomatoid neoplasms of the major salivary gland regions: A clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical study of 67 cases and review of the literature

Sixty‐seven cases of sarcomas and sarcomatoid neoplasms of the major salivary gland regions were studied in order to determine the clinical and histomorphologic features and biologic behavior. Fifty‐seven of these proved to be sarcomas and the two most common types were malignant schwannoma (11) and fibrosarcoma (9). Nine sarcomas could not be subclassified morphologically. Ten cases, originally believed to be sarcomas, proved by means of immunohistochemistry to be either carcinomas (five cases) or melanomas (five cases). Fifty‐nine of the 67 cases occurred in the parotid gland regions, and the remaining eight occurred in the submandibular regions. Twenty of the 67 cases were thought to arise from within the gland, nine from paraglandular tissues, and insufficient data was present to anatomically categorize the other 38 cases. The mean age of occurrence was 42 years for men and 38 years for women. A swelling was the presenting symptom in 64 cases, with a mean duration of 4.3 months. Pain, tenderness, or paralysis were noted in 17 cases, but the swelling was painless in seven cases. Follow‐up data of 42 sarcoma patients revealed that 17 experienced recurrences, 16 developed metastases, and 15 died of disease. These rates were lowest among patients with tumors arising from within the gland (Group I) and highest among those patients with tumors of paraglandular origin (Group III). Mean survival time for those dying of disease was 2.4 years, and a 5‐year survival time appeared to be a significant indicator of cure. The most successful therapy was either parotidectomy (superficial or total) or a combination of surgery and radiation. The morphologic and the immunohistochemical evidence suggest that the majority of the tumors represent true sarcomas that may arise from undifferentiated pluripotential cells, but that the remainder (15%) represent epithelial malignancies.
Architectural issues in adopting distributed shared memory for distributed object management systems

Distributed shared memory (DSM) provides transparent network interface based on the memory abstraction. Furthermore, DSM gives us the ease of programming and portability. Also the advantages offered by DSM include low network overhead, with no explicit operating system intervention to move data over network. With the advent of high-bandwidth networks and wide addressing, adopting DSM for distributed systems seems to be attractive. In this paper, we propose two alternative distributed system architectures which are attempts at adopting DSM for distributed object management systems. The two proposed architectures are distributed shared cache (DSC) architecture and distributed shared recoverable virtual memory (DSRVM) architecture. We address several major issues in the proposed architectures.
Rupture Process of the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake

The 26 December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake initiated slowly, with small slip and a slow rupture speed for the first 40 to 60 seconds. Then the rupture expanded at a speed of about 2.5 kilometers per second toward the north northwest, extending 1200 to 1300 kilometers along the Andaman trough. Peak displacements reached ∼15 meters along a 600-kilometer segment of the plate boundary offshore of northwestern Sumatra and the southern Nicobar islands. Slip was less in the northern 400 to 500 kilometers of the aftershock zone, and at least some slip in that region may have occurred on a time scale beyond the seismic band.
Stochastic Variance Reduced Gradient Methods by Sampling Extra Data with Replacement

We study the round complexity of minimizing the average of convex functions under a new setting of distributed optimization where each machine can receive two subsets of functions. The first subset is from a random partition and the second subset is randomly sampled with replacement. Under this setting, we define a broad class of distributed algorithms whose local computation can utilize both subsets and design a distributed stochastic variance reduced gradient method belonging to in this class. When the condition number of the problem is small, our method achieves the optimal parallel runtime, amount of communication and rounds of communication among all distributed first-order methods up to constant factors. When the condition number is relatively large, a lower bound is provided for the number of rounds of communication needed by any algorithm in this class. Then, we present an accelerated version of our method whose the rounds of communication matches the lower bound up to logarithmic terms, which establishes that this accelerated algorithm has the lowest round complexity among all algorithms in our class under this new setting.
Fully embedded LTCC spiral inductors incorporating air cavity for high Q-factor and SRF

In this paper, a new fully-embedded LTCC spiral inductor is proposed by incorporating an air cavity between the spiral and ground plane for high quality factor (Q-factor) and high self-resonant frequency (SRF). The disadvantage of fully embedded structure without an air cavity is the reduction of size efficiency in the RF system, since its structure needs a lot of layers to decrease parasitic capacitance between the spiral and ground plane for high Q-factor and SRF. The air cavity employed under the spiral reduces the shunt parasitic capacitance of the inductor, and results in high Q-factor and high SRF of the embedded inductors. The measured results of the optimized spiral inductor with the embedded air cavity show a maximum Q of 51 and SRF of 9.1 GHz, while those of the conventional spiral inductor describe a maximum Q of 43 and SRF of 8 GHz with effective inductance of 2.7 nH.
Blue-blindness in the normal fovea.

An area at the center of the human fovea, subtending a visual angle of only 7–8 min and hence hardly larger than the fixation area, is blue-blind in the sense of almost or entirely lacking blue-sensitive cones. This is a matter of foveal topography, not size of field, for in fields of this size elsewhere in the fovea or in the parafovea, blue-sensitive cones are well represented. The blue-cone system falls in sensitivity from the border of the photopic zone—the functionally all-cone area—to a minimum, usually to extinction, at its center. Other features of foveal topography oppose this trend: the density of cones rises and the macular pigmentation thins out toward the center of the fovea. Also the red- and green-cone systems display the opposite gradient; their sensitivities decline regularly from the center toward the borders of the fovea and beyond.Tritanopia, though the rarest form of congenital color-blindness, is thus a regular feature of the center of the normal fovea. The existence of two neutral points in this condition, in the yellow and violet, has its basis in the observation that the luminosity curves of the red- and green-sensitive cones, drawn so as to cross in the yellow, cross again or fuse in the violet region. It is suggested that the blue-blindness of the fixation area is a final step in the general withdrawal of image vision from the short wavelengths of the spectrum, for which the chromatic aberration of the eye is greatest. The blue-blindness of the fixation area, taken together with the red-green blindness of more-or-less concentric zones of the near periphery, and the total colorblindness of the far periphery, raises the possibility that various zones of the normal retina display all the major forms of colorblindness. Trichromic vision is normal only in the broad, central annulus of the retina, which alone is ordinarily tested. Some instances of defective color vision may be similarly localized. The problems of both normal and defective color vision involve not only the presence or absence of certain visual pigments and types of cone, but their spatial distributions on the retinal surface, and their neural connections.
Molecular cloning and analysis of genes for production of K5, K7, K12, and K92 capsular polysaccharides in Escherichia coli

With a DNA fragment from within the region encoding the transport functions for K1 production as a hybridization probe in Southern blot experiments, homologous DNA sequences were detected in the DNA from Escherichia coli strains producing K5, K7, K92, and K100 capsular polysaccharides. No homology with the laboratory strain LE392 was detected. The same DNA probe was used to prescreen cosmid libraries in LE392 by colony hybridization, as a rapid method to isolate clones encoding the genes for K5, K7, K12, and K92 antigen production. Clones carrying sequences homologous to the probe that also produced capsular material were identified by using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies raised against the K antigen in question and K antigen-specific phages. By restriction enzyme mapping of the appropriate cosmid clones it was possible to align the genes for the production of different K antigens in terms of common restriction endonuclease cleavage sites. A DNA fragment encoding the postulated transport functions for K7 antigen production could complement deletion mutations in the transport functions for K1 antigen production. Thus the transport to the cell surface of chemically distinct polysaccharides may be by a common process. Analysis in E. coli of the proteins produced by plasmids carrying the likely transport functions for K1, K5, and K7 antigen production revealed that each region coded for a similar polypeptide.
Bioimpedance spectroscopy as a measure of physical functioning in nursing home residents

Background and aims: Intracellular resistance (Ri), a raw measure of bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS), has been suggested for assessment of muscle health. The associations of repeated BIS measurements with functioning and nutritional status were investigated in nursing home residents suffering from poor health and disabilities. Methods: A total of 106 nursing home residents (age 83±8 yrs, 75% women) were recruited. Whole body and calf BIS measures (lean body mass, resistance at 50 kHz, and Ri), height and calf electrode distance (D) were used to calculate six muscle indices. Hand grip and knee extension strengths were measured and data on Activities of Daily Living (ADL), mobility score, and Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) collected. Repeated measurements were performed at 3 (BIS) and 6 months (BIS, muscle strength, ADL, mobility, and MNA). Results: All bioimpedance muscle indices were lower in women than men and associated with MNA. However, the calf skeletal muscle index (SMI=D2/Ri) associated with muscle strength measurements at baseline and consistently with mobility and ADL also at 6-month re-examination. When compared to the highest tertile of SMI percent change (cut point +0.7%), the patients in the lowest tertile (cut point - 11.6%) had a 5.3-fold risk (p=0.004) for mobility decline within the 6-month follow-up. This risk association also remained significant after controlling for age, gender, baseline mobility, and percent change in body weight. Conclusions: Calf intracellular resistance related to electrode distance is associated with the activities of daily living reflecting mobility in typical nursing home residents and a decrease in this index indicates a markedly increased risk for mobility decline.
Fundamental Analyses on Layered Media Reconstruction Using GPR and Full-Wave Inversion in Near-Field Conditions

Multifrequency and multioffset ground-penetrating radar data acquisition modes are used to maximize the information content and parameter retrieval capabilities. However, they also increase the computational cost dedicated to the inversion procedure. In this paper, the impact of the number of frequencies and the multistatic configurations on the information retrieval capabilities is investigated through the response surface topographies of the objective functions. We resort to a full-wave-inversion procedure and a recently developed electromagnetic model which takes advantage of a closed-form solution of Maxwell's equations to describe the antenna-medium system. We show with numerical and laboratory experiments the possibility of reducing the number of frequencies from several hundreds to one or several tens of components without affecting the information retrieval capabilities. We also show through several scenarios that the presence of a perfect electrical conductor increases the number of frequencies required to ensure an acceptable retrieval of the subsurface properties whereas the conductivity of the first layer and the relative permittivity of the second layer do not affect it. The results highlight that information content analyses are important in order to study and optimize data acquisition and inversion procedures, and thereby the computation time.
Completeness Theorems for Semantic Resolution in Consequence-Finding

The object of consequence-finding is to deduce l o g i c a l consequences from a set of axioms. The theory of J.R. S lag le ' s semantic reso lu t ion p r i n c i p l e , an inference ru l e fo r f i r s t o r d e r pred icate ca l cu lus , is extended to consequence-f inding. Given an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n I , i t is proved that any prime ( n o n t r i v i a l ) consequence, which is fa l se in I, can be der ived from a set of axioms by apply ing I (semant ic) r e s o l u t i o n .
A Levy Type Solution for Free Vibration Analysis of a Nano-Plate Considering the Small Scale Effect

Experimental results show that as length scales of a material are reduced, the influences of long-range interatomic and intermolecular cohesive forces on the mechanical properties become prominent and cannot be neglected. It is well known that surfaces and interfaces in nano structures behave differently from their bulk counterparts. For nanostructures with size less than 100nm, the surface to volume ratio is significant and the effective properties are altered by surface and nonlocal effects. Therefore, at nanolength scales, size effects often become prominent, the causes of which need to be explicitly addressed especially with an increasing interest in the general area of nanotechnology (Sharma et al., 2003). Due to the vast computational expenses of nano-structures analyses when using atomic lattice dynamics and molecular dynamic simulations, there is a great interest in applying continuum mechanics for analysis of nano-structures. Classical continuum elasticity, which is a scale free theory, cannot predict the size effects. Nonlocal continuum mechanics allows one to account for the small length scale effect that becomes significant when dealing with microstructures or nanostructures. It has been showed that it is possible to represent the integral constitutive relations of nano-structures in an equivalent differential form (Eringen, 1983). Eringen presented a nonlocal elasticity theory to account for the small scale effect by specifying the stress at a reference point is a functional of the strain field at every point in the body. Since then, many studies have been carried out nonlocal theory of elasticity for bending, buckling and vibration analyses of nano-structures. Small scale effect on static deformation of microand nano-rods or tubes is revealed through nonlocal Euler–Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories by Wang and Liew (2007). Li and Wang (2009) investigated a theoretical treatment of Timoshenko beams, in which the influences of shear deformation, rotary inertia, and scale coefficient are taken into account. Murmu and Pradhan (2009a) studied vibration response of nano cantilever considering nonuniformity in the cross sections using nonlocal elasticity theory. Although graphite sheet has many superior properties, such as low electrical and thermal conductivities normal to the sheet but high electrical and thermal conductivities in the plane of the sheet, relatively little research have been reported in the literature for mechanical analyses of graphene sheets.
Admixture in Hispanics: Distribution of Ancestral Population Contributions in the United States

AbstractThe effect of gene flow on Hispanic populations from different geographic regions of the United States was analyzed using six autosomal DNA markers (LDLR, GYPA, HBGG,D7S8, GC, and HLA-DQA). By region of sampling, the Hispanic populations showed different ancestry contributions, from a trihybrid structure with European, Native American, and African contributions (California, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, and Virginia) to a dihybrid structure with European and American contributions (Southwest population) or European and African contributions (Pennsylvania and Southeast population). These findings allowed us to define two regional groups, the West and the East. In the former, Native American contributions ranged from 35.58% to 57.87%; in the East region the values ranged from 0% to 21.27%. An African influence was similar in both regions, ranging from 0% to 17.11%, with a tendency of increasing in the East region. These data reflect the different origins of the Hispanic populations that led to the present ones. In the West, Hispanics are mostly of Mexican origin, and in the East, they are predominantly of Cuban and Puerto Rican origin.
Antibacterial Properties of Propolis (Bee Glue)

Propolis (bee glue) was found to have antibacterial activity against a range of commonly encountered cocci and Gram-positive rods, including the human tubercle bacillus, but only limited activity against Gram-negative bacilli. These findings confirm previous reports of antimicrobial properties of this material, possibly attributable to its high flavonoid content.
Treatment With a Growth Factor–Protein Mixture Inhibits Formation of Mineralized Nodules in Osteogenic Cell Cultures Grown on Titanium

Despite wide clinical application, the efficacy of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) for repairing bone defects and enhancing osseointegration of metal implants is still subject of debate. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a well-defined PRP-like mixture containing platelet-derived growth factor-BB, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, TGF-β2, albumin, fibronectin, and thrombospondin [growth factors (GFs) + proteins] on the development of the osteogenic phenotype on titanium (Ti) in vitro. Human alveolar bone-derived osteoblastic cells were subcultured on Ti discs and exposed during the first 7 days to osteogenic medium supplemented with GFs + proteins and to osteogenic medium alone thereafter up to 14 days. Control cultures were exposed to only osteogenic medium. Dose–response experiments were carried out using rat primary calvarial cells exposed to GFs + proteins and 1:10 or 1:100 dilutions of the mixture. Treated human-derived cell cultures exhibited a significantly higher number of cycling cells at days 1 and 4 and of total cells at days 4 and 7, significantly reduced alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity at days 4, 7, and 10, and no Alizarin red–stained areas (calcium deposits) at day 14, indicating an impairment in osteoblast differentiation. Although the 1:10 and 1:100 dilutions of the mixture restored the proliferative activity of rat-derived osteogenic cells to control levels and promoted a significant increase in ALP activity at day 10 compared with GFs + proteins, mineralized nodule formation was only observed with the 1:100 dilution (∼50% of the control). These results showed that a PRP-like protein mixture inhibits development of the osteogenic phenotype in both human and rat osteoblastic cell cultures grown on Ti.
Comparison of CHROMagar Salmonella Medium and Xylose-Lysine-Desoxycholate and Salmonella-Shigella Agars for Isolation of Salmonella Strains from Stool Samples

ABSTRACT The growth and appearance of 115 stock Salmonella isolates on a new formulation of CHROMagar Salmonella (CAS) medium were compared to those on xylose-lysine-desoxycholate agar (XLD), Salmonella-Shigella agar (SS), and Hektoen enteric agar (HEA) media. CAS medium was then compared prospectively to XLD and SS for the detection and presumptive identification of Salmonella strains in 500 consecutive clinical stool samples. All stock Salmonella isolates produced typical mauve colonies on CAS medium. Nine Salmonella strains were isolated from clinical specimens. The sensitivities for the detection of salmonellae after primary plating on CAS medium and the combination of XLD and SS after enrichment were 100%. The specificity for the detection of salmonellae after primary plating on CAS medium (83%) was significantly (P < 0.0001) higher than that after primary plating on the combination of SS and XLD media (55%) (a 28% difference in rates; 95% confidence interval, 23.0 to 34%). Twenty-nine non-Salmonella organisms produced mauve colonies on CAS medium, including 17 Candida spp. (59%) and 8 Pseudomonas spp. (28%). These were easily excluded as salmonellae by colony morphology, microscopic examination of a wet preparation, or oxidase testing. One biochemically inert Escherichia coli isolate required further identification to differentiate it from Salmonella spp. The use of plating on CAS medium demonstrated high levels of sensitivity and specificity and reduced the time to final identification of Salmonella spp. , resulting in substantial cost savings. It can be recommended for use for the primary isolation of Salmonella spp. from stool specimens. Other media (e.g., XLD) are required to detect Shigella spp. concurrently.
Classification of leaf images

There are tremendous content‐based retrieval systems. Most of them are applied to general image databases. Some were proposed for specified databases such as texture databases, ancient paintings, document image databases, digital mammography, face image databases, etc. However, there are fewer for plant databases. Plants are used in various fields such as in foodstuff, medicine, and industry. Recently, plant is important for environment protection. On the other hand, the problem of plant destruction becomes worse in the few years. We should train people to know about plants, in turn, to treasure and protect them. In addition to the limited number of expert botanists, the convenient content‐based retrieval system for plant is necessary and useful, since it can retrieve related information and knowledge from plant database for the query leaf so as to facilitate fast learning of plants. In this study, a leaf database is constructed and a classification method for leaves is proposed. Most approaches for leaf classification in literature used contour‐based features. The proposed method tries to use region‐based features. The reasons are that region‐based features are more robust than contour‐based features since significant curvature points are hard to find. Those features adopted include aspect ratio, compactness, centroid, and horizontal/vertical projections. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated by various experiments. On the average, our method has the classification accuracy for 1‐NN rule as 82.33% and the recall rate for 10 returned images as 48.2%, while the contour‐based method has 37.6% and 21.7%, respectively. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 16, 15–23, 2006