Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
E-HORM: An energy-efficient hole removing mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks

Cluster based routing protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been widely used for better performance in terms of energy efficiency. Efficient use of energy is challenging task of designing these protocols. Energy holes are created due to quickly drain the energy of a few nodes due to nonuniform node distribution in the network. Normally, energy holes make the data routing failure when nodes transmit data back to the sink. We propose Energy-efficient HOle Removing Mechanism (E-HORM) technique to remove energy holes. In this technique, we use sleep and awake mechanism for sensor nodes to save energy. This approach finds the maximum distance nodes to calculate the maximum energy for data transmission. We consider it as a threshold energy Eth. Every node first checks its energy level for data transmission. If the energy level of node is less than Eth, it cannot transmit data.
Sensitivity of different spirometric tests for detecting airway obstruction in childhood asthma

Abstract Objective: The objective of this study was to compare different measures of airflow obstruction by spirometry in childhood asthma. The objectives were; (a) to compare sensitivity of large airway tests (FEV1 and PEFR) with tests at low lung volumes (small airways) (FEF25–75, FEF50 and FEF75); (b) compare within each group which individual tests are more sensitive. Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of 2307 spirometry tests performed during outpatient visits on 821 doctor-diagnosed asthma patients aged 6–18. Tests were deemed acceptable if they were acceptable and repeatable by American Thoracic Society (ATS) criteria. Results: In mild obstruction, FEV1 detected 6.8% abnormal tests while FEF75 detected 33% (p < 0.0001). In more severe obstruction, the difference was more obvious (FEV1 14.8%; FEF75 71%). Tests at low lung volumes (small airway tests) were also more sensitive than PEFR. Within groups, FEV1 was more sensitive than PEFR in the large airway tests and FEF75 was more sensitive than FEF25–75 and FEF50 among the tests at low lung volumes (small airway tests). The FEV1/FVC ratio correlated more closely with tests at low lung volumes (small airway tests), than with large airway tests. Conclusions: (1) Tests at low lung volumes (small airway tests) are more sensitive than large airway tests; (2) Within groups, the FEV1 is better than PEFR and FEF75 is better than FEF25–75 or FEF50.
Collaboration and interference: awareness with mice or touch input

Multi-touch surfaces are becoming increasingly popular. An assumed benefit is that they can facilitate collaborative interactions in co-located groups. In particular, being able to see another's physical actions can enhance awareness, which in turn can support fluid interaction and coordination. However, there is a paucity of empirical evidence or measures to support these claims. We present an analysis of different aspects of awareness in an empirical study that compared two kinds of input: multi-touch and multiple mice. For our analysis, a set of awareness indices was derived from the CSCW and HCI literatures, which measures both the presence and absence of awareness in co-located settings. Our findings indicate higher levels of awareness for the multi-touch condition accompanied by significantly more actions that interfere with each other. A subsequent qualitative analysis shows that the interactions in this condition were more fluid and that interference was quickly resolved. We suggest that it is more important that resources are available to negotiate interference rather than necessarily to attempt to prevent it.
Total antioxidant, total oxidant and serum paraoxonase levels according to lipid administration method in parenterally fed premature infants

Abstract Objective: The aim of our study was to determine whether lipid solutions delivered separately or in mixture with total parenteral nutrition (TPN) solutions effect the balance between oxidant and antioxidant levels in premature infants. Methods: A total of 60 preterm newborns who were delivered at their 30–34 gestational weeks and received TPN were included in the study. Premature newborns were randomized into two groups based on the delivery method of the lipid solution, separately (Group 1) or in mixture with TPN solutions (Group 2). Total antioxidant status (TAS), total oxidant status (TOS) and paraoxonase (PON-1) levels were analyzed in both blood samples, and oxidative stress index (OSI) was also calculated. Results: Thirty cases from both groups were included in the study. Statistically significant decrease in the level of TAS and increase in the level of PON-1 were detected at 72 h of TPN therapy in both groups (p < 0.05). Statistically significant decrease in both TOS and OSI levels were observed in Group 2 (p < 0.05). In association with these findings, any statistically significant intergroup difference was not detected in both parameters regarding oxidant balance (p > 0.05). Conclusion: Our study showed that according to lipid administration method any difference for oxidant–antioxidant balance was not detected.
Repeated evolution and reversibility of self‐fertilization in the volvocine green algae *

Outcrossing and self‐fertilization are fundamental strategies of sexual reproduction, each with different evolutionary costs and benefits. Self‐fertilization is thought to be an evolutionary “dead‐end” strategy, beneficial in the short term but costly in the long term, resulting in self‐fertilizing species that occupy only the tips of phylogenetic trees. Here, we use volvocine green algae to investigate the evolution of self‐fertilization. We use ancestral‐state reconstructions to show that self‐fertilization has repeatedly evolved from outcrossing ancestors and that multiple reversals from selfing to outcrossing have occurred. We use three phylogenetic metrics to show that self‐fertilization is not restricted to the tips of the phylogenetic tree, a finding inconsistent with the view of self‐fertilization as a dead‐end strategy. We also find no evidence for higher extinction rates or lower speciation rates in selfing lineages. We find that self‐fertilizing species have significantly larger colonies than outcrossing species, suggesting the benefits of selfing may counteract the costs of increased size. We speculate that our macroevolutionary results on self‐fertilization (i.e., non‐tippy distribution, no decreased diversification rates) may be explained by the haploid‐dominant life cycle that occurs in volvocine algae, which may alter the costs and benefits of selfing.
Biosynthesis, Characterization, and Antibacterial Activity of Silver Nanoparticles Produced from Rice Straw Biomass

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were synthesized from AgNO3 using rice straw biomass as the reducing agent at room temperature via light irradiation. Full wavelength scanning with UV/Vis spectrophotometer was used to study the effect of light intensity, reaction time, and concentrations of rice straw biomass and AgNO3 during AgNPs synthesis. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) showed that the peak wavelength of synthesized silver nanoparticles arose at 425 nm, the optimal light intensity observed was 60,000 lx, and the optimal reaction time was 140 min. The optimum concentrations of the rice straw biomass and AgNO3 used were 4 mg/mL and 2 mM, respectively. The AgNPs were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The zeta potential of AgNPs reached -21.2 mV. In addition, the AgNPs synthesized by rice straw biomass revealed antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis, and Staphyloccus aureus. The inhibition rate reached about 97.17 ± 2.01% when the concentration of AgNPs solution used was 8 μg/mL. In the detection of antimicrobial effect of AgNPs and antibiotics, the antibacterial activity was found to be superior to that of antibiotics alone.
Analysis of electrodes' placement and deformation in deep brain stimulation from medical images

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is used to reduce the motor symptoms such as rigidity or bradykinesia, in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The Subthalamic Nucleus (STN) has emerged as prime target of DBS in idiopathic PD. However, DBS surgery is a difficult procedure requiring the exact positioning of electrodes in the pre-operative selected targets. This positioning is usually planned using patients' pre-operative images, along with digital atlases, assuming that electrode's trajectory is linear. However, it has been demonstrated that anatomical brain deformations induce electrode's deformations resulting in errors in the intra-operative targeting stage. In order to meet the need of a higher degree of placement accuracy and to help constructing a computer-aided-placement tool, we studied the electrodes' deformation in regards to patients' clinical data (i.e., sex, mean PD duration and brain atrophy index). Firstly, we presented an automatic algorithm for the segmentation of electrode's axis from post-operative CT images, which aims to localize the electrodes' stimulated contacts. To assess our method, we applied our algorithm on 25 patients who had undergone bilateral STNDBS. We found a placement error of 0.91±0.38 mm. Then, from the segmented axis, we quantitatively analyzed the electrodes' curvature and correlated it with patients' clinical data. We found a positive significant correlation between mean curvature index of the electrode and brain atrophy index for male patients and between mean curvature index of the electrode and mean PD duration for female patients. These results help understanding DBS electrode' deformations and would help ensuring better anticipation of electrodes' placement.
15-01 Issues in modelling the financial distress and bankruptcy of companies Marek

Paper presents selected issues in designing and implementing models for financial distress and/or bankruptcy of companies. Major topics include: (1) definition of financial distress, (2) approaches to specify the distress variable, (3) aims and extent of the research on distress, (4) quantitative approaches in the field, including the attempt by Campbell, Hilscher and Szilagyi (2008), (5) survey of recent papers on the topic published in Poland.
Simulated Analysis of Dielectric Properties of Heterogeneous Materials

The present paper reports the results of a numerical analysis of two phases lossless heterogeneous materials based on a three dimensional (3-D) random dielectric mixture. The effective permittivity of a 3-D dielectric materials is calculated by the S-parameter retrieval method and finite element method. The calculated effective permittivity is in good agreement with theoretical models by compared with Bruggeman formula and Coherent potential formula, showing that the volume fraction of inclusions is increasing, the effective permittivity increases with radiation frequency and appear an imaginary part taking on the dielectric loss properties.
Therapeutic Effect of Quinacrine, an Antiprotozoan Drug, by Selective Suppression of p-CHK1/2 in p53-Negative Malignant Cancers

Quinacrine (QNC), antiprotozoan drug commonly used against Malaria and Giardiasis, has been recently tried for rheumatics and prion diseases via drug repositioning. In addition, several reports suggest antitumor effects of QNC through suppression of NF-κB and activation of p53. This study demonstrates the anticancer effect of QNC via a novel pathway through the elimination of checkpoint kinase 1/2 (Chk1/2) under p53-inactivated conditions. Inhibition of p53 by PFT-α or siRNA promotes QNC-induced apoptosis in normal fibroblast and p53-intact cancer cells. Considering that Chk1/2 kinases exert an essential role in the control of cell cycle, inhibition of Chk1/2 by QNC may induce cell death via uncontrolled cell cycle progression. Indeed, QNC reduces Chk1/2 expression under p53-impaired cancer cells and induces cell death in the G2–M phase. QNC increases the binding between p-Chk1/2 and β-TrCP and promotes proteasome-dependent degradation. Moreover, QNC treatment displayed antitumor effects in a Villin-Cre;p53+/LSL-R172H intestinal cancer mouse model system as well as HCT116 p53−/− xenografts. Implications: QNC has been used for the past over 70 years without obvious side effects, as such it is a plausible drug candidate for relapsed cancers, small-cell lung cancer, breast cancer as well as various p53-inactivated human malignancies. Mol Cancer Res; 16(6); 935–46. ©2018 AACR.
Soil Moisture and Fungi Affect Seed Survival in California Grassland Annual Plants

Survival of seeds in the seed bank is important for the population dynamics of many plant species, yet the environmental factors that control seed survival at a landscape level remain poorly understood. These factors may include soil moisture, vegetation cover, soil type, and soil pathogens. Because many soil fungi respond to moisture and host species, fungi may mediate environmental drivers of seed survival. Here, I measure patterns of seed survival in California annual grassland plants across 15 species in three experiments. First, I surveyed seed survival for eight species at 18 grasslands and coastal sage scrub sites ranging across coastal and inland Santa Barbara County, California. Species differed in seed survival, and soil moisture and geographic location had the strongest influence on survival. Grasslands had higher survival than coastal sage scrub sites for some species. Second, I used a fungicide addition and exotic grass thatch removal experiment in the field to tease apart the relative impact of fungi, thatch, and their interaction in an invaded grassland. Seed survival was lower in the winter (wet season) than in the summer (dry season), but fungicide improved winter survival. Seed survival varied between species but did not depend on thatch. Third, I manipulated water and fungicide in the laboratory to directly examine the relationship between water, fungi, and survival. Seed survival declined from dry to single watered to continuously watered treatments. Fungicide slightly improved seed survival when seeds were watered once but not continually. Together, these experiments demonstrate an important role of soil moisture, potentially mediated by fungal pathogens, in driving seed survival.
Compensation for tactile hysteresis using Gaussian process with sensory Markov property

Flexible tactile sensors have been studied to enable robots to interact with objects in unstructured environments. However, due to nonlinearity caused by the hysteresis of tactile materials, it is difficult to accurately convert sensor signals into task-relevant information such as force and slip. To compensate for the hysteresis of flexible tactile sensors, we propose a model based on a Gaussian process. The key idea of our model is to include the Markov property of sensory input. The proposed model not only uses the current tactile signal, but also its time-series signals, to extract the influence of the past states on the current state. We evaluate the accuracy of force estimation using the proposed model in comparison to the normal Gaussian process model, which does not take the Markov property into account. The experimental results demonstrate that the performance of our model improves on the normal Gaussian process in terms of root mean squared error, correlation coefficient, and absolute maximum error between the actual and the estimated force. We discuss the advantages of accounting for the sensory Markov property and the potential ability of the Gaussian process to internally acquire the representation of the deviation of sensory signals.
Collaborative Inference of Coexisting Information Diffusions

The purpose of diffusion history inference is to reconstruct the missing traces of information diffusion according to incomplete observations. Existing methods, however, often focus only on single diffusion trace, while in a real-world social network, there often coexist multiple information diffusions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called Collaborative Inference Model (CIM) for the problem of the inference of coexisting information diffusions. CIM can holistically model multiple information diffusions without any prior assumption of diffusion models, and collaboratively infer the histories of the coexisting information diffusions via low-rank approximation with a fusion of heterogeneous constraints generated from additional data sources. We also propose an optimized algorithm called Time Window based Parallel Decomposition Algorithm (TWPDA) to speed up the inference without compromise on the accuracy. Extensive experiments are conducted on real-world datasets to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of CIM and TWPDA.
Detection of alarm sounds in noisy environments

Sirens and alarms play an important role in everyday life since they warn people of hazardous situations, even when these are out of sight. Automatic detection of this class of sounds can help hearing impaired or distracted people, e.g., on the road, and contribute to their independence and safety. In this paper, we present a technique for the detection of alarm sounds in noisy environments. The technique is not limited to particular alarms and can detect most electronically generated alerting sounds within 200 ms. We consider a set of acoustic features and use the ReliefF algorithm to select only the ones that best differentiate between alarms and other sounds. We use an SVM classifier as the detector. On the tested dataset, consisting of several dozen alarm sounds and several dozen background noises, the proposed technique shows an accuracy of 98% per audio frame. With a larger training dataset, this result is expected to substantially improve.
Persistence Acquisition and Maintenance for Autonomous Formations

Built upon a recently developed theoretical framework, we consider some practical issues raised in autonomous multi-agent formation control. We use the notions of rigidity and persistence to analyze the cohesiveness of the formation structure and maintenance of the constraints on each individual agent. We present basic properties of persistent formations and give an operational criterion to determine if a formation is persistent. Using the framework we develop, we seek to provide systematic ways of acquiring persistence for classes of formations often found in real world applications. Decentralized automatic acquisition of persistence for rigid formations is an open problem and answers found for these specific examples may serve as hints for seeking a general solution. Another focus of this paper is on how to transfer autonomy (abstracted as degrees of freedom) among agents, when the formation changes with new agent(s) added, to preserve persistence.
Simple and Computationally Efficient Movement Classification Approach for EMG-controlled Prosthetic Hand: ANFIS vs. Artificial Neural Network

The aim of this paper is to propose an exploratory study on simple, accurate and computationally efficient movement classification technique for prosthetic hand application. The surface myoelectric signals were acquired from 2 muscles—Flexor Carpi Ulnaris and Extensor Carpi Radialis of 4 normal-limb subjects. These signals were segmented and the features extracted using a new combined time-domain method of feature extraction. The fuzzy C-mean clustering method and scatter plots were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed multi-feature versus other accurate multi-features. Finally, the movements were classified using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and the artificial neural network. Comparison results indicate that ANFIS not only displays higher classification accuracy (88.90%) than the artificial neural network, but it also improves computation time significantly.
Serum uric acid levels in non-alcoholic steatosis patients: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Experimental and observational studies suggest a role for increased uric acid in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This study aimed to systematically review the association between serum uric acid (SUA) levels and NAFLD. Method and Study Design: We used PubMed, and the EMBASE data-base to identify all applicable studies through November 2015. We used the weighted mean difference (WMD) to demonstrate the differences between the control and NAFLD groups in continuous data. We calculated the odds ratios (ORs) for dichotomous data using the Mantel-Haenszel method. A total of 16 observational studies were identified and used for the analysis of continuous data, and 4 studies were analyzed for dichotomous data. RESULTS The WMD was 52.3 (95% CI: 39.0, 65.5, p<0.00001). The pooled OR in observational studies was 2.08 (95% CI: 1.93-2.24, p<0.00001). The results were heterogeneous for the comparison of continuous data and homogeneous for the comparison of dichotomous data. The SUA cutoff value for the occurrence of NAFLD was 308, with a sensitivity of 94.12% [71.3-99.9] and specificity of 70.6% [44.0-89.7]. CONCLUSION We observed a positive association between increased SUA levels and the diagnosis of NAFLD in all analyses. Our results suggest that SUA is upregulated in patients with NAFLD and might be related to the pathogenesis of NAFLD.
Quantifying Discrimination: The Role of Race and Gender in the Awarding of Subprime Mortgage Loans

The recent subprime mortgage crisis has brought to the forefront the possibility of discriminatory lending on the basis of race or gender. I explore these claims using approximately 10 million observations collected by the federal government in 2006 through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. I address two possible theories of discrimination: (1) structural discrimination, which is that any discriminatory lending patterns are picking up the fact that minority borrowers went to different lenders, and (2) individual discrimination, which is the possibility that individual lenders discriminated against identically situated borrowers. The results provide some evidence of both. However, a sensitivity test to examine the effect of missing controls (such as credit score) finds that these racial differences could be explained by a 50% difference in negative credit attributes between blacks and whites under structural discrimination, and 17% difference under individual discrimination.
Evaluating the effects of NAMI's consumer presentation program, In Our Own Voice.

OBJECTIVE Misperceptions about individuals with mental illness and their ability to recover and live productive lives are common. Consumer presentation programs, such as NAMI's (National Alliance on Mental Illness) In Our Own Voice (IOOV), employ psychoeducation and direct contact to help correct misperceptions and offer encouraging messages about recovery for those with and without mental illness. Prior research on IOOV has been limited to student samples in artificial settings. This study was designed to understand audience members' responses to IOOV in natural settings. METHOD IOOV audience evaluations collected from two NAMI affiliates in 2009 were analyzed (n = 599). A mixed methods approach was used to explore (a) overall responses to the program, (b) whether the program satisfied program goals for audience members, and (c) differences between consumer and nonconsumer responses. RESULTS The majority of viewers responded very positively. Qualitative responses suggested that the program is meeting NAMI's goals for audience members: educating the public and offering a hope-inspiring message of recovery. The program's effects generalized across consumers and nonconsumers with few differences. Nonconsumers were more likely to report that the program was educational, offered hope, and delivered a message of recovery; only the first difference remained when controlling for students. Consumers were more likely to report personally relating to presenters. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE IOOV, as performed in the field, appears to provide educational and inspiring recovery-oriented programming freely available to the public.