Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Participation of Immigrant Women Family Caregivers in Qualitative Research

The recruitment of articulate, expressive participants is an essential part of methodology in qualitative research. This article presents the authors’ experience in the recruitment of immigrant women of Chinese and South Asian origin in an ethnographic study. The study included women caring for an adult or child family member who had a chronic health problem. Knowledge of women family caregivers’ health is restricted by the failure to include diverse groups of women in research. In this article, the authors discuss issues related to recruitment and participation of immigrant women in research, including establishing access to diverse groups of women, benefits for immigrant women, and placing the researcher and research process on the same level. Practical research strategies to address these issues and engage the women in research that portrays their perspectives are presented. The authors’ discussion concludes with reflection on their experience and that of other researchers.
Associations Between Macrophage Colony‐Stimulating Factor and Monocyte Chemotactic Protein 1 in Plasma and First‐Time Coronary Events: A Nested Case–Control Study

Background Myeloid cells play a central role in atherosclerosis. We investigated the associations between the plasma levels of growth factors and chemokines that regulate myeloid cell homeostasis and function and the risk of first‐time acute coronary events in middle‐aged persons. Methods and Results We measured baseline plasma levels of macrophage colony‐stimulating factor; monocyte chemotactic protein 1; C‐C motif chemokine ligands 3, 4, and 20; C‐X‐C motif chemokine ligands 1, 6, and 16; and C‐X3‐C motif chemokine ligand 1 in 292 participants who had a coronary event during follow‐up and 366 controls matched for age, sex, and time of inclusion who remained event free. Study participants were recruited from the Malmö Diet and Cancer Study population cohort and had no previous history of coronary artery disease. We found a strong independent negative association between macrophage colony‐stimulating factor and incident coronary events in a forward stepwise Cox proportional hazards model including all biomarkers alongside the classic Framingham risk factors (age, sex, smoking, total cholesterol, high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol, systolic blood pressure), diabetes mellitus, and medication. Conversely, monocyte chemotactic protein 1 had the strongest independent positive association with the outcome. The addition of macrophage colony‐stimulating factor and monocyte chemotactic protein 1 significantly improved the predictive ability of a model including traditional risk factors alone (C statistic 0.81 [95% CI 0.78–0.84] versus 0.67 [95% CI 0.63–0.71]; net reclassification index 0.52 [0.42–0.62]; P<0.001). The combined model led to a 54% net downclassification of participants who did not have a coronary event during follow‐up and was particularly effective in the intermediate‐risk group. Conclusions High levels of macrophage colony‐stimulating factor and low levels of monocyte chemotactic protein 1 in plasma characterize middle‐aged persons at low risk to develop clinically manifested coronary artery disease.
Traffic exposure and lung function in adults: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study

Background: Traffic exposure is a major contributor to ambient air pollution for people living close to busy roads. The relationship between traffic exposure and lung function remains inconclusive in adults. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the association between traffic exposure and lung function in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a community based cohort of 15 792 middle aged men and women. Traffic density and distance to major roads were used as measures of traffic exposure. Results: After controlling for potential confounders including demographic factors, personal and neighbourhood level socioeconomic characteristics, cigarette smoking and background air pollution, higher traffic density was significantly associated with lower forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC) in women. Relative to the lowest quartile of traffic density, the adjusted differences across increasing quartiles were 5.1, −15.4 and −21.5 ml for FEV1 (p value of linear trend across the quartiles = 0.041) and 1.2, −23.4 and −34.8 ml for FVC (p trend = 0.010). Using distance from major roads as a simpler index of traffic related air pollution exposure, the FEV1 was −15.7 ml (95% CI −34.4 to 2.9) lower and the FVC was −24.2 ml (95% CI −46.2 to −2.3) lower for women living within 150 m compared with subjects living further away. There was no significant effect of traffic density or distance to major roads on lung function in men. The FEV1/FVC ratio was not significantly associated with traffic exposure in either men or women. Conclusions: This is the largest published study of traffic exposure and pulmonary function in adults to date. These results add to growing evidence that chronic exposure to traffic related air pollution may adversely affect respiratory health.
The political economy of protection rackets in the past and the present

Dans un premier temps, l'A. rappelle les mecanismes de protection entourant le commerce de conquete ainsi que le schema weberien de l'exercice par l'etat du monopole de la violence legitime, notamment pour assurer la protection de la taxation. Puis il decrit une forme de crime organise de la Russie actuelle, en s'attachant au cas des gangs de racket de protection issus des groupes de combat d'Ekaterinburg. Il souligne toutefois que les theories de formation de l'etat s'averent insuffisantes pour eclairer l'ampleur du phenomene qui caracterise le racket russe actuel, a savoir la gestion d'une ressource particuliere : la violence organisee
Network selection algorithm based on group decision making for heterogeneous wireless networks

Multimode terminals running multiple services at the same time are increasingly common, in response to this phenomenon, a network selection algorithm based on group decision making for heterogeneous wireless networks is presented in this paper. The algorithm considers each service from the terminal as a decision-maker, and obtains the weight vector of all network attributes for each service by the analytic hierarchy process, then uses the group decision making to synthesize these weight vectors. At the same time, the utility function is used to normalize the network attributes. At last, the network selection is made according to the synthesized weight vector and attribute utility. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is far superior to the TOPSIS in satisfying the QoS requirements of different class of services, and can solve the problem of network selection for a group of services from a multi-service terminal.
Fingertip Detection for Hand Pose Recognition

In this paper, a novel algorithm is proposed for fingertip detection and finger type recognition. The algorithm is applied for locating fingertips in hand region extracted by Bayesian rule based skin color segmentation. Morphological operations are performed in the segmented hand region by observing key geometric features. A probabilistic modeling of the geometric features of finger movement has made the finger type recognition process significantly robust. Proposed method can be employed in a variety of applications like sign language recognition and human robot interactions.
Combining Gaia and JADE for Multi-Agent Systems Development

In this paper we present an enhanced version of a roadmap we have previously proposed, concerning how one can implement JADE agents using the Gaia methodology for analysis and design purposes. This effort is based on the experience we have acquired by using this roadmap for implementing a real word multi-agent system conceived for providing eservices to mobile users. Thus, our aim here is to share this experience with future MAS developers, who would like to follow this refined version of our roadmap, taking into account several technical issues that emerged during the implementation phase, in order to easily model and implement their systems.
Sessile and Pendant Micro-Liter Drops Evaporate at Different Rates: An Experimental Approach

Evaporation of micro-liter drops from solid surfaces at room condition is mainly governed by diffusion. Therefore, there should be no difference between evaporation rate of sessile and pendant drops. However, some studies indicate a difference and explain the difference using buoyancy. The objective here is to reconcile the inconsistency in the literature. For that, first, by comparing two identical suspended drops, one with a plate on top and the other underneath with a space between drop and plate, we showed the contribution of buoyancy in evaporation is at most less than 8%. When a plate was placed on top, water (its vapor is lighter than air) evaporated slower and hydrocarbons (their vapors are heavier than air) evaporated faster. Interestingly, it was observed when drops touch the plates (i.e. sessile and pendant drops), both water and hydrocarbon drops evaporated faster in sessile configuration. The observation for hydrocarbons is in contradiction with what buoyancy explains. To describe the difference, different scenarios were studied. It was found that sessile drops stay longer in the “constant wetted area” (CWA) mode, before switching to the CCA (constant contact angle) mode, e.g. a 4 µl sessile water drop on a Poly(methyl methacrylate) coated silicon stays in the CWA mode for 318 s whereas for a similar pendant drop this time is 274 s. Considering the fact that evaporation rate in the CWA mode is 30–40% higher compared to the CCA mode, the faster evaporation rate of sessile drops may be explained.
WebUnify: An Ontology-based Web Site Organization and Publication Platform for Device Adaptation

Creating a web site for variant devices is an important work in ubiquitous computing. This paper, based on ontology and semantic web, proposed a device adaptive web site model, named WebUnify. WebUnify is composed of three parts---WWW Server, Content Server and Web Site Creation. With CC/PP protocol, WWW Server can recognize different kinds of device profiles and generate variant requests to Content Server, and then, the returned content, which is expressed as XML, is transferred into the device adaptive format document by XSLT with the device’s XSL description. During the course above, Content Server generates adaptive content according to WSDA algorithm and web site ontology. At mean time, WebUnify platform provides a ontology-based web site authoring tools by improving Protégé tools. At last, a practical web site is built on WebUnify.
Using KPCA feature selection and fusion for intrusion detection

The main task of intrusion detection is to extract meaningful and effective features from redundant and noisy features causing poor detection accuracy. A method of feature selection by Kernel Principle Component Analysis (KPCA) and fusion is proposed. The basic features, contend features and traffic features are extracted respectively by KPCA. Then we use two levels of fusion (feature fusion and decision fusion) technique to improve the performance of intrusion detection system. However, simple combining features will not work as well as expected. For this reason, a new feature fusion method, IS feature fusion is presented. Experiments have been done on dataset in KDD-99 and simulation results show that our method by KPCA feature selection is an effective and IS feature fusion outperforms other fusion techniques.
Individual Differences among Depressed Mothers and Their Infants during Face-to-Face Interactions.

AUTHOR Cohn, Jeffrey F. TITLE Individual Differences nmorg napraccati Mofharc anti Their Infants during Face-to-Face Interactions. INSTITUTION Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass. Medical School. ; Pittsburgh Univ., Pa. SPONS AGENCY National Inst. of Health (DHHS), Bethesda, MD. Biomedical Research Support Grant Program. ; National Inst. of Mental Health tDHHS), Rockville, Md. PUB DATE Apr 87 GRANT NIH-BRS-RR-07084-18; NIMM-1R-01-MH-40867-01; NIM1-1-R-C3-MH-39706-01-A1; NIMH-35122 NOTE 31p. ; Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (Baltimore, MD, April 23-26, 1987). PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) -Speeches /Conference Papers (150)
Mutations in p53, p53 protein overexpression and breast cancer survival

p53 is an important tumour suppressor gene that encodes p53 protein, a molecule involved in cell cycle regulation and has been inconsistently linked to breast cancer survival. Using archived tumour tissue from a population‐based sample of 859 women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1996 and 1997, we determined p53 mutations in exons 5–8 and p53 protein overexpression. We examined the association of p53 mutations with overexpression and selected tumour clinical parameters. We assessed whether either p53 marker was associated with survival through 2002, adjusting for other tumour markers and prognostic factors. The prevalence of protein overexpression in the tumour was 36% (307/859) and of any p53 mutation was 15% (128/859). p53 overexpression was positively associated with the presence of any p53 mutation (odds ratio [OR]= 2.2, 95% confidence interval [CI]= 1.5–3.2), particularly missense mutations (ER = 7.0, 95% CI = 3.6–13.7). Negative oestrogen and progesterone receptor (ER/PR) status was positively associated with both p53 protein overexpression (= 2.6, 95% CI = 1.7–4.0) and p53 mutation (OR = 3.9, 95% CI = 2.4–6.5). Any p53 mutation and missense mutations, but not p53 protein overexpression, were associated with breast cancer‐specific mortality (hazard ratio [HR]= 1.7, 95% CI = 1.0–2.8; HR = 2.0, 95% CI = 1.1–3.6, respectively) and all‐cause mortality (HR = 1.5, 95% CI = 1.0–2.4; HR = 2.0, 95% CI = 1.2–3.4, respectively); nonsense mutations were associated only with breast cancer‐specific mortality (HR = 3.0, 95% CI = 1.1–8.1). These associations however did not remain after adjusting for ER/PR status. Thus, in this population‐based cohort of women with breast cancer, although p53 protein overexpression and p53 mutations were associated with each other, neither independently impacted breast cancer‐specific or all‐causing mortality, after considering ER/PR status.
Bidirectional Dynamic Programming for Stereo Matching

The determination of 3D structure from images is one of the most active field in computer vision. This paper gives a contribution presenting a symmetric stereo matching algorithm, based on a bidirectional dynamic programming scanline optimization. Consistent matches are detected by inspecting the images scanlines with a complex exponential weighting window and then analyzing matching score map into a bidirectional optimization framework. Results are presented running the algorithm on stereo pair freely available on the Web, in order to numerically validate the performance.
Ghost Talk: Mitigating EMI Signal Injection Attacks against Analog Sensors

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) affects circuits by inducing voltages on conductors. Analog sensing of signals on the order of a few millivolts is particularly sensitive to interference. This work (1) measures the susceptibility of analog sensor systems to signal injection attacks by intentional, low-power emission of chosen electromagnetic waveforms, and (2) proposes defense mechanisms to reduce the risks. Our experiments use specially crafted EMI at varying power and distance to measure susceptibility of sensors in implantable medical devices and consumer electronics. Results show that at distances of 1-2m, consumer electronic devices containing microphones are vulnerable to the injection of bogus audio signals. Our measurements show that in free air, intentional EMI under 10 W can inhibit pacing and induce defibrillation shocks at distances up to 1-2m on implantable cardiac electronic devices. However, with the sensing leads and medical devices immersed in a saline bath to better approximate the human body, the same experiment decreases to about 5 cm. Our defenses range from prevention with simple analog shielding to detection with a signal contamination metric based on the root mean square of waveform amplitudes. Our contribution to securing cardiac devices includes a novel defense mechanism that probes for forged pacing pulses inconsistent with the refractory period of cardiac tissue.
Sustainable Embedded Software Life-Cycle Planning

Time to market is a crucial factor in increasing market share in consumer electronics. Furthermore, fierce market competition tends to sharply lower the prices of new consumer electronics products as soon as they're released. Researchers have studied software-intensive embedded system design methods, such as hardware/software co-design, with the goal of reducing development lead time by designing hardware and software simultaneously. However, most studies concentrate on static design methods, in which a design remains unchanged once it's determined. To survive the market competition in consumer electronics requires a dynamic design strategy that takes various market conditions into account for software-intensive embedded systems. This article proposes a sustainable embedded software life-cycle planning (SeSLP) process based on the evolution of embedded software. The SeSLP process provides a dynamic method for both selecting product life-cycle design alternatives and generating a profit-maximizing transition plan that covers the entire product life cycle.
Comparison of Lumbar Range of Motion Using Three Measurement Devices in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain

Study Design A correlational design was used to compare the lumbar spine's total sagittal range of motion (ROM) within a chronic low back pain patient population (n = 42) using three different measurement systems. Objectives. To compare, within a back pain patient population, the relationship of ROM measurements obtained from a motion analysis system (SPINETRAK), a lumbar extension rehabilitation device (MedX), and liquid inclinometers. Methods. Total lumbar sagittal ROM was determined with each device in each subject as part of patients' standard clinical evaluation. Results. Results indicated that the motion analysis system is significantly correlated with the liquid inclinometers and mildly correlated with the MedX. Inclinometer and MedX ROM measurements are also significantly correlated. To assess individual differences, dependent tests were performed. Results indicated that the SPINETRAK yielded significantly lower ROM than the inclinometer or the MedX. The MedX and in clinometer measures did not significantly differ. Conclusions. This report shows that, depending on the device and procedures used, the lumbar sagittal ROM within a chronic low back pain population vary significantly.
Modeling and optimization of high-power Nd/sup 3+/-Yb/sup 3+/ codoped fiber lasers

High-power continuous-wave Nd3+-Yb3+ codoped fiber lasers (NYDFL) are analyzed, based on a rate-propagation equations model. The model takes into account energy transfer between Nd3+ and Yb3+, as well as cross relaxation between Nd3+ ions, and contributions from high-order modes to the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). Examples of cladding-pumped NYDFLs with distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) at either end are presented. We demonstrate the optimal laser design by considering the effects of the Nd3+ and Yb3+ concentrations, pump wavelengths multiplexing, output mirror reflectivity, and the laser wavelength. Approximate quasi-analytical solutions are shown to be in good agreement with the exact numerical solutions of the rate equations for practical conditions
A plea for consistent reliability in ambulatory blood pressure monitors: a reminder

Objective: To compare three different software versions [read-only memory (ROM) versions 1.22, 1.24 and 1.28] of the SpaceLabs model 90202 ambulatory blood pressure monitor Design: Simultaneous measurements in a two-arm crossover design. Methods: Ten measurements each in 14 normotensive persons were performed to compare each pair of monitors. The results were corrected according to the deviation from a mercury column. The systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP) and mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) was noted and the factor K = (MAP — DBP)/(SBP — DBP) was calculated Results: The K factor in the two older ROM versions was close to 0.25, with no statistically significant difference. In contrast the K factor was higher in the most recent ROM version than in one of the previous versions. This could be explained by a 5.4mmHg increase in MAP found by the new version. A significant difference in blood pressure was observed even between two monitors with the same ROM version. Conclusion: Unnotified changes in the software version in the SpaceLabs 90202 monitor operating by an oscillometric technique seriously affect the reliability of MAP measurements. Whenever possible in clinical trials the same monitor should be used for the same patient on each occasion. The industry should inform clinicians of the consequences of updating apparently identical monitors
Double-Dose Hepatitis B Revaccination in Nonresponsive HIV-Infected Adolescents

There is no consensus regarding a best dosing regimen of hepatitis B virus vaccine (HBVV) for non-responsive HIV-infected individuals. Double-dose of hepatitis B vaccine (DDHBVV) could enhance immunogenicity to HBVV in non-responsive HIV-infected adults. We assessed the immunogenicity of DDHBVV in HIV-infected adolescents who failed to respond to standard HBVV revaccination. HIV-infected adolescents with current CD4 ≥ 200 cells/mm3 and no protective antibody concentration of hepatitis B surface antibodies (antiHBs) after HBVV revaccination received DDHBVV, at months 0, 1, 2. The HBVV doses were 20 microgram per dose for adolescents aged < 18 years and 40 microgram per dose for adolescents aged ≥ 18 years. AntiHBs titers were measured at 1, 2, 3 months after first DDHBVV. AntiHBs ≥ 10 mIU/ml was considered protective. Seven adolescents were enrolled; mean age was 15.4 years, CD4 was 775 cells/mm3 and all had HIV-RNA < 50 copies/ml. Proportions of adolescents with protective antiHBs were 86% at months 1 and 2, and 100% at month 3. Geometric means of antiHBs were 1.1 at baseline, 101.6 at 1 month, 137.1 at 2 months, and 355.9 mIU/ml at 3 months after the first DDHBVV. No grade 3-4 adverse event was reported. DDHBVV is an option for HIV-infected adolescents who are non-responder to standard HBVV revaccination.