Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Realistic deformable models for simulating the tongue during laryngoscopy

During the procedure of laryngoscopy, an anaesthetist uses a rigid blade to displace and compress the tongue of the patient, and then inserts a tube into the larynx to allow controlled ventilation of the lungs during an operation. This procedure can sometimes be difficult and even life threatening, and there is therefore a need for regular training. Currently, plastic models are used for this purpose, and these have many disadvantages. Computer simulation is an attractive alternative, however, for proper realism it is necessary to build a model of the upper airway. In particular, we need a deformable model that can realistically simulate the behaviour of the tongue as it is compressed by the blade. We start from medical images, extract the details that characterise the subject and then incorporate these in a finite element model to investigate how the tongue tissue behaves in response to the insertion of the blade, when it is subjected to a variety of loading conditions. The results show that, within a specific set of tongue material parameters, the simulated outcome can be successfully related to the experimental laryngoscopic studies. Further research is underway to apply these results in a virtual reality simulation for laryngoscopic training. One main problem to be solved is computing the deformations in real time.
Physical activity and food consumption in high- and low-active inbred mouse strains.

PURPOSE To determine the effect of innate activity level and running wheel access on food consumption in high-active (SWR/J) low-active (DBA/2J) mice. METHODS Two strains of inbred mice were used in this study owing to their high activity level (SWR/J) and low activity level (DBA/2J). Mice were housed in individual cages, and half of the mice in each strain had free access to running wheels in their cages, whereas the other half received no running wheel. All mice consumed standard chow and water ad libitum for 13 wk during the study period. Running wheel activity (daily), food consumption (biweekly), and body mass (weekly) were recorded. RESULTS SWR/J runners consumed more food (6.0 ± 0.4 g·d)(-1) than SWR/J nonrunners (4.7 ± 0.2 g·d(-1), P = 0.03), DBA/2J runners (4.6 ± 0.2 g·d(-1), P = 0.02), and DBA/2J nonrunners (4.2 ± 0.2 g·d(-1), P = 0.006). SWR/J nonrunners consumed more food than DBA/2J nonrunners (P = 0.03). Average daily distance and duration were significantly greater for the SWR/J runners (6.4 ± 0.7 km·d(-1) and 333.6 ± 40.5 min·d(-1), respectively) compared with those for the DBA/2J runners (1.6 ± 0.4 km·d(-1) and 91.3 ± 23.0 min·d(-1), respectively). There was a significant correlation between food consumption and distance (r = 0.74, P < 0.001), duration (r = 0.68, P < 0.001), and speed (r = 0.58, P < 0.001), respectively, in all mice. However, when considering the individuals strains, the relationship between running wheel activity and food consumption was only statistically significant for the SWR/J mice. CONCLUSIONS Higher running wheel activity in mice was associated with increased food consumption in the SWR/J mice but not in the DBA/2J mice. In DBA/2J mice, addition of a running wheel did not result in increased food consumption, suggesting that energy expenditure of nonwheel cage activity in the control DBA/2J mice was similar to the energy expenditure of the wheel activity because body mass was similar between the two groups.
Functional Outcome after Partial Hip Replacement for Femoral Neck Fracture (Subcapital Fracture) with Austin Moore Prosthesis

Background: Femoral neck fracture or Subcapital fracture of the hip is one of the most common fractures at old age. There is a debate about the use of monopolar monoblock prosthesis for the treatment of those fractures. This paper is a retrospective examination of the functional and ambulation outcome of patients after partial hip replacement with cementless Austin Moore prosthesis. Methods: Between 2002-2009, 320 patients with femoral neck fracture were treated by hip hemiarthroplasty with cementless Austin Moore prosthesis in our department. All patients had displaced femoral neck fractures. The anterolateral approach was used for all operations. Seventy nine patients who underwent 84 hip hemiarthroplasty with cementless Austin Moore prosthesis agree to participate and were enrolled to this study. (Five patients had bilateral femoral neck fracture at separate occasions during the study period). All patients were followed at the out patients clinic and filled a questionnaire about functional and ambulation before fracture and after rehabilitation period. The functional outcome was divided into four levels, Poor Fair Good and Excellent functional ability. The scale of ambulation ability was 1-7 in which 1 is ambulation with no means and 7 is bed or chair ridden. Results: The average functional score before the fracture was 22.87 and 10.43 after surgery. The average ambulation ability before the fracture and after rehabilitation was (1.62) (4.29) respectively. Out of the 320 patients, three prosthetic hip dislocated (0.94%), four were (1.25%) infected and five (1.56%) experienced a periprosthetic fracture. Conclusion: Our study reveals that only small number of patients achieved good or excellent functional and ambulation score. The decline in functional and ambulation ability was statistical significant. We showed a relatively low incidence of complications.
Social network modeling approach for brand awareness

The advance of social computing study is grown very fast to the extents that influence many aspects of our daily life. One of those aspects is implementation in marketing / advertising. We are always looking for the effective way to understand our market, but the absent of powerful metrics has cause some problem. The availibility of Big Data all around us has triggered a new perspective on how we approach those problems. Online social network disseminate information much faster than before, supporting highly exposure of brand awareness. The network behavior of the information spreading can be explained by the study of complex network. In this paper, we propose the social network modelling approach using graph theoritic to understand on how brand information travels in online social network and how it can benefit for business. In prior study in marketing, it is uncommon to approach phenomenon using social network model and online social data, they are mostly using questionnaire from population sample. Our paper will enrich effort in marketing study. Our experiment use conversation data from Indonesian Twitter user contains specific brand keyword.
Enhanced Software Quality Metrics for Fault Prediction in Object Oriented Components using SVM Classifier

Software quality metrics are defined as methods for quantitatively determining the extent to which an object oriented (OO) software process possess a certain quality attribute. Increase in software complexity and size is increasing the demand for new metrics to identify flaws in the design of OO system. This demand has necessitated this study to focus on adopting new metrics for measuring class complexities, for which established practices have yet to be developed. The proposed system works in two stages. The first stage presents new software metrics for measuring class complexity and the second stage analyzes the use of SVM classifier to predict faulty modules. Four new metrics, namely, Class Method Flow Complexity Measure, Friend Class Complexity Metric, Class Complexity from Inheritance and Class Complexity from Cohesion Measure, are proposed. These metrics, combined with 20 existing metrics, are used during prediction using SVM. The performance of prediction system is analyzed in terms of accuracy, precision, recall and F Measure. The experimental results showed positive improvement in the performance of prediction with the inclusion of the proposed metric and SVM classifier.
A Dynamic GHz-Band Switching Technique for RF CMOS VCO

A CMOS VCO circuit technique which enables a dynamic GHz-band switching has been described. To get wide band switching, it has been clarified analytically that keeping Q constant is important to configure the circuit. To meet this, an LC VCO circuit which can switch resonant capacitors and inductors simultaneously for switching the band has been suggested. To verify the effect, a dual band VCO circuit has been designed and fabricated by using a 0.13-mum standard CMOS process technology and succeeded in switching the band dynamically from 2 to 4 GHz with keeping 1 MHz offset phase noise of -120 dBc/Hz
Exact one-pass synthesis of digital microfluidic biochips

With the advances of the microfluidic technology, the design of digital microfluidic biochips recently received significant attention. But thus far, the corresponding design tasks such as binding, scheduling, placement, and routing have usually been considered separately. Furthermore, often just heuristic results have been obtained. In this work, we present a one-pass synthesis scheme which directly realizes the desired functionality onto the chip and, at the same time, guarantees minimality with respect to area and/or timing. For this purpose, the deductive power of solvers for Boolean satisfiability is exploited. Experiments show how the approach leverages the design of the respective devices.
Heterogeneity of Methicillin-Susceptible Staphylococcus aureus Strains at a German University Hospital Implicates the Circulating-Strain Pool as a Potential Source of Emerging Methicillin-Resistant S. aureus Clones

ABSTRACT Recently, we demonstrated rapid dissemination of different methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clones at the Institute for Microbiology at the University of Magdeburg (B. Ghebremedhin, W. König, and B. König, Eur. J. Clin. Microbiol. Infect. Dis. 24:388-398, 2005). The majority of them harbored the readily transmissible mec cassette type IV. Thus, theoretically, methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) might capture the mecA gene from circulating MRSA, or MRSA strains might catch mobile toxin genes from MSSA. Therefore, we characterized MSSA strains circulating at the University Hospital in Magdeburg. Among a total of 84 MSSA strains under study, about 40% possessed the tst (toxic shock syndrome toxin) gene and up to four additional enterotoxin genes. tst-positive MSSA strains belonged to all known agr groups (I to IV) and to 14 different spa types (t008, t012, t015, t019, t024, t056, t065, t127, t133, t162, t271, t287, t399, and t400), and they were classified by multilocus sequence typing (MLST) as ST1, ST8, ST30, ST39, ST45, ST101, ST121, ST395, and ST426. In contrast, simultaneously circulating MRSA strains (n = 24) harbored in general two or three genes of the enterotoxin gene cluster, and the tst-positive MRSA isolates belonged to the well-known epidemic types ST22, ST45, and ST228 and were classified as spa types t001, t028, and t032. From our results, one may conclude that the pool of circulating MSSA strains is an important parameter with regard to the epidemiology of hospital- and community-acquired MRSA clones and their potential virulence.
PFKFB3-Driven Macrophage Glycolytic Metabolism Is a Crucial Component of Innate Antiviral Defense

Signaling by viral nucleic acids and subsequently by type I IFN is central to antiviral innate immunity. These signaling events are also likely to engage metabolic changes in immune and nonimmune cells to support antiviral defense. In this study, we show that cytosolic viral recognition, by way of secondary IFN signaling, leads to upregulation of glycolysis preferentially in macrophages. This metabolic switch involves induction of glycolytic activator 6-phosphofructose-2-kinase and fructose-2,6-bisphosphatase (PFKFB3). Using a genetic inactivation approach together with pharmacological perturbations in mouse cells, we show that PFKFB3-driven glycolysis selectively promotes the extrinsic antiviral capacity of macrophages, via metabolically supporting the engulfment and removal of virus-infected cells. Furthermore, the antiviral function of PFKFB3, as well as some contribution of its action from the hematopoietic compartment, was confirmed in a mouse model of respiratory syncytial virus infection. Therefore, different from the long-standing perception of glycolysis as a proviral pathway, our findings establish an antiviral, immunometabolic aspect of glycolysis that may have therapeutic implications.
Arboricity and spanning-tree packing in random graphs with an application to load balancing

We study the arboricity A and the maximum number T of edge-disjoint spanning trees of the classical random graph G(n, p). For all p(n) e [0, 1], we show that, with high probability T is precisely the minimum between δ and ⌊m/(n - 1)⌋, where δ is the smallest degree of the graph and m denotes the number of edges. Moreover, we explicitly determine a sharp threshold value for p such that: above this threshold, T equals ⌊m/(n - 1)⌋ and A equals ⌈m/(n - 1)⌉ and below this threshold, T equals δ, and we give a two-value concentration result for the arboricity A in that range. Finally, we include a stronger version of these results in the context of the random graph process where the edges are sequentially added one by one. A direct application of our result gives a sharp threshold for the maximum load being at most k in the two-choice load balancing problem, where k → ∞.
Executive functions and development: Emerging themes.

Earlier in this special issue I outlined four themes that contribute to the growing research interest in studies of executive function in childhood populations. These were: (1) the importance of executive dysfunction in accounts of developmental disorders such as Autism and ADHD; (2) methodological insights arising from the development of new techniques for assessing children's emerging executive functions; (3) evidence for a fractionated or componential view of executive control; and (4) the relation between individual differences in young children's performance on tests of executive function and ‘theory of mind’. In this paper, these four themes are used to integrate the findings from all the papers in this special issue on executive functions and development. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Das lineare Regressionsmodell von Aalen zur Analyse von Überlebenszeiten unter Berücksichtigung zeitveränderlicher Kovariablen

Data from clinical studies often contain time-dependent covariates, e.g. events like transplantation or an adverse drug reaction, or the changing measurements of laboratory data. The common approach uses only the covariate information at time t=0 for regression analyses, but this baseline analysis is not very satisfying. This paper applies the linear counting process by Aalen for failure time analysis, modified to deal with time-dependent covariates. In the main part we describe methods to estimate and visualize the cumulated regression function with respect to time-dependent covariates. After introducing a test for significance of the influence of covariates we display different methods to investigate model validity depending on martingale residuals, or by use of the Arjas plot. Coding and interpretation problems are shortly discussed. Results are illustrated with data from the Stanford Heart Transplantation Study and a study on Oropharynx carcinoma.
A Strategy for Information Presentation in Spoken Dialog Systems

In spoken dialog systems, information must be presented sequentially, making it difficult to quickly browse through a large number of options. Recent studies have shown that user satisfaction is negatively correlated with dialog duration, suggesting that systems should be designed to maximize the efficiency of the interactions. Analysis of the logs of 2,000 dialogs between users and nine different dialog systems reveals that a large percentage of the time is spent on the information presentation phase, thus there is potentially a large pay-off to be gained from optimizing information presentation in spoken dialog systems. This article proposes a method that improves the efficiency of coping with large numbers of diverse options by selecting options and then structuring them based on a model of the user's preferences. This enables the dialog system to automatically determine trade-offs between alternative options that are relevant to the user and present these trade-offs explicitly. Multiple attractive options are thereby structured such that the user can gradually refine her request to find the optimal trade-off. To evaluate and challenge our approach, we conducted a series of experiments that test the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Experimental results show that basing the content structuring and content selection process on a user model increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the user's interaction. Users complete their tasks more successfully and more quickly. Furthermore, user surveys revealed that participants found that the user-model based system presents complex trade-offs understandably and increases overall user satisfaction. The experiments also indicate that presenting users with a brief overview of options that do not fit their requirements significantly improves the user's overview of available options, also making them feel more confident in having been presented with all relevant options.
Security Requirements Analysis for FileStamp Distributed File System 1

This report presents an analysis of security requirements of FileStamp – a multiwriter distributed file system developed at CETIC. Our objective is to identify the generic as well as specific security requirements for the grid data management system (GDMS) and to propose potential solutions that can be employed to address these requirements. FileStamp is considered as a case study of GDMS. In this report, we first present the FileStamp architecture followed by its generic and specific security requirements. Then we present a detailed account of technologies that can be employed to address the security requirements of the FileStamp. The objective of employing suitable existing technologies to fix the GDMS security problems is to avoid the reinvention of wheel. This report finds that there exist adequate solutions for GDMS in general and for FileStamp in particular. However, it is important that these security technologies be integrate in the GDMS from its inception rather than considering them as add-on optional features.
Is there a Bubble in the Chinese Housing Market?

For many analysts, the Chinese economy is being spurred on by a bubble in the housing market, probably driven by the fiscal stimulus package and massive credit expansion, with potentially adverse effects on the real economy. The house price development is investigated by panel cointegration techniques. Evidence is based on a data-set for 35 major cities. Cointegration is detected between real house prices and a set of macroeconomic determinants. The results indicate that the bubble is less than 15 per cent of the equilibrium value implied by the fundamentals at the end of 2010. The bubble is particularly huge in the cities in the south-east coastal areas and special economic zones. While the spillovers from real house prices to consumer price index (CPI) inflation are significant at the margin, gross domestic product (GDP) growth may not be heavily affected. Thus, a decline of the bubble will likely have only modest effects on the real economy.
Multi-Path TCP: A Joint Congestion Control and Routing Scheme to Exploit Path Diversity in the Internet

We consider the problem of congestion-aware multi-path routing in the Internet. Currently, Internet routing protocols select only a single path between a source and a destination. However, due to many policy routing decisions, single-path routing may limit the achievable throughput. In this paper, we envision a scenario where multi-path routing is enabled in the Internet to take advantage of path diversity. Using minimal congestion feedback signals from the routers, we present a class of algorithms that can be implemented at the sources to stably and optimally split the flow between each source-destination pair. We then show that the connection-level throughput region of such multi-path routing/congestion control algorithms can be larger than that of a single-path congestion control scheme
Differential-linear and Impossible Differential Cryptanalysis of Round-reduced Scream

In this work we focus on the tweakable block cipher Scream, We have analysed Scream with the techniques, which previously have not been applied to this algorithm, that is differential-linear and impossible differential cryptanalysis. This is work in progress towards a comprehensive evaluation of Scream. We think it is essential to analyse these new, promising algorithms with a possibly wide range of cryptanalytic tools and techniques. Our work helps to realize this goal.
Image quality assessment by decision fusion

This letter investigates a decision-fusion based image quality metric that performs multi-feature oriented method in contrast to individual feature as done by general methods. The comprehensive image quality feature is generated based upon the statistical method of Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), by which diverse quality features are incorporated. The efficient design of the proposed algorithm allows more accurate and stable quality prediction for complicated distortion, and another advantage over others is the flexibility of parameters tuning due to the employment of prior knowledge of the testing database.
Shutter‐speed analysis of contrast reagent bolus‐tracking data: Preliminary observations in benign and malignant breast disease

The standard pharmacokinetic model applied to contrast reagent (CR) bolus‐tracking (B‐T) MRI (dynamic‐contrast‐enhanced) data makes the intrinsic assumption that equilibrium transcytolemmal water molecule exchange is effectively infinitely fast. Theory and simulation have suggested that this assumption can lead to significant errors. Recent analyses of animal model experimental data have confirmed two predicted signature inadequacies: a specific temporal mismatch with the B‐T time‐course and a CR dose‐dependent underestimation of model parameters. The most parsimonious adjustment to account for this aspect leads to the “shutter‐speed” pharmacokinetic model. Application of the latter to the animal model data mostly eliminates the two signature inadequacies. Here, the standard and shutter‐speed models are applied to B‐T data obtained from routine human breast examinations. The signature standard model temporal mismatch is found for each of the three invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) cases and for each of the three fibroadenoma (FA) cases studied. It is effectively eliminated by use of the shutter‐speed model. The size of the mismatch is considerably greater for the IDC lesions than for the FA lesions, causing the shutter‐speed model to exhibit improved discrimination of malignant IDC tumors from the benign FA lesions compared with the standard model. Furthermore, the shutter‐speed model clearly reveals focal “hot spots” of elevated CR perfusion/permeation present in only the malignant tumors. Magn Reson Med 53:724–729, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.