Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geometry , Moments , and Semidefinite Optimization

Optimization formulations seek to take advantage of structure and information in a particular problem, and investigate how successfully this information constrains the performance measures of interest. In this paper, we apply some recent results of algebraic geometry, to show how the underlying geometry of the problem may be incorporated in a natural way, in a semidefinite optimization formulation. In particular, we discuss two examples; the first, an application to partial differential equations, and the second, an application to deriving optimal inequalities in probability theory. In both cases, the additional “geometry–constraints” significantly improve the quality of the bounds. Furthermore, we believe this framework to be a general one, with many potential applications.
Search Engine Based on Mobile User Customization

As the amount of Web information grows rapidly; Search engines must be able to retrieve information according to the user's preference. In this paper, we propose Ontology Based Personalized Mobile Search Engine (OBPMSE) that captures user's interest and preferences in the form of concepts by mining search results and their clickthroughs. OBPMSE profile the user's interest and personalized the search results according to user's profile. OBPMSE classifies these concepts into content concepts and location concepts. In addition, user's locations (positioned by GPS) are used to supplement the location concepts in OBPMSE. The user preferences are organized in an ontology-based, multifacet user profile, used to adapt a personalized ranking function which in turn used for rank adaptation of future search results. We propose to define personalization effectiveness based on the entropies and use it to balance the weights between the content and location facets. In our design, the client collects and stores locally the click through data to protect privacy, whereas heavy tasks such as concept extraction, training, and reranking are performed at the OBPMSE server. OBPMSE provide client-server architecture and distribute the task to each individual component to decrease the complexity.
TLR4‐mediated activation of dendritic cells by the heat shock protein DnaK from Francisella tularensis

Francisella tularensis is the causative agent of tularemia, a severe, debilitating disease of humans and other mammals. As this microorganism is also classified as a “category‐A pathogen” and a potential biowarfare agent, there is a need for an effective vaccine. Several antigens of F. tularensis, including the heat shock protein DnaK, have been proposed for use in a potential subunit vaccine. In this study, we characterized the innate immune response of murine bone marrow‐derived dendritic cells (DC) to F. tularensis DnaK. Recombinant DnaK was produced using a bacterial expression system and purified using affinity, ion‐exchange, and size‐exclusion chromatography. DnaK induced the activation of MAPKs and NF‐κB in DC and the production of the proinflammatory cytokines IL‐6, TNF‐α, and IL‐12 p40, as well as low levels of IL‐10. DnaK induced phenotypic maturation of DC, as demonstrated by an up‐regulation of costimulatory molecules CD40, CD80, and CD86. DnaK stimulated DC through TLR4 and the adapters MyD88 and Toll/IL‐1R domain‐containing adaptor‐inducing IFN‐β (TRIF) that mediated differential responses. DnaK induced activation of MAPKs and NF‐κB in a MyD88‐ or TRIF‐dependent manner. However, the presence of MyD88‐ and TRIF‐dependent signaling pathways was essential for an optimal, DnaK‐induced cytokine response in DC. In contrast, DnaK induced DC maturation in a TRIF‐dependent, MyD88‐independent manner. These results provide insight about the molecular interactions between an immunodominant antigen of F. tularensis and host immune cells, which is crucial for the rational design and development of a safe and efficacious vaccine against tularemia.
International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance Has Lean improved organizational decision making ?

Has Lean improved organizational decision making? Pascale Simons Jos Benders Jochen Bergs Wim Marneffe Dominique Vandijck Article information: To cite this document: Pascale Simons Jos Benders Jochen Bergs Wim Marneffe Dominique Vandijck , (2016),"Has Lean improved organizational decision making? ", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 29 Iss 5 pp. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi. org/10.1108/IJHCQA-09-2015-0118
A multiframe parametric wiener filter for acoustic echo suppression

Acoustic echo arises due to the acoustic coupling between the loudspeaker and the microphone in a full-duplex voice communication device. How to reduce or eliminate echo has been an important problem in voice communications. This paper deals with this problem in the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) domain. An approach to acoustic echo suppression (AES) is developed, which uses a linear filter in every STFT subband. A non-parametric variable step-size (NPVSS) normalized-least-mean-square (NLMS) algorithm is used to estimate the echo signal in every STFT bin and time frame. We then define the desired output signal as the sum of the desired near-end speech and a residual echo component. A parametric Wiener filter (PWF) is subsequently derived by minimizing the near-end speech distortion with a constraint on the residual echo. There are two parameters in this PWF, which can be adjusted to control the compromise between the amount of echo attenuation and the degree of near-end speech distortion, and the level of the residual echo remaining at the output. These two parameters can be tuned to optimize the perceptual quality of the echo-reduced signal. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed PWF can effectively attenuate the undesired echo and estimate the near-end signal with little distortion.
Clinical Features of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorders

Background: Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) was long believed to be an aggressive form of multiple sclerosis (MS). This study aimed to describe the clinical features of patients with MS and NMOSD to assist in differential diagnoses in clinical practice. Methods: Data including the patients’ serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tests, image findings, and clinical information from 175 patients with MS or NMOSD at Xuanwu Hospital, Capital Medical University from November 2012 to May 2014 were collected and analyzed retrospectively. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was performed to detect the myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) autoantibodies in CSF and serum. Cell-based assays were used to detect aquaporin-4-antibody (AQP4-Ab). The Chi-square test was used to compare the categorical variables. Wilcoxon rank sum test was performed to analyze the continuous variables. Results: Totally 85 MS patients (49%) and 90 NMOSD patients (51%) were enrolled, including 124 (71%) women and 51 (29%) men. Fewer MS patients (6%) had autoimmune diseases compared to NMOSD (19%) (&khgr; 2 = 6.9, P < 0.01). Patients with NMOSD had higher Expanded Disability Status Scale scores (3.5 [3]) than MS group (2 [2]) (Z = −3.69, P < 0.01). The CSF levels of white cell count and protein in both two groups were slightly elevated than the normal range, without significant difference between each other. Positivity of serum AQP4-Ab in NMOSD patients was higher than that in MS patients (MS: 0, NMOSD: 67%; &khgr; 2 = 63.9, P < 0.01). Oligoclonal bands in CSF among NMOSD patients were remarkably lower than that among MS (MS: 59%, NMOSD: 20%; &khgr; 2 = 25.7, P < 0.01). No significant difference of MOG autoantibodies was found between the two groups. Conclusion: The different CSF features combined with clinical, magnetic resonance imaging, and serum characteristics between Chinese patients with MS and NMOSD could assist in the differential diagnosis.
Regulation of the Fear Network by Mediators of Stress: Norepinephrine Alters the Balance between Cortical and Subcortical Afferent Excitation of the Lateral Amygdala

Pavlovian auditory fear conditioning involves the integration of information about an acoustic conditioned stimulus (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA). The auditory CS reaches the LA subcortically via a direct connection from the auditory thalamus and also from the auditory association cortex itself. How neural modulators, especially those activated during stress, such as norepinephrine (NE), regulate synaptic transmission and plasticity in this network is poorly understood. Here we show that NE inhibits synaptic transmission in both the subcortical and cortical input pathway but that sensory processing is biased toward the subcortical pathway. In addition binding of NE to β-adrenergic receptors further dissociates sensory processing in the LA. These findings suggest a network mechanism that shifts sensory balance toward the faster but more primitive subcortical input.
Solvation of carbon nanotubes in a room-temperature ionic liquid.

Single- and double-walled carbon nanotubes in the armchair configuration solvated in the room-temperature ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMI+BF4−) are studied via molecular dynamics (MD) computer simulations. Cations and anions show smeared-out, cylindrical shell-like distributions outside of the nanotubes irrespective of the nanotube diameter. The ion distributions inside the nanotubes vary markedly with their diameter. For example, in the case of (n,n) single-walled nanotubes, EMI+ and BF4− ions separately form single-shell zigzag and chiral distributions for (8,8) and (10,10), respectively, while (12,12) develops a second internal solvation structure. The first internal solvation shell of (15,15) nanotubes consists of alternating layers of cations and anions along the nanotube axis. In the azimuthal direction, these cations and anions, respectively, form a pentagonal structure, whereas the corresponding ions for (20,20) show disordered octagonal structures. The smallest nan.
Specification and Estimation of the Transfer Function in Paleoclimatic Reconstructions ∗

We identify two issues with a standard time series approach to reconstruction of past climate fluctuations from paleoclimatic data series, one related to specification of the estimated relationship between climate and the paleoclimatic index, the other to the methodology of estimation. We show that the standard approach provides biased estimates of the reconstructed climate series and underestimates the true variability of historical climate. We demonstrate that inversion of the estimated response function between tree ring growth and climate indicators provides consistent estimates of historical climate. The inversion method results in an overestimation of the variance. We show analytically as well as using Monte Carlo experiments and actual tree ring data, that use of the new specification and reconstruction procedure can be crucial for inferences about the nature of past climate and interpretation of recent climate variations.
The difficult temperament in adolescence: associations with substance use, family support, and problem behaviors.

This study investigated interrelations between the number of difficult temperament factors (e.g., arrhythmicity, inflexibility, high distractibility) and substance use, perceived family support, and problem behaviors for a sample of 297 adolescents (M age = 15.7 years). The number of adolescent difficult temperament factors was associated significantly with more childhood behavior problems (e.g., hyperactivity, conduct disordered symptoms), which suggests some continuity of disordered behavior from childhood to adolescence. Number of adolescent difficult temperament factors also was associated with a higher percentage of substance users (for cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, hard drugs), lower perceived family support, higher levels of depressive symptoms, and more delinquent activity. Number of difficult temperament factors was not associated significantly with gender or age of respondents.
An update on the use of indacaterol in patients with COPD

Current guidelines for the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) establish that bronchodilator medications are central to the symptomatic treatment of the disease. Regular treatment with long-acting bronchodilators is recommended as more effective and convenient than short-acting bronchodilators, because the long-acting agents provide greater bronchodilator efficacy and symptomatic relief, increased tolerance to exercise, and improved rate of exacerbations and quality of life test scores. Dosing regimens requiring less frequent dosing also provide improved treatment compliance. Indacaterol is a novel once-daily ultra-long-acting β2-agonist bronchodilator now approved in the European Union for maintenance bronchodilator treatment of airflow obstruction in adult patients with COPD, to be administered as 150 or 300 µg once-daily dose by means of a single-dose dry powder inhaler. This review focuses on providing a clinical practice-oriented synopsis of the data generated from the randomized trials during the clinical development of indacaterol, published as of the time of writing. Indacaterol has been shown to provide effective 24-h bronchodilation and a fast onset of action, with an efficacy at least comparable or superior to current bronchodilator therapy standards and with a favourable safety and tolerability profile within the β2-agonist drug class.
Discovering and visualizing temporal-based Web access behavior

Discovering and understanding Web users' surfing behavior are essential for the development of successful Web monitoring and recommendation systems. In this paper, we propose a Web usage mining approach for the automatic discovery and visualization of temporal-based Web access behavior of individual users by mining client-side logs. The proposed approach is based on a Web usage lattice model which represents a hierarchy of Web access activities. To describe such Web access activities, we incorporate fuzzy logic to represent real life temporal concepts such as morning, afternoon and evening, and meaningful Web categories such as news, sports and chat. Based on the lattice, temporal and association behavior patterns can be extracted and visualized.
A high‐level programming‐language implementation of topology optimization applied to steady‐state Navier–Stokes flow

We present a versatile high‐level programming‐language implementation of non‐linear topology optimization. Our implementation is based on the commercial software package FEMLAB, and it allows a wide range of optimization objectives to be dealt with easily. We exemplify our method by studies of steady‐state Navier–Stokes flow problems, thus extending the work by Borrvall and Petersson on topology optimization of fluids in Stokes flow (Int. J. Num. Meth. Fluids 2003; 41:77–107). We analyse the physical aspects of the solutions and how they are affected by different parameters of the optimization algorithm. A complete example of our implementation is included as FEMLAB code in an appendix. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sclerotherapy for the Management of Seromas: A Systematic Review

Objective: Despite improved recognition of risk factors, plastic surgeons commonly encounter seromas postoperatively and must decide upon management. Current recommendations for minimally invasive, chemical management originate from the literature on management of pneumothorax and pleural effusions. A handful of published reports have suggested the efficacy of sclerotherapy in seroma management. The aim of this study was to assess the literature on the use of sclerosants to treat subcutaneous fluid collections. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed on the PubMed, MEDLINE, and Cochrane databases for primary research articles on sclerotherapy for seroma treatment between January 1975 and January 2017. Exclusion criteria were surgical treatment, sclerotherapy for seroma prevention, hematoma, or absence of detailed documentation. Data related to seroma location, sclerosant, and resolutions were extracted. Results: The literature search yielded 7 relevant articles of level IV evidence and 12 case reports, with a total of 84 patients treated with sclerotherapy for persistent seromas. Slerosant included talc, tetracycline antibiotics, ethanol, polidocanol, erythromycin, OK-432, fibrin glue, and povidone-iodine. All agents achieved high rates of success. Repeat aspirations and instillations were easily performed when required. Complications, while uncommon, included pain, tightness or discomfort of the treated area, and infection. Conclusion: Sclerotherapy appears to be effective and safe for recurrent seromas. While a variety of sclerosing agents may be applied successfully, talc and tetracyclines remain popular choices. Because of the small scale and retrospective nature of the published literature, larger, randomized, comparative studies are necessary to assess and optimize this treatment approach.
Parallel multigrid on hierarchical hybrid grids: a performance study on current high performance computing clusters

This article studies the performance and scalability of a geometric multigrid solver implemented within the hierarchical hybrid grids (HHG) software package on current high performance computing clusters up to nearly 300,000 cores. HHG is based on unstructured tetrahedral finite elements that are regularly refined to obtain a block‐structured computational grid. One challenge is the parallel mesh generation from an unstructured input grid that roughly approximates a human head within a 3D magnetic resonance imaging data set. This grid is then regularly refined to create the HHG grid hierarchy. As test platforms, a BlueGene/P cluster located at Jülich supercomputing center and an Intel Xeon 5650 cluster located at the local computing center in Erlangen are chosen. To estimate the quality of our implementation and to predict runtime for the multigrid solver, a detailed performance and communication model is developed and used to evaluate the measured single node performance, as well as weak and strong scaling experiments on both clusters. Thus, for a given problem size, one can predict the number of compute nodes that minimize the overall runtime of the multigrid solver. Overall, HHG scales up to the full machines, where the biggest linear system solved on Jugene had more than one trillion unknowns. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Entropy and Graph Based Modelling of Document Coherence using Discourse Entities: An Application to IR

We present two novel models of document coherence and their application to information retrieval (IR). Both models approximate document coherence using discourse entities, e.g. the subject or object of a sentence. Our first model views text as a Markov process generating sequences of discourse entities (entity n-grams); we use the entropy of these entity n-grams to approximate the rate at which new information appears in text, reasoning that as more new words appear, the topic increasingly drifts and text coherence decreases. Our second model extends the work of Guinaudeau & Strube [28] that represents text as a graph of discourse entities, linked by different relations, such as their distance or adjacency in text. We use several graph topology metrics to approximate different aspects of the discourse flow that can indicate coherence, such as the average clustering or betweenness of discourse entities in text. Experiments with several instantiations of these models show that: (i) our models perform on a par with two other well-known models of text coherence even without any parameter tuning, and (ii) reranking retrieval results according to their coherence scores gives notable performance gains, confirming a relation between document coherence and relevance. This work contributes two novel models of document coherence, the application of which to IR complements recent work in the integration of document cohesiveness or comprehensibility to ranking [5, 56].
Detection and differentiation of Newcastle disease virus (avian paramyxovirus type 1)

Substantial variation in the virulence of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) isolates means that the detection of NDV or evidence of infection is insufficient for an adequate diagnosis, as control measures for avirulent viruses are very different to those for virulent viruses. Diagnosis therefore requires further characterization, at least as to whether an isolate is virulent or avirulent. Conventional detection and differentiation of ND viruses is perceived as slow, laborious and requiring an undesirable use of in vivo techniques. In addition, further characterization is needed to give greater information on origin and spread. This review concentrates on the application of monoclonal antibody and molecular biological approaches. Panels of monoclonal antibodies were a major advance for the characterization of NDV isolates, although confirmation of virulence for poultry still required in vivo testing. As molecular-based techniques become easier and more reliable, they are likely to supersede the use of monoclonal antibodies, especially for characterizing viruses for epidemiological purposes. The attraction of molecular-based techniques is that they may be able to cover all three aspects of Newcastle disease diagnosis (detection of virus, characterization, including inference of virulence, and epidemiology) quickly, accurately and definitively in a single test. A number of approaches based on the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction have been developed, with subsequent analysis of the product by restriction enzyme analysis, probe hybridization and nucleotide sequencing. Although extensive variation among NDVs still poses technical problems, the real and potential advantages of a molecular biological approach to Newcastle disease diagnosis appear to be overwhelming.
Avoiding interpretation ambiguities with phonetic cues ∗

In spite of the noise, you’re able to understand what you think your sister is trying to tell you: that she wants to get another cat (i.e. you interpret her utterance as I want to give my cat a friend). However, when you then ask her what breed she wants to get, she is confused, because she has decided that she can’t manage owning a cat; what she actually said was I want to give my cat to a friend. Now imagine you call your brother and tell him about your conversation. You want to report what your sister told you about her cat, but saying she wants to give a friend her cat seems strange. While there are many other ways in which you could convey the message, for whatever reason you use the same structure that your sister did: she wants to give her cat to a friend. However, you know that losing the to over a noisy connection could force your brother to the wrong interpretation, as happened to you. How can you ensure that he arrives at the correct interpretation, without changing the structure you use to convey it? ∗This paper uses data from the Origins of New Zealand English (ONZE) project at the University of Canterbury. The Mobile Unit data was collected by the Mobile Disc recording unit of the NZ Broadcasting Service, the Intermediate Corpus data was collected by Rosemary Goodyear, Lesley Evans and members of the ONZE team. The work done by members of the ONZE team in preparing the data, making transcripts and obtaining background information is gratefully acknowledged. I am very grateful to Daniel Bürkle, Kirsty Thompson, Liam Walsh and Alia Hope-Wilson for their help with extracting, realigning and coding the dative constructions, to Jen Hay for facilitating that help, and to Anette Rosenbach, Sali Tagliamonte and Joan Bresnan for their guidance in developing coding criteria and assistance with correcting coding errors. I’d like to thank my QP committee – Joan Bresnan, Dan Jurafsky, and John R. Rickford – for helpful discussions on theoretical and methodological matters. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. BCS-1025602.