Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deformation velocity imaging using optical coherence tomography and its applications to the cornea

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) can monitor human donor corneas non-invasively during the de-swelling process following storage for corneal transplantation, but currently only resultant thickness as a function of time is extracted. To visualize and quantify the mechanism of de-swelling, we present a method exploiting the nanometer sensitivity of the Fourier phase in OCT data to image deformation velocities. The technique was demonstrated by non-invasively showing during de-swelling that osmotic flow through an intact epithelium is negligible and removing the endothelium approximately doubled the initial flow at that interface. The increased functional data further enabled the validation of a mathematical model of the cornea. Included is an efficient method of measuring high temporal resolution (1 minute demonstrated) corneal thickness, using automated collection and semi-automated graph search segmentation. These methods expand OCT capabilities to measure volume change processes for tissues and materials.
Automatic Derivation of Concepts Based on the Analysis of Source Code Identifiers

The existing software engineering literature has empirically shown that a proper choice of identifiers influences software understandability and maintainability. Indeed, identifiers are developers' main up-to-date source of information and guide their cognitive processes during program understanding when the high-level documentation is scarce or outdated and when the source code is not sufficiently commented. Deriving domain terms from identifiers using high-level and domain concepts is not an easy task when naming conventions (e.g., Camel Case) are not used or strictly followed and-or when these words have been abbreviated or otherwise transformed. Our thesis is to develop an approach that overcomes the shortcomings of the existing approaches and maps identifiers to domain concepts even in the absence of naming conventions and–or the presence of abbreviations. Our approach uses a thesaurus of words and abbreviations to map terms or transformed words composing identifiers to dictionary words. It relies on an oracle that we manually build for the validation of our results. To evaluate our technique, we apply it to derive concepts from identifiers of different systems and open source projects. We also enrich it by the use of domain knowledge and context-aware dictionaries to analyze how sensitive are its performances to the use of contextual information and specialized knowledge.
Social inequalities in mortality by cause among men and women in France

Background: The aim of this study was to compare inequalities in mortality (all causes and by cause) by occupational group and educational level between men and women living in France in the 1990s. Methods: Data were analysed from a permanent demographic sample currently including about one million people. The French Institute of Statistics (INSEE) follows the subjects and collects demographic, social and occupational information from the census schedules and vital status forms. Causes of death were obtained from the national file of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). A relative index of inequality (RII) was calculated to quantify inequalities as a function of educational level and occupational group. Overall all-cause mortality, mortality due to cancer, mortality due to cardiovascular disease and mortality due to external causes (accident, suicide, violence) were considered. Results: Overall, social inequalities were found to be wider among men than among women, for all-cause mortality, cancer mortality and external-cause mortality. However, this trend was not observed for cardiovascular mortality, for which the social inequalities were greater for women than for men, particularly for mortality due to ischaemic cardiac diseases. Conclusions: This study provides evidence for persistent social inequalities in mortality in France, in both men and women. These findings highlight the need for greater attention to social determinants of health. The reduction of cardiovascular disease mortality in low educational level groups should be treated as a major public health priority.
A Revised Radiocarbon Sequence for Karluk-1 and the Implications for Kodiak Island Prehistory

The Karluk-1 site has played a central role in defining the late prehistory of the Kodiak archipelago, in particular the Koniag tradition and its genesis. As part of the Bryn Mawr College Karluk Archaeology Project, Richard Jordan and Richard Knecht excavated the site in the 1980s and obtained six radiocarbon dates. Here, I add 21 new dates for the Karluk-1 site, which suggest that the site was occupied approximately 250–300 years later than previously thought. These new dates help to refine our understanding of Karluk’s place in prehistory and raise questions about the role of the Little Ice Age in driving cultural changes observed at Karluk-1.
Using of transcranial Doppler sonography to guide triple-H therapy in cerebral vasospasm associated with subarachnoid hemorrhage

Prophylactic triple-H therapy (the combination of induced hypertension, hypervolemia, and hemodilution) has been suggested to prevent cerebral vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) that would cause increased cerebral blood flow (CBF) to the brain, and widely accepted in a number of institutions. It must be noted that triple-H therapy is not completely safe, sometimes carries significant medical morbidity. The measurement of CBF with transcranial Doppler sonography (TCD) has provided a way of early detecting vasospasm after SAH as soon as possible and could guide the timing of triple-H therapy. Here, we present two patients who developed vasospasm associated with Aneurysmal SAH. In both patients, TCD examinations were daily performed to detect vasospasm before the onset of its clinical effects. One patient underwent mild vasospasm, resolved only by the treatment of triple-H therapy. While the second, followed-up triple-H therapy, suffered from vasodilator administered by intraarterial injecting for its severe vasospasm. In conclusion, our cases suggest that TCD optimize the timing of triple-H therapy in cerebral vasospasm associated with SAH.
K-Means Clustering of Biological Sequences

The unsupervised clustering of biological sequences is an important task in the bioinformatics space; however, the high computational expense associated with computing pairwise distances between these sequences makes many traditional clustering approaches untenable, leading to the use of greedy algorithms that are fast but degrade poorly. In this paper we introduce a method of clustering biological sequences by first converting them into an intermediate binary format where Hamming distance is used as the metric of comparison. Following this, we use the k-means algorithm on these sequences to cluster them. We show that this approach produces results equivalent or superior to comparable biological clustering algorithms in less time.
International Public Opinion on China’s Climate Change Policies

With the emergence of a global public sphere and the revolution of global media, international public opinion has gained an intrinsic importance for effective multilateral cooperation. Global governance initiatives are subject to international public opinion, and climate change is the single most important global governance issue of our time. Tackling climate change requires a fundamental transformation of the global economy, with an emphasis on sustainable development. Due to its political and economic weight, China can push forward UN climate change negotiations, and can do so without compromising its national development goals (China’s National Climate Change Programme, 2007). China’s national policies are beyond what is required from developing nations, but international public opinion often perceives a different message. This paper holds that a national branding strategy will help convey China’s current efforts, allowing a better understanding among nations in order to break the climate change negotiations deadlock. This research merged perception analysis and public opinion surveys with mass media qualitative and quantitative analysis to gain a full insight into what the international climate change decision-makers, opinion-leaders and general public think about China’s position at the UNFCCC negotiations. As seen in the findings of the present research, the climate of opinion is unfavorable to China. Overall, the results show that China is perceived as a negative influence in the negotiations. China’s climate change efforts are being overlooked by international public opinion. But the reason lies in China’s current discourse, where climate change and the environment are always downplayed by the right to develop (D’Hooghe, 2011). According to China’s 12th Five Year Plan, the new path for the country is marked by its commitment to achieve growth through low carbon development, with a strong focus on addressing climate change and energy challenges (Shealy & Dorian, 2007). The results of this study show that the positive intentions and actions of the Chinese government aren’t being accurately perceived by public opinion. The empirical findings in this study provide a new understanding of one specific part of the overall image that the world has about China. Whilst this study did not confirm unequivocally that international public opinion directly determines the outcomes of international negotiations and foreign policy, it did partially substantiate the concept that there’s a correlation between China’s public declarations and actions, the negotiators declarations to the press, press coverage in general, the attitude of experts towards China, and the attitudes and perceptions of uninformed public towards China. The study concludes that China requires a country rebranding strategy, and presents solid data as to which areas China has to tackle. This paper can be a working base for the national branding strategy, but by no means intends to be a complete evaluation of China’s brand.
Self-reported giving-way episode during a stepping-down task: case report of a subject with an ACL-deficient knee.

STUDY DESIGN Case report. OBJECTIVE To describe the knee kinematics and moments of a giving-way trial of a subject with an anterior-cruciate-ligament- (ACL) deficient knee relative to his non-giving-way trials and to healthy subjects during a step-down task. BACKGROUND Episodes of giving way are believed to damage joint structures, therefore treatments aim to prevent giving-way episodes, yet few studies document giving-way events. METHODS The giving-way trial experienced by a 32-year-old male subject with ACL deficiency during a step-down task was compared to his non-giving-way trials (n = 5) and data from healthy subjects (n = 20). Position data collected at 60 Hz were combined with anthropometric data and ground reaction force data collected at 300 Hz to estimate knee displacement and 3-dimensional angles and net joint moments. RESULTS The knee joint displacement was higher during the giving-way trial: from 4% to 32% of stance, reaching 9.0 mm at 18% of stance as compared to 1.6 +/- 0.7 mm for the non-giving-way trials. After 4% of stance, the knee flexion angle of the giving-way trial was 6.6 degrees higher than the non-giving-way trials and was associated with a higher knee extension moment. The knee frontal plane moment was near neutral during early stance of the giving-way trial in contrast to the non-giving way and healthy subjects which demonstrated a knee abduction moment. CONCLUSIONS The response of this subject to the giving-way event suggests that higher knee flexion angles may enhance knee stability and, in reaction to the giving-way event, that knee extension moment may increase.
PaloPro: a platform for knowledge extraction from big social data and the news

PaloPro is a platform that aggregates textual content from social media and news sites in different languages, analyses them using a series of text mining algorithms and provides advanced analytics to journalists and social media marketers. The platform capitalises on the abundance of social media sources and the information they provide for persons, products and events. In order to handle huge amounts of multilingual data that are collected continuously, we have adopted language independent techniques at all levels and from an engineering point of view, we have designed a system that takes advantage of parallel distributed computing technologies and cloud infrastructure. Different systems handle data aggregation, data processing and knowledge extraction and others deal with the integration and visualisation of knowledge. In this paper, we focus on two important text mining tasks, named entity recognition from texts and sentiment analysis to extract the sentiment associated with the corresponding identified entities.
Intracellular re‐routing of prion protein prevents propagation of PrPSc and delays onset of prion disease

Prion diseases are fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative disorders linked to an aberrant conformation of the cellular prion protein (PrPc). We show that the chemical compound Suramin induced aggregation of PrP in a post‐ER/Golgi compartment and prevented further trafficking of PrPc to the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane. Instead, misfolded PrP was efficiently re‐routed to acidic compartments for intracellular degradation. In contrast to PrPSc in prion‐infected cells, PrP aggregates formed in the presence of Suramin did not accumulate, were entirely sensitive to proteolytic digestion, had distinct biophysical properties, and were not infectious. The prophylactic potential of Suramin‐induced intracellular re‐routing was tested in mice. After intraperitoneal infection with scrapie prions, peripheral application of Suramin around the time of inoculation significantly delayed onset of prion disease. Our data reveal a novel quality control mechanism for misfolded PrP isoforms and introduce a new molecular mechanism for anti‐prion compounds.
APPLICABILITY OF AN INTEGRATED ADOPTION MODEL to an Adoption-Resistant M-Business Technology

Business is applying mobile technologies in the attempt to address its problems and to realize its opportunities at such a rate that researchers have difficulty maintaining their contact. Absent general models that can provide some assistance, business has few sources of impartial assistance. This paper aims to better assist organizations seeking to successfully adopt and to implement m-business innovations by testing the applicability of a general purpose e-business adoption model with a worst-case, adoption-resistant example of m-business technology. The Integrated Adoption Model was successfully applied to capture the complexity of the industry innovation and to identify major drivers and inhibitors of m-business success. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.
Design of a small composite right/left-handed band-pass filter

A new design approach to a small band-pass filter based on Composite Right/Left-Handed (CRLH-TL) transmission lines for the target Terrestrial-Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB, 174-216 MHz) band-pass filtering, which is a digital radio transmission technology developed in South Korea. The overall size of the proposed filter is substantially diminished compared to similar filters reported recently, and unwanted passbands are effectively suppressed. For the verification of this approach, the experimental results are demonstrated along with full-wave simulation and equivalent circuit simulation results.
Discomfort glare evaluation: The influence of anchor bias in luminance adjustments

Luminance adjustment is a procedure commonly used to evaluate discomfort glare and the results from adjustment experiments form the basis of some recommendations for limiting its occurrence. There are, however, strong reasons to expect that settings made using adjustment are unintentionally influenced by extraneous variables. This paper discusses bias towards the initial anchor, the setting of the variable stimulus immediately before an adjustment is made. Specifically, the initial luminance is expected to influence the setting that is made by adjustment; for example, a lower initial luminance leads to a lower setting than a high initial luminance. To investigate anchor bias, a Hopkinson-like multiple-criterion adjustment experiment was undertaken, but with three different anchors. The results confirmed significant bias: glare settings were biased towards the luminance of the initial anchor. This demonstrates a need for caution when using adjustment to explore discomfort glare and when interpreting the results of past studies that used discomfort glare models fitted to data obtained with this procedure.
Comparison of inducible nitric oxide synthase expression in the brains of Listeria monocytogenes-infected cattle, sheep, and goats and in macrophages stimulated in vitro

The expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) was studied in the brains of cattle, sheep, and goat that succumbed to a natural infection with Listeria monocytogenes. The lesions in infected brains are characterized by microabscesses, perivascular cuffs, gliosis, glial nodules, and large areas of malacia. Using immunocytochemistry, we detected bacteria in microabscesses, particularly in sheep and goats, and in areas without signs of inflammation, but not in perivascular infiltrates. iNOS was expressed by macrophage (Mphi)-type cells of microabscesses and glial nodules but rarely by Mphi in areas of malacia, as determined by immunohistochemistry with iNOS-specific antibodies. iNOS was not detected in perivascular cuffs. Major histocompatibility complex class II molecules (MHC-II), another marker of cell activation, showed a different pattern of distribution. Perivascular cuffs contained high numbers of MHC-II-positive cells, including some with Mphi characteristics. Microabscesses in sheep and goats showed low expression of MHC-II, particularly in iNOS-expressing cells. In cattle, the expression of markers for activated or recruited phagocytes, the calcium-binding proteins S100A8 and S100A9 (formerly called MRP-8 and MRP-14, respectively), was largely restricted to cells showing weak or undetectable iNOS expression; iNOS-positive Mphi showed a low expression of S100A8 and S100A9. Thus, iNOS is expressed by a restricted subset of Mphi in listeric encephalitis. In cultured sheep and goat Mphi, a low proportion of cells expressed iNOS upon activation by L. monocytogenes and gamma interferon, resulting in nitrite generation at least 1 order of magnitude lower than that in similarly treated cattle Mphi. Since these species differences were much less obvious in vivo, it appears that the well-known species variation in iNOS expression by Mphi could reflect an in vitro phenomenon.
PrivaSense: Privacy-Preserving and Reputation-Aware Mobile Participatory Sensing

The integration of privacy into reputation systems is a crucial need for building secure and reliable participatory sensing applications. Participants are given the assurance that their privacy is preserved even if they contribute some personal sensitive data. In addition, reputation systems allow an application server to monitor participants' behaviors and evict those who provide the system with corrupted data. However, this integration requires achieving seemingly conflicting objectives. Reputation systems monitor participants behaviors along subsequent interactions. Whereas, one of the major objectives of privacy preserving systems is to unlink subsequent interactions. In this paper, we define a new attack (RR attack), which exploits this conflict in order to detect the succession of contributions provided by the same participant and to subsequently re-identify his original identity. We show that using this attack, more than 35% of contributions can be associated to their successive contributions in each campaign. We then propose PrivaSense as a new privacy preserving reputation system that integrates both reputation and privacy such that their objectives are simultaneously achieved. Experimental results are conducted using a real data-set. These results show that PrivaSense decreases by up to 80% the number of contributions linked to their original providers.
Formative Dislocation in V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival

The Enigma of Arrival represents a significant shift in V. S. Naipaul’s corpus. In earlier work Naipaul used realist techniques to depict the periphery as the product of a historical derangement. In Enigma, Naipaul focuses on himself as a narrating subject who is the product of a disturbance that he cannot overthrow, only channel. The originality of The Enigma of Arrival lies in its attempt to engage, at the level of form, the disorienting effects of the periphery’s induction into modernity.
A 32dBm power amplifier for WiMAX applications in 90nm CMOS

A compact 90nm CMOS power amplifier with integrated transformer/BALUN matching network, for 2.32. 7GHz WiMAX (802.16e) band applications, is demonstrated. The PA gain and saturated power are +18dB and +32dBm, respectively, working from a 3.3V supply, with a peak power added efficiency (PAE) of 48%. A memory-less Digital Pre Distortion (DPD) technique is used to enhance the PA linearity. The measured EVM for a 64-QAM OFDM signal is improved from −24dB to −30dB at +25dBm output power. Compliance with the 802.16e standard 10MHz WiMAX mask and FCC regulations is demonstrated at +25dBm of output power with power efficiency of ~25%, and with a measured second harmonic level of −31[dBm/MHz].
A Community-Centric Internet Portal for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery with a Probabilistic Functional Atlas

Objective: This paper describes an Internet portal for stereotactic and functional neurosurgery with a probabilistic functional atlas (PFA) calculated from electrophysiological and neuroimaging data. This portal enables (1) data sharing among neurosurgeons; (2) the calculation of probabilistic functional maps of stereotactic target structures from a neurosurgeon’s own data, optionally combined with data from other neurosurgeons, and (3) the construction and development of a PFA of the human brain by the neurosurgical community via the Internet. Method: The overall approach is done in three steps: (1) development and validation of the algorithm for PFA generation; (2) design and development of the portal for stereotactic and functional neurosurgery with tools for the rapid calculation, presentation, and use of the PFA, and (3) portal testing with the initial data acquired for 274 Parkinson’s disease patients, 487 hemispheres, and 500 best contacts. This paper covers step 2 and some results from step 3. Results: The Internet portal has been developed in Java and tested with the available data. Functions have been developed for: (1) data input, transfer, and editing; (2) data selection for PFA generation; (3) PFA generation; (4) PFA display and interactive manipulation, and (5) target planning. The portal has been put on the Internet for public use and so far more than 100 users downloaded it. Conclusion: The Internet portal for stereotactic and functional neurosurgery with a PFA potentially increases both the accuracy of targeting and the neurosurgeon’s confidence. The portal may be useful for both experienced functional neurosurgeons who have studied numerous cases and novices in the field. The use of the PFA through this portal, and sharing and expanding its content by neurosurgeons represents a paradigm shift from manufacturer centric to community centric.