Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stochastic Simulation of LandCover Change Using Geostatistics and Generalized Additive Models

change is important because it is the only way to evaluate the Abstract consequences of current and recent land-cover trends for the An approach to simulating land-cover change based on pairs of future fragmentation of the landscape. classified images is presented. The method conditions the Transition probability models have been used extensively simulations on three sources of information: an initial land-cover for analysis and stochastic modeling of land-use and landmap, maps of the probabilities of each possible class transition, cover change (Bell, 1974; Turner, 1987; Muller and Middleton, and a description of the spatial patterns of changes (e.g., 1994). Increasingly, these models use spatially variable transisemivariograms). The method can produce multiple simulated tion probabilities to account for the effects of exogenous variland-cover maps that honor each of these sources of information. ables on the transition process (Baker, 1989; Brown et al., The approach is demonstrated for data on forest-cover change 2000b). To estimate probabilities of land-use transition, landnear Traverse City, Michigan. The discussion describes use change is typically modeled as a function of variables extensions to the method and an approach to generating future describing (1) biophysical land quality (e.g., soils and terrain) land-cover scenarios based on socioeconomic information. and (2) location relative to jobs, markets, and amenities (Landis
The Psychosocial Well-Being of Black and White Mothers Following Marital Dissolution

This study proposed that African American cultural, social, and economic experiences would positively influence the psychosocial adjustment to marital dissolution of Black mothers as compared to White mothers. The study sample consisted of 235 Black and 662 White divorced or separated mothers from the National Survey of Families and Households. The mothers were not remarried and reported having at least one or more biological or adopted children, 18 years of age or younger, living in the home. Discriminant analysis (stepwise), after controlling for socioeconomic status and time since divorce or separation, indicated that Black mothers had higher levels of personal mastery and economic well-being and received greater formal support after divorce. Contrary to the hypotheses, White mothers received more informal support and evidenced earlier entry into dating than Black mothers. The findings document cultural variations in marital dissolution and the strengths of Black families in coping with this transition.
Exhaled breath condensate: a comprehensive update

Abstract Since the late 1990s, a surge in interest in the analysis of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) resulted in the American Thoracic Society and European Respiratory Society (ATS/ERS) organising a Task Force in 2001 to develop guidelines on EBC collection and measurement of biomarkers. This Task Force published their guidelines in 2005 based on literature and expert opinions at that time, and multiple shortcomings and knowledge deficits were also identified. The clinical application of EBC collection and its biomarkers are currently still limited by several of these knowledge gaps, hence further guidelines for standardisation are required to ensure external validity. Using related articles produced since the publication of the ATS/ERS Task Force report, this paper attempts to provide a comprehensive update to the original guideline and review the methodological shortcomings identified. This review can hopefully serve as a yardstick for future studies involving this emerging clinical tool.
Identification of patients at increased risk of first unheralded acute myocardial infarction by electron-beam computed tomography.

BACKGROUND There is a clear relationship between absolute calcium scores (CS) and severity of coronary artery disease. However, hard coronary events have been shown to occur across all ranges of CS. METHODS AND RESULTS We conducted 2 analyses: in group A, 172 patients underwent electron-beam CT (EBCT) imaging within 60 days of suffering an unheralded myocardial infarction. In group B, 632 patients screened by EBCT were followed up for a mean of 32+/-7 months for the development of acute myocardial infarction or cardiac death. The mean patient age and prevalence of coronary calcification were similar in the 2 groups (53+/-8 versus 52+/-9 years and 96% each). In group B, the annualized event rate was 0.11% for subjects with CS of 0, 2.1% for CS 1 to 99, 4.1% for CS 100 to 400, and 4.8% for CS >400, and only 7% of the patients had CS >400. However, mild, moderate, and extensive absolute CSs were distributed similarly between patients with events in both groups (34%, 35%, and 27%, respectively, in group A and 44%, 30%, and 22% in group B). In contrast, the majority of events in both groups occurred in patients with CS >75th percentile (70% in each group). CONCLUSIONS Coronary calcium is present in most patients who suffer acute coronary events. Although the event rate is greater for patients with high absolute CSs, few patients have this degree of calcification on a screening EBCT. Conversely, the majority of events occur in individuals with high CS percentiles. Hence, CS percentiles constitute a more effective screening method to stratify individuals at risk.
Depression and anxiety in a case series of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: frequency and association with clinical features

ABSTRACT Objective To investigate the frequency of anxiety and depression and their association with clinical features of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Methods This is a cross-sectional and descriptive study including a consecutive series of patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis according to Awaji’s criteria. Patients underwent clinical and psychiatric assessment (anxiety and depression symptoms). Results We included 76 patients. The men/women ratio was 1.6:1. Participants’ mean age at disease onset was 55 years (SD±12.1). Sixty-six patients (86.8%) were able to complete psychiatric evaluation. Clinically significant anxiety was found in 23 patients (34.8%) while clinically significant depression was found in 24 patients (36.4%). When we compared patients with and without depression a significant difference was seen only in the frequency of anxiety symptoms (p<0.001). We did further analysis comparing subgroups of patients classified according to the presence or not of anxiety and or depression, without any significant difference regarding sex, age at onset, initial form, disease duration or functional measures. A positive correlation between anxiety and depressive symptoms was found (p<0.001). Conclusion Anxiety and depressive symptoms were highly correlated and frequent in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In addition, anxiety and depression were not associated with disease duration and presentation, sex, age at onset, and functional score.
Design of an Adaptive Fuzzy Estimator for Force/Position Tracking in Robot Manipulators

This paper presents a stable new algorithm for force/position con- trol in robot manipulators. In this algorithm, position vectors are measured by sensors and then used in the control law. Since using force sensor has some issues such as high costs and technical problems, an approach is presented to overcome these issues. In this respect, force sensor is replaced by an adaptive fuzzy estimator to estimate the external force based on position and veloc- ity measurements. In this approach, force can be properly estimated using universal approximation property of fuzzy systems. Therefore, robots can be controlled in dierent environments even when no exact mathematical model is available. Since this approach is adaptive, accuracy of the system can be improved with time. Through a theorem the stability of the control system is analyzed using Lyapunov direct method. At last, satisfactory performances of the proposed approach are veried via some numerical simulations and the results are compared with some previous approaches.
A Synthesis of Academic Interventions for Incarcerated Adolescents

This article contains a synthesis of academic intervention studies conducted between 1970 and 2012 with adolescents who were incarcerated in residential juvenile correctional facilities. Literacy, mathematics, written expression, and multicomponent interventions were included if they measured effects on at least one academic outcome measure. Of the 16 studies synthesized, 7 studies employed an experimental or quasi-experimental design, 4 used a single-case design, and 5 used a single-group design. Because the results are restricted due to methodological limitations and a general lack of research in this area, we discuss the existing gaps in the literature and explore initial findings using these 16 studies. Results suggest the potential of implementing explicit, targeted, academic interventions that have previously shown promise with adolescents in the general school setting (e.g., peer-mediated instruction). Implications and guidance for future research regarding effective delivery of evidence-based practices for adolescents in the incarcerated setting are discussed.
Dissertation Constrained Matching of Point Clouds and Surfaces

In this thesis we are concerned with the geometric matching of shapes. We consider the local and rigid alignment of point clouds and the reconstruction of ruled surfaces from point clouds within an active shape framework. The emerging nonlinear and occasionally non-smooth optimization problems center around minimizations of the squared and unsigned distance function, respectively. Several application specific requirements impose side conditions on this optimization. The alignment of point clouds without mutual penetration reconstructs broken objects in a physical meaningful way. For an effective alignment of input data acquired at high frame rates, we constrain the registration of input shapes locally to a kinematic surface in a space-time model. We consider ruled surface approximations to compute optimal tool paths for production technologies. In particular, for cylindrical flank milling, we minimize undercut errors and stress along the cutting tool by introducing constraints. For architecture, we join multiple ruled surface patches and discuss ways to achieve smooth and visually pleasing designs.
Mining actionable behavioral rules from group data

Many security-related applications can benefit from constructing models to predict the behavior of an entity. However, such models do not provide the user with explicit knowledge that can be directly used to influence the behavior for his/her interest. This type of knowledge is called actionable knowledge. Actionability is a very important aspect of the interestingness of mined patterns. In this paper, we formally define a new problem of mining actionable behavioral rules from group data. We also propose an algorithm for solving the problem. Using terrorism group data, our experiment shows the validity of our approach as well as the practical value of our defined problem in security informatics.
Analyzing Binomial Data in a Split-Plot Design: Classical Approach or Modern Techniques?

Modeling data that are non-normally distributed with random effects is the major challenge in analyzing binomial data in split-plot designs. Seven methods for analyzing such data using mixed, generalized linear, or generalized linear mixed models are compared for the size and power of the tests. This study shows that analyzing random effects properly is more important than adjusting the analysis for non-normality. Methods based on mixed and generalized linear mixed models hold Type I error rates better than generalized linear models. Mixed model methods tend to have higher power than generalized linear mixed models when the sample size is small.
Diagnostic spirometry in primary care: Proposed standards for general practice compliant with American Thoracic Society and European Respiratory Society recommendations: a General Practice Airways Group (GPIAG)1 document, in association with the Association for Respiratory Technology & Physiology (A

Primary care spirometry services can be provided by trained primary care staff, peripatetic specialist services, or through referral to hospital-based or laboratory spirometry. The first of these options is the focus of this Standards Document. It aims to provide detailed information for clinicians, managers and healthcare commissioners on the key areas of quality required for diagnostic spirometry in primary care--including training requirements and quality assurance. These proposals and recommendations are designed to raise the standard of spirometry and respiratory diagnosis in primary care and to provide the impetus for debate, improvement and maintenance of quality for diagnostic (rather than screening) spirometry performed in primary care. This document should therefore challenge current performance and should constitute an aspirational guide for delivery of this service.
Accurate And Efficient Macromodel Of Submicron Digital Standard Cells

In this paper a new analytic gate delay modelingtechnique is presented that allows to accuratelyreproduce the timing behavior of deep submicron digitalstandard cells for a large range of operating conditions.The proposed technique sensibly improves the accuracyof the existing analytic delay models and it usuallyrequires less simulations for the cell characterization.Moreover it is compatible with the most advanced interconnectdelay models that have been recently proposed inthe literature.
SEGMENTATION , FILTERING AND CLASSIFICATION OF SAR IMAGES

Segmentation plays a key role in many image processing applications, including SAR image analysis. Given a high-quality segmentation, important tasks such as adaptive noise filtering and classification can be greatly simplified. However, the presence of a strong, multiplicative noise known as speckle makes segmentation of SAR images very difficult. A new, hybrid segmentation technique has permitted us to obtain segmentations of good quality prior to filtering. This has led us to develop a region-based version of the LMMSE speckle filter. The segmentations may further be used for the classification of raw or filtered images. In this paper we give an overview of the entire scheme, which segments, filters and classifies SAR images. Sample results on a multitemporal series of ERS-1 images of an agricultural scene are presented.
ABS-NET: Fully Decentralized Runtime Adaptation for Distributed Objects

We present a formalized, fully decentralized runtime semantics for a core subset of ABS, a language and framework for modelling distributed object-oriented systems. The semantics incorporates an abstract graph representation of a network infrastructure, with network endpoints represented as graph nodes, and links as arcs with buffers, corresponding to OSI layer 2 interconnects. The key problem we wish to address is how to allocate computational tasks to nodes so that certain performance objectives are met. To this end, we use the semantics as a foundation for performing networkadaptive task execution via object migration between nodes. Adaptability is analyzed in terms of three Quality of Service objectives: node load, arc load and message latency. We have implemented the key parts of our semantics in a simulator and evaluated how well objectives are achieved for some application-relevant choices of network topology, migration procedure and ABS program. The evaluation suggests that it is feasible in a decentralized setting to continually meet both the objective of a node-balanced task allocation and make headway towards minimizing communication, and thus arc load and message latency.
A Unified Model of Trust in E-commerce Relationship Development

Online trust is one of the key obstacles to vendors succeeding on the internet medium; a lack of trust is likely to discourage online consumers from participating in e-commerce. Previous study most have investigated only a component of e-commerce (e.g., initial adoption or continuance), but neglected the role of good relations with the consumer in ensuring a successful sustained relationship. Therefore, a model that went beyond intention and included key relational concepts (satisfaction, loyalty, etc.) was developed. Trust and its components are a major part of this model, which was based on strong theoretical foundations. Ten hypotheses were formulated. Data on the constructs were collected from 350 respondents and analyzed using lisrel 8.7 to test model validity and the hypotheses. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.
Emergence of Young Children’s Presentational Self in Daily Conversation and Its Semiotic Foundation

In this article, I take a relational and discursive perspective on young children’s self observed in daily natural conversations, and consider the process of semiotic mediation in the observer’s recognition. Based on the ideas of co-construction of relationships and identities in conversation, and using excerpts of dialogues between a young child and her mother that deal with the child’s experiences at daycare center (hoikuen in Japan) recorded during their car rides, I present how the self of young children in relation to others appears to observers. I regard this genre of self – ‘presentational self’ – as a kind of Gestalt quality appearing in the act of positioning and in the configuration of the child and others presented through the conversation. As a basis of this process, I will discuss the semiotically mediated process of differentiation in 2 aspects of the conversation: first, in the process of conversation when the children and the partners make further extensions of what is shared, and second, in the array of self and others as exposed in the conversation.
Measuring the discernability of virtual objects in conventional and stylized augmented reality

In augmented reality, virtual graphical objects are overlaid over the real environment of the observer. Conventional augmented reality systems normally use standard real-time rendering methods for generating the graphical representations of virtual objects. These renderings contain the typical artifacts of computer generated graphics, e.g., aliasing caused by the rasterization process and unrealistic, manually configured illumination models. Due to these artifacts, virtual objects look artifical and can easily be distinguished from the real environment. A different approach to generating augmented reality images is the basis of stylized augmented reality [FBS05c]. Here, similar types of artistic or illustrative stylization are applied to the virtual objects and the camera image of the real enviroment. Therefore, real and virtual image elements look significantly more similar and are less distinguishable from each other. In this paper, we present the results of a psychophysical study on the effectiveness of stylized augmented reality. In this study, a number of participants were asked to decide whether objects shown in images of augmented reality scenes are virtual or real. Conventionally rendered as well as stylized augmented reality images and short video clips were presented to the participants. The correctness of the participants' responses and their reaction times were recorded. The results of our study show that an equalized level of realism is achieved by using stylized augmented reality, i.e., that it is significantly more difficult to distinguish virtual objects from real objects.
Modeling the Influence of Thematic Fit (and Other Constraints) in On-line Sentence Comprehension

The time-course with which readers use event-specific world knowledge (thematic fit) to resolve structural ambiguity was explored through experiments and implementation of constraint-based and two-stage models. In a norming study, subjects completed fragments that ended in the ambiguous region of a reduced relative clause (The crook arrested/by/the/detective). Completion proportions up to and includingthewere influenced by thematic fit. The results were simulated using a competition model in which independently quantified syntactic and semantic constraints simultaneously influenced interpretation. Predictions were then generated for a self-paced reading task using model parameter values established by the off-line simulations. The pattern of reading times matched the predictions of the constraint-based version of the model but differed substantially from a one-region delay garden-path version. In addition, a garden-path model with a very short delay simulated the data better than the one-region delay model, but not as closely as the constraint-based version. The experiment and modeling illustrate that thematic fit is computed and used immediately in on-line sentence comprehension. Furthermore, the modeling highlighted the difficulty of interpreting sentence comprehension experiments without both quantifying the relevant constraints and implementing the mechanisms involved.
Resolution-Based Model Construction for PLTL

With tableaux-based reasoning approaches or model checking techniques for propositional linear-time temporal logics, PLTL, it is easily possible to construct counter examples for formulae that are not valid. In contrast, only the information that a formula is satisfiable is usually available in resolution-based inference systems. In this paper we present a resolution-based approach for constructing models for satisfiable PLTL formulae. Our approach is based on using the standard model construction for sets of propositional clauses saturated under ordered resolution in the different time points of a temporal model. The temporal model construction procedure is also designed in such a way that it can be easily implemented in existing theorem rovers for PLTL.
Changing Patterns of Euroscepticism in Cyprus: European Discourse in a Divided Polity and Society

This article aims to map the extent and the causality of party and popular Cypriot euroscepticism. It traces the latter's changing patterns at both the elite and popular levels and analyses contextual factors and idiosyncratic features in a divided polity and society. It concludes that key turning points are definitely linked to the country's political problem. Party-based euroscepticism displays both strategic and ideological characteristics. Parallel to soft euroscepticism, an economic and policy-based euroscepticism has emerged, displaying a shift from nested to mainstream euroscepticism.
Interaction of Local Anesthetics with Biomembranes Consisting of Phospholipids and Cholesterol: Mechanistic and Clinical Implications for Anesthetic and Cardiotoxic Effects

Despite a long history in medical and dental application, the molecular mechanism and precise site of action are still arguable for local anesthetics. Their effects are considered to be induced by acting on functional proteins, on membrane lipids, or on both. Local anesthetics primarily interact with sodium channels embedded in cell membranes to reduce the excitability of nerve cells and cardiomyocytes or produce a malfunction of the cardiovascular system. However, the membrane protein-interacting theory cannot explain all of the pharmacological and toxicological features of local anesthetics. The administered drug molecules must diffuse through the lipid barriers of nerve sheaths and penetrate into or across the lipid bilayers of cell membranes to reach the acting site on transmembrane proteins. Amphiphilic local anesthetics interact hydrophobically and electrostatically with lipid bilayers and modify their physicochemical property, with the direct inhibition of membrane functions, and with the resultant alteration of the membrane lipid environments surrounding transmembrane proteins and the subsequent protein conformational change, leading to the inhibition of channel functions. We review recent studies on the interaction of local anesthetics with biomembranes consisting of phospholipids and cholesterol. Understanding the membrane interactivity of local anesthetics would provide novel insights into their anesthetic and cardiotoxic effects.