Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Condorcet's Jury Theorem for Consensus Clustering and its Implications for Diversity

Condorcet's Jury Theorem has been invoked for ensemble classifiers to indicate that the combination of many classifiers can have better predictive performance than a single classifier. Such a theoretical underpinning is unknown for consensus clustering. This article extends Condorcet's Jury Theorem to the mean partition approach under the additional assumptions that a unique ground-truth partition exists and sample partitions are drawn from a sufficiently small ball containing the ground-truth. As an implication of practical relevance, we question the claim that the quality of consensus clustering depends on the diversity of the sample partitions. Instead, we conjecture that limiting the diversity of the mean partitions is necessary for controlling the quality.
Phototesting with a divergent UVB beam in the investigation of anti‐inflammatory effects of topically applied substances

Background: Phototesting based on a single exposure to a divergent ultraviolet B (UVB) beam with radially decreasing UVB doses can be used to determine an individual's minimal erythema dose (MED). Laser Doppler perfusion imaging (LDPI) data can be combined with dosimetry data to produce objective dose–response plots in addition to the MED. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the divergent beam protocol could be used to demonstrate and quantify the anti‐inflammatory effects of clobetasol diproprionate (Dermovate®), pharmaceutical‐grade acetone and a gel vehicle, applied after skin provocation by UVB.
Towards Automatic Classification of EU Projects for Supporting Open Fiscal Data Analysis

The European union funding for job creation and a sustainable and healthy EU economy and environment is channelled through the five EU structural and investment funds. Although there is EU categorization system for EU projects, EU countries apply their own different categorization systems. Some EU countries already apply European categorization system, but many do not. As a result, many projects in available datasets are not categorized using the European categorization system which hinders straightforward fiscal analyses. The long-term goal of this work is to support an open fiscal data analysis by an automatic classification of EU projects using a machine learning classifier.
Tests of a planar L-band orthomode transducer in circular waveguide

This note describes tests made of a planar L-band orthomode transducer consisting of four probes symmetrically arranged in a circular waveguide and two wideband baluns, made from back-to-back slotline-to-microstrip transitions. We designed this device to model at large scale (>50:1) the performance of a compact millimeter wave transducer for use in an astronomical receiver where probes and baluns are microfabricated with SiON thin-film dielectric deposited on a quartz substrate. In the L-band model, probes and baluns are printed on 0.010-in. -thick Duroid 6006, mounted on a 0.25-in. -thick piece of fiberglass and placed flush against the waveguide. Each pair of opposite probes is coupled through a balun to a 50 Ω microstrip output. Measurements show that, from 1.2 to 1.9 GHz, the orthomode transducer has an output return loss less than −18 dB and cross polarization less than −35 dB. It should be possible to scale this design to cover bands of high atmospheric transparency at 100, 230, or 345 GHz.
The monophasic action potential upstroke: a means of characterizing local conduction.

The upstrokes of monophasic action potentials (MAPs) recorded with an extracellular pressure electrode were characterized in isolated canine tissue preparations in vitro. The characteristics of the MAP upstroke were compared with those of the local action potential foot as well as with the characteristics of approaching electrical activation during uniform and asynchronous conduction. The upstroke of the MAP was exponential during uniform conduction. The time constant of rise of the MAP upstroke (TMAP) correlated with that of the action potential foot (Tfoot): TMAP + 1.01 Tfoot + 0.50; r2 = . 80. Furthermore, changes in Tfoot with alterations in cycle length were associated with similar changes in TMAP: Tfoot = 1.06 TMAP - 0.11; r2 = . 78. In addition, TMAP and Tfoot both deviated from exponential during asynchronous activation; the inflections that developed in the MAP upstroke correlated in time with intracellular action potential upstrokes that were asynchronous in onset in these tissues. Finally, the field of view of the MAP was determined and was found to be dependent in part on tissue architecture and the space constant. Specifically, the field of view of the MAP was found to be greater parallel compared with transverse to fiber orientation (6.02 +/- 1.74 vs 3.03 +/- 1.10 mm; p less than .01). These data suggest that the MAP upstroke may be used to define and characterize local electrical activation. The relatively large field of view of the MAP suggests that this technique may be a sensitive means to record focal membrane phenomena in vivo.
Design and verification of peripheral control circuits in Esterel

We present a case study showing how an existing concurrent programming language can be used to produce either efficient control‐oriented circuits or embedded software from the same description. This description is also amenable to fully automatic formal verification and can be used to produce pairs of reconfigurable components which can be dynamically scheduled into either hardware or software resources. By using an existing concurrent language we increase the productivity because we can make use of readily available tools for debugging, analysis and verification. We believe that a language and a system that generates good software and hardware is a promising starting point for helping mainstream software developers target future manycore systems which will comprise a mixture of software and hardware components as well as provide a valuable technique for producing interchangeable reconfigurable components for run‐time reconfigurable FPGAs. Copyright © 2007 S. Singh. [Correction made here after initial online publication]
Improved Glycemic Control Without Hypoglycemia in Elderly Diabetic Patients Using the Ubiquitous Healthcare Service, a New Medical Information System

OBJECTIVE To improve quality and efficiency of care for elderly patients with type 2 diabetes, we introduced elderly-friendly strategies to the clinical decision support system (CDSS)-based ubiquitous healthcare (u-healthcare) service, which is an individualized health management system using advanced medical information technology. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted a 6-month randomized, controlled clinical trial involving 144 patients aged >60 years. Participants were randomly assigned to receive routine care (control, n = 48), to the self-monitored blood glucose (SMBG, n = 47) group, or to the u-healthcare group (n = 49). The primary end point was the proportion of patients achieving A1C <7% without hypoglycemia at 6 months. U-healthcare system refers to an individualized medical service in which medical instructions are given through the patient’s mobile phone. Patients receive a glucometer with a public switched telephone network-connected cradle that automatically transfers test results to a hospital-based server. Once the data are transferred to the server, an automated system, the CDSS rule engine, generates and sends patient-specific messages by mobile phone. RESULTS After 6 months of follow-up, the mean A1C level was significantly decreased from 7.8 ± 1.3% to 7.4 ± 1.0% (P < 0.001) in the u-healthcare group and from 7.9 ± 1.0% to 7.7 ± 1.0% (P = 0.020) in the SMBG group, compared with 7.9 ± 0.8% to 7.8 ± 1.0% (P = 0.274) in the control group. The proportion of patients with A1C <7% without hypoglycemia was 30.6% in the u-healthcare group, 23.4% in the SMBG group (23.4%), and 14.0% in the control group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The CDSS-based u-healthcare service achieved better glycemic control with less hypoglycemia than SMBG and routine care and may provide effective and safe diabetes management in the elderly diabetic patients.
Real-time optimizations for integrated smart network camera

We present an integrated real-time smart network camera. This system is composed of an image sensor, an embedded PC based electronic card for image processing and some network capabilities. The application detects events of interest in visual scenes, highlights alarms and computes statistics. The system also produces meta-data information that could be shared between other cameras in a network. We describe the requirements of such a system and then show how the design of the system is optimized to process and compress video in real-time. Indeed, typical video-surveillance algorithms as background differencing, tracking and event detection should be highly optimized and simplified to be used in this hardware. To have a good adequation between hardware and software in this light embedded system, the software management is written on top of the java based middle-ware specification established by the OSGi alliance. We can integrate easily software and hardware in complex environments thanks to the Java Real-Time specification for the virtual machine and some network and service oriented java specifications (like RMI and Jini). Finally, we will report some outcomes and typical case studies of such a camera like counter-flow detection.
ECM — A Novel On-line, Evolving Clustering Method and Its Applications

In this paper, an on-line, dynamic clustering method — ECM, Evolving Clustering Method, is proposed. The ECM is usually used for on-line systems, in which it performs an one-pass, maximum distance-based clustering process without any optimisation. The ECM can also be applied to off-line problems where a constrained minimisation is introduced.
Using document-based databases for medical information systems in unreliable environments

Healthcare and crisis management are pervaded by the usage of Information Systems (IS). Virtually all IS rely on data storage. Despite the document-oriented nature of medical datasets, the prevailing kind of database used are relational (RDBMS) ones. In order to find a more adequate solution in a development project for a patient-registry, we evaluated a document-based database incorporated into the data storage layer of a system. To foster the understanding of this technology, we present the background of form-originated data storage in healthcare, introduce document-based databases, and describe our scenario. Based on our findings, we generalize the results with a focus on crisis management. We found that document-based databases such as CouchDB are well-suited for IS in medical contexts and might be a feasible option for the future implementation of systems in various fields of healthcare, crisis response, and medical research
Transparency of Hybrid Films Based on (γ-Methacrylpropyl)- Trimethoxysilane and its Validation by Computing Energy-Band Structure

Using (γ-methacrylpropyl)-trimethoxysilane (MPMS) modified with various amounts of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and titanium tetrabutoxide (TTB), two kinds of hybrid films, film-MPMS-silsesquioxane (SSO)-TEOS (f-MSTE) and film-MPMS-SSO-TTB (f-MSTT), were prepared. The average transparency (AT) of the modified films, about 90-94%, was measured in the ranges of the VIS light region (400-750 nm) and in the NIR region (750-2500 nm), indicating that these high-AT films can provide crops with growth energy and improvement of the photosynthetic process efficiency. Both TEOS and TTB adequate additions resulted in a hybrid structure (containing SiO2 and TiO2), and an addition can cause an increase in the AT radiation from sunlight. However, the AT of f-MSTE is higher than that of f-MSTT, which was validated using molecular dynamic simulation and calculation of the states density and the energy-band structure of MPMS-SSO, SiO2 and TiO2 building blocks.
Evaluation of case depth on steels by Barkhausen noise measurement

Abstract Use of eddy currents to measure the depth of surface modified layers inferromagnetic materials has been the subject of numerous studies. This technique, however, is limited by surface permeability which considerably reduces skin depth value. The Barkhausen noise technique, used to evaluate residual stresses, has also been used to evaluate case depth in carburised steels (AISI 8620 and 9310) and ion nitrided tool steels (AISI P20, D2, and H13). A method employing digital signal processing, which includes afast Fourier transform, has been applied at frequencies rangingfrom 0 to 200 kHz. Experiments show good correlation between magnetic Barkhausen noise and hardening depth values between 100 and 1000 μm for carburised steels, and between 25 and 200 μm for nitrided steels.MST/2021
VNF modeling towards the cloud-RAN implementation

We address in this paper the problem of modeling Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) in order to devise execution principles. We specifically represent a VNF as a chain of sub-functions or micro-services and investigate its processing on a multi-core platform. Instead of reserving dedicated resources to a VNF, we specifically examine the gain that can be obtained by resource pooling, namely a pool of cores which is shared by active VNFs. The driving use case of this study is the virtualization and the cloudification of Radio Access Network functions, in particular Base Band Unit (BBU) functions. We validate this approach by simulation and show that an adequate threading model can reduce the VNF runtime. Obtained results open the door towards the Cloud-RAN implementation since some BBU tasks might be hosted in geographically distant data centers.
Participation of the TRPV1 receptor in the development of acute gout attacks.

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to investigate the participation of TRPV1 in an acute gout attack model. METHODS Experiments were conducted to evaluate the participation of TRPV1 in the nociceptive and inflammatory responses (oedema, plasma extravasation, leucocyte infiltration and also IL-1β production) triggered by IA (ankle) administration of monosodium urate (MSU) in rats using selective antagonist TRPV1 receptor, defunctionalization of sensory fibres and increased immunoreactivity. We have also analysed the inflammatory response. The participation of mast cells in the MSU-induced nociception and inflammation was evaluated using a mast cell stabilizer and a mast cell degranulator compound. RESULTS We observed that MSU (1.25 mg/site) injected into the rat ankle joint elicited ongoing pain-like behaviour, hyperalgesia, allodynia and articular oedema as well as plasma extravasation, leucocyte infiltration and IL-1β production in lavage fluid. All of these events were inhibited by the co-administration of the selective TRPV1 receptor antagonist SB366791 (10 nmol/site). MSU crystals also increased the immunoreactivity of the TRPV1 receptor in the articular tissue of injected animals. Furthermore, the defunctionalization of TRPV1-positive sensory neurons also significantly reduced MSU-induced ongoing pain-like behaviour, hyperalgesia and oedema. CONCLUSION Thus we demonstrate that TRPV1 acts on sensory neurons and plays a relevant role in the nociception and inflammation induced by IA MSU, indicating it as a potential target to treat acute gout attacks.
Characterization of the gene for a 30-kilodalton adhesion-related protein of Mycoplasma pneumoniae

A previously identified trypsin-resistant surface protein of Mycoplasma pneumoniae clusters at the tip organelle of virulent mycoplasmas and appears to be essential for cytadherence and virulence. Monoclonal antibodies generated against this protein were used to identify positive recombinant clones from M. pneumoniae genomic DNA libraries. The structural gene was sequenced and contained an open reading frame of 825 nucleotides that encoded a protein of 275 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 29,743 Da. This protein (P30) contained three types of repeat sequences at the carboxy end, each consisting of six amino acids. In addition, the protein was proline rich (20.7%) and exhibited significant amino acid homology with the P1 cytadhesin of M. pneumoniae and with several matrix-associated eucaryotic proteins.
Frequency-Hiding Order-Preserving Encryption

Order-preserving encryption allows encrypting data, while still enabling efficient range queries on the encrypted data. This makes its performance and functionality very suitable for data outsourcing in cloud computing scenarios, but the security of order-preserving is still debatable. We present a scheme that achieves a strictly stronger notion of security than any other scheme so far. The basic idea is to randomize the ciphertexts to hide the frequency of plaintexts. Still, the client storage size remains small, in our experiments up to 1/15 of the plaintext size. As a result, one can more securely outsource large data sets, since we can also show that our security increases with larger data sets.
Current status of sapphire dome production

Sapphire is an ideal choice for the transparent dome element in higher speed missile systems because of its high transmission, high strength, and thermal shock resistance. Sapphire domes for various missile systems are being produced but fabrication technology development is required for cost reduction and improved performance. Major costs of dome production are in fabrication. It has been shown that grinding to near-finished size is important to reduce fabrication costs and improve quality of finished domes. With this approach, optical distortion problems related to the anisotropic properties and subsurface damage can be minimized. Subsurface damage has been shown to reduce sapphire's strength. The depth of subsurface damage has been quantified and it has been shown that room temperature strength can be increased with a post-polish heat treatment.
Contact Trees: Network Visualization beyond Nodes and Edges

Node-Link diagrams make it possible to take a quick glance at how nodes (or actors) in a network are connected by edges (or ties). A conventional network diagram of a “contact tree” maps out a root and branches that represent the structure of nodes and edges, often without further specifying leaves or fruits that would have grown from small branches. By furnishing such a network structure with leaves and fruits, we reveal details about “contacts” in our ContactTrees upon which ties and relationships are constructed. Our elegant design employs a bottom-up approach that resembles a recent attempt to understand subjective well-being by means of a series of emotions. Such a bottom-up approach to social-network studies decomposes each tie into a series of interactions or contacts, which can help deepen our understanding of the complexity embedded in a network structure. Unlike previous network visualizations, ContactTrees highlight how relationships form and change based upon interactions among actors, as well as how relationships and networks vary by contact attributes. Based on a botanical tree metaphor, the design is easy to construct and the resulting tree-like visualization can display many properties at both tie and contact levels, thus recapturing a key ingredient missing from conventional techniques of network visualization. We demonstrate ContactTrees using data sets consisting of up to three waves of 3-month contact diaries over the 2004-2012 period, and discuss how this design can be applied to other types of datasets.
3. The Foundations of Causal Inference

This paper reviews recent advances in the foundations of causal inference and introduces a systematic methodology for defining, estimating, and testing causal claims in experimental and observational studies. It is based on nonparametric structural equation models (SEM)—a natural generalization of those usedby econometricians and social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s, which provides a coherent mathematical foundation for the analysis of causes and counterfactuals. In particular, the paper surveys the development of mathematical tools for inferring the effects of potential interventions (also called “causal effects” or “policy evaluation”), as well as direct and indirect effects (also known as “mediation”), in both linear and nonlinear systems. Finally, the paper clarifies the role of propensity score matching in causal analysis, defines the relationships between the structural and potential-outcome frameworks, and develops symbiotic tools that use the strong features of both.
3.1 Linear Programming Duality

In the previous few lectures we have seen examples of LP-rounding, a method for obtaining approximation algorithms that involves solving a linear programming relaxation of the problem at hand and rounding the solution. In the last lecture we also discussed the basic theory of LP-duality. Today we will apply this theory to obtain a second LP-based technique for obtaining approximation algorithms — the primal-dual method. This technique has the advantage that it circumvents the need to actually solve an LP relaxation, leading to efficient algorithms that are purely combinatorial. We will apply this technique to the Vertex Cover and Steiner Forest problems. The primal-dual method in the context of approximation algorithms was first used by Goemans and Williamson [1].
Multiscale Amplitude-Modulation Frequency-Modulation (AM–FM) Texture Analysis of Ultrasound Images of the Intima and Media Layers of the Carotid Artery

The intima-media thickness (IMT) of the common carotid artery (CCA) is widely used as an early indicator of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Clinically, there is strong interest in identifying how the composition and texture of the media layer (ML) can be associated with the risk of stroke. In this study, we use 2-D amplitude-modulation frequency-modulation (AM-FM) analysis of the intima-media complex (IMC), the ML, and intima layer (IL) of the CCA to detect texture changes as a function of age and sex. The study was performed on 100 ultrasound images acquired from asymptomatic subjects at risk of atherosclerosis. To investigate texture variations associated with age, we separated them into three age groups: 1) patients younger than 50; 2) patients aged between 50 and 60 years old; and 3) patients over 60 years old. We also separated the patients by sex. The IMC, ML, and IL were segmented manually by a neurovascular expert and also by a snake-based segmentation system. To reject strong edge artifacts, we prefilter with an AM-FM filterbank that is centered along the horizontal frequency axis (parallel to the long axis of the IMC, ML, and IL), while removing the low-pass filter estimates and frequency bands with large, vertical frequency components. To investigate significant texture changes, we extract the instantaneous amplitude (IA) and the magnitude of the instantaneous frequency (IF) over each layer component, for low-, medium-, and high-frequency AM-FM components. We detected significant texture differences between the higher risk age group of >;60 years versus the lower risk age group of <;50 and the 50-60 group. In particular, between the <;50 and >;60 groups, we found significant differences in the medium-scale IA extracted from the IMC. Between the >;60 and the 50-60 groups, we found significant texture changes in the low scale IA and high-scale IF magnitude extracted from the IMC, and the low-scale IA extracted from the IL. Also, we noted that the IA for the ML showed significant differences between males and females for all age groups. The AM-FM features provide complimentary information to classical texture analysis features like the gray-scale median, contrast, and coarseness. These findings provide evidence that AM-FM texture features can be associated with the progression of cardiovascular risk for disease and the risk of stroke with age. However, a larger scale study is needed to establish the application in clinical practice.