Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new measure of prognostic separation in survival data

Multivariable prognostic models are widely used in cancer and other disease areas, and have a range of applications in clinical medicine, clinical trials and allocation of health services resources. A well‐founded and reliable measure of the prognostic ability of a model would be valuable to help define the separation between patients or prognostic groups that the model could provide, and to act as a benchmark of model performance in a validation setting. We propose such a measure for models of survival data. Its motivation derives originally from the idea of separation between Kaplan–Meier curves. We define the criteria for a successful measure and discuss them with respect to our approach. Adjustments for ‘optimism’, the tendency for a model to predict better on the data on which it was derived than on new data, are suggested. We study the properties of the measure by simulation and by example in three substantial data sets. We believe that our new measure will prove useful as a tool to evaluate the separation available‐with a prognostic model. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Enhanced Outsider-anonymous Broadcast Encryption with Subset Difference Revocation

This paper puts forward an efficient broadcast encryption in public key setting employing ternary tree subset difference method for revocation. It provides outsider anonymity disabling the revoked users from getting any information of message and concealing the set of subscribed users from the revoked users. Our approach utilizes composite order bilinear group setting and exhibits significant improvement in the broadcast efficiency. The proposed scheme compares favourably over the existing similar schemes in standard model. The public key and secret key sizes are poly-logarithmic while the ciphertext size is sublinear in total number of users. Our scheme achieves selective security against chosen plaintext attack in the standard model under reasonable assumptions.
Double heterostructure GaAs/AlGaAs thin film diode lasers on glass substrates

The epitaxial liftoff approach has been attracting increasing interest as an alternative to lattice-mismatched heteroepitaxy. A thin-film GaAs double heterostructure injection diode laser fabricated on a glass substrate by the epitaxial liftoff technique is reported. This presages the integration of the two major optical communication materials, III-V semiconductor crystals with SiO/sub 2/ glass. <<ETX>>
Contingency-Constrained PMU Placement in Power Networks

In this paper, a model for the optimal placement of contingency-constrained phasor measurement units (PMUs) in electric power networks is presented. The conventional complete observability of power networks is first formulated and then, different contingency conditions in power networks including measurement losses and line outages are added to the main model. The communication constraints which would limit the maximum number of measurements associated with each installed PMU is considered as measurement limitations. The relevant formulations are also proposed to make the model more comprehensive. The IEEE standard test systems are examined for the applicability of proposed model. The comparison of presented results with those of other methods is presented which would justify the effectiveness of proposed model with regards to minimizing the total number of PMUs and the execution time. A large-scale system with 2383 buses is also analyzed to exhibit the applicability of proposed model to practical power system cases.
Developmental, metabolic and immunological costs of flea infestation in the common vole

Summary 1Parasites use resources from their hosts, which can indirectly affect a number of host functions because of trade-offs in resource allocation. In order to get a comprehensive view of the costs imposed by blood sucking parasites to their hosts, it is important to monitor multiple components of the development and physiology of parasitized hosts over long time periods. 2The effect of infestation by fleas on body mass, body length growth, haematocrit, resistance to oxidative stress, resting metabolic rate and humoral immune response were experimentally evaluated. During a 3-month period, male common voles, Microtus arvalis, were either parasitized by rat fleas (Nosopsyllus fasciatus), which are naturally occurring generalist ectoparasites of voles, or reared without fleas. Then voles were challenged twice by injecting Keyhole Limpet Haemocyanin (KLH) to assess whether the presence of fleas affects the ability of voles to produce antibodies against a novel antigen. During the immune challenge we measured the evolution of body mass, haematocrit, resistance to oxidative stress and antibody production. 3Flea infestation negatively influenced the growth of voles. Moreover, parasitized voles had reduced haematocrit, higher resting metabolic rate and lower production of antibodies against the KLH. Resistance to oxidative stress was not influenced by the presence of fleas. 4During the immune challenge with KLH, body mass decreased in both groups, while the resistance to oxidative stress remained stable. In contrast, the haematocrit decreased only in parasitized voles. 5Our experiment shows that infestation by a haematophageous parasite negatively affects multiple traits like growth, energy consumption and immune response. Fleas may severely reduce the survival probability and reproductive success of their host in natural conditions.
Effect of Loads and Other Key Factors on Oil-Transformer Ageing: Sustainability Benefits and Challenges

Transformers are one of the more expensive pieces of equipment found in a distribution network. The transformer’s role has not changed over the last decades. With simple construction and at the same time mechanically robust, they offer long term service that on average can reach half a century. Today, with the ongoing trend to supply a growing number of non-linear loads along with the notion of distributed generation (DG), a new challenge has arisen in terms of transformer sustainability, with one of the possible consequences being accelerated ageing. In this paper we carefully review the existing studies in the literature of the effect of loads and other key factors on oil-transformer ageing. The state-of-the-art is reviewed, each factor is analysed in detail, and in the end a smart transformer protection method is sought in order to monitor and protect it from upcoming challenges.
Reducing the performance gap of remote GPU virtualization with InfiniBand Connect-IB

GPU accelerators may provide great performance improvements in the context of parallel applications. However, their use in HPC clusters may also present some disadvantages such as their high cost and high power consumption. In addition, this kind of accelerators are generally underutilized. Remote GPU virtualization could be a solution to overcome these drawbacks, but its performance is usually impaired because the network bandwidth is lower than the PCIe one. In this paper we analyze how the InfiniBand Connect-IB network adapters (with performance similar to that of PCIe 3.0) reduce the overhead of remote GPU virtualization. We show that this overhead is decreased to 1.5% in terms of bandwidth, and to 0.51% in the tested application.
Synthesis of Oceanic Crustal Structure From Two‐Dimensional Seismic Profiles

We present a new synthesis of oceanic crustal structure from two‐dimensional seismic profiles to explore differences related to spreading rate and age. Primary results are as follows: (1) Layer 2 has an average thickness of 1.84 km but is thicker for young slow‐spreading crust and thinner for young superfast‐spreading crust. At faster‐spreading rates the layer 2/3 boundary likely corresponds to the lithologic boundary between dikes and gabbros. At slow‐spreading centers, the layer 2/3 boundary is interpreted to mark a change in porosity with depth within the dikes. (2) Total crustal thickness averages 6.15 km and is similar across all spreading rates. (3) Velocities at the top of layer 2 increase rapidly from 3.0 km/s at 0 Ma to 4.6 km/s at 10.5 Ma, with a slower increase to 5.0 km/s at 170 Ma. The rapid increase in velocity at young ages is attributed to crack closure by precipitation of hydrothermal alteration products; the increase at older ages suggests that this process persists as the oceanic crust evolves. (4) There is a correlation between velocities at the top of layer 2 and sediment thickness, with velocities of 5.8–5.9 km/s associated with a sediment thickness of 4.0–4.3 km. The thick sediment may collapse large‐scale features such as lava tubes and fractures. (5) Average velocities at the top of layer 3 are lower for young slow‐spreading and intermediate‐spreading oceanic crust (6.1–6.2 km/s) than for older or faster‐spreading oceanic crust (6.5–6.7 km/s). These low velocities are likely associated with faults penetrating into the sheeted dikes.
Quantitative Measurements of Wire Ablation in Tungsten  $X$-pinches at 80 kA

This paper investigates the ablation of wires in two-wire tungsten X -pinches driven by an 80-kA current over 50 ns. High-resolution imaging using a Nomarski interferometer allows measurements close to the X-pinch cross point, where the ablation ldquoflarerdquo structure is observed to clearly develop during the drive-current rise time. Electron density profiles are recovered as a function of both distance normal to the wire and of time. Results compare favorably to the rocket model of wire ablation. In addition, the density contrast over the ablation ldquostreamrdquo and ldquogaprdquo structure is measured and compared to similar measurements made using quantitative radiography on the 1-MA 250-ns MAGPIE generator at Imperial College London, London, U.K.
Spectral Nonlocal Restoration of Hyperspectral Images With Low-Rank Property

Restoration is important in preprocessing hyperspectral images (HSI) to improve their visual quality and the accuracy in target detection or classification. In this paper, we propose a new low-rank spectral nonlocal approach (LRSNL) to the simultaneous removal of a mixture of different types of noises, such as Gaussian noises, salt and pepper impulse noises, and fixed-pattern noises including stripes and dead pixel lines. The low-rank (LR) property is exploited to obtain precleaned patches, which can then be better clustered in our spectral nonlocal method (SNL). The SNL method takes both spectral and spatial information into consideration to remove mixed noises as well as preserve the fine structures of images. Experiments on both synthetic and real data demonstrate that LRSNL, although simple, is an effective approach to the restoration of HSI.
The physiological effect of a ‘climb assist’ device on vertical ladder climbing

Abstract ‘Climb assist’ claims to reduce strain when climbing ladders; however, no research has yet substantiated this. The purpose of this study was to assess the physiological and psychophysical effects of climb assist on 30 m ladder climbing at a minimum acceptable speed. Eight participants (six male and two female) climbed a 30 m ladder at 24 rungs per minute with and without climb assist, and were monitored for heart rate (HR), O2 and rate of perceived exertion (RPE). All three variables decreased significantly (p < 0.05) with climb assist with O2 decreasing by 22.5%, HR by 14.8% and RPE decreasing by a mean of 2.3 units on the 10-point Borg scale. When descending the ladder O2 decreased by a mean of 42% compared to that ascending. At the minimal acceptable climbing speed climb assist decreases the physiological strain on climbers, as demonstrated by reduced O2, HR and perceived exertion. Practitioner Summary: ‘Climb assist’ systems claim to reduce strain when climbing, however; no research has yet been published to substantiate this. A crossover study compared O2, HR and RPE at a minimal acceptable climbing speed with and without climb assist. Climb assist significantly reduced all variables confirming it reduces strain when climbing.
Accelerating Particle filter using multiscale methods

We present a method that accelerates the Particle Filter computation. Particle Filter is a powerful method for tracking the state of a target based on non-linear observations. Unlike the conventional way of calculating weights over all particles in each run, we sample a small subset of the particles using matrix decomposition methods, followed by a novel function extension algorithm to recover the density function of all particles. This significantly reduces the computational load where the measurement computation is substantial, as often happens, for example, when tracking targets in videos. We demonstrate our method on both simulated data and real data (videos).
Variability of Summer Precipitation Events Associated with Tropical Cyclones over Mid-Lower Reaches of Yangtze River Basin: Role of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation

Based on tropical cyclone (TC) track data and gridded observational rainfall data of CN05.1 during the period of 1961 to 2014, we examine the contribution of TCs on three metrics of summertime rainfall regimes and identify the connection between TC-induced precipitation events and El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in middle–lower reaches of Yangtze River Basin (MLYRB). At the regional scale, TCs are responsible for approximately 14.4%, 12.5%, and 6.9% of rainfall events for normal, 75th, and 95th percentile precipitation cases, respectively. There is no evidence of significant long-term trends of the three type events linked with TCs, while their interdecadal variability is remarkable. Fractionally, larger proportions of TC-induced events occur along southeast coastal regions of MLYRB for normal rainfall events, and they are recorded over southwest and central-east MLYRB for 95th percentile cases. Moreover, a larger contribution of 95th percentile precipitation events to summer total rainfall is found than that for 75th percentile cases, suggesting that TCs may exert stronger impacts on the upper tail of summertime precipitation distribution across MLYRB. The TC-induced normal rainfall events tend to occur more frequency over central-west MLYRB during negative phase of ENSO in summer. However, the higher likelihood of TC-induced rainfall for three defined metrics are found over the majority of areas over MLYRB during negative ENSO phase in spring. In preceding winter, La Niña episode plays a crucial role in controlling the frequency of both normal and 75th percentile precipitation events.
The Membrane Domains Occupied by Glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored Prion Protein and Thy-1 Differ in Lipid Composition*

Glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored prion protein and Thy-1, found in adjacent microdomains or “rafts” on the neuronal surface, traffic very differently and show distinctive differences in their resistance to detergent solubilization. Monovalent immunogold labeling showed that the two proteins were largely clustered in separate domains on the neuronal surface: 86% of prion protein was clustered in domains containing no Thy-1, although 40% of Thy-1 had a few molecules of prion protein associated with it. Only 1% of all clusters contained appreciable levels of both proteins (≤3 immunogold label for both). In keeping with this distribution, immunoaffinity isolation of detergent-resistant membranes (DRMs) using the non-ionic detergent Brij 96 yielded prion protein DRMs with little Thy-1, whereas Thy-1 DRMs contained ∼20% of prion protein. The lipid content of prion protein and Thy-1 DRMs was measured by quantitative nano-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. In four independent preparations, the lipid content was highly reproducible, with Thy-1 and prion protein DRMs differing markedly from each other and from the total DRM pool from which they were immunoprecipitated. Prion protein DRMs contained significantly more unsaturated, longer chain lipids than Thy-1 DRMs and had 5-fold higher levels of hexosylceramide. The different lipid compositions are in keeping with the different trafficking dynamics and solubility of the two proteins and show that, under the conditions used, DRMs can isolate individual membrane microenvironments. These results further identify unsaturation and glycosylation of lipids as major sources of diversity of raft structure.
University of Dundee Inflation and measures of the markup

Theoretical models of the markup-inflation relationship focus on the markup of price on marginal costs in contrast with empirical models that typically focus on the markup on unit costs. Using nearly 50 years of quarterly United States data we identify a negative long-run relationship between inflation and the markup of price on unit costs on the one hand and with the markup on marginal costs on the other. We find that the impact of inflation on the marginal cost markup is larger than the impact on the unit cost markup.
Characterizing FJ and KKT Conditions in Nonconvex Mathematical Programming with Applications

In this paper we analyze the Fritz John and Karush--Kuhn--Tucker (KKT) conditions for a (Gâteaux) differentiable nonconvex optimization problem with inequality constraints and a geometric constraint set. The Fritz John condition is characterized in terms of an alternative theorem which covers beyond standard situations, while characterizations of KKT conditions, without assuming constraints qualifications, are related to strong duality of a suitable linear approximation of the given problem and the properties of its associated image mapping. Such characterizations are suitable for dealing with some problems in structural optimization, where most of the known constraint qualifications fail. In particular, several examples are given showing the usefulness and optimality, in a certain sense, of our results, which provide much more information than those (including the Mordukhovich normal cone or Clarke's) appearing elsewhere. The case with a single inequality constraint is discussed in detail by establishing.
Pindolol augmentation in depressed patients resistant to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Studies of pindolol augmentation of antidepressants in major depressive disorder have produced mixed results, and data in treatment-resistant patients are limited. Here, we report on a double-blind, randomized, controlled 6-week study of pindolol augmentation of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in depressed outpatients resistant to SSRI monotherapy. METHOD Forty-two outpatients with DSM-IV major depressive disorder who had an insufficient response to an adequate trial of an SSRI (fluoxetine, paroxetine, or sertraline) were randomly assigned to pindolol, 2.5 mg t.i. d. , or sham augmentation, in addition to continued SSRI administration. For separate analysis, the control group underwent a single-blinded switch to pindolol, 2.5 mg t.i. d. , from week 4 through week 6, while the active group was continued on pindolol augmentation (hemi-crossover design). Change in Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D) score from baseline to the end of week 3 was the primary outcome measure. Data were gathered from February 1994 to August 1998. RESULTS Thirty-eight patients completed at least 1 week on protocol, with 21 and 17 randomly assigned to the pindolol and control groups, respectively. After 3 weeks on protocol, partial response rates (i.e., minimum 50% decrease from baseline in HAM-D score and maximum absolute score of 15) for the pindolol (19% [4/21]) and control (24% [4/17]) groups were comparable. At 3 weeks, the pindolol and control groups demonstrated mean +/- SD decreases in HAM-D scores of 6.5 +/- 9.8 and 9.7 +/- 7.2, respectively. There were no significant differences in antidepressant response or side effects between the 2 groups. CONCLUSION These results do not support the efficacy of pindolol in augmenting clinical response to SSRIs in treatment-resistant depressed patients.
12. Sexual dimorphism in two species of hynobiid salamanders ( Hynobius leechii and Salamandrella keyserlingii )

Sexual dimorphism is a widespread phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom and a key topic in evolutionary biology. In this study, we quantified patterns of sexual dimorphism in two hynobiid salamanders (Hynobius leechii and Salamandrella keyserlingii) from Chinese populations. Sexual size dimorphism did not occur in either species, despite differences in body shape traits. Likely related to fecundity selection, females have relatively longer trunks in both species. Female S. keyserlingii have larger heads likely due to reproductive investment and ecological selection, whereas larger forelimb and hindlimb width in male H. leechii may be related to reproductive behaviour.
Fetal abdominal subcutaneous tissue thickness measured by ultrasound at term is associated with birth weight and mode of delivery.

PURPOSE To determine if measurement of fetal abdominal subcutaneous tissue thickness (FASTT) at term can predict birth weight, mode of delivery and perinatal outcome. METHODS A prospective study with 352 normal, singleton pregnancies in the vertex presentation examined with real-time ultrasound at 37-39 weeks' gestation. RESULTS FASTT was positively correlated with birth weight (Pearson's, r = 0.784, p < 0.001). Fetuses with low FASTT were more likely to be delivered through normal vaginal delivery (7.8 +/- 0.1 mm), while higher FASTT was correlated with operative vaginal delivery (7.9 +/- 0.2 mm) and cesarean section (8.6 +/- 0.3 mm) (ANOVA, p = 0.034). In contrast, FASTT was not correlated with intrapartum CTG, labor duration and Apgar scores. CONCLUSIONS In normal pregnancies, FASTT at term is positively associated with birth weight. With increasing FASTT the likelihood of operative vaginal and cesarean delivery increases. FASTT is not associated with perinatal outcome.
Exploring a Corpus of George MacDonald’s Fiction

The Corpus-stylistic Approach: Ways and Means In recent years, many of George MacDonald’s narrative, poetic, critical and theological works have been made available in digital formats —which has opened up new possibilities for investigating these works. The aim of the present paper is to explore some of the new possibilities by approaching George MacDonald’s literary works using a quantitative method of stylistic research that has recently been termed “corpus stylistics” (Sinclair 2007; Mahlberg 2007b). This paper’s main inspiration is drawn from examples such as Stubbs’s (2005) and Mahlberg’s (2007a) corpus-stylistic analyses of works by Joseph Conrad and Charles Dickens, respectively. Corpus stylistics itself is a relatively young discipline that is based on the analysis of literature and literary style by means of tools originally developed by linguists for empirical language research. The most important of these tools are large collections of texts or parts of texts in computer-readable form (text corpora usually millions of words in size), and computer software programs tailored to efficiently analyze such large text corpora, such as WordSmith Tools version 5 (Smith 2008), which was used primarily for this paper. The research target of corpus linguistics itself is usually the quantitative analysis of particular languages or language varieties, but the existence of specific text corpora also allows for close investigation of the language of certain time periods, genres, or even authors. The application of corpus-linguistic tools, or of quantitative methods in general, to literary research questions might seem awkward. George MacDonald himself warns against making empirical methods absolute in his Unspoken Sermons (2006: 313), illustrating his point with the example of an empirical scientist who runs the risk of confusing “the facts about” a flower with what MacDonald calls “the truth of” the flower, the latter being the “idea” of a flower in the Platonic sense, compared with which the former is merely “a thing of ways and means. ” We might suspect a similar, if not even