Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Exploiting Small-World Usage Patterns in File-Sharing Communities

We showed previously that the graph obtained by connecting users with similar data interests has small-world properties. We conjectured then that observing these properties is important not only for system description and modeling, but also for designing mechanisms. In this paper we present a set of mechanisms that exploit the small-world patterns for delivering increased performance. We propose an overlay construction algorithm that mirrors the interest similarity of data consumers and a technique to identify clusters of users with similar interests. To appreciate the benefits of these components in a real context, we take file location as a case study: we show how these components can be used to build a file-location mechanism and evaluate its performance.
Design of Serially-Concatenated LDGM Coded MIMO Systems

Serially-concatenated low-density generator matrix (SCLDGM) codes are an attractive scheme to approach the capacity of single input single output (SISO) channels due to the low computational cost of the encoding and decoding procedures. In this paper we investigate the design of SCLDGM codes for the spatial multiplexing over multiple input multiple output (MIMO) wireless communication channels. SCLDGM codes are constructed using an optimization procedure based on tracking the decoding behaviour of the sum-product algorithm (SPA) using extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions. We present results for different antenna configurations, showing that the optimized SCLDGM codes exhibit better performance than standard low density parity check (LDPC) codes with similar encoding complexity
Case Studies on the Implementation of Knowledge Management in the Distribution Industry: Worldpeace and Alltek

A hot topic, knowledge management (KM) is enthusiastically discussed and implemented in high-tech and software industries, as it is the basis for competitive advantage. We have heretofore neglect whether KM is suitable for implementing in other industries. In this article, two cases from the distribution industry, Worldpeace and Alltek, were studied to illustrate how KM is implemented and increases the firms' competitive advantage. We analyze the implementation of KM in terms of knowledge creation, storage/retrieval, transfer and application. As distributors, these firms have to learn and change faster than designers and manufacturers. The findings point out that not only the upstream and downstream firms in IC industry have to implement KM, but also the midstream firms could benefit, as they face the rapidly changing technologies of upstream firms and the different and changing requirements of downstream customers. Moreover, some insights from these case studies and the enabling roles of KM processes are presented in the discussion section of the paper.
Interpreting Neural Population Activity During Feedback Motor Control

The motor system routinely generates a multitude of fast, accurate, and elegant movements. In large part, this capacity is enabled by closed-loop feedback control systems in the brain. Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), which translate neural activity into control signals for driving prosthetic devices, also engage the brain’s feedback control systems and offer a promising experimental paradigm for studying the neural basis of feedback motor control. Here, we address both the engineering challenges facing current BMI systems and the basic science opportunities afforded by them. Previous studies have demonstrated reliable control of the direction of movement in cursorbased BMI systems. However, control of movement speed has been notably deficient. We provide an explanation for these observed difficulties based on neurophysiological studies of arm reaching. These findings inspired our design of a novel BMI decoding algorithm, the speeddampening Kalman filter (SDKF) that automatically slows the cursor upon detecting changes in decoded movement direction. SDKF improved success rates by a factor of 1.7 relative to a standard Kalman filter in a closed-loop BMI task requiring stable stops at targets. Next, we transition toward leveraging the BMI paradigm for basic scientific studies of feedback motor control. It is widely believed that the brain employs internal models to describe our prior beliefs about how an effector responds to motor commands. We developed a statistical framework for extracting a subject’s internal model from neural population activity. We discovered that a mismatch between the actual BMI and the subjects internal model of the BMI explains roughly 65% of movement errors. We also show that this internal model mismatch limits movement speed dynamic range and may contribute toward the aforementioned known difficulties in control of BMI movement speed.
Poster Abstract: Improving Occupancy Presence Prediction via Multi-Label Classification

An opportunity exits to reduce energy waste by improving the scheduling of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) based on occupancy. However, to enable this potential requires more accurate methods for predicting occupancy. This poster abstract motivates the use of multi-label classification (MLC) for predicting whether or not rooms are occupied based on data from motion sensors. Our implemented algorithms are benchmarked on a dataset from a commercial building in comparison to existing work. By presenting more accurate algorithms for occupancy prediction, we hope to foster the development of more energy-efficient HVAC scheduling systems to reduce overall energy consumption.
Comorbidities in Severe Asthma: Frequency of Rhinitis, Nasal Polyposis, Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, Vocal Cord Dysfunction and Bronchiectasis

OBJECTIVES Severe asthma is found in approximately 10% of patients with asthma. Some factors associated with worse asthma control include rhinitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, vocal cord dysfunction (VCD), nasal polyposis and bronchiectasis. Therefore, we evaluated the prevalence of these illnesses in patients with severe asthma. METHODS We conducted a retrospective analysis of data obtained from electronic medical records of patients with severe asthma between January 2006 and June 2008. Symptoms of rhinitis and gastroesophageal reflux disease were evaluated as well as intolerance to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. We evaluated the results of esophagogastroduodenoscopy, videolaryngoscopy and CT scans of the chest in order to confirm gastroesophageal reflux disease, nasal polyposis, vocal cord dysfunction and bronchiectasis. RESULTS We evaluated 245 patients. Rhinitis symptoms were present in 224 patients (91.4%); 18 (7.3%) had intolerance to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and 8 (3.3%) had nasal polyposis. Symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease were reported for 173 (70.6%) patients, although the diagnosis of gastroesophageal reflux disease was confirmed based on esophagogastroduodenoscopy or laryngoscopy findings in just 58 (33.6%) patients. Vocal cord dysfunction was suspected in 16 (6.5%) and confirmed through laryngoscopy in 4 (1.6%). The patient records provided CT scans of the chest for 105 patients, and 26 (24.8%) showed bronchiectasis. DISCUSSION Rhinitis and gastroesophageal reflux disease were the most common comorbidities observed, in addition to bronchiectasis. Therefore, in patients with severe asthma, associated diseases should be investigated as the cause of respiratory symptoms and uncontrolled asthma.
A Robust Procedure to Eliminate Degenerate Faces from Triangle Meshes

When using triangle meshes in numerical simulations or other sophisticated downstream applications, we have to guarantee that no degenerate faces are present since they have, e.g., no well defined normal vectors. In this paper we present a simple but effective algorithm to remove such artifacts from a given triangle mesh. The central problem is to make this algorithm numerically robust because degenerate triangles are usually the source for all kinds of numerical instabilities. Our algorithm is based on a slicing technique that cuts a set of planes through the given polygonal model. The mesh slicing operator only uses numerically stable predicates and therefore is able to split faces in a controlled manner. In combination with a custom tailored mesh decimation scheme we are able to remove the degenerate faces from meshes like those typically generated by tesselation units in CAD systems.
Virtual reality exposure in the treatment of panic disorder and agoraphobia: A controlled study

The main goal of this study was to offer data about the efficacy of virtual reality exposure (VRE) in the treatment of panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PDA). The study was a between-subject design with three experimental conditions (VRE group, in vivo exposure [IVE] group and waiting-list [WL] group) and repeated measures (pre-treatment, post treatment and 12 month follow-up). The treatment programmes lasted 9 weekly sessions. Thirty-seven patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for PDA participated in this study. The improvement achieved using virtual exposure was superior to a WL condition and similar to that achieved using IVE. Our results support the efficacy of VRE in the treatment of PDA at short and long term. The advantages of VRE for the treatment of PDA regarding cost-benefit issues are described. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Relaxing Orthogonality Assumption in Conceptual Text Document Similarity

By reflecting the degree of proximity or remoteness of documents, similarity measure plays the key role in text analytics. Traditional measures, e.g. cosine similarity, assume that documents are represented in an orthogonal space formed by words as dimensions. Words are considered independent from each other and document similarity is computed based on lexical overlap. This assumption is also made in the bag of concepts representation of documents while the space is formed by concepts. This paper proposes new semantic similarity measures without relying on the orthogonality assumption. By employing Wikipedia as an external resource, we introduce five similarity measures using concept-concept relatedness. Experimental results on real text datasets reveal that eliminating the orthogonality assumption improves the quality of text clustering algorithms.
Frequency of Streptococcus pneumoniae infection in patients with suspected meningitis in Imam Reza Hospital of Kermanshah in the west of Iran

Background and Objectives: Streptococcus pneumoniae is the main causative agent of acute bacterial meningitis in the world. This study aimed to detect pneumoniae infection in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples of patients with suspected meningitis. Materials and Methods: In this study, 200 CSF samples in patients with suspected meningitis and with negative bacterial cultures were tested. Demographic data of patients and the laboratory analysis of CSF samples were also collected in a questionnaire. Pneumococcal capsular gene spn9802 was examined by real-time PCR technique. Results: Of 200 CSF samples from patients with the average age of 32.1±25.3 year old, 20 were positive for S. pneumoniae in patients with the average age of 35.05±24.6. The biochemical and cytological analysis of positive samples showed significant changes, including, 39.7 mg/DL protein, 46.2 mg/DL glucose and 1173 white blood cells per microliter of CSF on average. Conclusion: The results of this study showed the significant pneumococcal infection in culture negative CSF samples. The majority of this infection occurred in middle-aged patients and with a higher incidence rate in the winter. It seems that the traditional methods of cultivation are not sensitive enough to detect this bacterium in CSF. Alternatively, the molecular techniques such a real-time seem to be accurate, sensitive and rapid for the detection of this agent in CSF. The cytological and biochemical findings of CSF can provide valuable clues in the diagnosis of bacterial meningitis.
Modeling, Analysis and Improvement for BitTorrent-Like File Sharing Networks

In this paper, a simple mathematical model is presented for studying the performance of the BitTorrent (1) file sharing system. We are especially interested in the distribution of the peers with different states of the download job completedness. With the model we find that in the stable state the distribution of the download peers follows a U-shaped curve, and the parameters such as the departure rate of the seeds and the abort rate of the download peers will influence the peer distribution in different ways notably. We also analyze the file availability and the dying process of the BitTorrent file sharing system. We find that the system's stability deteriorates with the clustering of the peers, and BitTorrent's built-in "tit-for-tat" unchoking strategy could not help to preserve the integrity of the file among the download peers when the size of the community is small. An innovative peer selection strategy which enables more peers to finish the download job and prolongs the system's lifetime is proposed, in which the peers cooperate to improve the stability of the system by making a tradeoff between the current download rate and the future service availability. Finally, experimental results are presented to validate our analysis and findings.
Does vitamin C or its combination with vitamin E improve radial artery endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in patients awaiting coronary artery bypass surgery?

Background We evaluated the vasodilatory effects of two antioxidants, vitamins C (ascorbic acid) and E (α-tocopherol), on radial artery and endothelium-dependent responses in patients awaiting coronary artery bypass surgery. Methods The study was performed in three groups. The first group took 2 g of vitamin C orally (n = 31, vitamin C group), the second group took 2 g of vitamin C with 600 mg of vitamin E orally (n = 31, vitamins C + E group), and the third group took no medication (n = 31, control group). After baseline measurements were taken of the radial artery lumen diameter, flow volume and lumen area in the non-dominant radial artery, occlusion was maintained for five minutes with a pressure cuff placed around the arm. The measurements were taken again at the time of deflating the cuff, and 60 seconds later. The measurements were repeated after medication in two of the groups and after placebo in the third group. Results We compared values of the vitamin C group with those of the vitamins C + E group, and found that the latter were higher than those of the vitamin C group but not statistically significant. In the control group, there was no statistical difference. Conclusion Vitamin C or its combination with vitamin E significantly enhanced endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in the radial circulation of patients with coronary artery disease. Its combination with vitamin E was superior to vitamin C administration alone for endothelial enhancement but this difference was not statistically significant. We hypothesised that vitamin C or its combination with vitamin E may be used as antioxidants for arterial graft patency in patients undergoing coronary artery surgery.
Exploring the Cross-Sectional Association between Transit-Oriented Development Zoning and Active Travel and Transit Usage in the United States, 2010–2014

Background In response to traditional zoning codes that contribute to car-dependent sprawling and disconnected neighborhoods, communities are reforming their land use laws to create pedestrian-friendly areas that promote physical activity. One such reform is the adoption of transit-oriented developments or districts (TODs). TODs are higher density, compact, and mixed use areas located around transit stops that are designed to encourage walking. Purpose To identify the characteristics of communities that have adopted TODs in their land use laws and examine if communities that have included TODs in their zoning codes are more likely to have adults that commute by any form of active transportation (i.e., walking, biking, or public transportation) or by using public transportation specifically. Methods Zoning codes effective as of 2010 were obtained for a purposeful sample of the largest 3,914 municipal jurisdictions located in 473 of the most populous U.S. counties and consolidated cities within 48 states and the District of Columbia. They were evaluated to determine whether they included TOD districts or regulations using a coding tool developed by the study team. Descriptive statistics together with t-tests and Pearson’s chi-squared independence test were used to compare characteristics of jurisdictions with and without TOD zoning. Multivariate linear regressions were used to compute the adjusted association between TOD zoning and taking public or active transportation to work. Results Jurisdictions with TOD zoning were located more in the South and West than non-TOD jurisdictions and were more populous, higher income, more racially diverse, and younger. Jurisdictions with TOD zoning had significantly higher percentages of occupied housing with no vehicle than those without TOD zoning. TOD zoning was associated with significantly higher rates of public transportation to work (β = 2.10, 95% CI = 0.88, 3.32) and active transportation to work (β = 2.48, 95% CI = 1.03, 3.94). Conclusion Communities that have or are considering developing public transit infrastructure may want to modify their zoning codes to include TODs to promote physical activity and active travel to work.
Scaling to the end of silicon with EDGE architectures

Microprocessor designs are on the verge of a post-RISC era in which companies must introduce new ISAs to address the challenges that modern CMOS technologies pose while also exploiting the massive levels of integration now possible. To meet these challenges, we have developed a new class of ISAs, called explicit data graph execution (EDGE), that will match the characteristics of semiconductor technology over the next decade. The TRIPS architecture is the first instantiation of an EDGE instruction set, a new, post-RISC class of instruction set architectures intended to match semiconductor technology evolution over the next decade, scaling to new levels of power efficiency and high performance.
Assessment of sedation levels in pediatric intensive care patients can be improved by using the COMFORT “behavior” scale*

Objectives: The original COMFORT scale, including both observational and physiologic items, has been validated for measuring distress in children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit. However, physiologic variables are influenced by drugs given in the pediatric intensive care unit setting. The objectives of this study were to assess the usefulness of physiologic variables in judgment of sedation and to determine new cutoff points for the COMFORT “behavioral” scale (COMFORT-B), using only observational items. Design: Prospective observational study. Setting: Pediatric intensive care unit in a university hospital Patients: Seventy-eight patients admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit. Interventions: None. Measurements and Results: COMFORT scores were obtained in this patient group. Similar to the original COMFORT scale validation, the expert opinion of nurses (Nurse Interpretation Score of Sedation) served to determine optimal cutoff scores for the COMFORT-B scale. A total of 843 combined COMFORT and Nurse Interpretation Score of Sedation scores were obtained in 78 patients. Cronbach’s alpha for the COMFORT scale was . 78, increasing to . 84 when the physiologic items, blood pressure and heart rate, were excluded. COMFORT scores were significantly different for the three Nurse Interpretation Score of Sedation categories (Kruskal-Wallis, p < .001). According to the pediatric intensive care unit nurses, undersedation was present in 11% and oversedation in 3% of all observations. Cutoff points for the COMFORT-B scale were ≤10 for oversedation and ≥23 for undersedation. The area in the COMFORT-B score between 11 and 22 does not adequately predict under- or oversedation, pointing to a need for supplemental observation. Conclusions: The COMFORT-B scale is a reliable alternative to the original COMFORT scale. The cutoff points of the COMFORT-B scale in conjunction with the Nurse Interpretation Score of Sedation facilitate the use of sedation algorithms on the pediatric intensive care unit.
First attempt of boltzmann machines for speaker verification

Frequently organized by NIST, Speaker Recognition evaluations (SRE) show high accuracy rates. This demonstrates that this field of research is mature. The latest progresses came from the proposition of low dimensional i-vectors representation and new classifiers such as Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis (PLDA) or Cosine Distance classifier. In this paper, we study some variants of Boltzmann Machines (BM). BM is used in image processing but still unexplored in Speaker Verification (SR). Given two utterances, the SR task consists to decide whether they come from the same speaker or not. Based on this definition, we can illustrate SR as two-classes (same vs. different speakers classes) classification problem. Our first attempt of using BM is to model each class with one generative Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) with symmetric Log-Likelihood Ratio on both models as decision score. This new approach achieved an Equal Error Rate (EER) of 7% and a minimum Detection Cost Function (DCF) of 0.035 on the female content of the NIST SRE 2008. The objective of this research is mainly to explore a new paradigm i.e. BM without necessarily obtaining better performance than the state-of-the-art system.
Underlying mechanisms of episodic autobiographical memory and self-consciousness

Cognitive neuroscience has been examining consciousness associated with the subject, that is the self of the conscious experience and its related multisensory processing of bodily signals, the so-called bodily self-consciousness. Different line of research has highlighted the concept of the autobiographical self in memory and the associated autonoetic consciousness, that is the human ability to mentally travel in time. The subjective re-experiencing of past episodes is often described as re-living them from a viewpoint and location that is similar to the initial encoding. In the first part of my thesis, I have studied how self-relevant bodily cues and personal memories influence our sense of self. In the second part, I have examined how the self is involved in spontaneous thoughts. Through a collection of four studies, I will argue here that it is possible to explore the underlying characteristics of self-consciousness and its relation to bodily signals and memory by a number of cognitive neuroscience approaches, including virtual reality (VR), electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). First, I investigated how the presence or absence of multisensory bodily cues influences long-term episodic autobiographical memory by using immersive VR environment. Second, I examined the underlying brain mechanisms of bodily-self and autobiographical-self by combining a meta-analytical approach with recent fMRI results from (a) patients suffering with out-of-body experiences and (b) healthy participants with induced illusory states of bodily self. Third, I explored how the immersive VR technology can be used to selectively and retroactively strengthen episodic autobiographical memory. Fourth, I examined whether it is possible to capture the inner, self-relevant conscious thoughts and record them with both fMRI and EEG methods. The results from my thesis indicate that (a) the bodily cues fundamentally influence the autobiographical memory and (b) it is possible to manipulate the self-related nature of conscious thoughts. I will discuss my findings with reference to current understanding of bodily-self, autobiographical-self and their links to theories of self-consciousness. Finally, based on my results, I will suggest what should be the following, future step towards memory prosthesis.