Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A task-based approach to parametric imaging with dynamic contrast enhanced MRI

In this paper, we propose a task-based approach to parametric imaging and apply the proposed method to an example problem of prostate cancer segmentation with dynamic contrast enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE MRI). Traditionally, the time activity curve obtained from dynamic series of MR images is modeled without considering a specific task in order to obtain the kinetic parameters and to construct the parametric images. This mostly consists of estimating parameters based on minimizing the error between the model and measurement. In this paper, we develop a new method for the estimation of kinetic parameters based on the maximization of tumor segmentation performance. We use Fisher Ratio as the criterion that quantifies the image's ability to classify tumor and normal pixels. Then, the kinetic parameters are estimated with a weighted approach such that the Fisher Ratio is maximized. The calculation of the Fisher Ratio requires the prior knowledge of the confirmed regions of the tumor. Therefore, we use a training dataset to determine the optimum set of parametric images. The proposed method results in parametric images with a considerable improvement in terms of classification power between tumor and the normal regions of the prostate.
Drunken-cell footprints: nuclease treatment of ethanol-permeabilized bacteria reveals an initiation-like nucleoprotein complex in stationary phase replication origins.

The nucleoprotein complex formed on oriC, the Escherichia coli replication origin, is dynamic. During the cell cycle, high levels of the initiator DnaA and a bending protein, IHF, bind to oriC at the time of initiation of DNA replication, while binding of Fis, another bending protein, is reduced. In order to probe the structure of nucleoprotein complexes at oriC in more detail, we have developed an in situ footprinting method, termed drunken-cell footprinting, that allows enzymatic DNA modifying reagents access to intracellular nucleoprotein complexes in E.coli, after a brief exposure to ethanol. With this method, we observed in situ binding of Fis to oriC in exponentially growing cells, and binding of IHF to oriC in stationary cells, using DNase I and Bst NI endonuclease, respectively. Increased binding of DnaA to oriC in stationary phase was also noted. Because binding of DnaA and IHF results in unwinding of oriC in vitro, P1 endonuclease was used to probe for intracellular unwinding of oriC. P1 cleavage sites, localized within the 13mer unwinding region of oriC ', were dramatically enhanced in stationary phase on wild-type origins, but not on mutant versions of oriC unable to unwind. These observations suggest that most oriC copies become unwound during stationary phase, forming an initiation-like nucleoprotein complex.
Achieving the EVINSAR objectives with TERRASAR-L

An L-band InSAR mission, EVINSAR, was proposed to ESA’s Earth Explorer Opportunity Mission programme in 2002 that would measure the strain cycles associated with earthquakes/tectonism and volcanoes. Although not funded the concept was encouraged by ESA and the EVINSAR Science Team was asked to study how the science requirements of EVINSAR could be met by the proposed TerraSAR-L mission. The EVINSAR concept emphasises the collection of a frequent time series of repeat-pass SCANSAR interferograms of the world’s areas of active tectonism and volcanism from an inclined orbital plane and a narrow orbital tube. Leftand right-viewing would alternate with each repeat cycle. These characteristics would obviate baseline decorrelation, minimise topographic noise and maximise the ability to recover the 3D motion vector. L-band radar is needed to reduce temporal decorrelation over vegetation and give the mission a global capability. We have studied TerraSAR-L’s Phase 0 specifications in relation to distributed scatterer differential InSAR. TerraSAR-L goes a considerable way to meeting the EVINSAR science needs. Under ideal conditions it could approach a target minimum strain rate sensitivity of 1mm/10km/year. However, the polar orbit of TerraSAR-L and only limited capability for left-sided viewing reduces the ability to retrieve the 3D motion vector from multiple views.
Learning about Numeracy: The Impact of a Compulsory Unit on Pre-service Teachers' Understandings and Beliefs

In 2015, a new Master of Teaching coursework unit, Numeracy for Learners and Teachers, was introduced at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. The drivers for the establishment of the unit were the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership numeracy standards for graduate teachers and the inclusion of numeracy as a general capability in the Australian Curriculum. In this article, we describe the content and organisation of the unit. An evaluation was conducted with students in each of the years 2015-2017. Data included pre- and post-unit surveys and interviews. Findings indicated that students had fairly good numeracy skills on entry to the unit, and that as a consequence of studying the unit, their understanding of the relationship between numeracy and mathematics improved, as did their confidence to incorporate numeracy into their teaching across the curriculum.
Using floating-point arithmetic on FPGAs to accelerate scientific N-Body simulations

This paper investigates the usage of floating-point arithmetic on FPGAs for N-Body simulation in natural science. The common aspect of these applications is the simple computing structure where forces between a particle and its surrounding particles are summed up. The role of reduced precision arithmetic is discussed, and our implementation of a floating-point arithmetic library with parameterized operators is presented. On the base of this library, implementation strategies of complex arithmetic units are discussed. Finally the realization of a fully pipelined pressure force calculation unit consisting of 60 floating-point operators with a resulting performance of 3.9 Gflops on an off the shelf FPGA is presented.
VNRE: Flexible and Efficient Acceleration for Network Redundancy Elimination

Network Redundancy Elimination (NRE) aims to improve network performance by identifying and removing repeated transmission of duplicate content from remote servers. Using a Content-Defined Chunking (CDC) policy, an inline NRE process can obtain a higher Redundancy Elimination (RE) ratio but may suffer from a considerably higher computational requirement than fixed-size chunking. Additionally, the existing work on NRE is either based on IP packet level redundancy elimination or rigidly adopting a CDC policy with a static empirically-decided expected chunk size. These approaches make it difficult for conventional NRE MiddleBoxes to achieve both high network throughput to match the increasing line speeds and a high RE ratio at the same time. In this paper we present a design and implementation of an inline NRE appliance which incorporates an improved FPGA-based scheme to speed up CDC processing to match the ever increasing network line speeds while simultaneously obtaining a high RE ratio. The overhead of Rabin fingerprinting, which is a key component of CDC, is greatly reduced through the use of a record table and registers in the FPGA. To efficiently utilize the hardware resources, the whole NRE process is handled by a Virtualized NRE (VNRE) controller. The uniqueness of this VNRE that we developed lies in its ability to exploit the redundancy patterns of different TCP flows and customize the chunking process to achieve a higher RE ratio. VNRE will first decide if the chunking policy should be either fixed-size chunking or CDC. Then VNRE decides the expected chunk size for the corresponding chunking policy based on the TCP flow patterns. Implemented in a partially reconfigurable FPGA card, our trace driven evaluation demonstrates that the chunking throughput for CDC in one FPGA processing unit outperforms chunking running in a virtual CPU by nearly 3X. Moreover, through the differentiation of chunking policies for each flow, the overall throughput of the VNRE appliance outperforms one with static NRE configurations by 6X to 57X while still guaranteeing a high RE ratio.
A cross-sectional assessment of the burden of COPD symptoms in the US and Europe using the National Health and Wellness Survey

Introduction Past research has suggested significant relationships between symptoms and health outcomes among patients with COPD. However, these studies have generally focused on a broad COPD sample and may have included those not receiving proper treatment. As a result, the aim of this study was to document the burden of COPD symptoms among those who are currently treated with the standard-of-care (SOC) medications in both the US and Western Europe. Methods Data from the 2013 US (N=75,000) and 2011 (N=57,512)/2013 (N=62,000) European (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and UK; 5EU) National Health and Wellness Survey (NHWS) were used. The NHWS is a health survey administered to a demographically representative sample of the adult population in each country. A total of 1,666 and 2,006 patients with self-reported physician diagnosis of COPD in the 5EU and US, respectively, were being treated with the appropriate SOC (based on self-reported medication use) and were included in the analyses. Symptoms (eg, dyspnea, coughing, wheezing) were reported descriptively and summed to create a symptom score (with higher score indicating more frequent symptoms). The relationships between the symptom score and patient outcomes (eg, health status using the Short Form-36 version 2 [SF-36v2], work productivity and activity impairment [WPAI], and self-reported health care resource use) were explored using regression modeling. Results Nearly all patients (99.7% and 99.8% in the 5EU and US, respectively) reported experiencing symptoms and >80% reported experiencing at least one symptom “often”. Increasing symptom scores were associated with poorer health status (unstandardized beta [b] =−0.87 and −0.78 for mental component summary and physical component summary, respectively, in the US and b =−0.67 and −0.79 in the 5EU, respectively; all P<0.05). Increasing symptom scores were also associated with greater work impairment (b =0.09 and 0.06 for the US and 5EU, respectively), activity impairment (b =0.05 and 0.06, respectively), and health care resource utilization (eg, hospitalizations: b =0.05 and 0.06, respectively) (all P<0.05). Approximately 70% of patients reported some level of non-adherence. Greater non-adherence was significantly associated with more frequent symptoms, poorer health status, and greater work impairment and health care resource use (all P<0.05). Conclusion Patients with COPD who are using the appropriate SOC still experience symptoms, which have a significant effect on both humanistic and economic outcomes.
Age and aerobic power: the rate of change in men and women.

: The historic studies by Robinson and Astrand as well as more recent studies present a fairly uniform rate of decline in VO2max with age at 0.40-0.50 ml X kg-1 X min-1 X year-1 in men. In women the rate of decline appears to be less--approximately 0.20-0.35 ml X kg-1 X min-1 X year-1, at least in cross-sectional studies. Further, there is no clear distinction in the rate of change in VO2max when comparing active and inactive populations. Longitudinal studies varying from 2.5 to 21 to 56 years present a confounding picture. The rate of decline in VO2max varies from 0.04 to 1.43 ml X kg-1 X min-1 X year-1. There is some indication that active individuals decline at a slower rate than inactive persons but the results are not uniform. A possible explanation is that changes in VO2max over the entire age range may be curvilinear, with active individuals declining slowly as long as they maintain a regular exercise program, and sedentary individuals declining at a rapid rate during their 20's and 30's followed by a slower rate of decline of their VO2max as they age further.
Changes in Accommodation Experienced by People with Down Syndrome and Dementia in the First Five Years After Diagnosis

Research that has tracked living situation changes is lacking for people with Down syndrome post-diagnosis of dementia. Extant studies have not considered reasons for a move, the stage at which it happened, and how involved in the decision the person with Down syndrome was. To study this, a postal questionnaire was used with 35 carers of persons with Down syndrome who had beendiagnosedwithdementiaduringthepreviousfiveyears.Resultsshowedthattherearefeweraccommodationchangesintheearly stages of dementia among people with Down syndrome than have previously been suspected and that confusion exists over the interpretation of existing care models. Findings also revealed that adults with Down syndrome were often denied the opportunity to take part in discussions about their future accommodations and there was a lack of forward planning on the part of carers.
NL Scoring Technique for the Assessment of Learners' Understanding

Assessment is an important component of learning and it also noted that many academic examination make heavy used of short answers. This assessment can be a tedious task. However, there are not many computer-based assessment tools due to limitations in computerized marking technology. Our research attempts to address this limitation by introducing a technique to evaluate short free text answer. It is based on a hybrid approach that combines natural language processing, node-link representation and information theory. A textual answer is converted into a node link representation to extract the hidden knowledge structure. We then apply excess entropy to compute the amount of known information for each model and later compute the score accordingly. Results show that the proposed technique can be applied for the assessment of learners' understanding in tertiary and school level for science domain.
Regional citrate versus systemic heparin for anticoagulation in critically ill patients on continuous venovenous haemofiltration: a prospective randomized multicentre trial.

BACKGROUND Continuous venovenous haemofiltration (CVVH) in the intensive care setting requires anticoagulation to prevent clotting of the extracorporeal circuit. Several protocols avoiding heparin and using regional citrate anticoagulation have been developed to diminish bleeding risks. However, data from randomized trials comparing citrate anticoagulation with systemic heparinization are very limited. METHODS One hundred and seventy-four patients on mechanical ventilation, requiring renal replacement therapy for acute renal failure, were included in this prospective randomized multicentre trial comparing regional citrate with systemic heparin. The study was performed at nine different intensive care units at university or academic teaching hospitals. The participants were randomized to either CVVH using regional citrate anticoagulation or CVVH using systemic anticoagulation with unfractionated heparin. The primary outcome was to compare treatment efficacy represented by the patients' acid base status on Day 3 and on each consecutive day. Several parameters of safety and efficacy were analysed as secondary outcomes. RESULTS Comparison of standard bicarbonate from Day 3 to Day 11 revealed no difference between both treatment modalities. Use of citrate resulted in less systemic anticoagulation, a lower risk of bleeding and a longer haemofilter patency. Episodes of hypercalcaemia, hypocalcaemia and the need for additional bicarbonate infusions occurred more often under citrate. The patients' high mortality was not influenced by the mode of anticoagulation. CONCLUSIONS Citrate may be used as a regional anticoagulant and the only buffering agent in CVVH with adequate treatment efficacy and safety. However, neither citrate nor heparin anticoagulation should be regarded as a therapeutic standard, since there is no advantage of one of these substances with regard to patient mortality.
CaLRS: A Critical-Aware Shared LLC Request Scheduling Algorithm on GPGPU

Ultra high thread-level parallelism in modern GPUs usually introduces numerous memory requests simultaneously. So there are always plenty of memory requests waiting at each bank of the shared LLC (L2 in this paper) and global memory. For global memory, various schedulers have already been developed to adjust the request sequence. But we find few work has ever focused on the service sequence on the shared LLC. We measured that a big number of GPU applications always queue at LLC bank for services, which provide opportunity to optimize the service order on LLC. Through adjusting the GPU memory request service order, we can improve the schedulability of SM. So we proposed a critical-aware shared LLC request scheduling algorithm (CaLRS) in this paper. The priority representative of memory request is critical for CaLRS. We use the number of memory requests that originate from the same warp but have not been serviced when they arrive at the shared LLC bank to represent the criticality of each warp. Experiments show that the proposed scheme can boost the SM schedulability effectively by promoting the scheduling priority of the memory requests with high criticality and improves the performance of GPU indirectly.
Regression Analysis and Time Use Data : A Comparison of Microeconometric Approaches with Data from the Swedish Time Use Survey (HUS)

This study focuses on a comparison and evaluation of models and estimators appropriate for time-use data. The tobit type I as well as different generalizations are used. According to our findings, a simple tobit I method can produce results that are similar and in some cases even better to the much more sophisticated methods. This is especially true if the participation or index equation is incorrectly specified.
Optimal Signal Quality Index for Photoplethysmogram Signals

A photoplethysmogram (PPG) is a noninvasive circulatory signal related to the pulsatile volume of blood in tissue and is typically collected by pulse oximeters. PPG signals collected via mobile devices are prone to artifacts that negatively impact measurement accuracy, which can lead to a significant number of misleading diagnoses. Given the rapidly increased use of mobile devices to collect PPG signals, developing an optimal signal quality index (SQI) is essential to classify the signal quality from these devices. Eight SQIs were developed and tested based on: perfusion, kurtosis, skewness, relative power, non-stationarity, zero crossing, entropy, and the matching of systolic wave detectors. Two independent annotators annotated all PPG data (106 recordings, 60 s each) and a third expert conducted the adjudication of differences. The independent annotators labeled each PPG signal with one of the following labels: excellent, acceptable or unfit for diagnosis. All indices were compared using Mahalanobis distance, linear discriminant analysis, quadratic discriminant analysis, and support vector machine with leave-one-out cross-validation. The skewness index outperformed the other seven indices in differentiating between excellent PPG and acceptable, acceptable combined with unfit, and unfit recordings, with overall F1 scores of 86.0%, 87.2%, and 79.1%, respectively.
NONPARAMETRIC REGRESSION ON FUNCTIONAL DATA: INFERENCE AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS

We consider the problem of predicting a real random variable from a functional explanatory variable. The problem is tackled using a nonparametric kernel approach, which has been recently adapted to this functional context. We derive theoretical results from a deep asymptotic analysis of the behaviour of the estimate, including mean squared convergence (with rates and precise evaluation of the constant terms) as well as asymptotic distribution. Practical use of these results relies on the ability to estimate these constants. Some perspectives in this direction are discussed. In particular, a functional version of wild bootstrapping ideas is proposed and used both on simulated and real functional datasets.
Balancing power consumption in multiprocessor systems

Actions usually taken to prevent processors from overheating, such as decreasing the frequency or stopping the execution flow, also degrade performance. Multiprocessor systems, however, offer the possibility of moving the task that caused a CPU to overheat away to some other, cooler CPU, so throttling becomes only a last resort taken if all of a system's processors are hot. Additionally, the scheduler can take advantage of the energy characteristics of individual tasks, and distribute hot tasks as well as cool tasks evenly among all CPUs.This work presents a mechanism for determining the energy characteristics of tasks by means of event monitoring counters, and an energy-aware scheduling policy that strives to assign tasks to CPUs in a way that avoids overheating individual CPUs. Our evaluations show that the benefit of avoiding throttling outweighs the overhead of additional task migrations, and that energy-aware scheduling in many cases increases the system's throughput.
Image enhancement by wavelet multi-scale edge statistics

The distribution of wavelet modulus maxima across wavelet scales can be used to characterize edges in an image. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm that performs image enhancement by mapping the distribution of the wavelet modulus maxima of the blurred image to that of a generic sharp image. Experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm is able to perform image enhancement without introducing unpleasant visual artifacts.
Research on Evolution and Synchronization of Space Information Support Power Networks

The evolution and synchronization of the space information support network was discussed based on the theories of Networks Science. A network model of the architecture was established and the characteristic parameters of this model and the synchronization foundation were studied. The effect of the initial link mechanism, the number of communication nodes, other information support nodes and the total nodes on the evolution and synchronization of this network were analyzed. Simulation results show that the models and the method are erective and scientific．The research can be some reference value to the further study of related problems.
ORGANIZATIONAL MOTIVATIONS FOR GREEN IT : DEVELOPING AND EXPLORING A GREEN IT MATRIX AND MOTIVATION MODELS

The environmental impact of information and communications technologies (ICT) might be a two way street. On the one hand, each stage of the ICT lifecycle has a potential to contribute to the damage of the environment. On the other hand, ICT can provide some of the best tools not only in measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions, waste and water use within core enterprise and value chain processes but also in reducing them. The application of environmental criteria to ICT is commonly referred to as Green IT. It is attracting IT management’s interest but has hardly been researched. This paper aims to explore the extent to which Green IT has penetrated business consciousness. The contributions of the paper reset on offering a snapshot of Green IT diffusion, on proposing and empirically exploring a Green IT Matrix and Motivation classifications and on testing some of the theoretical propositions regarding the influence of institutional forces and organizational motivations in the adoption of Green IT.