Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Carotid femoral pulse wave velocity in type 2 diabetes and hypertension: capturing arterial health effects of step counts

Objective: Optimal medication use obscures the impact of physical activity on traditional cardiometabolic risk factors. We evaluated the relationship between step counts and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV), a summative risk indicator, in patients with type 2 diabetes and/or hypertension. Research design and methods: Three hundred and sixty-nine participants were recruited (outpatient clinics; Montreal, Quebec; 2011–2015). Physical activity (pedometer/accelerometer), cfPWV (applanation tonometry), and risk factors (A1C, Homeostatic Model Assessment–Insulin Resistance, blood pressure, lipid profiles) were evaluated. Linear regression models were constructed to quantify the relationship of steps/day with cfPWV. Results: The study population comprised 191 patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension, 39 with type 2 diabetes, and 139 with hypertension (mean ± SD: age 59.6 ± 11.2 years; BMI 31.3 ± 4.8 kg/m2; 54.2% women). Blood pressure (125/77 ± 15/9 mmHg), A1C (diabetes: 7.7 ± 1.3%; 61 mmol/mol), and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (diabetes: 2.19 ± 0.8 mmol/l; without diabetes: 3.13 ± 1.1mmol/l) were close to target. Participants averaged 5125 ± 2722 steps/day. Mean cfPWV was 9.8 ± 2.2 m/s. Steps correlated with cfPWV, but not with other risk factors. A 1000 steps/day increment was associated with a 0.1 m/s cfPWV decrement across adjusted models and in subgroup analysis by diabetes status. In a model adjusted for age, sex, BMI, ethnicity, immigrant status, employment, education, diabetes, hypertension, medication classes, the mean cfPWV decrement was 0.11 m/s (95% confidence interval −0.2, −0.02). Conclusions: cfPWV is responsive to step counts in patients who are well controlled on cardioprotective medications. This ability to capture the ‘added value’ of physical activity supports the emerging role of cfPWV in arterial health monitoring.
Alias-free, multiresolution sinusoidal modeling for polyphonic, wideband audio

We describe an improved method of generating more accurate sinusoidal parameters (amplitude, frequency, phase) from a wideband polyphonic audio source in a multiresolution, non-aliased fashion. This significantly improves upon previous work of sinusoidal modeling that assumes a single-pitched monophonic source, such as speech or an individual musical instrument. In addition to a more general analysis, we can now perform high-quality transformations such as time-stretching and pitch-shifting on polyphonic audio with ease.
Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Extended Training during Sleep Deprivation in Humans: Evidence for Local, Task-Specific Effects

Recent work has demonstrated that behavioral manipulations targeting specific cortical areas during prolonged wakefulness lead to a region-specific homeostatic increase in theta activity (5–9 Hz), suggesting that theta waves could represent transient neuronal OFF periods (local sleep). In awake rats, the occurrence of an OFF period in a brain area relevant for behavior results in performance errors. Here we investigated the potential relationship between local sleep events and negative behavioral outcomes in humans. Volunteers participated in two prolonged wakefulness experiments (24 h), each including 12 h of practice with either a driving simulation (DS) game or a battery of tasks based on executive functions (EFs). Multiple high-density EEG recordings were obtained during each experiment, both in quiet rest conditions and during execution of two behavioral tests, a response inhibition test and a motor test, aimed at assessing changes in impulse control and visuomotor performance, respectively. In addition, fMRI examinations obtained at 12 h intervals were used to investigate changes in inter-regional connectivity. The EF experiment was associated with a reduced efficiency in impulse control, whereas DS led to a relative impairment in visuomotor control. A specific spatial and temporal correlation was observed between EEG theta waves occurring in task-related areas and deterioration of behavioral performance. The fMRI connectivity analysis indicated that performance impairment might partially depend on a breakdown in connectivity determined by a “network overload. ” Present results demonstrate the existence of an association between theta waves during wakefulness and performance errors and may contribute explaining behavioral impairments under conditions of sleep deprivation/restriction.
The architectural specification of embedded systems

One of the perspective directions of embedded computer systems design is wide usage of configuration mechanisms on all levels of their architectural organization. This leads to increased complexity of toolchains and makes it necessary to consider the embedded systems and toolchains as a whole. In the article, we present three graphic notations to work with embedded systems in this way from different viewpoints: design process as a part of computational process; embedded systems as an hierarchy of processors (real and virtual); in system engineering style.
3-D Video Representation Using Depth Maps

Current 3-D video (3DV) technology is based on stereo systems. These systems use stereo video coding for pictures delivered by two input cameras. Typically, such stereo systems only reproduce these two camera views at the receiver and stereoscopic displays for multiple viewers require wearing special 3-D glasses. On the other hand, emerging autostereoscopic multiview displays emit a large numbers of views to enable 3-D viewing for multiple users without requiring 3-D glasses. For representing a large number of views, a multiview extension of stereo video coding is used, typically requiring a bit rate that is proportional to the number of views. However, since the quality improvement of multiview displays will be governed by an increase of emitted views, a format is needed that allows the generation of arbitrary numbers of views with the transmission bit rate being constant. Such a format is the combination of video signals and associated depth maps. The depth maps provide disparities associated with every sample of the video signal that can be used to render arbitrary numbers of additional views via view synthesis. This paper describes efficient coding methods for video and depth data. For the generation of views, synthesis methods are presented, which mitigate errors from depth estimation and coding.
Benefits of multiple transmit antennas in secure communication: A secrecy outage viewpoint

This paper investigates secure multi-antenna transmission in slow fading channels without the eavesdropper's channel state information. The use of multiple transmit antennas enables the transmitter to strengthen the signal reception at the intended receiver while simultaneously confusing the eavesdropper by delivering artificial noise. A recently developed secrecy outage formulation, which can separately measure the quality of service and the level of security, is used to characterize the security performance. We show that an arbitrarily low secrecy outage probability cannot be achieved by adding more transmit antennas alone without optimizing other system parameters. To facilitate the practical system design, we present an on-off transmission scheme with optimal artificial noise power allocation, which minimizes the secrecy outage probability whilst guaranteeing a minimum required quality of service.
Frontal Assessment Battery and Brain Perfusion Image in Parkinson’s Disease

The objective was to compare brain perfusion image using 3-dimensional stereotactic surface projection analysis of N-isopropyl-p-123I iodoamphetamine single photon emission computed tomography between Parkinson’s disease patients with a high frontal assessment battery score and those with a low frontal assessment battery score. Thirty nondemented patients with Parkinson’s disease were studied. Patients were divided into 2 groups: a high-scoring group whose frontal assessment battery score was 12 or more and a low-scoring group whose frontal assessment battery score was 11 or less. The high-scoring group included 21 patients, and the low-scoring group included 9 patients. They underwent N-isopropyl-p-123I iodoamphetamine single photon emission computed tomography, and we analyzed the data by the 3-dimensional stereotactic surface projection method. Results showed that left inferior parietal lobule and left supramarginal gyrus perfusion of the low-scoring group were significantly decreased compared with the high-scoring group. It is concluded that_patients with Parkinson’s disease may have frontal lobe dysfunction, but the decreased frontal assessment battery score may be caused not by progressed frontal lobe dysfunction but by parietal lobe dysfunction added to their preexisting frontal lobe impairment.
Multi-objective evolutionary optimization of exemplar-based classifiers: A PNN test case

In this paper the major principles to effectively design a parameter-less, multi-objective evolutionary algorithm that optimizes a population of probabilistic neural network (PNN) classifier models are articulated; PNN is an example of an exemplar-based classifier. These design principles are extracted from experiences, discussed in this paper, which guided the creation of the parameter-less multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, named MO-EPNN (multi-objective evolutionary probabilistic neural network). Furthermore, these design principles are also corroborated by similar principles used for an earlier design of a parameter-less, multi-objective genetic algorithm used to optimize a population of ART (adaptive resonance theory) models, named MO-GART (multi-objective genetically optimized ART); the ART classifier model is another example of an exemplar-based classifier model. MO-EPNN's performance is compared to other popular classifier models, such as SVM (Support Vector Machines) and CART (Classification and Regression Trees), as well as to an alternate competitive method to genetically optimize the PNN. These comparisons indicate that MO-EPNN's performance (generalization on unseen data and size) compares favorably to the aforementioned classifier models and to the alternate genetically optimized PNN approach. MO-EPPN's good performance, and MO-GART's earlier reported good performance, both of whose design relies on the same principles, gives credence to these design principles, delineated in this paper.
Noninvasive diagnosis of fetal aneuploidy by shotgun sequencing DNA from maternal blood

We directly sequenced cell-free DNA with high-throughput shotgun sequencing technology from plasma of pregnant women, obtaining, on average, 5 million sequence tags per patient sample. This enabled us to measure the over- and underrepresentation of chromosomes from an aneuploid fetus. The sequencing approach is polymorphism-independent and therefore universally applicable for the noninvasive detection of fetal aneuploidy. Using this method, we successfully identified all nine cases of trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), two cases of trisomy 18 (Edward syndrome), and one case of trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome) in a cohort of 18 normal and aneuploid pregnancies; trisomy was detected at gestational ages as early as the 14th week. Direct sequencing also allowed us to study the characteristics of cell-free plasma DNA, and we found evidence that this DNA is enriched for sequences from nucleosomes.
Using a Cascade of Asymmetric Resonators with Fast-Acting Compression as a Cochlear Model for Machine-Hearing Applications

Every day, machines process many thousands of hours of audio signals through a realistic cochlear model. They extract features, inform classifiers and recommenders, and identify copyrighted material. The machine-hearing approach to such tasks has taken root in recent years, because hearingbased approaches perform better than we can do with more conventional sound-analysis approaches. We use a bio-mimetic “cascade of asymmetric resonators with fast-acting compression” (CARFAC)—an efficient sound analyzer that incorporates the hearing research community’s findings on nonlinear auditory filter models and cochlear wave mechanics. The CAR-FAC is based on a pole–zero filter cascade (PZFC) model of auditory filtering, in combination with a multi-time-scale coupled automaticgain-control (AGC) network. It uses simple nonlinear extensions of conventional digital filter stages, and runs fast due to its low complexity. The PZFC plus AGC network, the CAR-FAC, mimics features of auditory physiology, such as masking, compressive traveling-wave response, and the stability of zero-crossing times with signal level. Its output “neural activity pattern” is converted to a “stabilized auditory image” to capture pitch, melody, and other temporal and spectral features of the sound.
A Stochastic Image Grammar for Fine-Grained 3D Scene Reconstruction

This paper presents a stochastic grammar for fine-grained 3D scene reconstruction from a single image. At the heart of our approach is a small number of grammar rules that can describe the most common geometric structures, e.g., two straights lines being co-linear or orthogonal, or that a line lying on a planar region etc. With these grammar rules, we re-frame single-view 3D reconstruction problem as jointly solving two coupled sub-tasks: i) segmenting of image entities, e.g. planar regions, straight edge segments, and ii) optimizing pixel-wise 3D scene model through the application of grammar rules over image entities. To reconstruct a new image, we design an efficient hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm to simulate Markov Chain walking towards a posterior distribution. Our algorithm utilizes two iterative dynamics: i) Hamiltonian Dynamics that makes proposals along the gradient direction to search the continuous pixel-wise 3D scene model; and ii) Cluster Dynamics, that flip the colors of clusters of pixels to form planar region partition. Following the Metropolis-hasting principle, these dynamics not only make distant proposals but also guarantee detail-balance and fast convergence. Results with comparisons on public image dataset show that our method clearly outperforms the alternate state-of-the-art single-view reconstruction methods.
Natural Language Steganography and an \AI-complete" Security Primitive

In order to sketch, why steganography is such an important topic, and has received far too little attention from the hacker community in the past, let me quickly challenge our view of cryptosystems as commonly built in the context of military or commercial applications: Cryptosystems are designed to protect our sensitive data from evil arbitrators. Wrong. Well, maybe not. But then again, what is evil? Basically one could say, hacker ethics is about protecting a good individual from a bad society and this has some severe consequences in the construction of secure communication systems. In particular, I would like to draw our attention to the evil spy, we are envisioning, when we think about cryptosystems, who intercepts sensitive military communication, and to the criminal who fakes banking transactions. Most often, what we have in mind, when we build cryptosystems is a bad individual in a good society, which is rather some instance of witch hunt ethics. In practice this assumption has the simple incarnation, that cryptograms are vulnerable to detection, since a good society would encourage the use of cryptography as a means to protect everyone’s privacy. But under the assumption of a bad society, would Alice and Bob be allowed to use cryptography? What would witchhunt ethics assert about people who use cryptography? Do they have something to hide? Something evil? The central shift in views that is necessary, is the fact that it is not Alice and Bob who control their communication channel, so they can make sure, that evil Wendy won’t be able to recover their communication, but evil Wendy controls the channel and wants to make sure Alice and Bob can’t exchange unwanted messages. This communication setup has rst been stated by Gustavus J. Simmons, which he popularly introduced via the prisoner’s dilemma. In this scenario we assume Alice and Bob are arrested, and \their only means of communication after they are locked up will be by way of messages conveyed for them by trustees { who are known to be agents of the warden. However since he has every reason to suspect that the prisoners want to coordinate an escape plan, the warden will only permit the exchanges to occur if the information contained in the messages is completely open to him { and presumably innocuous. " (Simmons 1984).
Reproducibility and Relative Validity of a Food Frequency Questionnaire Developed for Female Adolescents in Suihua, North China

Background This study aims to evaluate the reproducibility and validity of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) developed for female adolescents in the Suihua area of North China. The FFQ was evaluated against the average of 24-hour dietary recalls (24-HRs). Methodology/Principal Findings A total of 168 female adolescents aged 12 to 18 completed nine three consecutive 24-HRs (one three consecutive 24 HRs per month) and two FFQs over nine months. The reproducibility of the FFQ was estimated using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), and its relative validity was assessed by comparing it with the 24-HRs. The mean values of the 24-HRs were lower than those of the FFQs, except for protein (in FFQ1) and iron (in FFQ2). The ICCs for all nutrients and food groups in FFQ1 and FFQ2 were moderately correlated (0.4–0.8). However, all the ICCs decreased after adjusting for energy. The weighted κ statistic showed moderate agreement (0.40–0.6) for all nutrients and food groups, except for niacin and calcium, which showed poor agreement (0.35). The relative validity results indicate that the crude Spearman's correlation coefficients of FFQ1 and the 24-HRs ranged from 0.41 (for Vitamin C) to 0.65 (for fruit). The coefficients of each nutrient and food group in FFQ2 and the 24-HRs were higher than those in FFQ1 and the 24-HRs, indicating good correlation. Although all energy-adjusted Spearman's correlation coefficients were lower than the crude coefficients, de-attenuation to correct for intra-individual variability improved the correlation coefficients. The weighted κ coefficients of nutrients and food groups ranged from 0.32 for beans to 0.52 for riboflavin in FFQ1 and the 24-HRs, and 0.32 for Vitamin C to 0.54 for riboflavin in FFQ2 and the 24-HRs. Conclusion The FFQ developed for female adolescents in the Suihua area is a reliable and valid instrument for ranking individuals within this study.
Three-Dimensional Gravity Revisited

We consider the problem of identifying the CFT's that may be dual to pure gravity in three dimensions with negative cosmological constant. The c-theorem indicates that three-dimensional pure gravity is consistent only at certain values of the coupling constant, and the relation to Chern-Simons gauge theory hints that these may be the values at which the dual CFT can be holomorphically factorized. If so, and one takes at face value the minimum mass of a BTZ black hole, then the energy spectrum of three-dimensional gravity with negative cosmological constant can be determined exactly. At the most negative possible value of the cosmological constant, the dual CFT is very likely the monster theory of Frenkel, Lepowsky, and Meurman. The monster theory may be the first in a discrete series of CFT's that are dual to three-dimensional gravity. The partition function of the second theory in the sequence can be determined on a hyperelliptic Riemann surface of any genus. We also make a similar analysis of supergravity.
Control of an pseudo-omnidirectional, non-holonomic, mobile robot based on an ICM representation in spherical coordinates

For mobile platforms with steerable standard wheels it is necessary to precisely coordinate rotation and steering angle of their wheels. Especially for redundantly actuated platforms the misalignments of a single wheel directly leads to invalid configurations which may cause degraded motion of the platform and high internal forces. An established approach to deal with this problem is to represent the current state of motion in form of the instantaneous centre of motion (ICM) and to derive a valid trajectory for this point. However, this representation bears severe numerical drawbacks. To remedy those numerical problems an alternative ICM representation based on spherical coordinates is proposed in this work. Furthermore, the relations between ICM and generalized robot velocities are addressed. It is shown, that one receives a basis of a subspace within the kinematical constraints¿ nullspace by decomposing the generalized velocity vector in spherical coordinates. Finally the proposed ICM-based control is particularized and simulative analyzed w.r. t. the Care-O-bot 3 demonstrator.
Cultural politics-- queer reading

Was Shakespeare gay? Is "The Merchant of Venice" anti-semitic? How does mainstream reading differ from that of subcultural groups? How does the formal study of literature handle such questions? This text considers such questions and issues such as the gendering of literary culture, the sexual politics of psychoanalysis during the Cold War, and the history of cultural materialism. It discusses figures such as Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser, Walt Whitman, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Holly Hughes, Audre Lorde, Thom Gunn and Jeanette Winterson. The author challenges the assumptions that have shaped the study of English literature, investigates the principles and practice that may inform dissident reading, and ultimately argues that lesbian and gay intellectuals should cultivate an allegiance beyond the academy.
Sleep EEG evidence of sex differences in adolescent brain maturation.

STUDY OBJECTIVES The steep decline in slow-wave (delta) electroencephalogram (EEG) intensity across adolescence is a prominent feature of late brain maturation. As a first step in determining whether the adolescent delta decline is similar in both sexes, we compared cross-sectional sleep EEG data from 9- and 12-year-old boys and girls. DESIGN All-night EEG recordings, 6 months apart, were conducted on each subject. SETTING EEG was recorded in the subjects' homes. PARTICIPANTS Thirty-two 9-year-olds and 38 12-year-olds are enrolled in a 4-year longitudinal study of adolescent sleep. There are equal numbers of each sex in both age cohorts. INTERVENTIONS N/A. MEASUREMENTS Using ambulatory recorders, EEG was recorded in the subjects' homes on their normal sleep schedule. For each of the 2 semi-annual recording periods, data from the 10 subjects from each age-sex group with the cleanest (fewest artifacts) signals were selected for crosssectional comparisons of visual scoring and EEG variables. All artifact-free 20-second non-rapid eye movement epochs were analyzed with power spectral and period-amplitude analysis. RESULTS In the 12-year-old cohort, delta power per minute was 37% higher in boys than girls. The 9-year-old cohort showed no sex difference. A second recording 6 months later produced similar results. CONCLUSION These cross-sectional data indicate that girls begin the steep adolescent decline in slow-wave EEG earlier than boys. We hypothesize that this reflects an earlier onset of adolescent synaptic pruning in females.