Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bayesian Approach to Weibull Survival Model for Clinical Randomized Censoring Trial Based on MCMC Simulation

Survival analysis for randomized censored data is common in clinical trial. Among various survival models proposed to deal with such censoring, Weilbull regression model is widely used as one of accelerated failure time models, because it's flexible to suit different applications. It's well known that Bayesian analysis has the advantage in dealing with censored data and small sample over frequentist methods. Therefore, this paper presents the Weibull regression model for randomized censored data from Bayesian perspective, and then computes the Bayesian estimator based on the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. The Gibbs sampling is proposed to simulate the Markov chain of parameters' posterior distribution dynamically, which avoids the calculation of complex integrals of the posterior distribution effectively. Finally the simulation with real clinical data of lymph sarcoma is presented. The whole procedure is implemented by the freely available software WinBUGS.
A scheme for efficient topology management of wireless ad hoc networks using the MARI algorithm

Wireless ad hoc networks consist of nodes which can communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer fashion over single hop or multi hops without any fixed infrastructure such as access point or base station. In flat topology there is no topology management concept and all the nodes participate in routing. In this paper the task of topology management for ad hoc networks is implemented using routing intelligence mobile agent (MARI) algorithm and the performance is compared with that of flat topology network having same number nodes. In the proposed scheme the nodes with higher power levels among their one hop neighbors are selected as MARI nodes and these participate in routing. To provide communication between any two MARI nodes a midway node is selected. Only these MARI and midway nodes will stay awake and the remaining nodes will be in sleep mode so that there is power saving. In this paper, the power consumption and back off delay performance of a flat network and a network employing MARI algorithm are compared. The proposed MARI topology management is found to have less power consumption and less back-off delay as compared with flat topology.
Electrooptic light modulation technology

Electrooptic light modulators are one of key elements to materialize future photonic systems for info-communication and instrumentation technologies. A number of possible MWP applications have been proposed and investigated, while a few practical devices have been implemented. With the recent growing interest in this area, we can expect rapid development in the utilization of lightwave technologies in microwave engineering, exploiting the potentiality in microwave and lightwave interactions through electrooptic effects.
Selecting Combinatorial Libraries to Optimize Diversity and Physical Properties

The program SELECT is presented for the design of combinatorial libraries. SELECT is based on a genetic algorithm with a multi-objective fitness function. Any number of objectives can be included, provided that they can be readily calculated. Typically, the objectives would be to maximize structural diversity while ensuring that the compounds in the library have “drug-like” properties. In the examples given, structural diversity is measured using Daylight fingerprints as descriptors and either the normalized sum of pairwise dissimilarities, calculated with the cosine coefficient, or the average nearest neighbor distance, calculated with the Tanimoto coefficient, as the measure of diversity. The objectives are specified at run time. Combinatorial libraries are selected by analyzing product space, which gives significant advantages over methods that are based on analyzing reactant space. SELECT can also be used to choose an optimal configuration for a multicomponent library. The performance of SELECT is dem.
Decision Making, Affect, and Learning: Attention and Performance XXIII

SECTION 1: PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES UNDERLYING DECISION MAKING 1. Trial-by-trial data analysis using computational models 2. Psychological influences on economic choice: Pavlovian cuing and emotional regulation 3. The psychology of common value auctions 4. The instability of value 5. Do intransitive choices reflect genuinely context-dependent preferences? SECTION 2: NEURAL SUSTEMS OF DECISION MAKING 6. On the difficulties of integrating evidence from fMRI and electrophysiology in cognitive neuroscience (TUTORIAL REVIEW) 7. Neuroeconomics of risky decisions: from variables to strategies 8. Multiple neural circuits in value-based decision making 9. Model-based analysis of decision variables 10. Reversal learning in fronto-striatal circuits: a functional, autonomic, and neurochemical analysis 11. Cingulate and orbitofrontal contributions to valuing knowns and unknowns in a changeble world SECTION 3: NEURAL SYSTEMS OF EMOTION, REWARD, AND LEARNING 12. Dissociating encoding of attention, errors, and value in outcome-related neural activity (Tutorial Review) 13. The striatum and beyond: contributions of the hippocampus decision making 14. The neural basis of positive and negative emotion regulation: implications for decision making 15. Reward processing and conscious awareness 16. Role of striatal dopamine in the fast adaption of outcome-based decisions 17. Investigating the role of the noradrenergic system in human cognition 18. Interoception and decision making SECTION 4: NEURODEVELOPMENTAL AND CLINICAL ASPECTS 19. A neural systems model of decision making in adolescents 20. Risky and impulsive components of adolescent decision making 21. Abnormalities in monetary and other non-drug reward processing in drug addiction 22. The neuropsychology of stimulant and opiate dependence: neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies 23. Depression and resilience: insights from cognitive, neuroimaging, and psychopharmacological studies
Urinary Excretion of IGF-I and Growth Hormone in Children With IDDM

Objective To compare the urinary output of insulinlike growth factor I (IGF-I) and growth hormone (GH) in prepubertal and pubertal children with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) versus nondiabetic subjects and to analyze the relationship between the urinary excretion of these peptides and degree of metabolic control. Research Design and Methods Group 1 included 30 IDDM patients who had had diabetes for 4.9 ± 0.7 yr and had normal renal function (mean age 11.6 ± 0.9 yr); group 2 consisted of 31 control subjects (mean age 9.2 ± 0.6 yr). Sensitive radioimmunoassays were used to measure IGF-I and GH in urine aliquots from 12-h timed overnight collections that had been dialyzed, concentrated 50-fold, and lyophilized. Results Significantly lower IGF-I and GH outputs per kilogram body weight per 12 h were observed in IDDM subjects compared with control subjects. When data were expressed per kilogram of body weight, no difference was observed between the urinary output of IGF-I and GH between prepubertal and pubertal subjects within group 1 or group 2. The prepubertal children had significantly lower HbA1 than the pubertal population; however, no correlation was found between urinary output of IGF-I or GH and HbA1. A positive correlation was observed between urinary IGF-I and GH (r = 0.85, P < .001). Conclusions Patients with long-standing IDDM excrete significantly lower urinary levels of IGF-I and GH compared with normal subjects. Serial measurements of these peptides from onset of IDDM are needed to define whether the changes observed are present at diagnosis or are secondary to duration of disease.
Genetic Algorithm-Based Energy-Efficiency via Role Sharing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

This study proposes a genetic algorithm-based (GA-based) ERoS (Energy-efficiency via Role Sharing) protocol with capable of predicting the optimal probability of cluster heads to enhance the performance of cluster-based wireless sensor networks. The proposed GA-based ERoS protocol, termed ERoS-GA, which basically includes set-up and steady-state phases for each round in the protocol, and a preparation phase is added at the beginning of the first round to obtain the optimal probability of nodes being cluster heads from the base station via genetic algorithm computation. The preparation phase is performed only once before the set-up phase of the first round, and the processes of following set-up and steady-state phases in every round are the same as ERoS. Simulation results show that the proposed genetic-algorithmbased ERoS protocol can produce optimal energy consumption effectively for the wireless sensor networks, resulting in a prolongation for entire network lifetime.
Software Newsroom – an approach to automation of news search and editing

We have developed tools and applied methods for automated identification of potential news from textual data for an automated news search system called Software Newsroom. The purpose of the tools is to analyze data collected from the internet and to identify information that has a high probability of containing new information. The identified information is summarized in order to help understanding the semantic contents of the data, and to assist the news editing process. It has been demonstrated that words with a certain set of syntactic and semantic properties are effective when building topic models for English. We demonstrate that words with the same properties in Finnish are useful as well. Extracting such words requires knowledge about the special characteristics of the Finnish language, which are taken into account in our analysis. Two different methodological approaches have been applied for the news search. One of the methods is based on topic analysis and it applies Multinomial Principal Component Analysis (MPCA) for topic model creation and data profiling. The second method is based on word association analysis and applies the log-likelihood ratio (LLR). For the topic mining, we have created English and Finnish language corpora from Wikipedia and Finnish corpora from several Finnish news archives and we have used bag-of-words presentations of these corpora as training data for the topic model. We have performed topic analysis experiments with both the training data itself and with arbitrary text parsed from internet sources. The results suggest that the effectiveness of news search strongly depends on the quality of the training data and its linguistic analysis. In the association analysis, we use a combined methodology for detecting novel word associations in the text. For detecting novel associations we use the background corpus from which we extract common word associations. In parallel, we collect the statistics of word co-occurrences from the documents of interest and search for associations with larger likelyhood in these documents than in the background. We have demonstrated the applicability of these methods for Software Newsroom. The results indicate that the background-foreground model has significant potential in news search. The experiments also indicate great promise in employing background-foreground word associations for other applications. A combined application of the two methods is planned as well as the application of the methods on social media using a pre-translator of social media language.
Measuring complexity in C++ application software

This paper concerns the use of design/source‐code complexity metrics in analysing C++ software. It describes the use of one suite of object‐oriented metrics published by Chidamber and Kemerer1 to evaluate a commercial C++ application. It provides an interpretation and critique of these metrics, including the use of two traditional metrics (Cyclomatic Complexity2 and Software Science3) in association with these object‐oriented metrics. The evolution, over a two and a half year period, of one commercial grade C++ application comprising 114 classes with 25,000 lines of code is studied. The efforts consumed in bug fixes and enhancements are correlated with the complexity measures on a per class basis, and results are presented. These results are compared to those from other workers. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the practical strengths and weaknesses of the metrics suite in the light of experiences with its use. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Perceptions of the food shopping environment are associated with greater consumption of fruits and vegetables

Abstract Objective The present study examined whether characteristics such as quality, selection and convenience are associated with dietary intake of fruits and vegetables independent of perceived costs in an inner-city, low-income population. Design Secondary analysis of baseline data from a social marketing intervention designed to change household dietary practices among parents of 3- to 7-year-old children. Setting A community sample drawn from six low-income, primarily minority neighbourhoods in Chicago, IL, USA. Subjects From the parent study, 526 respondents completed the baseline survey and were eligible for inclusion. Of this number, 495 provided complete data on sociodemographic characteristics, fruit and vegetable consumption, perceptions of the shopping environment, perceived costs of fruits and vegetables, and food shopping habits. Results Logistic regression analysis showed that more positive perceptions of the food shopping environment were associated with greater consumption of fruits and vegetables. There was an increase of approximately twofold in the likelihood of consuming three or more fruits and vegetables daily per level of satisfaction ascribed to the shopping environment. This association was independent of perceived cost, store type and sociodemographic characteristics. Conclusions Our data show that among a generally minority and low-income population, quality, selection and convenience are important determinants of fruit and vegetable consumption. Nutrition promotion campaigns that aim to alter the built environment by increasing access to fruits and vegetables should recognize that simply increasing availability may not yield beneficial change when characteristics of the shopping context are ignored.
Juvenile Huntington’s disease presenting as progressive myoclonic epilepsy

A 9-year-old girl, who had no family history of neurologic diseases in the first-degree relatives, had a 3-year history of progressive myoclonus epilepsy (PME). A thorough laboratory investigation was normal. As two sisters of her paternal grandmother were said to have Huntington’s disease (HD), the authors looked for HD and found a CAG repeat expansion of 115 repeats. This diagnosis should be considered in addition to other causes in patients with PME. Moreover, the current case further supports the notion that HD should be considered even when a family history is not obvious.
Design of Low Power and Area Efficient 2-Bit / Step Asynchronous SAR ADC using Dynamic Threshold Configuring Comparator Design of Low Power and Area Efficient SAR ADC Ms

A low power (0.4-09V) 2-bit/step successive approximation register (SAR) analog to digital converter (ADC) is conferred. A 2-bit/step operation technique is proposed which implementing a dynamic threshold configuring comparator instead of number of digital to analog converters (DACs). Area and power is reduced by successively activated comparators. Here the second comparator is activated reflecting the preceding comparator’s results. Because the second comparator threshold is configured dynamically for every cycle, only two comparators are required instead of three. By successively activating the comparators, the number of DAC settling is halved, so the power and area overhead is very small and the performance will be increased. The proposed ADC was implemented in a 90nm technology achieved a gain of 35.4 db, power of 0.89 μw and the conversion time of 0.32ns with a supply voltage of 0.4v. The total core area of this ADC is 7.74 μm2. Keywords— SAR ADC, 2-bit/step, low power, threshold configuring comparator.
Electrically reconfigurable dual metal-gate planar field-effect transistor for dopant-free CMOS

In this paper, we demonstrate by simulation the feasibility of electrostatically doped and therefore reconfigurable planar field-effect-transistor structure which is based on our already fabricated and published Si-nanowire devices. The technological cornerstones for this dual-gated general purpose FET contain Schottky S/D junctions on a silicon-on-insulator substrate. The transistor type, i.e. n-type or p-type FET, is electrically selectable on the fly by applying an appropriate control-gate voltage which significantly increases the versatility and flexibility in the design of digital integrated circuits.
Attracted to or Locked In? Predicting Continuance Intention in Social Virtual World Services

Internet-based social virtual world (SVW) services have aroused extensive interest among academicians and practitioners. The success of SVW services depends heavily on customers' continuance usage, a topic not yet adequately investigated in information systems research. It is unclear to what extent, and how, the existing theories can be extended to explain the continuance usage of such services. In consideration of the distinctive features of these services, this study adapts the dedication-constraint framework of commitment and develops a model of SVW continuance, which is assessed empirically using data collected from 438 experienced users of Second Life, a typical SVW service. Results indicate that SVW customers' continuance intention is jointly determined by two mechanisms: affective commitment (being attracted to) and calculative commitment (being locked in), with the former playing a more central role. Perceived utilitarian value, hedonic value, and relational capital promote affective commitment directly and indirectly through satisfaction, while service-specific investments in personalization and relational capital increase calculative commitment. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are subsequently discussed.
New steroids from Anemarrhena asphodeloides rhizome and their α-glucosidase inhibitory activity

Abstract Two new steroids were isolated from acid hydrolysis residue of the rhizomes of Anemarrhena asphodeloides. Their structures were identified on the basis of several spectroscopic analysis approaches including 1D, 2D-NMR techniques, and MS data, and by the comparison of spectral data of the known compounds. The biological activities of these two isolated compounds were explored on α-glucosidase. Compound 1 displayed 4.7 folds inhibitory activity against α-glucosidase compared with the positive control acarbose.
On the performance of regression and step-initialized IIR clutter filters for color Doppler systems in diagnostic medical ultrasound

One of the major issues in color Doppler ultrasound is the suppression of clutter that arises from stationary or slowly moving tissue. If not adequately suppressed, clutter can severely affect the ability of color Doppler systems to accurately estimate the Doppler mean frequency and power of blood, resulting in a potentially misleading depiction of flow. In this study, the performances of two classes of clutter suppression techniques-step-initialized infinite impulse response (IIR) and regression filters-were evaluated and compared by means of extensive simulations. The performance indicators used were the accuracy and precision of the mean frequency and the power estimates after clutter filtering. In summary, the ability of both filter classes to suppress clutter was found to vary considerably depending on factors such as the clutter-to-flow-signal ratio and the ensemble length. In particular, the performance of step-initialized IIR filters was shown to be noticeably inferior to that predicted by their steady-state response. Regression filters were found to offer significantly better performance than step-initialized IIR filters under heavy clutter conditions and, given their steeper roll-off, appear to be more effective clutter suppressors for power Doppler imaging. However, it should be noted that, as demonstrated by the simulations, the performance of IIR filters is severely degraded by their transient response which, in turn, is determined by the initialization scheme used. Therefore, more elaborate schemes-with superior transient characteristics than step-initialization-could significantly improve the effectiveness of IIR filtering under heavy clutter conditions. <<ETX>>
Development of a Distance Education Program by a Land-Grant University Augments the 2-Year to 4-Year STEM Pipeline and Increases Diversity in STEM

Although initial interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is high, recruitment and retention remains a challenge, and some populations are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM fields. To address these challenges, the Microbiology and Cell Science Department in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Florida has developed an innovative 2+2 degree program. Typical 2+2 programs begin with a student earning an associate’s degree at a local community college and then transferring to a 4-year institution to complete a bachelor’s degree. However, many universities in the United States, particularly land-grant universities, are located in rural regions that are distantly located from their respective states’ highly populated urban centers. This geographical and cultural distance could be an impediment to recruiting otherwise highly qualified and diverse students. Here, a new model of a 2+2 program is described that uses distance education as the vehicle to bring a research-intensive university’s life sciences curriculum to students rather than the oft-tried model of a university attempting to recruit underrepresented minority students to its location. In this paradigm, community college graduates transfer into the Microbiology and Cell Science program as distance education students to complete their Bachelor of Science degree. The distance education students’ experiences are similar to the on-campus students’ experiences in that both groups of students take the same department courses taught by the same instructors, take required laboratory courses in a face-to-face format, take only proctored exams, and have the same availability to instructors. Data suggests that a hybrid online transfer program may be a viable approach to increasing STEM participation (as defined by enrollment) and diversity. This approach is particularly compelling as the distance education cohort has comparable grade point averages and retention rates compared to the corresponding on-campus transfer cohort.
Streamlining semantic interpretation for medical narratives

We introduce two abstraction mechanisms by which the process of semantic interpretation of medical narratives can be simplified and further optimized. One relates to generalized triggering conditions, the other to inheritance-based specifications of semantic rules. The proposed methodology leads to a parsimonious inventory of abstract, simple and domain-independent semantic interpretation schemata whose effectiveness has been evaluated on a medical text corpus.