Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anti-cholesterol antibody levels in hereditary angioedema

Hereditary angioedema (HAE) is a rare disorder caused by the deficiency of the C1‐inhibitor gene (C1INH) and characterized by recurrent bouts of angioedema. Autoimmune disorders frequently occur in HAE. Previously we found, that danazol has an adverse effect on serum lipid profile: reduced high‐density lipoprotein (HDL) and elevated low‐density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels are associated with long‐term prophylactic use, whereas total cholesterol levels are unchanged. Our aim was to study the anti‐cholesterol antibody (ACHA) production in HAE patients and compare it with those of healthy blood donors, and to investigate the possible associations between ACHA levels and serum lipid profile alterations caused by danazol. Anti‐cholesterol IgG levels were measured by ELISA and their correlation with serum concentrations of total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides was determined in HAE patients receiving/not receiving danazol. Serum ACHA levels were significantly higher in HAE patients, compared to healthy blood donors (P < 0.0001). Longterm danazol prophylaxis had no effect on serum ACHA levels in HAE patients. However, we found a significant, negative correlation between ACHA levels and serum total cholesterol (r =−0.4033, P = 0.0200), LDL (r =−0.4565, P = 0.0076) and triglyceride (r =−0.4230, P = 0.0121) levels only in danazol‐treated patients, but not in HAE patients who did not receive long‐term prophylaxis. Patients with HAE have higher baseline ACHA levels compared to healthy subjects, and this might reflect polyclonal B‐cell activation. The latter would be a potential explanation for the lack of an increased incidence of infectious diseases in HAE patients, but might lead to increased autoimmunity.
Optimal design of high dexterity modular MIS instrument for coronary artery bypass grafting

This paper introduces an original, dextrous, active and modular minimally invasive instrument dedicated to coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. Its design is obtained by a generic evolutionary optimization process using Pareto-based multi objective genetic algorithms and including highly realist simulations and experimental models of the surgical gesture. The optimal instrument has 5 intra-body DOFs, is actuated by brush-less micro motors and is position controlled. Its optimization, mechanical design and performances are discussed.
Monte Carlo evaluation of monolithic scintillator block detectors using silicon PMTs

The optimal pixel size of SiPMT arrays to read out monolithic 20×20×10 mm LSO scintillator block detectors has been studied. The influence of different SiPMT parameters on the achievable spatial resolution was compared. It was concluded that a SiPMT array with 3*3 mm pixel size, pitch 3.4 mm pixel, 30% detection efficiency, 100 m *100 m micro-cell size and crosstalk smaller than 20% is a good and realistic design that achieves better spatial and energy resolution than our current monolithic scintillator block readout based on Hamamatsu S8550 APD arrays.
Neuroenergetics Original Research Article

and allows investigating neurovascular coupling. In sum, its non-invasiveness requiring no exposure to radiation, magnetic fields or contrast agents and device portability allow a flexible handling in a clinical diagnostic, prognostic, and rehabilitative environment (Miyai et al., 2001). One major methodological shortcoming of OI is spatial resolution. Typically in the range of few centimeters, topographical assignment of the activations is hampered by a sparse spatial sampling over the scalp. In the most commonly used next-neighbor approach, the individual measurement channels are defined by a pair of light-emitting and light-detecting probe separated by an inter-optode distance (IOD) of 2–4 cm. These discrete measurement points are then interpolated into a topographic map of functional activation, which is superimposed onto the brain area covered by the probe array. To enhance the spatial resolution a multi-distance approach using several sources and detectors has been proposed. Since light attenuation of multiple neighbors with different IODs is assessed, this approach yields measurements of overlapping photon paths with different sampled target depths (Barbour et al., 2001; Boas et al., 2004). The differential sensitivity of the volumes interrogated by light, leads to a rough depth discrimination and facilitates the separation of signals from superficial
A sink-n-hoist framework for leakage power reduction

Power leakage constitutes an increasing fraction of the total power consumption in modern semiconductor technologies. Recent research efforts have tried to integrate architecture and compiler solutions to employ power-gating mechanisms to reduce leakage power. This approach is to have compilers perform data-flow analysis and insert instructions at programs to shut down and wake up components whenever appropriate for power reductions. While this approach has been shown to be effective in early studies, there are concerns for the amount of power-control instructions being added to programs with the increasing amount of components equipped with power-gating control in a SoC design platform. In this paper, we present a Sink-N-Hoist framework in the compiler solution to generate balanced scheduling of power-gating instructions. Our solution will attempt to merge power-gating instructions as one compound instruction. Therefore, it will reduce the amount of power-gating instructions issued.We perform experiments by incorporating our compiler analysis and scheduling policies into SUIF compiler tools and by simulating the energy consumptions on Wattch toolkits. The experimental results demonstrate that our mechanisms are effective in reducing the amount of power-gating instructions while further in reducing leakage power compared to previous methods.
Uses and abuses of EIDORS: an extensible software base for EIT

EIDORS is an open source software suite for image reconstruction in electrical impedance tomography and diffuse optical tomography, designed to facilitate collaboration, testing and new research in these fields. This paper describes recent work to redesign the software structure in order to simplify its use and provide a uniform interface, permitting easier modification and customization. We describe the key features of this software, followed by examples of its use. One general issue with inverse problem software is the difficulty of correctly implementing algorithms and the consequent ease with which subtle numerical bugs can be inadvertently introduced. EIDORS helps with this issue, by allowing sharing and reuse of well-documented and debugged software. On the other hand, since EIDORS is designed to facilitate use by non-specialists, its use may inadvertently result in such numerical errors. In order to address this issue, we develop a list of ways in which such errors with inverse problems (which we refer to as ‘cheats’) may occur. Our hope is that such an overview may assist authors of software to avoid such implementation issues.
THE THEORY OF TAXATION AND PUBLIC ECONOMICS BY LOUIS KAPLOW

I his preface, Louis Kaplow writes, “The purpose of this book is to offer a unifying conceptual framework for the normative study of taxation and related subjects in public economics. ” This framework is very much in the optimal tax mode, where a social welfare function with individual utilities as arguments is maximized, subject to a government budget constraint. To this reviewer, optimal tax theory is one of the triumphs of modern public economics, though much remains to be done. It is fun and informative to read in one place about the progress researchers have made in understanding many facets of the optimal tax problem, while at the same time seeing how progress is being slowed by the problem’s sheer complexity. For example, we still do not have a defi nitive answer to the question of whether optimal marginal income tax rates rise or fall as incomes become high, but we now know a lot about the factors that determine the answer. In addition, the models covered in this volume are of limited value for developing countries, for which Kaplow observes that income taxation is largely infeasible.1 While the book’s main focus is on established results from the standard optimal tax model, with its assumptions of fully optimizing consumers under complete information, no costs of tax administration, and no ineffi cient political processes, it provides informative discussions of departures from these and other assumptions. The book covers a wide range of research on normative tax theory, and therefore could be useful to economists interested in learning about the area. Little space is devoted to formal statements of the optimal tax problems, and, “. no attempt is made here to replicate existing formal derivations or to extend them. Instead, attention is focused on articulating the main results and the intuition behind them . ” (p. 57). Thus, the book is probably not suitable as the main text for public fi nance courses for Ph.D. students
3d gesture recognition applying long short-term memory and contextual knowledge in a CAVE

Virtual reality applications are emerging into various regions of research and entertainment. Although visual and acoustic capabilities are already quite impressive, a wide range of users still criticizes the user interface. Frequently complex and very sensitive input devices are being used, although simple gestures would be preferred. While gesture recognition systems are quite common, see Nintendo's Wii mote, a CAVE has further challenges, as the person can be located in any random position and the gestures are not being performed related to a common fixpoint. Applying an infrared tracking system it is possible to reliably locate the hand and compute 3D trajectories. These are then further analyzed with a Long Short-Term Memory approach, which is able to model sequences of variable length with a higher reliability than HMMs.
Staying on or Dropping Out? The Role of Intergroup Friendship and Perceived Teacher Support in Minority and Nonminority School Careers

Background Bridging educational and social psychology, we examine the impact of positive intergroup relations in schools on minority and nonminority school careers. Purpose of Study The study aims to estimate and explain the attainment gap between Turkish Belgian minority and Belgian nonminority students at four stages of their school careers, controlling for family background and prior attainment. Intergroup friendship and perceived teacher support were expected to reduce the attainment gap. Research Design Randomly sampled Turkish Belgian students and students in a nonminority comparison sample (N = 661) answered retrospective questions on their school careers and early schooling experiences. By way of separate multinomial logistic regressions, we estimated the attainment gap as the odds of leaving school or staying in vocational (vs. academic) education at four stages: lower, middle, upper secondary, and tertiary levels. Next, we tested the effects of intergroup friendship and teacher support on track placement and dropout at each level. Results As expected, our findings indicated a persistent and widening attainment gap between minority and nonminority school careers in the hierarchical structure of the Belgian school system. Minority students who had started in academic tracks were less likely to continue in academic and higher education and more likely to leave school at each stage than similar nonminority students. Intergroup friendship (for minority students) and perceived support from teachers (for all) significantly increased staying-on rates and reduced the attainment gap. Conclusion Our findings demonstrate the key role of positive intergroup relations with peers and teachers in enabling students, especially minority students, to stay on in school.
Capability of GLAS/ICESat Data to Estimate Forest Canopy Height and Volume in Mountainous Forests of Iran

The importance of measuring forest biophysical properties for ecosystem health monitoring and forest management encourages researchers to find precise, yet low-cost methods especially in mountainous and large areas. In the present study, geoscience laser altimeter system (GLAS) on board Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) was used to estimate three biophysical characteristics of forests located in the north of Iran: 1) maximum canopy height (Hmax); 2) Lorey's height (HLorey); and 3) forest volume (V). A large number of multiple linear regressions (MLR) and also random forest (RF) regressions were developed using different sets of variables including waveform metrics, principal components (PCs) produced from principal component analysis (PCA) and wavelet coefficients (WCs) generated from wavelet transformation (WT). To validate and compare models, statistical criteria were calculated based on a fivefold cross validation. Best model concerning the maximum height was an MLR (RMSE = 5.0 m) which combined two metrics extracted from waveforms (waveform extent “ Wext” and height at 50% of waveform energy “ H50”), and one from digital elevation model (terrain index, TI). The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of maximum height estimates was 16.4%. For Lorey's height, a simple MLR (including Wext and TI) represented the highest performance (RMSE = 5.1 m, MAPE = 24.0%). Generally, MLR models had a better performance when compared to the RF models. In addition, the accuracy of height estimations using waveform metrics was greater than those based on PCs or WCs. Concerning forest volume, regression models estimating volume directly from GLAS data led to a better result (RMSE = 128.8 m3/ha) rather than volume- HLorey relationship (RMSE = 167.8 m3/ha).
Secrecy forever? Analysis of anonymity in Internet-based voting protocols

Internet-based elections have become more and more popular. In future a lot of people are probably going to cast their ballot over the Internet. This could be a great benefit. But at the same time new possibilities to manipulate the election will arise: Besides other network specific attacks, sniffing of the network traffic becomes interesting. This paper identifies the problems with respect to temporal unlimited election secrecy against sniffing on the network. The problem is the voter's IP address and the fact that in practice, there is no anonymous communication channel. Thus the voter's anonymity can be broken in future. However, the attacker will not be able to proof his knowledge about the voter's decision. We figure out how this vulnerability is prevented with state of the art technologies.
Gamification of Information Systems and Security Training: Issues and Case Studies

This paper discusses gamification, the application of gaming elements in non-game contexts, with regard to information systems and information security training. The authors have developed gamification tools for use in the classroom as well as several educational games in order to explore the viability of gamified curricula in both high school and college environments. Early results indicate positive student attitudes toward gamified approaches, as well as improved attendance and success rate. Issues encountered in curriculum gamification and game development are described along with best practices for both.
Compact Photonic Integrated Chip for Tunable Microwave Generation

A tunable microwave generation is demonstrated by monolithically integrated photonic chip, which combines a mirror section and two distributed feedback (DFB) lasers. The focus ion beam technology was employed to achieve high-quality air/semiconductor slab for the mirror. Two DFB lasers (named slave and master lasers, respectively) can operate in a single fundamental mode when they are individually pumped. A microwave signal with the differential frequency between the two lasers can be obtained through optical heterodyning. A tunable microwave signal up to 25.5 GHz can be generated by adjusting the injected currents of the two DFB lasers. A four-wave mixing spectrum was measured and the linewidth of the generated radio frequency signal is 1.9 MHz.
Early Spatial and Temporal Events of Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 Spread following Blood-Borne Transmission in a Rabbit Model of Infection

ABSTRACT Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) infection causes adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) and is associated with a variety of lymphocyte-mediated disorders. HTLV-1 transmission occurs by transmission of infected cells via breast-feeding by infected mothers, sexual intercourse, and contaminated blood products. The route of exposure and early virus replication events are believed to be key determinants of virus-associated spread, antiviral immune responses, and ultimately disease outcomes. The lack of knowledge of early events of HTLV-1 spread following blood-borne transmission of the virus in vivo hinders a more complete understanding of the immunopathogenesis of HTLV-1 infections. Herein, we have used an established animal model of HTLV-1 infection to study early spatial and temporal events of the viral infection. Twelve-week-old rabbits were injected intravenously with cell-associated HTLV-1 (ACH-transformed R49). Blood and tissues were collected at defined intervals throughout the study to test the early spread of the infection. Antibody and hematologic responses were monitored throughout the infection. HTLV-1 intracellular Tax and soluble p19 matrix were tested from ex vivo cultured lymphocytes. Proviral copy numbers were measured by real-time PCR from blood and tissue mononuclear leukocytes. Our data indicate that intravenous infection with cell-associated HTLV-1 targets lymphocytes located in both primary lymphoid and gut-associated lymphoid compartments. A transient lymphocytosis that correlated with peak virus detection parameters was observed by 1 week postinfection before returning to baseline levels. Our data support emerging evidence that HTLV-1 promotes lymphocyte proliferation preceding early viral spread in lymphoid compartments to establish and maintain persistent infection.
Integration of Microarray and Textual Data Improves the Prognosis Prediction of Breast, Lung, and Ovarian Cancer Patients

Microarray data are notoriously noisy such that models predicting clinically relevant outcomes often contain many false positive genes. Integration of other data sources can alleviate this problem and enhance gene selection and model building. Probabilistic models provide a natural solution to integrate information by using the prior over model space. We investigated if the use of text information from PUBMED abstracts in the structure prior of a Bayesian network could improve the prediction of the prognosis in cancer. Our results show that prediction of the outcome with the text prior was significantly better compared to not using a prior, both on a well known microarray data set and on three independent microarray data sets.
Inter- and intra-speaker variation in Liverpool English : a sociophonetic study

INTERAND INTRA-SPEAKER VARIATION IN LIVERPOOL ENGLISH: A SOCIOPHONETIC STUDY Catherine M. Sangster, Merton College, University of Oxford Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Trinity Term 2002 This thesis presents experiments and interviews which investigate pronunciation variation in the Liverpool accents of young speakers. Experiment One investigates inter-speaker variation, Experiment Two investigates intra-speaker variation, and Experiment Three investigates both interand intra-speaker variation. These three experiments are conducted from a sociophonetic perspective, with controlled elicitation of natural speech and acoustic analysis of speech data. The experimental investigations are complemented by interviews, which incorporate the perceptions and opinions of speakers of Liverpool English into the study. The study makes several contributions to the field of sociolinguistic research. It provides a new examination of Liverpool English. Experiment One is specifically designed to explore one of its most complex and ill-defined phonetic features, the realisation of plosives as affricates or fricatives. In addition to this phonetic investigation, Experiment One also examines sociolinguistic variation in this feature, and shows that speakers' individual attributes (such as their social networks and their plans for the future) are as relevant to variation as their socio-economic status. The study also makes important methodological contributions. Instrumental phonetic techniques and standards are successfully applied to sociolinguistic investigation conducted in the field. An interdisciplinary approach, bringing together qualitative interviews and sociophonetic experiments, is adopted. A new quiz-questionnaire technique for data collection, which should prove useful for many kinds of future sociolinguistic research, is developed for Experiment Three. Finally, Experiment Three tests many accounts and models of intra-speaker variation. Speakers are shown to vary their pronunciation as the speech situation varies, but not all the seven phonetic variables investigated show the same patterns of variation. Speakers vary their pronunciation according to audience, and also according to topic. Speakers with a high level of ambition vary their pronunciation of certain phonetic variables more than those with a lower level of ambition, and female speakers vary their pronunciation more than male speakers.
Conducting Research with Racial/Ethnic Minorities: Methodological Lessons from the NIDA Clinical Trials Network

Background: Multiple studies in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Clinical Trials Network (CTN) demonstrate strategies for conducting effective substance abuse treatment research with racial/ethnic minorities (REMs). Objectives: The objectives of this article are to describe lessons learned within the CTN to (1) enhance recruitment, retention, and other outcomes; (2) assess measurement equivalence; and (3) use data analytic plans that yield more information. Method: This article includes background information and examples from multiple CTN studies on inclusion, measurement, and data analysis. Results and Conclusions: Seven recommendations are included for conducting more effective research on REMs.
Serial position effects scoring in the assessment of memory in Alzheimer's disease and major depression

The objective of this thesis was to validate serial position effects (SPE’S) scoring in the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). The RAVLT is a much used clinical method for assessing memory performance, but the method of scoring obfuscates that two memory processes underlie free recall. This is suggested by SPE’S of single-trial free recall , although the extent of the effects are not defined. The internal and external validity of SPE’S of the RAVLT is studied. The internal validity of SPE’S is studied by means of confirmatory factor analysis. It is shown that the recency effect comprises two to three items, while the primacy effect and middle (prerecency) comprise the remaining items in a list, implying that they arise from two memory functions. Studies testing their external validity show that they play a variant role in memory impairment of Alzheimer’s disease and Major Depression patients and are found to be differentially related to stress hormone activity in these patients, and in healty human subjects. Scoring of accurately determined SPE’S in the RAVLT is a valid improvement of clinical memory assessment. As serial position effects are further found in the recall of a variety of types of information, and also found in the animal, it is argued that they are general to temporal information processing.