Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pulmonary Capillary Wedge Pressure Augments Right Ventricular Pulsatile Loading

Background— Right ventricular failure from increased pulmonary vascular loading is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, yet its modulation by disease remains poorly understood. We tested the hypotheses that, unlike the systemic circulation, pulmonary vascular resistance (RPA) and compliance (CPA) are consistently and inversely related regardless of age, pulmonary hypertension, or interstitial fibrosis and that this relation may be changed by elevated pulmonary capillary wedge pressure, augmenting right ventricular pulsatile load. Methods and Results— Several large clinical databases with right heart/pulmonary catheterization data were analyzed to determine the RPA-CPA relationship with pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary fibrosis, patient age, and varying pulmonary capillary wedge pressure. Patients with suspected or documented pulmonary hypertension (n=1009) and normal pulmonary capillary wedge pressure displayed a consistent RPA-CPA hyperbolic (inverse) dependence, CPA=0.564/(0.047+RPA), with a near-constant resistance-compliance product (0.48±0.17 seconds). In the same patients, the systemic resistance-compliance product was highly variable. Severe pulmonary fibrosis (n=89) did not change the RPA-CPA relation. Increasing patient age led to a very small but statistically significant change in the relation. However, elevation of the pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (n=8142) had a larger impact, significantly lowering CPA for any RPA and negatively correlating with the resistance-compliance product (P<0.0001). Conclusions— Pulmonary hypertension and pulmonary fibrosis do not significantly change the hyperbolic dependence between RPA and CPA, and patient age has only minimal effects. This fixed relationship helps explain the difficulty of reducing total right ventricular afterload by therapies that have a modest impact on mean RPA. Higher pulmonary capillary wedge pressure appears to enhance net right ventricular afterload by elevating pulsatile, relative to resistive, load and may contribute to right ventricular dysfunction.
Comparing the temperatures of galaxy clusters from hydrodynamical N-body simulations to Chandra and XMM-Newton observations

Theoretical studies of the physical processes guiding the formation and evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the X-ray region are mainly based on the results of numerical hydrodynamical N-body simulations, which in turn are often directly compared with X-ray observations. Although trivial in principle, these comparisons are not always simple. We demonstrate that the projected spectroscopic temperature of thermally complex clusters obtained from X-ray observations is always lower than the emission-weighed temperature, which is widely used in the analysis of numerical simulations. We show that this temperature bias is mainly related to the fact that the emission-weighted temperature does not reflect the actual spectral properties of the observed source. This has important implications for the study of thermal structures in clusters, especially when strong temperature gradients, such as shock fronts, are present. Because of this bias, in real observations shock fronts appear much weaker than what is predicted by emission-weighted temperature maps, and may not even be detected. This may explain why, although numerical simulations predict that shock fronts are a quite common feature in clusters of galaxies, to date there are very few observations of objects in which they are clearly seen. To fix this problem we propose a new formula, the spectroscopic-like temperature function, and show that, for temperatures higher than 3 keV, it approximates the spectroscopic temperature to better than a few per cent, making simulations more directly comparable to observations.
UNDERSTANDING VARIANCE OF PROFICIENCY TEST PERFORMANCE IN CINCINNATI'S NEIGHBORHOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

In the 2003-04 school year, the Ohio Proficiency Test was administered to third, fourth, sixth, and ninth grade students. The test measures third graders’ competency in reading and the competency of fourth, sixth, and ninth graders in mathematics, reading, writing, citizenship, and science. In the Cincinnati Public School District in the 2003-04 school year, performance on the Ohio Proficiency Test varied both numerically and spatially among neighborhood elementary schools (i.e., schools that draw students from attendance areas). The purpose of this thesis is to explain the variation in performance. This study uses several variables, based on previous studies, in correlation and regression analyses. The results indicate that strongly performing neighborhood schools had attendance areas with high percentages of residents enrolled in private schools, low percentages of families headed by single females, high income levels, low percentages of residents who moved between 1995 and 2000, and high percentages of white residents.
Addressing Confusions in Spoken Language in ESL Pronunciation Tutors

This paper presents a new approach for developing pronunciation tutors in Second Language (L2) learning. Ap-plying the Basic Identiﬁcation of Confusable Contexts (BICC) procedure we automatically generate curriculum that is rich in possible confusion contexts which can be practiced by L2 students in read-aloud tasks. This is the basis of a new pronunciation tutor where the student interacts orally in a scripted conversation with a virtual avatar. The student’s utterances are automatically evaluated to detect mispronunciations and the tutor provides feedback on the errors which produce a confusion in the message. An assessment was carried out with a group of English as Second Language (ESL) speakers to evaluate the tutor interface as well as to determine their motivation and engagement in practicing English with it.
Poxvirus Orthologous Clusters: toward Defining the Minimum Essential Poxvirus Genome

ABSTRACT Increasingly complex bioinformatic analysis is necessitated by the plethora of sequence information currently available. A total of 21 poxvirus genomes have now been completely sequenced and annotated, and many more genomes will be available in the next few years. First, we describe the creation of a database of continuously corrected and updated genome sequences and an easy-to-use and extremely powerful suite of software tools for the analysis of genomes, genes, and proteins. These tools are available free to all researchers and, in most cases, alleviate the need for using multiple Internet sites for analysis. Further, we describe the use of these programs to identify conserved families of genes (poxvirus orthologous clusters) and have named the software suite POCs, which is available at www.poxvirus. org . Using POCs, we have identified a set of 49 absolutely conserved gene families—those which are conserved between the highly diverged families of insect-infecting entomopoxviruses and vertebrate-infecting chordopoxviruses. An additional set of 41 gene families conserved in chordopoxviruses was also identified. Thus, 90 genes are completely conserved in chordopoxviruses and comprise the minimum essential genome, and these will make excellent drug, antibody, vaccine, and detection targets. Finally, we describe the use of these tools to identify necessary annotation and sequencing updates in poxvirus genomes. For example, using POCs, we identified 19 genes that were widely conserved in poxviruses but missing from the vaccinia virus strain Tian Tan 1998 GenBank file. We have reannotated and resequenced fragments of this genome and verified that these genes are conserved in Tian Tan. The results for poxvirus genes and genomes are discussed in light of evolutionary processes.
Cortical Reactivity and Attentional Bias during a Body Image Exposure

Photographs of one’s own body can evoke different motivational tendencies, depending on one’s own body satisfaction and narcissistic propensity. The present study had two main purposes: (1) to replicate and extend the findings from Chong (2014) in order to investigate whether the relationship between body satisfaction and frontal asymmetry is mediated by self-attentional bias, and (2) to determine whether the relationship between body satisfaction and self-attentional bias is moderated by narcissistic vulnerability. A total of 79 Lakehead University female undergraduates completed questionnaires pertaining to narcissism and body satisfaction followed by a laboratory visit to engage in a dot probe and picture-viewing task. The study failed to replicate the negative relationship between body satisfaction and frontal asymmetry, and to demonstrate the hypothesized mediating effect of attentional bias on this relationship. However, body satisfaction predicted attentional bias towards oneself among individuals high on narcissistic vulnerability. At 175 ms exposure duration during the dot probe task, greater narcissistic vulnerability predicted attentional bias towards oneself when participants had high body satisfaction relative to their low-satisfaction counterparts. An opposite pattern emerged at 500 ms exposure duration such that greater narcissistic vulnerability predicted attentional bias towards oneself when participants had low body satisfaction compared to their high-satisfaction counterparts. These observations suggest that in response to stimuli that pose a threat to selfrepresentation, narcissistically vulnerable individuals may engage in attentional processing strategies to build and maintain their self-representation. The null findings are discussed in terms of replication concerns in psychological research, as well as limitations with the existing models of frontal asymmetry. CORTICAL REACTIVITY AND ATTENTIONAL BIAS iii
Optimal LQG Control Across a Packet-Dropping Link

We examine optimal Linear Quadratic Gaussian control for a system in which communication between the sensor (output of the plant) and the controller occurs across a packet-dropping link. We extend the familiar LQG separation principle to this problem that allows us to solve this problem using a standard LQR state-feedback design, along with an optimal algorithm for propagating and using the information across the unreliable link. We present one such optimal algorithm, which consists of a Kalman Filter at the sensor side of the link, and a switched linear filter at the controller side. Our design does not assume any statistical model of the packet drop events, and is thus optimal for an arbitrary packet drop pattern. Further, the solution is appealing from a practical point of view because it can be implemented as a small modification of an existing LQG control design.
PUMA : Phase Unwrapping via MAx flows

Phase unwrapping is the inference of absolute phase from modulo-2π phase. This paper synthetically presents an energy minimization framework for phase unwrapping. The considered objective functions are first-order Markov random fields. We provide an exact energy minimization algorithm, whenever the corresponding clique potentials are convex, n amely for the phase unwrapping classicalL norm, with p ≥ 1. For nonconvex clique potentials, often used owing to their discontinuity preserving ability, we face an NP-hard problem for which we devise an approximate solution. Both algorithms solve integer optimization problems, by computing a sequen ce of binary optimizations, each one solved by graph cut techniqu es. Accordingly, we name the two algorithms PUMA, for phase unwrapping max-flow/min-cut. A set of experimental results illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach andits competitiveness in comparison with state-of-the-art phas e unwrapping algorithms.
Analysis of multistage amplifier-frequency compensation

Frequency-compensation techniques of single-, two- and three-stage amplifiers based on Miller pole splitting and pole-zero cancellation are re-analyzed. The assumptions made, transfer functions, stability criteria, bandwidths, and important design issues of most of the reported topologies are included. Several proposed methods to improve the published topologies are given. In addition, simulations and experimental results are provided to verify the analysis and to prove the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Analyzing the weighted dark networks using scale-free network approach

The task of identifying the main key nodes in the dark (covert) networks is very important for the researchers in the field of dark networks analysis. This analysis leads to locate the major nodes in the network as the functionality can be minimized by disrupting major key nodes in the network. In this paper, we have primarily focused on two basic network analysis metrics, degree and betweenness centrality. Traditionally, both these centrality measures have been applied on the bases of number of links connected with the nodes but without considering link weights. Like many other networks, dark networks also follow scale-free behavior and thus follow the power-law distribution where few nodes have maximum links. This, inhomogeneous structure of network causes the creation of key nodes. In this research, we analyze the behavior of nodes in dark networks based on degree and betweenness centrality measures by using 9/11 terrorist network dataset. We analyzed both these measures with weighted and un-weighted links to prove that weighted networks are much closer to scale-free phenomenon as compared to un-weighted networks.
TEACHING WRITING SKILL BY USING BRAINWRITING STRATEGY

English is getting more crucial to be mastered since its important part in the world nowadays. It is not only as a means of communication but also a means transferring knowledge, news, and technology around the world. There are four basic skills in English such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing, every students must have problem in learning and mastering those skill. But writing is the main issue to be discussed in this article. In writing, some of the writer’s students feel difficult to determine the topic when they want to write, they are hardly to complete a writing paper because they run out of idea. In this case the students need to absorb some information to understand a word, including how to combine a word with the other words. Therefore the teacher should have a strategy to get the students understanding and overcome their problems.Teaching is about just how to encourage the learners to achieve their goals and other times it requires that we actually facilitate resources and foster experiences so students can learn, continue learning and love the process. It is an art of the teacher to know how to make the students able to create knowledge of their own. Brainstorming is one of the teaching techniques in writing that can encourage the students to think about the topic as many as possible. This technique is help the students to enrich their vocabularies then create an idea become a writing composition. By using this strategy the students will be able to improve their writing skill. Brainwriting is an alternative method to brainstorming that tries to encourage a more uniform participation within a group. Like brainstorming, it is designed to generate lots and lots of ideas in a short amount of time.
INface: A Toolbox for Illumination Invariant Face Recognition

Foreword The INFace (Illumination Normalization techniques for robust Face recognition) toolbox is a collection of Matlab functions and scripts intended to help researchers working in the filed of face recognition. The toolbox was produced as a byprod-uct of my research work. It includes implementations of the following photomet-ric normalization techniques: the single-scale-retinex algorithm, the multi-scale-retinex algorithm, the single-scale self quotient image, the multi-scale self quotient image, the homomorphic-filtering-based normalization technique, a wavelet-based normalization technique, a wevelet-denoising-based normalization technique, the isotropic-diffusion-based normalization technique, the anisotropic-diffusion-based normalization technique, the non-local-means-based normalization technique, the adaptive non-local-means-based normalization technique, the DCT-based nor-malization technique and a normalization technique based on steerable filters. In addition to the listed techniques there are also a number of histogram manipulation functions included in the toolbox, which can be useful for the task of illumination invariant face recognition. This document describes the basics of the toolbox, from installation to usage. The reader is referred to the original papers for more information on the theory underlying the individual techniques.
Multilayer Circularly Polarized Circular Annular Ring Patch

paper presents the effect on circular polarization of multilayer circular annular ring patch (CARP). A CARP have been fabricated on FR4 substrate of dielectric constant 4.2 and thickness 1.52mm. Experimental resonant frequency impedance bandwidth and Axial ratio of simple CARP, covered CARP, spaced dielectric CARP and CARP with two superstrates have been measured and simulated using full wave analysis methods. The Simple CARP is fed diagonal to the radiating patch by a 50 � coaxial probe for determining circular polarization (CP) and 3dB Axial Ratio (AR) bandwidth. The simple CARP has been designed and fabricated and found to have a CP.3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 15MHz at the center fundamental resonant frequency of 1.5514GHz. Covering the simple CARP with various dielectric material of varying thickness shows a 4% increase in 3dB AR bandwidth. Covering the CARP with constant thickness material but with varying dielectric material, both the 10dB impedance bandwidth and 3dB AR bandwidth shows 1.9% and 15% increase with respect to the simple CARP. This type of study is useful for wideband, high gain antenna and to calculate the radome and environmental effect on resonant frequency.
A Burstiness Control for TCP

In this paper, we propose a two-layer model for TCP traffic with burstiness effect. We show that the backlog in bottleneck queue is bounded by the sum of two components: the long term effect of congestion window control algorithm and the short term effect of burstiness. This motivates a formal definition of burstiness. A simple algorithm is proposed to measure and control burstiness at the sender’s side. We present experimental results to illustrate the effectiveness of burstiness control.
Localization algorithm for a fleet of three AUVs by INS, DVL and range measurements

The strong research efforts undergone in Marine Robotics during the last two decades open great possibilities for maritime operations. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) take the crew away from dangerous situations at depths of sea, with available and cost-affordable technology. MDM Lab, the Laboratory of Mechatronics and Dynamic Modelling of the University of Florence, is partner of the Thesaurus project, funded by Regione Toscana, with the aim of designing a moderate-cost AUV, called Tifone, to be used, in swarm, for research and monitoring of archaeological sites. In this paper we propose a Localization Algorithm for a fleet of three vehicles and a surface support ship which employs several sensors. Each AUV is equipped with low-cost sensors such as IMU, magnetometer and depth sensor; two of them have an high accuracy velocity sensor such as the Doppler Velocity Log. Acoustic modems, used for communication between AUVs, can provide the time of flight from an AUV to an another one. The positions estimated with a Range-Based algorithm fuse with the ones estimated by INS&DVL, avoiding unbounded error growth in the position estimate of the AUVs.
Performance Analysis of AsF5-intercalated Top-Contact Multi Layer Graphene NanoRibbon Interconnects

In this paper, As F5-intercalated multilayer graphene nanoribbons (MLGNRs) as a potential interconnect candidate for future technology nodes is investigated. This paper for the first time analyzes impact of As F5 intercalation on effective resistance of top contact MLGNR (TC-MLGNRs) interconnects. Performance metrics such as delay, energy delay product and bandwidth density of As F5-intercalated TC-MLGNRs for local/intermediate and global interconnects are analyzed and compared with that of neutral TC-MLGNRs as well as traditional copper (Cu) interconnects. Our analysis shows that for similar dimensions, As F5-intercalated TC-MLGNR interconnects can provide better performance than Cu wires for both local/intermediate and global interconnect applications. For 1 mm interconnect length, As F5-intercalated TC-MLGNRs offer significant improvement in delay, energy budget and BWD as compared to Cu wires for local/intermediate and global interconnects, thereby making it a promising candidate for future interconnect technologies.
GPU-based simulation of 3 D blood flow in abdominal aorta using

The simulation of blood flow in the cardiac system has the potential to become an attractive diagnostic tool for many cardiovascular diseases, such as in the case of aneurysm. This potential could be reached if the simulations were to be completed in hours rather than days and without resorting to the use of expensive supercomputers. Therefore we have investigated a possibility of accelerating medical computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations using graphics processing units (GPUs). Our results for the 3D blood flow in the human abdominal aorta show that by transferring only a part of the computations (linear system solvers) to the GPU, it is possible to make the typical CFD simulations three to four times faster depending on the CFD model being used. Since these simulations were performed on widely available GPUs that had been designed as mass-market PC extension cards, our results suggest that porting larger parts of CFD to GPUs could really bring the technology into hospitals.
EEG desynchronization during phasic REM sleep suppresses interictal epileptic activity in humans

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep has a suppressing effect on epileptic activity. This effect might be directly related to neuronal desynchronization mediated by cholinergic neurotransmission. We investigated whether interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) and high frequency oscillations—a biomarker of the epileptogenic zone—are evenly distributed across phasic and tonic REM sleep. We hypothesized that IEDs are more suppressed during phasic REM sleep because of additional cholinergic drive.
Experimental evidence validating the computational inference of functional associations from gene fusion events: a critical survey

More than a decade ago, a number of methods were proposed for the inference of protein interactions, using whole-genome information from gene clusters, gene fusions and phylogenetic profiles. This structural and evolutionary view of entire genomes has provided a valuable approach for the functional characterization of proteins, especially those without sequence similarity to proteins of known function. Furthermore, this view has raised the real possibility to detect functional associations of genes and their corresponding proteins for any entire genome sequence. Yet, despite these exciting developments, there have been relatively few cases of real use of these methods outside the computational biology field, as reflected from citation analysis. These methods have the potential to be used in high-throughput experimental settings in functional genomics and proteomics to validate results with very high accuracy and good coverage. In this critical survey, we provide a comprehensive overview of 30 most prominent examples of single pairwise protein interaction cases in small-scale studies, where protein interactions have either been detected by gene fusion or yielded additional, corroborating evidence from biochemical observations. Our conclusion is that with the derivation of a validated gold-standard corpus and better data integration with big experiments, gene fusion detection can truly become a valuable tool for large-scale experimental biology.