Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A generic API for load balancing in distributed systems for big data management

Distributed systems for big data management very often face the problem of load imbalance among nodes. To address this issue, there exist almost as many load balancing strategies as there are different systems. When designing a scalable distributed system geared towards handling large amounts of information, it is often not so easy to anticipate which kind of strategy will be the most efficient to maintain adequate performance regarding response time, scalability, and reliability at any time. Based on this observation, we describe a generic API to implement and experiment any strategy independently from the rest of the code, prior to a definitive choice for instance. We then show how existing load balancing strategies used by famous systems could be implemented with this API. We also present how this work has helped us implement load balancing on our distributed system and modify the behavior of our strategy in a few lines of code. This led us to easily perform various experiments to determine the most efficient scheme for our system. This paper is an extension to our work presented at Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing for Big Data Applications (WPBA) 2014. We detail here more experiments and extend the use of the API to a broad class of big data storage systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Analysis and Simulation of Antenna Protocol Optimization for Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks are defined as a set of sensors and configure themselves into a network upon activation and communicate with each other, which can be applied in such fields as data gathering from disaster areas or areas not accessible to human beings or larger machines. Wireless mobile networks have different considerations and limitations compared with traditional networks and hence need to be studied separately. The paper analyzes the optimization of the antenna and protocol combination for ad hoc wireless networks. The different combination of antenna types and MAC protocols are simulated under different environment. It shows from the result that such performance as gains and energy consumption can be improved by directional antennas.
Dialectical behaviour therapy as a treatment for borderline personality disorder in prisons: Three illustrative case studies

Abstract Little is known about the effectiveness of treatments for severe personality disorder in prisons. Any treatment within the prison context will aim to reduce criminogenic risk in its participants, and ameliorate the overall symptomatology of the disorder. The over-representation of borderline personality disorder in female prisons has lead to pilots of dialectical behaviour therapy in three such establishments in the UK. This treatment was designed for borderline personality disordered women in the community in the USA, and this is the first time it has been piloted within a UK prison context. It was the treatment of choice as it had the strongest evidence base in lower security settings. Overall findings from the pilots have been very promising in terms of the viability of DBT as an offending behaviour programme and in terms of improving the manageability of prisoners on the wing. The case studies described here aim to illustrate in some detail the cognitive and behavioural change process in individuals over a year of treatment, and at six-month follow-up, and to highlight the particular challenges faced by participants and therapists when delivering treatment in prison. In describing the improvements in all three cases, which vary in terms of symptomatology and background, we aim to demonstrate the versatility of DBT in the prison setting and its capacity for reducing criminogenic risk.
Integration of palliative care in end-stage liver disease and liver transplantation.

BACKGROUND Patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) have a life-limiting illness that causes multiple distressing symptoms and negatively affects quality of life (QOL). This population traditionally has not had much attention within the palliative care community. DISCUSSION This article provides an evidence-based review of palliative care issues that patients with ESLD and those awaiting liver transplant face, including approaches to prognosis, symptom management, advance care planning, and end-of-life care. CONCLUSION Tremendous opportunity exists to integrate palliative medicine into the care of these patients.
Confirming the factor structure of modified CFSS-DS in Finnish children at different ages

Abstract Objective. The aims were to determine whether means of different fear-related items were similar in 1998 and 2001 and to find a common factor structure of the modified CFSS-DS for children at different ages. Materials and methods: Independent random samples of 6-, 9-, 12- and 15-year olds were drawn in two cities in 1998 and 2001 (n = 180 per age group from each city). The study group in 2001 comprised 282, 265, 281 and 234 subjects aged 6, 9, 12 and 15 years, respectively. Each child received a modified CFSS-DS form to be filled out at home. Mean scores of different fear-related items were reported for each age group for both data sets. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were performed to test whether the three factor structures revealed for 6-, 9- and 12–15-year olds in 1998 fitted the 2001 data. Multiple group CFA was used to test for the equivalence of the factorial structure across age groups (configural invariance). Results. The age-specific patterns of the means for individual fear-related items in 2001 corresponded to the mean values for 1998. When age-specific factor structures were tested separately for each age group, the factor structure for 9-year-olds was, in general, the best-fitting overall structure. The factor structure had a good fit for all age groups, but the loadings differed at different ages. Conclusions. The modified CFSS-DS provides consistent factor structures for children at different ages and reflects the changes in manifestations of dental fear during growth.
Risk of advanced proximal neoplasms in asymptomatic adults according to the distal colorectal findings.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS The clinical significance of a distal colorectal polyp is uncertain. We determined the risk of advanced proximal neoplasia, defined as a polyp with villous features, a polyp with high-grade dysplasia, or cancer, among persons with distal hyperplastic or neoplastic polyps as compared with the risk among persons with no distal polyps. We analyzed data from 1994 consecutive asymptomatic adults (age, 50 years or older) who underwent colonoscopic screening for the first time between September 1995 and December 1998 as part of a program sponsored by an employer. The location and histologic features of all polyps were recorded. Colonoscopy to the level of the cecum was completed in 97.0 percent of the patients. RESULTS Sixty-one patients (3.1 percent) had advanced lesions in the distal colon, including 5 with cancer, and 50 (2.5 percent) had advanced proximal lesions, including 7 with cancer. Twenty-three patients with advanced proximal neoplasms (46 percent) had no distal polyps. The prevalence of advanced proximal neoplasia among patients with no distal polyps was 1.5 percent (23 cases among 1564 persons; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.9 to 2.1 percent). Among patients with distal hyperplastic polyps, those with distal tubular adenomas, and those with advanced distal polyps, the prevalence of advanced proximal neoplasia was 4.0 percent (8 cases among 201 patients), 7.1 percent (12 cases among 168 patients), and 11.5 percent (7 cases among 61 patients), respectively. The relative risk of advanced proximal neoplasia, adjusted for age and sex, was 2.6 for patients with distal hyperplastic polyps, 4.0 for those with distal tubular adenomas, and 6.7 for those with advanced distal polyps, as compared with patients who had no distal polyps. Older age and male sex were associated with an increased risk of advanced proximal neoplasia (relative risk, 1.3 for every five years of age and 3.3 for male sex). CONCLUSIONS Asymptomatic persons 50 years of age or older who have polyps in the distal colon are more likely to have advanced proximal neoplasia than are persons without distal polyps. However, if colonoscopic screening is performed only in persons with distal polyps, about half the cases of advanced proximal neoplasia will not be detected.
Frequency-Domain Equalization of Faster-than-Nyquist Signaling

In this letter, motivated by the recent rediscovery of faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling transmissions, we conceive a frequency-domain equalization (FDE)-assisted FTN receiver architecture, which is capable of attaining a low demodulating complexity. The proposed scheme is especially beneficial for a long channel tap FTN scenario. More specifically, in our scheme the resultant inter-symbol interference imposed by FTN signaling is approximated by a finite-tap circulant matrix structure, which allows us to employ an efficient fast Fourier transform operation and a low-complexity channel-inverse-based minimum mean-square error detection algorithm. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is capable of attaining a near-optimal error-rate performance without imposing any substantial demodulating complexity as well as power penalty.
Trefftzs Award: The Variation of the Return on Stocks in Periods of Inflation

The bear market of the late sixties amidst inflation has led to growing concern over the validity of the proposition that stocks provide a good hedge against inflation. Conflicting arguments have been raised on both sides of the issue but a synthesis has as yet failed to emerge. The gains resulting from a careful assessment of the various propositions are obvious. If stock prices are adversely affected by inflation, the financial analyst must search for other hedges against the erosion of the purchasing power of money, while the economist must note that inflation has a depressing effect on economic growth through the rise of the cost of capital.
Shortcomings of cuffed paediatric tracheal tubes.

BACKGROUND The goal of this investigation was to evaluate adequacy of the design of readily available paediatric cuffed tracheal tubes (CPTT). METHODS In 15 series of cuffed (11) and uncuffed (four) paediatric tracheal tubes (ID: 2.5-7.0 mm) from four different manufacturers the following dimensions were measured: outer diameter of the tube, position and largest diameter of the tube cuff inflated at 20 cm H(2)O and position of depth markings and compared with age-related dimensions. RESULTS Outer diameters for tubes with similar IDs varied markedly between manufacturers and between cuffed and uncuffed tracheal tubes from the same manufacturer. Cuff diameters at 20 cm H(2)O cuff pressure and cross-sectional cuff area at 20 cm H(2)O cuff pressure did not always cover maximal internal age-related tracheal diameters and cross-sectional areas. Placing the tube tip in the mid-trachea, the cuffs of cuffed tubes with ID 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0 mm would become positioned within the larynx. If the cuffs were placed 1 cm below the cricoid level, many of the tube tips would be dangerously deep within the trachea. Only five of the 11 cuffed tubes had a depth marking. In many of these tubes the distances from depth marking to tube tip were greater than the age-related minimal tracheal length. CONCLUSION Most cuffed paediatric tracheal tubes are poorly designed, in particular the smaller sizes. A better design of cuffed tubes with a short high-volume, low-pressure cuff, cuff-free subglottic space and adequately placed depth markings are urgently needed.
Planning for Growth: Life Stage Differences in Family Firms

Applying insights from the generational perspective, this study explores when strategic planning and succession planning are most conducive to privately held family firm growth. The results show that the degree to which strategic planning and succession planning are associated with family firm growth depends on the generation managing the firm. Both forms of planning are most conducive to the growth of first–generation firms; however, neither form of planning confers much growth for second–generation firms. For third–and–beyond–generation firms, the benefits of succession planning appear to reemerge. However, strategic planning is negatively associated with their level of growth.
Error performance of mismatched receivers for linear-coded modulation

Optimum demodulation of intersymbol interference may be performed using maximum-likelihood sequence estimation receivers. Standard performance analysis of these receivers assume that the receiver has perfect knowledge of the channel. We assume instead a mismatched receiver that uses an imperfect estimate of the channel to decode the information sequence. A free-distance expression for a mismatched ML receiver is derived and applied to the case of linear-coded modulation. A truncated union bound approximation accurately predicts the error probability.
[The results of internal fixation of proximal humeral fractures with the PHILOS locking plate].

OBJECTIVES Proximal and diaphyseal humeral fractures are common especially in the elderly, presenting as a challenging problem due to their high complication rates following surgical treatment. In this prospective study, we evaluated the results of patients treated with the PHILOS (Proximal Humeral Internal Locking System) locking plate, a new technique recently developed by the AO/ASIF. METHODS Forty-one patients who were treated with the PHILOS plate for proximal humeral fractures were evaluated in two age groups. Group A included 24 patients (12 males, 12 females; mean age 47 years; range 24 to 64 years) younger than 65 years, and group B involved 17 patients (4 males, 13 females; mean age 78 years; range 67 to 90 years) at or above 65 years. Radiographically, all fractures were classified according to the AO/ASIF system. Surgery was performed with the deltopectoral approach in 10 and two patients, and with a deltoid split in 14 and 15 patients in group A and B, respectively. Functional and radiographic results were evaluated after a mean follow-up of 15 months (range 6 to 28 months). RESULTS The mean Constant scores were 95.0 (range 74 to 100) and 92.8 (range 72 to 100) in group A and B, respectively (p>0.05). After six months of surgery, Constant scores and functional outcomes were similar in patients operated on with the deltopectoral approach or deltoid split. There was neither nonunion nor implant failure. Complications included intra-articular screw penetration (n=1), displacement of the greater tuberculum (n=1) with oblique placement of the plate (n=1), insufficient reduction (n=4), and varus displacement of the humeral head (n=3). No avascular necrosis was seen. CONCLUSION Locking plate system is superior over other means of fixation methods, particularly in osteoporotic fractures, because it allows early rehabilitation and does not result in implant failure.
End-to-End Stacking and Liquid Crystal Condensation of 6– to 20–Base Pair DNA Duplexes

Short complementary B-form DNA oligomers, 6 to 20 base pairs in length, are found to exhibit nematic and columnar liquid crystal phases, even though such duplexes lack the shape anisotropy required for liquid crystal ordering. Structural study shows that these phases are produced by the end-to-end adhesion and consequent stacking of the duplex oligomers into polydisperse anisotropic rod-shaped aggregates, which can order into liquid crystals. Upon cooling mixed solutions of short DNA oligomers, in which only a small fraction of the DNA present is complementary, the duplex-forming oligomers phase-separate into liquid crystal droplets, leaving the unpaired single strands in isotropic solution. In a chemical environment where oligomer ligation is possible, such ordering and condensation would provide an autocatalytic link whereby complementarity promotes the extended polymerization of complementary oligomers.
Deep Sentiment Features of Context and Faces for Affective Video Analysis

Given the huge quantity of hours of video available on video sharing platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc. development of automatic tools that help users find videos that fit their interests has attracted the attention of both scientific and industrial communities. So far the majority of the works have addressed semantic analysis, to identify objects, scenes and events depicted in videos, but more recently affective analysis of videos has started to gain more attention. In this work we investigate the use of sentiment driven features to classify the induced sentiment of a video, i.e. the sentiment reaction of the user. Instead of using standard computer vision features such as CNN features or SIFT features trained to recognize objects and scenes, we exploit sentiment related features such as the ones provided by Deep-SentiBank, and features extracted from models that exploit deep networks trained on face expressions. We experiment on two recently introduced datasets: LIRIS-ACCEDE and MEDIAEVAL-2015, that provide sentiment annotations of a large set of short videos. We show that our approach not only outperforms the current state-of-the-art in terms of valence and arousal classification accuracy, but it also uses a smaller number of features, requiring thus less video processing.
Early alcohol initiation and subsequent sexual and alcohol risk behaviors among urban youths.

OBJECTIVES We examined relations between early alcohol use and subsequent alcohol and sexual risk behaviors among urban adolescents. METHODS A total of 1034 African American and Hispanic youths completed surveys assessing alcohol and sexual behaviors at 7th and 10th grade. After we controlled for early sexual initiation, we examined relations between early drinking and subsequent alcohol and sexual behaviors. RESULTS Early drinking was associated with alcohol and sexual risks through mid-adolescence. Early drinkers were more likely to report subsequent alcohol problems, unprotected sexual intercourse, multiple partners, being drunk or high during sexual intercourse, and pregnancy. Among females, early drinking was also related to sexual initiation and recent sexual intercourse. CONCLUSIONS Prevention programs should address combined risks of early alcohol use and sexual intercourse, especially where levels of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections are elevated.
Poverty, Inequality and Stochastic Dominance, Theory and Practice: The Case of Burkina Faso

In this paper we provide a set of rules that can be used to check poverty or inequality dominance using discrete data. Existing theoretical rules assume continuity in incomes or in percentiles of the population. In reality, with the usual household surveys, this continuity does not exist. However, such a discontinuity can be exploited to test for stochastic dominance. This paper also proposes stochastic dominance conditions that check for the statistical robustness of the inferred rankings. The methodology of this paper is illustrated using Burkina Faso's household surveys for the years of 1994 and 1998.
Nonmonotone Projected Barzilai-Borwein Method for Compressed Sensing

In this paper, we present a new nonmonotone projected BB (Barzilai-Borwein) method for minimizing regularization problem in compressed sensing. The proposed method exploits the idea of determining the search stepsize in monotone projected BB algorithm (MPBB) of nonnegative matrix factorization, and provides a direct calculation method of search stepsize which doesnt need line search and satisfies nonmonotonicity. Finally, the proposed algorithm is theoretically proved to be globally convergent. Numerical experiment results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is effective and outruns the GPSR and SpaRSA as the sparseness degrees range.
Cons: the confusing mucinous adenocarcinoma classification.

In 2015 a new WHO classification of lung tumors was issued. This classification clarified several important issues and corrected many entities (1). For adenocarcinomas the previous published classification (2) was adapted and largely taken over. Adenocarcinomas are now grouped into non-mucinous adenocarcinomas and adenocarcinoma variants. Within the non-mucinous adenocarcinomas the evaluation of primary, secondary, and tertiary patterns have to be given in percentages; patterns recognized are lepidic, acinar, papillary, micropapillary, and solid. Recently cribriform pattern was added as another pattern conferring worse prognosis (3,4). Patterns are also important for prognosis, as lepidic pattern confers a good prognosis, whereas solid and micropapillary regardless of their percentage confers a worse prognosis.
French nature-based tourist potentials to Norway: Who are they?

Nature-based tourism is perceived as a substantial and growing market for many countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Norway. However, despite detailed research into the analysis of motivations and activity preferences of tourists after a tourist experience, little research has been conducted into identifying potential nature-based tourists' destination choice prior to visitation. Knowledge of these previsitation perceptions of a country's nature-based tourism offerings as perceived by these possible tourists is important for market segmentation and targeting purposes and subsequent marketing campaigns. The present study outlines a sequential procedure to reveal nature-based tourism potentials to norway followed by an online questionnaire of French residence. A two-step cluster analysis is run to segment tourists by their prechoice motivational preferences (psychographics), number of activities sought (behavioral), age, education, employment, gender, household income, household size, marital status (demographic), and region (geographic). A total of 2,010 French residents who exhibit an interest in nature-based vacations and visiting Norway are segmented into three valid groups according to their variations. It is concluded that these segments differ based on the 10 identified variables. As a result of the findings, recommendations are made including utilizing all four segmentation bases to target the three segments. Future research opportunities are also outlined.
Phased attenuation correction and respiratory motion compensation of pet image by using a ct images and multiple respiratory-phase mr images

Respiratory motion blurs positron emission tomography (PET) images in thorax and abdominal regions, and can cause attenuation-related errors in quantitative parameters. In addition, this motion can cause localization error and disappearance of tumor(s) near the diaphragm. Respiratory gated PET imaging, or 4D PET imaging, is an attractive solution. For 4D PET, a surrogate measurement of the patient's breathing is made during the scan, and based on this measurement the list-mode PET data are sorted and reconstructed into multiple images. In several studies, it has been reported that 4D PET imaging recovers tumor volume more accurately than 3D PET imaging, and yields more accurate standard uptake values. In spite of its promise, 4D PET images suffer from statistical noise because only a fraction of the acquired data can be used in each image. Moreover, they also suffer from inconsistent attenuation correction due to mismatches between PET and CT images. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for phased attenuation correction and respiratory motion compensation for a 3D PET image by using a 3D CT image and multiple respiratory-phase 3D MR images. For phased attenuation correction, we generate and utilize 4D CT image obtained via non-rigid registrations among a 3D CT image and multiple respiratory-phase 3D MR images. A 3D PET image at a selected respiratory phase is then obtained by adding attenuation corrected multiple 3D PET images through non-rigid transformation. Experimental result for a clinical dataset shows that the proposed algorithm can provide much clearer organ boundary with improved quality than the conventional method in a 3D PET image.