Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gaining Perspective on Death: Training Program and Language Use Outcomes Assessment

Understanding and managing the fear of death is a central issue in clinical care. Research in terror management theory suggests that death reminders can lead to anxiety, depression, and maladaptive social behaviors. Additional research has suggested that discourse about death can be beneficial in contexts that are safe and supportive. A telecourse and web-based learning program on diverse worldviews of death and the afterlife was developed and used to explore these issues. The impact of this training was assessed using pre- and posttest journaling and questionnaire data. The content of these journals was analyzed within and across subjects for emotionally meaningful expressions related to the writing prompts. Significant pre- and postdifferences were identified using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count text analysis software. After the intervention, participants were less centered on their body as use of the body category decreased by 32% (p .01). This was consistent with an increase of 16% in the use of abstract pronouns (p .05). Participants also were more confident in their expression with a 58% increase in the certain category (p .05). Participants made fewer references to death with a decrease of 34% in the death category (p .05). Results of this work support the feasibility of an online training program that has measurable beneficial affects for clinical care, both for professionals and patients. We discuss such educational clinical applications and the implications for future research.
HYPERSURFACES IN R " WHOSE UNIT NORMAL

Let M be a hypersurface in R + whose Gauss map has small BMO norm. This condition is closely related to (but much weaker than) the requirement that the principal curvatures of M have small L (M) norm. (The relationship between these two conditions is a nonlinear geometrical analogue of a classical Sobolev embedding.) This paper deals with the problem of understanding the geometrical constraints imposed on M by the requirement that the Gauss map have small BMO norm. Let M be a connected codimension 1 submanifold of R + , and let n(x) denote a choice of unit normal on M. What can we say about M if n has small BMO norm, i.e., if (0.1) ||/i||, = sup ————— Í \n(y)-nxR\dy x€M \B\X, -KJ II M\ Jb(x,R)C\M R>0 is small? Here B(x, R) denotes the ball with center x and radius R, \E\ denotes the surface measure of F if E ç M, dy denotes surface measure on M, and / n(y)dy. JB{x,R)nM I shall assume a priori that M is smooth, and even that M U{oo} is smooth inside of R + U {00} = S + . Of course this assumption will not be used in any quantitative way. Algebraic topology implies that M is orientable and has exactly two complementary components. Notice that n always lies in BMO, because it takes values in a compact set. If there were some vector v0 so that ||« v0\\L<x>,M, were small, then M would have to be a Lipschitz graph (with small constant). However, it is easy to construct examples of M's that spiral around as much as you want—and are thus far from being graphs—but so that ||n||„ is as small as you want. Let me describe two ways in which the condition ||n|| small can arise. "*■« \B(x,R)nM\JB{x,R)nM' Received by the editors July 10, 1989. 1980 Mathematics Subject Classification (1985 Revision). Primary 42B99; Secondary 53A05. The author is partially supported by the NSF and the Sloan Foundation. © 1991 American Mathematical Society 0002-9939/91 $1.00+ $. 25 per page
SMAC: A VLSI Architecture for Scene Matching

Abstract Scene matching is the problem of matching regions of two images of the same scene taken by different sensors at different times or under different viewing conditions. In this paper, we describe an efficient architecture for scene matching called SMAC (Scene Matching ArChitecture). The architecture achieves a significant amount of speedup by utilizing a large amount of parallelism and pipelining. Such an architecture can be used to compute the exhaustive search task of hierarchical scene matching, a technique used to reduce the amount of computations involved in scene matching applications. A prototype very large scale integration (VLSI) chip implementing a scaled down version of the proposed architecture has been designed and built. The prototype chip has been tested to be fully functional at a frequency of 50 MHz with a clock cycle of 20 ns. Based on the prototype design, it is estimated that the proposed architecture can process a 512 × 512 image with an 128 × 128 size template in about 15.36 μs, which corresponds to a rate of 65K frames per second.
Market integration and exchange rates in primary commodity markets

In most recent studies on international market integration exchange rates have not received much attention. This is in contrasts to the exchange rate passthrough literature where the degree of substitution normally is restricted. We revisit the seminal paper of Richardson (1978) that addresses the issue of exchange rate pass-through together with market integration, but in a multivariate cointegration framework. In addition to standard test like the law of one price and exchange rate pass-through, the multivariate cointegration framework allow us to test common assumptions like leading price, central markets, and exogeneity of exchange rates. This approach is particularly suited when studying markets for primary products. We provide empirical examples using salmon imports to Japan and fish meal exports from Peru to Germany.
Combined laser and magnetic field treatment of YFeO3—containing films grown by spray-pyrolysis

Thin films (50–1200 nm) of YFeO3 were deposited on fused silica substrates by spray-pyrolysis using ethylene glycol solution of Y-Fe(III) citric complexes. The films were post deposition annealed at 750°C in static air for 2 h. Films obtained in this way were afterwards irradiated by a burst mode operated Nd-YAG laser (pulse energy 650 mJ, pulse duration 700 μs, energy density 110 mJ/cm2). The laser’s onset was synchronized with that of a magnetic field pulse of nearly square shape (magnetic induction 0.5 T, pulse duration 900 μs). The samples were placed normally to the direction of the magnetic field. The treatment does not affect the phase composition of the film but significantly increases the crystallite sizes of the phases presenting in the sample. The saturation magnetization of the films decreases as a result of the laser and magnetic field treatment and the coercive force increases by 50%.
CD40 gene polymorphisms confer risk of Behcet's disease but not of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome in a Han Chinese population.

OBJECTIVES Recent genetic surveys including a genome-wide association study have identified CD40 as a susceptibility gene for several autoimmune diseases. This study was designed to investigate the association of CD40 gene polymorphisms with Behçet's disease (BD) and Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) syndrome in a Han Chinese population. METHODS Two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), rs4810485 and rs1883832, were genotyped using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism in 373 BD patients, 519 VKH patients and 402 controls. A binary logistic regression analysis was applied to assess the influence of gender on the association of CD40 polymorphisms with BD. RESULTS Our results showed significantly increased frequencies of the homozygous rs4810485 TT and rs1883832 TT in BD patients as compared with the controls [Bonferroni-corrected P-value for gender adjustment (Pac) = 0.006, odds ratio (OR) = 1.98, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.38, 2.83; = 0.012, OR = 1.73, 95% CI 1.22, 2.46, respectively]. A markedly decreased frequency of the heterozygous rs4810485 GT was observed in BD patients as compared with the controls ( = 0.042, OR = 0.68, 95% CI 0.51, 0.90). The genotype and allele frequencies of rs4810485 and rs1883832 were not different between VKH patients and controls. Stratification analysis did not find any association between the tested SNPs and extra-ocular manifestations of both diseases. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that TT genotypes of rs4810485 and rs1883832 may be predisposing genotypes for BD, and that the rs4810485 GT genotype may be a protective genotype for BD. The two tested CD40 gene polymorphisms are not associated with VKH syndrome in the investigated Han Chinese population.
Analytical model for predicting the electromagnetic fields intensity in wireless power transfer systems

In this paper, we propose an analytical model for predicting the EMF intensity from the circular coil in WPT systems while the current flows through the coil. Assuming the coil is a filament, we then calculate the magnitude of B-field of the circular coil from the vector magnetic potential. Through 3D EM simulations, it is verified that the proposed model well predicts the EMF intensity at various distance from the coil. As the proposed EMF intensity prediction model gives a fast, yet precise solution of the intensity, it can significantly reduce the design optimization time.
Let's Dance: How to Build a User Model for Dance Students Using Wearable Technology

Motor skill learning is an area where wearable technology and user modelling can be synergistically combined for providing support. In this paper, we explore how a simple accelerometer sensor can be used to capture motion data associated with critical aspects of learning in the context of social dancing. We developed a prototype mobile app that tracks students' motion data whilst they practise dance exercises. This paper describes a set of features, such as rhythm duration, consistency and body motion, which can be automatically tracked and included into a dance student model. These dancing features can be presented back to the students as feedback, in the form of i) summaries, ii) visualisations or iii) narratives. We illustrate the feasibility and potential of modelling these features through a study with beginner students taking dance classes during three weeks.
Modifications to WRF's dynamical core to improve the treatment of moisture for large‐eddy simulations

Yamaguchi and Feingold (2012) note that the cloud fields in their large‐eddy simulations (LESs) of marine stratocumulus using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model exhibit a strong sensitivity to time stepping choices. In this study, we reproduce and analyze this sensitivity issue using two stratocumulus cases, one marine and one continental. Results show that (1) the sensitivity is associated with spurious motions near the moisture jump between the boundary layer and the free atmosphere, and (2) these spurious motions appear to arise from neglecting small variations in water vapor mixing ratio (qv) in the pressure gradient calculation in the acoustic substepping portion of the integration procedure. We show that this issue is remedied in the WRF dynamical core by replacing the prognostic equation for the potential temperature θ with one for the moist potential temperature θm=θ(1 + 1.61qv), which allows consistent treatment of moisture in the calculation of pressure during the acoustic substeps. With this modification, the spurious motions and the sensitivity to the time stepping settings (i.e., the dynamic time step length and number of acoustic sub‐steps) are eliminated in both of the example stratocumulus cases. This modification improves the applicability of WRF for LES applications, and possibly other models using similar dynamical core formulations, and also permits the use of longer time steps than in the original code.
Graphene-Based Plasmonic Tunable Low-Pass Filters in the Terahertz Band

We propose the concept, synthesis, analysis, and design of graphene-based plasmonic tunable low-pass filters operating in the terahertz band. The proposed structure is composed of a graphene strip transferred onto a dielectric and a set of polysilicon dc gating pads located beneath it. This structure implements a stepped impedance low-pass filter for the propagating surface plasmons by adequately controlling the guiding properties of each strip section through graphene's field effect. A synthesis procedure is presented to design filters with desired specifications in terms of cutoff frequency, in-band performance, and rejection characteristics. The electromagnetic modeling of the structure is efficiently performed by combining an electrostatic scaling law to compute the guiding features of each strip section with a transmission line and transfer-matrix framework, approach further validated via full-wave simulations. The performance of the proposed filters is evaluated in practical scenarios, taking into account the presence of the gating bias and the influence of graphene's losses. These results, together with the high miniaturization associated with plasmonic propagation, are very promising for the future use and integration of the proposed filters with other graphene and silicon-based elements in innovative terahertz communication systems.
Gadobutrol for Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Chronic Myocardial Infarction: Intraindividual Comparison With Gadopentetate Dimeglumine

Objectives:To compare 0.15 mmol/kg gadobutrol with 0.20 mmol/kg gadopentetate dimeglumine with regard to late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) of infarcted myocardium at magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Materials and Methods:Twenty patients with history of chronic myocardial infarction underwent 2 cardiac MR examinations at 1.5 Tesla. For the evaluation of myocardial infarction, late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) imaging was performed with an inversion recovery-prepared gradient-echo sequence 15 minutes after administration of either gadobutrol (r1 = 5.2 mmol−1s−1) or gadopentetate dimeglumine (r1 = 4.1 mmol−1s−1). The dose of the contrast agents was adjusted based on the relaxivity of both contrast agents. Hence, gadobutrol and gadopentetate dimeglumine were administered at 0.15 mmol/kg and 0.20 mmol/kg, respectively. Contrast-to-noise ratios (CNR) between infarcted myocardium and remote myocardium (CNRremote) and between infarcted myocardium and left ventricular lumen (CNRlumen) were assessed by 2 independent readers. Additionally, infarct size was assessed semiautomatically by using a threshold of 5 standard deviations above the mean signal intensity of remote myocardium. Results:Subendocardial or transmural LGE was present in 16 of 20 (80%) patients. The optimal inversion time for LGE imaging did not differ significantly between gadobutrol and gadopentetate dimeglumine (275 ± 21 milliseconds [range, 240–320 milliseconds] and 282 ± 23 milliseconds [range, 240–330 milliseconds], respectively; P = 0.32). The CNRremote after administration of gadobutrol (40.0 ± 4.6; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 30.3; 49.7) and gadopentetate dimeglumine (40.6 ± 4.6; 95% CI: 30.9; 50.3) did not show significant differences (P = 0.90), whereas gadobutrol yielded a significantly higher CNRlumen (6.2 ± 3.6; 95% CI: −1.5; 13.9) compared with gadopentetate dimeglumine (0.8 ± 3.6; 95% CI: −6.9; 8.5). Infarct size after administration of gadobutrol (23.7 ± 4.7 mL; 95% CI: 13.6; 33.7) and gadopentetate dimeglumine (23.7 ± 4.7 mL;95% CI: 13.7; 33.8) was not statistically different (P = 0.94). There was an excellent correlation between gadobutrol- and gadopentetate dimeglumine-enhanced assessment of infarct size (Spearman r = 0.99 and r = 0.97 for reader 1 and 2, respectively). Conclusion:This pilot study shows that 0.15 mmol/kg gadobutrol is an effective contrast agent for LGE imaging with better delineation of infarcted myocardium from left ventricular lumen than 0.20 mmol/kg gadopentetate dimeglumine.
MUTUAL FUNDS AND OUTPERFORMANCE:difficulty of generating positive alpha

One of the most successful developments in financial markets is the mutual fund industry, with US mutual funds holding nearly US$16 trillion in assets at the end of 2014 (ICI Factbook 2015). About 80 per cent of these funds are actively managed, i.e. using strategies whereby the fund manager aims to outperform the market (or their selected benchmark). In finance jargon, this is known as generating positive alpha. However, the claim by many of these active funds that they are able to generate outperformance is in stark contrast with much of the academic literature, which has documented little evidence of fund managers’ ability to generate outperformance.
Mammalian antimicrobial peptide influences control of cutaneous Leishmania infection

Cathelicidin‐type antimicrobial peptides (CAMP) are important mediators of innate immunity against microbial pathogens acting through direct interaction with and disruption of microbial membranes and indirectly through modulation of host cell migration and activation. Using a mouse knock‐out model in CAMP we studied the role of this host peptide in control of dissemination of cutaneous infection by the parasitic protozoan Leishmania. The presence of pronounced host inflammatory infiltration in lesions and lymph nodes of infected animals was CAMP‐dependent. Lack of CAMP expression was associated with higher levels of IL‐10 receptor expression in bone marrow, splenic and lymph node macrophages as well as higher anti‐inflammatory IL‐10 production by bone marrow macrophages and spleen cells but reduced production of the pro‐inflammatory cytokines IL‐12 and IFN‐γ by lymph nodes. Unlike wild‐type mice, local lesions were exacerbated and parasites were found largely disseminated in CAMP knockouts. Infection of CAMP knockouts with parasite mutants lacking the surface metalloprotease virulence determinant resulted in more robust disseminated infection than in control animals suggesting that CAMP activity is negatively regulated by parasite surface proteolytic activity. This correlated with the ability of the protease to degrade CAMP in vitro and co‐localization of CAMP with parasites within macrophages. Our results highlight the interplay of antimicrobial peptides and Leishmania that influence the host immune response and the outcome of infection.
Effects of Radiation Exposure on the Cost-Effectiveness of CT Angiography and Perfusion Imaging in Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: CT angiography and perfusion imaging is an important prognostic tool in the management of patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. The purpose of this study was to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis of advanced imaging in patients with SAH, incorporating the risks of radiation exposure from CT angiography and CT perfusion imaging. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The risks of radiation-induced brain cancer and cataracts were incorporated into our established decision model comparing the cost-effectiveness of CT angiography and CT perfusion imaging and transcranial Doppler sonography in SAH. Cancer risk was calculated by using National Cancer Institute methodology. The remaining input probabilities were based on literature data and a cohort at our institution. Outcomes were expected quality-adjusted life years gained, costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. One-way, 2-way, and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were performed. RESULTS: CT angiography and CT perfusion imaging were the dominant strategies, resulting in both better health outcomes and lower costs, even when incorporating brain cancer and cataract risks. Our results remained robust in 2-way sensitivity analyses varying the prolonged latency period up to 30 years, with either brain cancer risk up to 50 times higher than the upper 95% CI limit or the probability of cataracts from 0 to 1. Results were consistent for scenarios that considered either symptomatic or asymptomatic patients with SAH. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis confirmed our findings over a broad range of selected input parameters. CONCLUSIONS: While risks of radiation exposure represent an important consideration, CT angiography and CT perfusion imaging remained the preferred imaging compared with transcranial Doppler sonography in both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients with SAH, with improved health outcomes and lower health care costs, even when modeling a significantly higher risk and shorter latency period for both cataract and brain cancer than that currently known.
Non-GAAP Earnings Disclosure and IPO Pricing

The disclosure of non-GAAP earnings measures is increasingly common among firms undergoing initial public offerings (IPOs). However, the influence of this disclosure practice on IPO price formation is largely unexplored. We address this issue by investigating the underlying determinants of non-GAAP disclosure in IPO prospectuses and the effect of these metrics on asymmetric uncertainty and partial price adjustment in the IPO process. Using a sample of 696 book-built IPOs completed between 2003 and 2012, we find that firms disclosing non-GAAP earnings figures exclude an economically significant amount of income statement line items in calculating their non-GAAP earnings figures. Our manual inspection of IPO prospectuses reveals that the majority of these exclusions pertain to recurring expenses. We find that the disclosure of non-GAAP earnings in IPO filings is largely influenced by (1) GAAP-based operating performance, (2) industry-peer effects, (3) litigation risk, (4) the presence of venture funding, and (5) the use of non-GAAP metrics in debt covenants. Our pricing tests indicate that the earnings adjustments contained in non-GAAP prospectuses are positively associated with asymmetric uncertainty as proxied by IPO underpricing and post-issue return volatility. Underwriters tend to lowball the initial price estimates of non-GAAP IPOs (especially when issuers exclude recurring expenses), followed by under-adjustment of the offer price after book building. Additional analyses suggest that this under-adjustment reflects agency conflicts between issuers and underwriters. Lastly, we find evidence that, while some firms use non-GAAP disclosures to mitigate underpricing and lowballing, others act aggressively in their disclosure practices.
Extraction of 2.1D Sketch from Monocular Images Using DIRECT Optimization Algorithm

A performance and time efficient 2.1D sketch extraction from a given monocular image is proposed in a global optimization framework that exploits the divided rectangles (DIRECTs) but otherwise extracted by heuristic global optimization methods, like genetic algorithms, particle swarm evolution algorithms, and simulated annealing. An appeal of these algorithms is that they are guaranteed to yield the global minimum in probability one sense. The flip side of these algorithms is that they are usually time consuming and also may not reproduce the results consistently. Contrastingly, the currently proposed in this paper, we formulate 2.1D sketch extraction using DIRECT algorithm, which not only apparently aims at providing the better global minimum but as a deterministic approach. Further, the extraction of 2.1D sketch are found to yield comparatively better than the results obtained by the hybrid differential evolution algorithm [1]. Interestingly, the proposed algorithm is superior since it takes far less computations in converging to either same global minimum or far better global minimum value that gives a 2.1 D sketch extraction.