Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanics of the canine femur with two types of hip replacement stems

Summary The long-term performance of total hip replacement is of concern to veterinary surgeons. Two of the main complications associated with this procedure are implant loosening and stress shielding. Designs of the femoral stem which will avoid loosening and achieve maximum endurance while reducing stress shielding and periprosthetic bone loss are sought. In the intact femur the stress is distributed over the entire cross section of the bone. After hip replacement this pattern of stress distribution is altered because of the manner in which the load is transferred from the prosthesis to the bone. The objective of this study was to examine the stresses that develop in the femur and implant components of two different methods of hip replacement used clinically in dogs. Anatomic, three-dimensional finite element models of the canine femur with a cemented femoral stem and a Zurich cementless stem were constructed. The stresses and displacements were calculated by the finite element analysis method, under physiologic loads that included muscle forces and joint reaction forces. The results were compared to results obtained by a similar analysis of an intact femur. This study demonstrates that the Zurich cementless method causes less stress shielding in the proximal femoral cortex than does the cemented method. Implant stresses are higher in the Zurich cementless stem, but still within an acceptable range.
On the design of universal LDPC codes

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding for a multitude of equal-capacity channels is studied. First, based on numerous observations, a conjecture is stated that when the belief propagation decoder converges on a set of equal-capacity channels, it would also converge on any convex combination of those channels. Then, it is proved that when the stability condition is satisfied for a number of channels, it is also satisfied for any channel in their convex hull. For the purpose of code design, a method is proposed which can decompose every symmetric channel with capacity C into a set of identical-capacity basis channels. We expect codes that work on the basis channels to be suitable for any channel with capacity C. Such codes are found and in comparison with existing LDPC codes that are designed for specific channels, our codes obtain considerable coding gains when used across a multitude of channels.
Decoding Cognitive States from fMRI Data Using Single Hidden-Layer Feedforward Neural Networks

The development of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers promising approaches in the study of human brain function. It dramatically improves an ability to collect large amount of data about brain activity in human subjects performing tasks. Analysis of fMRI is essential for successful detection of cognitive states. This paper presents the use of single hidden-layer feedforward neural networks (SLFNs) to decode cognitive states from fMRI data. The SLFNs are trained by an improved extreme learning machine (ELM) which is named as regularized least-squares ELM (RLS-ELM). Experimental results show that the proposed method can give better performance compared to the Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB) classifier that is known as one of the best classifiers for decoding cognitive states.
A Verification Study for the Bounding Surface Plasticity Model for Cohesive Soils

Abstract : Results of drained and undrained, triaxial compression and extension, and thick-walled cylinder laboratory tests are given for a laboratory prepared kaolin soil. For the soil in question, a portion of the data is used to calibrate a 'bounding surface plasticity model' for cohesive soils. The model is used to analyze the remaining tests and the results are compared to the measured values with good agreement. (Author)
A Study of the Structure Formed by Thickeners of Greases Using Atomic Force Microscope

This paper describes an experimental study on quantitative evaluation of correlation between the structure formed by thickeners and yield stress of greases. In order to evaluate the thickener structures, untreated surface of greases was observed by using an atomic force microscope, and an index was obtained from AFM images to describe the degree of dispersion of the thickeners. The index physically represented both factors of shape and distribution of thickeners. The results for twelve types of lithium soap greases with different base oils and thickener concentrations showed good correlation between the index of the degree of dispersion and the yield stress of the greases. This relationship indicated that uniform distribution of thickeners in greases caused higher yield stress.
Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Tuberculosis in the State of Mexico, Mexico

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the oldest human diseases that still affects large population groups. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were approximately 9.4 million new cases worldwide in the year 2010. In Mexico, there were 18,848 new cases of TB of all clinical variants in 2010. The identification of clusters in space-time is of great interest in epidemiological studies. The objective of this research was to identify the spatial and temporal distribution of TB during the period 2006–2010 in the State of Mexico, using geographic information system (GIS) and SCAN statistics program. Nine significant clusters (P < 0.05) were identified using spatial and space-time analysis. The conclusion is that TB in the State of Mexico is not randomly distributed but is concentrated in areas close to Mexico City.
Quality culture in higher education: from theory to practice

In this paper we elaborate a conceptual framework as well as an instrument for reflection and research on quality culture. We illustrate this dialectical approach sustained by a survey in two cases. Questions for discussion Can a dialectical approach to quality culture be translated in a manageable took for assessment an reflection? Can such an approach help to maximize the fit between internal and external quality assurance systems, quality culture and organizational and educational goals?
Non-cooperative RSU deployment in vehicular networks

This work considers the issue of distributing contents to vehicles through roadside communication infrastructure. Within this scenario, this work studies the dynamics of infrastructure deployment by using game theoretic tools. A strategic game is used to model the case in which the operators perform their deployment decisions concurrently, whereas an extensive game is used to study the dynamics in case one operator is the deployment leader and moves first. The equilibria of the aforementioned games are then assessed as a function of several parameters (nominal infrastructure capacity, interference, vehicle flows). Simulations are used to validate the analytical findings.
Term Impact-Based Web Page Ranking

Indexing Web pages based on content is a crucial step in a modern search engine. A variety of methods and approaches exist to support web page rankings. In this paper, we describe a new approach for obtaining measures for Web page ranking. Unlike other recent approaches, it exploits the meta-terms extracted from the titles and urls for indexing the contents of web documents. We use the term impact to correlate each meta-term with document's content, rather than term frequency and other similar techniques. Our approach also uses the structural knowledge available in Wikipedia for making better expansion and formulation for the queries. Evaluation with automatic metrics provided by TREC reveals that our approach is effective for building the index and for retrieval. We present retrieval results from the ClueWeb collection, for a set of test queries, for two tasks: for an adhoc retrieval task and for a diversity task (which aims at retrieving relevant pages that cover different aspects of the queries).
On Discovery of Traveling Companions from Streaming Trajectories

The advance of object tracking technologies leads to huge volumes of spatio-temporal data collected in the form of trajectory data stream. In this study, we investigate the problem of discovering object groups that travel together (i.e., traveling companions) from trajectory stream. Such technique has broad applications in the areas of scientific study, transportation management and military surveillance. To discover traveling companions, the monitoring system should cluster the objects of each snapshot and intersect the clustering results to retrieve moving-together objects. Since both clustering and intersection steps involve high computational overhead, the key issue of companion discovery is to improve the algorithm's efficiency. We propose the models of closed companion candidates and smart intersection to accelerate data processing. A new data structure termed traveling buddy is designed to facilitate scalable and flexible companion discovery on trajectory stream. The traveling buddies are micro-groups of objects that are tightly bound together. By only storing the object relationships rather than their spatial coordinates, the buddies can be dynamically maintained along trajectory stream with low cost. Based on traveling buddies, the system can discover companions without accessing the object details. The proposed methods are evaluated with extensive experiments on both real and synthetic datasets. The buddy-based method is an order of magnitude faster than existing methods. It also outperforms other competitors with higher precision and recall in companion discovery.
Bone mineral density and effects of growth hormone treatment in prepubertal children with Prader-Willi syndrome: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Bone mineral density (BMD) is unknown in children with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), but is decreased in adults with PWS. In patients with GH deficiency, BMD increases during GH treatment. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to evaluate BMD in children with PWS and to study the effects of GH treatment. DESIGN We conducted a randomized controlled GH trial. Forty-six prepubertal children were randomized into either a GH-treated group (1.0 mg/m(2) . d) or a control group for 2 yr. At start, 6, 12, and 24 months of study, total body and lumbar spine BMD were measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, and lumbar spine bone mineral apparent density (BMAD) was calculated. RESULTS Baseline total body and lumbar spine BMD sd score (SDS) were normal [mean (sd), -0.2 SDS (1.1) and -0.4 SDS (1.2), respectively]. BMADSDS, which corrects for short stature, was also normal [mean (sd), 0.40 SDS (1.1)]. Total body BMDSDS decreased during the first 6 months of GH (P < 0.0001), but increased during the second year of treatment. After 24 months of study, total body and lumbar spine BMDSDS, and the BMADSDS did not significantly differ between GH-treated children and randomized controls (P = 0.30, P = 0.44, and P = 0.47, respectively). Results were similar when corrected for body mass index SDS. Repeated measurements analysis showed a significant positive association between IGF-I SDS and total body and lumbar spine BMDSDS, but not with BMADSDS. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that prepubertal children with PWS have a normal BMD. GH treatment had no effect on BMD, except for a temporary decrease of total body BMDSDS in the first 6 months.
A Prototype Real-time Plugin Framework for the Phase Vocoder

With the dramatic increase in computing power over the last few years, computationally intensive tasks such as the phase vocoder can now be performed faster than real-time. This paper presents details of the modifications and enhancements to the phase vocoder required to support real-time performance, and describes new implementations both as conventional command-line tools and in the form of plugins. This leads to consideration of phase vocoder analysis data as one of a number of multi-dimensional streamable signal types that now demand direct support by streaming audio frameworks, and discuss the concomitant need for the definition of standardized, portable and streamable file formats for these signals.
Speaker detection using acoustic event sequences

Novel approaches using high level features have recently shown up in the speaker recognition field. They basically consist in modeling speakers using linguistic features such as words, phonemes, idiolects. The benefit of these features was demonstrated in NIST campaigns. Their main disadvantage is their need of a huge amount of data to be efficient. The purpose of this study is to generalize this approach by using acoustic events, generated by a GMM, as input features. A methodology to build a dictionary and to model speakers using symbol sequences from this dictionary is derived. Different experiments on NIST SRE 2004 database show that the information produced is speaker specific and that a fusion experiment with a GMM verification system improves performance.
Hybrid control of a three-level three-cell dc-dc converter

This paper compares three synthesis methods for controlling a three-level three-cell dc-dc converter. The main contribution of this paper is to analyse different strategies: i) The Passivity Based Control that uses the notion of average model, ii) A stabilizing method in which a unique Lyapunov function is introduced and iii) A new predictive control approach, which relies on the use of optimization procedures.
Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) gene polymorphisms are not associated with sarcoidosis in the Japanese population

Purpose Sarcoidosis is a systemic inflammatory disease characterized by the formation of non-caseating granulomas, with varied clinical manifestations. The common etiology of sarcoidosis is uncertain, but it is thought to be triggered by an exogenous antigenic stimulus, such as some bacterial proteins. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) recognize microbial components and elicit innate as well as adaptive immune responses. It has been reported that polymorphisms in TLR2 might be important in a small group of Caucasian sarcoidosis patients. The present study aimed to establish whether these findings are relevant to the Japanese population. Methods We genotyped 5 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TLR2 and assessed the allelic diversity between 257 Japanese sarcoidosis patients and 193 Japanese healthy controls. Results No significant differences in the frequency of TLR2 alleles and haplotypes in the sarcoidosis cases were found in comparison with the controls. However, marginal associations were observed for TLR2 at rs3804099 and rs3804100 in sarcoidosis patients with cutaneous manifestations. Conclusions Our results suggest that TLR2 polymorphisms are not significantly related to the pathogenesis of sarcoidosis in the Japanese population.
Progress in nanotechnology-based drug carrier in designing of curcumin nanomedicines for cancer therapy: current state-of-the-art

Abstract Comprehensive pharmacological screening of curcumin (CUR) has given the evidence that it is an excellent naturally occurring therapeutic moiety for cancer. It is very well tolerated with insignificant toxicity even after high doses of oral administration. Irrespective of its better quality as an anticancer agent, therapeutic application of CUR is hampered by its extremely low-aqueous solubility and poor bioavailability, rapid clearance and low-cellular uptake. A simple means of breaking up the restrictive factor of CUR is to perk-up its aqueous solubility, improve its bioavailability, protect it from degradation, and metabolism and potentiate its targeting capacity towards the cancer cell. The development in the field of nanomedicine has made excellent progresses toward enhancing the bioavailability of lipophilic drugs like CUR. Nanoparticles (NPs) are capable to deliver the CUR at specific area and thereby prevent it from physiological degradation and systemic clearance. In recent year, an assortment of nanomedicine-based novel drug delivery system has been designed to potentiate the bioavailability of CUR towards anticancer therapy. In this review, we discuss the recent development in the field of nanoCUR (NanoCur), including polymeric micelles, liposome, polymeric NPs, nanoemulsion, nanosuspension, solid lipid NPs (SLNPs), polymer conjugates, nanogel, etc. in anticancer application.
Lipid extraction in stable isotope analyses of juvenile sea turtle skin and muscle

Studies involving various aspects of the biology and ecology of sea turtles have successfully applied stable isotope analysis. In many of these studies, the chemical extraction of 13 C-depleted lipids of sea turtle tissues has been used as a standard protocol, often without testing whether the time-consuming lipid removal is required. Furthermore, this chemical procedure may unpredictably modify δ 15 N values, probably due to the loss of proteins associated with lipid struc- tures, thus reinforcing the need for testing the isotopic consequence of the chemical removal of lipids. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of lipid extraction on skin and muscle C and N iso- topic values of juvenile green turtles Chelonia mydas. We analyzed paired δ 13 C and δ 15 N values from lipid-extracted and non-lipid-extracted samples of skin and muscle of 15 juvenile green tur- tles. Lipid extraction was performed using a mixture of chloroform and methanol. A significant increase was found in δ 13 C values after lipid extraction for muscle (~0.5‰), but not for skin. C:N ratios were not correlated with the change in δ 13 C values in either tissue. δ 15 N values were not affected by lipid extraction in either tissue. The difference found in δ 13 C values between control and lipid-extracted muscle samples may be biologically significant. On the other hand, the lipid extraction of skin samples does not appear to be necessary in the case of juvenile green turtles. This procedure needs to be tested in green turtles in other life stages.
Guiding Constructive Search with Statistical Instance-Based Learning

Several real world applications involve solving combinatorial optimization problems. Commonly, existing heuristic approaches are designed to address specific difficulties of the underlying problem and are applicable only within its framework. We suspect, however, that search spaces of combinatorial problems are rich in intuitive statistical and numerical information, which could be exploited heuristically in a generic manner, towards achievement of optimized solutions. Our work presents such a heuristic methodology, which can be adequately configured for several types of optimization problems. Experimental results are discussed, concerning two widely used problem models, namely the Set Partitioning and the Kanpsack problems. It is shown that, by gathering statistical information upon previously found solutions to the problems, the heuristic is able to incrementally adapt its behaviour and reach high quality solutions, exceeding the ones obtained by commonly used greedy heuristics.
A New Probabilistic Ranking Model

Over the years a number of models have been introduced as solutions to the central IR problem of ranking documents given textual queries. Here we define another new model. It is a probabilistic model and has no term inter-dependencies, thus allowing calculation from inverted indices. It is based upon a simple core hypothesis, directly calculating a ranking score in terms of probability theory. Early results show that its performance is credible, even in the absence of parameters or heuristics. Its semantic basis gives absolute results, allowing different rankings to be compared with each other. The investigation of this model is at a very early stage; here, we simply propose the model for further investigation.
Early Goal-Directed Sedation Versus Standard Sedation in Mechanically Ventilated Critically Ill Patients: A Pilot Study*

Objective:To assess the feasibility and safety of delivering early goal-directed sedation compared with standard sedation. Design:Pilot prospective, multicenter, randomized, controlled trial. Setting:Six ICUs. Patients:Critically ill adults mechanically ventilated for greater than 24 hours. Interventions:Patients randomized to early goal-directed sedation received a dexmedetomidine-based algorithm targeted to light sedation (Richmond Agitation Sedation Score of –2 to 1). Patients randomized to standard sedation received propofol and/or midazolam-based sedation as clinically appropriate. Measurements and Main Results:The main feasibility outcomes were time to randomization and proportion of Richmond Agitation Sedation Score assessments in the first 48 hours in the light and deep sedation range. Safety outcomes were delirium-free days, vasopressor and physical restraints use, and device removal. Randomization occurred within a median (interquartile range) of 1.1 hours (0.46–1.9) after intubation or ICU admission for out of ICU intubation. Patients in the early goal-directed sedation (n = 21) mean (SD) Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score was 20.2 (6.2) versus 18.6 (8.8; p = 0.53) in the standard sedation (n = 16). A significantly higher proportion of patients was lightly sedated on days 1, 2, and 3 (12/19 [63.2%], 19/21 [90.5%], and 18/20 [90%] vs 2/14 [14.3%], 8/15 [53.3%], and 9/15 [60%]; p = 0.005, 0.011, 0.036) and more Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale assessments between (–2 and 1), in the first 48 hours (203/307 [66%] versus (74/197 [38%]; p = 0.01) in the early goal-directed sedation versus standard sedation, respectively. Early goal-directed sedation patients received midazolam on 6 of 173 (3.5%) versus 4 of 114 (3.5%) standard sedation patient-days when dexmedetomidine was given. Propofol was given to 16 of 21 (76%) of early goal-directed sedation versus 16 of 16 (100%) of standard sedation patients (p = 0.04). Early goal-directed sedation patients had 101 of 175 (58%) versus 54 of 114 (47%; p = 0.27) delirium-free days and required significantly less physical restraints 1 (5%) versus 5 (31%; p = 0.03) than standard sedation patients. There were no differences in vasopressor use and self-extubation. Conclusions:Delivery of early goal-directed sedation was feasible, appeared safe, achieved early light sedation, minimized benzodiazepines and propofol, and decreased the need for physical restraints. The findings of this pilot study justify further investigation of early goal-directed sedation.
Study on semantic control in motion synthesis

This paper focuses on studying semantic control in motion graph based human motion synthesis. Relational features are implemented for describing and specifying motions with spatial variations within a class of semantically similar motions at a high semantic level. Motion templates are then automatically derived from the training motions for capturing the spatio-temporal characteristics of an entire given class of semantically related motions. Automatic semantic annotation is performed on the unknown motion data document by identifying the presence of certain motion class from matching their respective motion class templates. Finally, the semantic control is introduced in motion graph based human motion synthesis. Experiments of motion synthesis demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach which enables user the higher level of intuitive semantically control and quality of human motion synthesis from mocap database.