Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blood pressure measurement is changing!

As we move into the new millennium, the century old Riva-Rocci/Korotkoff technique of measuring blood pressure is changing. There are a number of reasons for this. First, mercury is a toxic substance, the use of which can no longer be countenanced in clinical medicine, and the traditional technique, despite a history of reputable service, is likely to disappear from clinical practice.1 2 Second, it is now recognised that though the old technique has given good service, it is fraught with inaccuracies,3 and accurate automated devices are becoming available to replace the mercury sphygmomanometer. Third, 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure measurement (ABPM) has highlighted the phenomenon of white coat hypertension, and more reliance is being placed on blood pressure behaviour than on casual measurement of blood pressure levels.4 Mercury is a toxic, persistent, and bioaccumable substance, many tons of which are distributed throughout the world to hospitals and countless individual doctors and little of which is returned for disposal. Admittedly the contribution of mercury from sphygmomanometers to environmental pollution is small, but none the less, mercury from whatever source finds its way back into the environment through evaporation, in sewage or in solid waste, most seriously damaging the marine environment, and it accumulates in soil and in sediments thereby entering the food chain.1 The mercury thermometer has been replaced in many countries, and in Sweden and the Netherlands the use of mercury is no longer permitted in hospitals. In other European countries, however, including the UK and Ireland, the move to ban mercury from hospital use has not been received with enthusiasm because we do not have an accurate alternative to the mercury sphygmomanometer.1 2 This ambivalence often results in hospitals and doctors replacing mercury sphygmomanometers with unreliable and inaccurate devices, such as aneroid sphygmomanometers, which …
Elastic Image Registration with Applications to Proteomics

In proteomics, electrophoretic 2‐D gels are used to separate the proteome according to the molecular weight and electrical charge of its constituents, which are proteins expressed by a cell or organ at a particular time and under specific conditions. One of the main applications is the analysis of differential expressions between different conditions for which certain (perhaps many) spots are present in one of the images, but not in the other. One of the difficulties of this analysis is that 2‐D gels are affected by spatial distortions due to run‐time differences and dye‐front deformations, which results in images that are significantly dissimilar and that pose a challenging problem to image‐registration algorithms. In this paper, we test the efficiency of a state‐of‐the‐art elastic‐registration algorithm that we had already introduced in the context of biomedical images. We study here the registration of simulated 2‐D gels with known expression patterns and deformations. We show that our algorithm is cap.
Exploiting Subcarrier Agility to Alleviate Active Jamming Attacks in Wireless Networks

Malicious interference injection or jamming is one of the simplest ways to disrupt wireless communications. Prior approaches can alleviate jamming interference to a limited extent; they are especially vulnerable to a reactive jammer i.e., a jammer that injects noise upon sensing a legitimate transmission or wideband jamming. In this paper, we leverage the inherent features of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) to cope with such attacks. Specifically, via extensive experiments, we observe that the jamming signal experiences differing levels of fading across the composite sub-carriers in its transmission bandwidth. Thus, if the legitimate transmitter were to somehow exploit the relatively unaffected sub-carriers to transmit data to the receiver, it could achieve reasonable throughputs, even in the presence of the active jammer. We design and implement JIMS, a Jamming Interference Mitigation Scheme that exploits the above characteristic by overcoming key practical challenges. Via extensive testbed experiments and simulations we show that JIMS achieves a throughput restoration of up to 75 percent in the presence of an active jammer.
Semi-active and Active Control of an ERF Embedded in Pneumatic Vibration Isolator

In the paper, the Electrorheological fluid(ERF) is embedded in the pneumatic vibration isolator and three kinds of control systems are designed, which experimental results are also compared. The first kind of the control system is the semi-active control system, which is designed for ERF controllable damper. The second kind of the control system is the active control system, which is designed for the air servo position control of the platform of the pneumatic vibration isolator. The third kind of vibration isolator control systems is the combination of the active air servo control system and the ERF controllable damper. The experimental results are shown and compared to those of the passive pneumatic vibration isolators, the transmissibility of a vibration source to the isolation platform can be reduced by the first control system. Using the second kind of the control system, the transmissibility of the system is less than that of the first kind of the control system. Using the third control system, the transmissibility becomes the least of these control systems.
The Influence of Role Models on Students' Entrepreneurial Intentions

The Smart State initiative requires both improved education and training, particularly in technical fields, plus entrepreneurship to commercialise new ideas. In this study, we propose an entrepreneurial intentions model as a guide to examine the educational choices and entrepreneurial intentions of first-year University students, focusing on the effect of role models. A survey of over 1000 first-year University students revealed that the most enterprising students were choosing to study in the disciplines of information technology and business, economics and law, or selecting dual degree programs that include business. The role models most often identified for their choice of field of study were parents, followed by teachers and peers, with females identifying more role models than males. For entrepreneurship, students' role models were parents and peers, followed by famous persons and teachers. Males and females identified similar numbers of role models, but males found starting a business more desirable and more feasible, and reported higher entrepreneurial intention. The implications of these findings for Smart State policy are discussed.
Cascading recognizers for ambiguous calligraphic interaction

Throughout the last decade many approaches have been made to the problem of developing CAD systems that are usable in the early stages of product ideation. Although most of these approaches rely on some kind of drawing paradigm and on the paper-and-pencil metaphor, only a few of them deal with the ambiguity that is inherent to natural languages in general and to sketching in particular. Also the paper-and-pencil metaphor has not in most cases been fully accomplished, since many gesture-based interfaces resort to secondary buttons and modifier keys in order to make command strokes easier to differentiate from their geometry instantiating counterparts. In this paper we describe the architecture of GIDeS++, a sketch-based 3D modeling system that approaches these problems in three different ways: by dealing with ambiguity and exploring it to the user's benefit; by reducing the command set and thus minimizing the cognitive load on the user; and by cascading different types of gesture recognizers, which allows interaction to resort only to the button located on the tip of an electronic stylus.
Analysis of classifiers performance for classification of potential microcalcification

Breast cancer is a significant public health problem in the world. According to the literature early detection improve breast cancer prognosis. Mammography is a screening tool used for early detection of breast cancer. About 10–30% cases are missed during the routine check as it is difficult for the radiologists to make accurate analysis due to large amount of data. The Microcalcifications (MCs) are considered to be important signs of breast cancer. It has been reported in literature that 30% - 50% of breast cancer detected radio graphically show MCs on mammograms. Histologic examinations report 62% to 79% of breast carcinomas reveals MCs. MC are tiny, vary in size, shape, and distribution, and MC may be closely connected to surrounding tissues. There is a major challenge using the traditional classifiers in the classification of individual potential MCs as the processing of mammograms in appropriate stage generates data sets with an unequal amount of information for both classes (i.e., MC, and Not-MC). Most of the existing state-of-the-art classification approaches are well developed by assuming the underlying training set is evenly distributed. However, they are faced with a severe bias problem when the training set is highly imbalanced in distribution. This paper addresses this issue by using classifiers which handle the imbalanced data sets. In this paper, we also compare the performance of classifiers which are used in the classification of potential MC.
Will U.S. Agriculture Really Benefit from Global Warming? Accounting for Irrigation in the Hedonic Approach

Will U.S. Agriculture Really Benefit from Global Warming? Accounting for Irrigation in the Hedonic Approach. Wolfram Schlenker, W. Michael Hanemann, and Anthony C. Fisher ∗ There has been a lively debate about the potential impact of global climate change on U.S. agriculture. Most of the early agro-economic studies predict large damages (see, for example, Richard M. Adams, 1989; Harry M. Kaiser et al., 1993; and Adams et al., 1995). In an innovative paper Robert Mendelsohn, William D. Nordhaus and Daigee Shaw (1994) - hereafter MNS - propose a new approach: using the variation in temperature and precipitation across U.S. counties to estimate a reduced form hedonic equation with the value of farmland as the dependent variable. A change in temperature and/or precipitation is then associated with a change in farmland value which can be interpreted as the impact of climate change. Adams et al. (1998) characterize the hedonic approach as a spatial analogue approach, and acknowledge that ”the strength of the spatial analogue approach is that structural changes and farm responses are implicit in the analysis, freeing the analyst from the burden of estimating the eﬀects of climate change on particular region-speciﬁc crops and farmer responses. ” On the other hand, one of the potential disadvantages of the hedonic approach is that it is a partial equilibrium analysis, i.e., agricultural prices are assumed to remain constant. 1 While year-to-year ﬂuctuations in annual weather conditions certainly have the potential to impact current commodity prices, especially for crops produced only in a relatively localized area, (such as citrus fruits which are grown mainly in California and Florida), changes in long-run weather patterns (i.e., changes in climate) might have a smaller eﬀect on commodity prices because of the greater potential for economic adaptation, particularly shifts in growing regions. 2 The hedonic approach as implemented by MNS predicts that existing agricultural land on average might be more productive and hence result in beneﬁts for U.S. farmers. 3 The hedonic approach has received considerable attention in our judgment in part because the conclusions are at variance with those of some other studies
Problem statements: an exploratory study of their function, significance, and form

Examination of research methods textbooks and survey findings suggests that research studies should contain a problem statement. However, survey respondents disagreed over the purpose, content, and form of the statement. It would seem that researchers have referred to whatever they want as the problem statement. The research presented in this paper explores the function, form, and major attributes of a problem statement, and thereby provides a list of possible items to include when writing a problem statement
A fine-grained access control model for Web services

The emerging Web service technology has enabled the development of Internet-based applications that integrate distributed and heterogeneous systems and processes, which are owned by different organizations. However, while Web services are rapidly becoming a fundamental paradigm for the development of complex Web applications, several security issues still need to be addressed. Among the various open issues concerning security, an important issue is represented by the development of suitable access control models, able to restrict access to Web services to authorized users. We present an innovative access control model for Web services. The model is characterized by a number of key features, including identity attributes and service negotiation capabilities. We also discuss an architecture implementing the model and we propose the use of a certificate scheme able to support the exchange and verification of subject attributes.
Serious Complication of Cement Augmentation for Damaged Pilot Hole

Polymethl methacrylate (PMMA) screw reinforcement is frequently used in osteoporotic bone as well as in damaged pilot holes. However, PMMA use can be dangerous, since the amount of applied cement is uncontrolled. A 47-year-old male with traumatic cervical spondylolisthesis at C6-7 underwent anterior cervical plate fixation. During repeated drilling and tapping for false trajectory correction, a pilot hole was damaged. Although it was an unconventional method, PMMA augmentation was tried. However, PMMA was accidentally injected to the cervical spinal cord owing to lack of fluoroscopic guidance. The PMMA was surgically removed after corpectomy and durotomy. The patient had left side hemiparesis (Grade 2/5) immediately post operation. The patient improved spontaneously (Grade 4/5) except for 4th and 5th digit extension. Here, we report a rare complication of PMMA extrusion in the spinal cord during a damaged pilot hole injection, which has not previously been described.
Does Text Contrast Mediate Binocular Advantages in Reading?

Humans typically make use of both of their eyes in reading and efficient processes of binocular vision provide a stable, single percept of the text. Binocular reading also comes with an advantage: reading speed is high and word frequency effects (i.e., faster lexical processing of words that are more often encountered in a language) emerge during fixations, which is not the case for monocular reading (Jainta, Blythe, & Liversedge, 2014). A potential contributor to this benefit is the reduced contrast in monocular reading: reduced text contrasts in binocular reading are known to slow down reading and word identification (Reingold & Rayner, 2006). To investigate whether contrast reduction mediates the binocular advantage, we first replicated increased reading time and nullified frequency effects for monocular reading (Experiment 1). Next, we reduced the contrast for binocular but whole sentences to 70% (Weber-contrast); this reading condition resembled monocular reading, but found no effect on reading speed and word identification (Experiment 2). A reasonable conclusion, therefore, was that a reduction in contrast is not the (primary) factor that mediates less efficient lexical processing under monocular reading. In a third experiment (Experiment 3) we reduced the sentence contrast to 40% and the pattern of results showed that, globally, reading was slowed down but clear word frequency effects were present in the data. Thus, word identification processes during reading (i.e., the word frequency effect) were qualitatively different in monocular reading compared with effects observed when text was read with substantially reduced contrast.
An FtsH Protease Is Recruited to the Mitochondrion of Plasmodium falciparum

The two organelles, apicoplast and mitochondrion, of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum have unique morphology in liver and blood stages; they undergo complex branching and looping prior to division and segregation into daughter merozoites. Little is known about the molecular processes and proteins involved in organelle biogenesis in the parasite. We report the identification of an AAA+/FtsH protease homolog (PfFtsH1) that exhibits ATP- and Zn2+-dependent protease activity. PfFtsH1 undergoes processing, forms oligomeric assemblies, and is associated with the membrane fraction of the parasite cell. Generation of a transfectant parasite line with hemagglutinin-tagged PfFtsH1, and immunofluorescence assay with anti-PfFtsH1 Ab demonstrated that the protein localises to P. falciparum mitochondria. Phylogenetic analysis and the single transmembrane region identifiable in PfFtsH1 suggest that it is an i-AAA like inner mitochondrial membrane protein. Expression of PfFtsH1 in Escherichia coli converted a fraction of bacterial cells into division-defective filamentous forms implying a sequestering effect of the Plasmodium factor on the bacterial homolog, indicative of functional conservation with EcFtsH. These results identify a membrane-associated mitochondrial AAA+/FtsH protease as a candidate regulatory protein for organelle biogenesis in P. falciparum.
Tandem Duplication of rab Genes Followed by Sequence Divergence and Acquisition of Distinct Functions in Trypanosoma brucei *

The Ras superfamily of small G proteins governs unidirectional cellular processes by virtue of GTP hydrolysis and concomitant conformational changes, which are in turn regulated by a number of accessory factors. Members of the Rab subfamily are important for correct targeting and fusion of intra-organellar vesicles loaded with trafficking proteins and lipids. During evolution from a prototype gene, novel functions may be acquired by duplicated daughter genes; for Rab proteins, this can be tested by location, which is specifically related to the function of each Rab. We have found an example of tworab genes in Trypanosoma brucei(trab genes) that clearly arose by tandem duplication, being highly related to each other and remaining juxtaposed in the genome, whose products have dramatically different subcellular locations, indicative of discrete functions. These two trabgenes, isolated on a single genomic clone, are separated by a short intervening sequence and are in a head-to-tail orientation. The nucleotide sequences of the open reading frames and intervening sequence were determined and show that the genes are paralogues, probably arising from an ancient tandem duplication. Both genes are most homologous to ypt1 and sec4 in theSaccharomyces cerevisiae genome, while phylogenetic reconstruction indicates that although they have clearly diverged, the proteins are more closely related to each other than to other Rab protein sequences available in the data base. Immunofluorescence microscopy, using antibodies raised against the recombinant Trab proteins, clearly demonstrates that the native Trab proteins have completely distinct subcellular locations in the trypanosome. Trab1p is present in a widespread reticular location similar to BiP, suggesting an endoplasmic reticulum location, while Trab7p is observed in a discrete structure adjacent to the kinetoplast. Most interestingly, the Trab7p-positive compartment also appears to divide at the same time, or just prior to, the kinetoplast, i.e. early in mitosis, suggestive of association with structures in the flagellar pocket region. An estimate of the divergence time indicates that thetrab1/trab7 duplication occurred ∼100 million years ago, and therefore, the persistence of this pair suggests an essential role in the survival of T. brucei.
Morphological Characterization of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a MODS Culture for an Automatic Diagnostics through Pattern Recognition

Tuberculosis control efforts are hampered by a mismatch in diagnostic technology: modern optimal diagnostic tests are least available in poor areas where they are needed most. Lack of adequate early diagnostics and MDR detection is a critical problem in control efforts. The Microscopic Observation Drug Susceptibility (MODS) assay uses visual recognition of cording patterns from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) to diagnose tuberculosis infection and drug susceptibility directly from a sputum sample in 7–10 days with a low cost. An important limitation that laboratories in the developing world face in MODS implementation is the presence of permanent technical staff with expertise in reading MODS. We developed a pattern recognition algorithm to automatically interpret MODS results from digital images. The algorithm using image processing, feature extraction and pattern recognition determined geometrical and illumination features used in an object-model and a photo-model to classify TB-positive images. 765 MODS digital photos were processed. The single-object model identified MTB (96.9% sensitivity and 96.3% specificity) and was able to discriminate non-tuberculous mycobacteria with a high specificity (97.1% M. avium, 99.1% M. chelonae, and 93.8% M. kansasii). The photo model identified TB-positive samples with 99.1% sensitivity and 99.7% specificity. This algorithm is a valuable tool that will enable automatic remote diagnosis using Internet or cellphone telephony. The use of this algorithm and its further implementation in a telediagnostics platform will contribute to both faster TB detection and MDR TB determination leading to an earlier initiation of appropriate treatment.
Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice in Education: A Sociological Grounding

Evidence use and user engagement have become part of the rhetoric of education and social science research, with policy makers required to base their recommendations on evidence. This book expands the analysis of policy (educational and others) and considers the wider environment within which policy is made. Chris Brown grounds this analysis within contemporary theory that explains pertinent social phenomenon to show the interplay and tensions between policy and practice and to illustrate how, within each, being evidence-informed results in very different actions and behaviours when it comes to evidence use. This exploration reconciles policy and practice within an overarching framework which attempts to explain what emerges when 'top down' and 'bottom up' evidence production and use collide. The book both challenges and informs: challenging those currently working in the area to begin to think more deeply about their work and the theoretical mechanisms that underpin it, and informing use by providing theoretical tools to assist them in doing so.
Search and navigation as retrieval strategies in large photo collectionsi

In this exploratory study we investigated the use of search and navigation as strategies for retrieval in large collections of digital photos. The main goal of the research was to test out models and methods that can describe retrieval behaviour and preferences. A focus group interview was conducted and demonstrated the need for taking various types of factors and measurements into account. We examined relationships between independent variables (happiness levels, satisfaction with and confidence in the search results, feeling lost during search,), and perceived satisfaction as dependent variable. The analysis showed statistical significant relationships for some important factors, but also indicated limitations in the applied theoretical framework, in particular related to use of emotions as independent variables. The study also showed that users’ own perception of which retrieval strategy was the fastest differed from the actual time they used on search and navigation tasks. This confirms the need for analytical models that integrates subjective preferences/perceptions and measurement of objective factors.