Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of Multilayer Perceptron and radial Basis Function networks as tools for flood forecasting

This paper presents a comparison between two Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approaches, namely, Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and Radial Basis Function (RBF) networks, in flood forecasting. The basic difference between the two methods is that the parameters of the former network are nonlinear and those of the latter are linear. The optimum model parameters are therefore guaranteed in the latter, whereas it is not so in the more popularly adopted former approach. The two methods are applied to predict water levels at stations in an experimental drainage basin and in a major river in China during storm periods. The RBF network based models give predictions comparable in accuracy to those from the MLP based models. It is also observed that the RBF approach requires less time for model development since no repetition is required to reach the optimum model parameters.
Declarative Patterns for Imperative Distributed Graph Algorithms

We provide an abstraction for expressing graph algorithms in which the vertices and edges of the graph provide locality and communication structure and graph data are represented by property maps that associate vertices and edges to arbitrary user-defined data. Operations on the graph are expressed as patterns, which allow limited traversal of the graph and modification of property maps for the traversed fragments of the graph. Traversal is implicit, and is automatically computed from the pattern's access of property map values. Patterns are declarative, but they can be used in imperative algorithms by using strategies that run in epochs. Strategies are user defined programs that apply patterns in a certain way (e.g., We provide fixed point, once, and ? -stepping strategies), including chaining patterns in an arbitrary way. Patterns are applied in epochs, which provide synchronization across a distributed system, guaranteeing that all patterns have been applied by the end of an epoch.
The Perceived Effects of Dance for Individuals with Parkinson’s Disease and Healthy Amateurs

The objective of the present study was to compare the effects of dance participation on physical and psychological functioning as perceived by two distinct groups of dancers: dancers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy amateur (HA) dancers. Dancers in the Parkinson's sample group were gathered from participants in the Dance for PD® program, while healthy amateur dancers were recruited from university dance departments and through social media. Both groups were administered measures related to affect, self-efficacy, quality of life, and which aspects of dance classes were most helpful and/or challenging. Several open-ended questions for both groups were included, along with questions specific to each group. Results of the study indicated that there was no difference between the two groups on positive affect experienced while dancing, but that HA dancers experienced higher levels of negative affect than PD dancers. HA dancers exhibited higher levels of self-efficacy, but there was no difference between the groups on perceived quality of life. Additionally, both groups identified the same two components of dance classes as the most helpful: "moving and getting some exercise" and "doing something fun. " Thematic analysis of responses to open-ended questions found that, in general, HA and PD dancers identified similar factors which made dance unique from other forms of exercise. The primary differences were that HA dancers more strongly emphasized artistic and spiritual components of dance, whereas PD dancers focused on the importance of the dance instructors and tailoring movements iii to individuals with PD. More differences were found between the two groups with respect to the negative aspects of dance classes. Notably, PD dancers identified almost no negative aspects, while HA dancers described internal and external pressure, criticism, and competition as problematic. Future research could benefit from ensuring that both groups are administered the same standardized measures to allow for additional comparisons between groups and with normative samples.
Cladribine combined with cyclophosphamide and mitoxantrone is an active salvage therapy in advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility, efficacy and toxicity of the combined therapy consisting of cladribine (2-CdA), mitoxantrone and cyclophosphamide (CMC regimen) in patients with refractory or relapsed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). Thirty six patients, 14 with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), 10 with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), 5 with follicular lymphoma (FL), 3 with small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), and 4 with T-cell lymphoma were enrolled to the study. The CMC protocol consisted of 2-CdA at a dose of 0.12 mg/kg in a 2-hour infusion on days 1 through 3, mitoxantrone 10 mg/m2 i.v. on day 1 and cyclophosphamide 650 mg/m2 i.v. on day 1. The CMC courses were repeated at intervals of 4 weeks. Thirty three patients were available for evaluation of response. Overall response rate (OR) was 58% (95% CI, 41 – 75%). Seven patients (21%; 95% CI, 7 – 35%) achieved a complete response (CR) and 12 patients (36%; 95% CI, 20 – 52%) achieved a partial response (PR). Seven of 19 patients with CR/PR are still in remission with a median follow-up of 3 months (range, 2 – 17 months). The median failure-free survival (FFS) was 5 months (range, 2 – 17 months). The median overall survival (OS) for the entire group was 9 months (range, 0.1 – 77 months). There was a significant difference in OS between responders and nonresponders after CMC therapy (log rank test, P = 0.015). When different disease status before CMC treatment was considered, a trend toward longer survival of recurrent patients was observed (log rank test, P = 0.08). Grade 3 – 4 neutropenia developed in 14 (39%) patients, and 16 episodes (15%) of grade 3 – 4 infections were observed. Grade 3 – 4 thrombocytopenia or anemia was seen in 9 patients (25%) and 10 patients (28%), respectively. The results of our study show that the CMC regimen is effective salvage therapy with acceptable toxicity in heavily pretreated patients with NHL including MCL and DLBCL.
State Authenticity in Everyday Life

We examined the components and situational correlates of state authenticity to clarify the construct's meaning and improve understanding of authenticity's attainment. In Study 1, we used the day reconstruction method (participants assessed real–life episodes from ‘yesterday’) and in Study 2 a smartphone app (participants assessed real–life moments taking place ‘just now’) to obtain situation–level ratings of participants’ sense of living authentically, self–alienation, acceptance of external influence, mood, anxiety, energy, ideal–self overlap, self–consciousness, self–esteem, flow, needs satisfaction, and motivation to be ‘real’. Both studies demonstrated that state authentic living does not require rejecting external influence and, further, accepting external influence is not necessarily associated with state self–alienation. In fact, situational acceptance of external influence was more often related to an increased, rather than decreased, sense of authenticity. Both studies also found state authentic living to be associated with greater, and state self–alienation with lesser: positive mood, energy, relaxation, ideal–self overlap, self–esteem, flow, and motivation for realness. Study 2 further revealed that situations prioritizing satisfaction of meaning/purpose in life were associated with increased authentic living and situations prioritizing pleasure/interest satisfaction were associated with decreased self–alienation. State authenticity is best characterized by two related yet independent components: authentic living and (absence of) self–alienation. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology
Using Context to Assist in Personal File Retrieval (CMU-CS-06-147)

Personal data is growing at ever increasing rates, fueled by a growing market for personal computing solutions and dramatic growth of available storage space on these platforms. Users, no longer limited in what they can store, are now faced with the problem of organizing their data such that they can find it again later. Unfortunately, as data sets grow the complexity of organizing these sets also grows. This problem has driven a sudden growth in search tools aimed at the personal computing space, designed to assist users in locating data within their disorganized file space. Despite the sudden growth in this area, local file search tools are often inaccurate. These inaccuracies have been a long-standing problem for file data, as evidenced by the downfall of attribute-based naming systems that often relied on content analysis to provide meaningful attributes to files for automated organization. While file search tools have lagged behind, search tools designed for the world wide web have found wide-spread acclaim. Interestingly, despite significant increases in non-textual data on the web (e.g., images, movies), web search tools continue to be effective. This is because the web contains key information that is currently unavailable within file systems: context. By capturing context information, e.g., the links describing how data on the web is inter-related, web search tools can significantly improve the quality of search over content analysis techniques alone. This work describes Connections, a context-enhanced search tool that utilizes temporal locality among file accesses to provide inter-file relationships to the local file system. Once identified, these inter-file relationships provide context information, similar to that available in the world wide web. Connections leverages this context to improve the quality of file search results. Specifically, user studies with Connections see improvements in both precision and recall (i.e., fewer false-positives and false-negatives) over content-only search, and a live deployment found that users experienced reduced search time with Connections when compared to content-only search.
Computational modelling and evaluation of cardiovascular response under pulsatile impeller pump support

This study presents a numerical simulation of cardiovascular response in the heart failure condition under the support of a Berlin Heart INCOR impeller pump-type ventricular assist device (VAD). The model is implemented using the CellML modelling language. To investigate the potential of using the Berlin Heart INCOR impeller pump to produce physiologically meaningful arterial pulse pressure within the various physiological constraints, a series of VAD-assisted cardiovascular cases are studied, in which the pulsation ratio and the phase shift of the VAD motion profile are systematically changed to observe the cardiovascular responses in each of the studied cases. An optimization process is proposed, including the introduction of a cost function to balance the importance of the characteristic cardiovascular variables. Based on this cost function it is found that a pulsation ratio of 0.35 combined with a phase shift of 200° produces the optimal cardiovascular response, giving rise to a maximal arterial pulse pressure of 12.6 mm Hg without inducing regurgitant pump flow while keeping other characteristic cardiovascular variables within appropriate physiological ranges.
High incidence of the maternally inherited bacterium Cardinium in spiders

Inherited bacteria are now recognized as important players in arthropod evolution and ecology. Here, we test spiders, a group recently identified as possessing inherited bacteria commonly, for the presence of two reproductive parasites, Cardinium hertigii (Bacteroidetes group) and Wolbachia (α‐proteobacteria), estimating incidence, prevalence, any sex bias in infection, and infection diversity, for a panel of field‐collected specimens. We identify spiders as a hotspot for Cardinium. Present in 22% of the sampled species, incidence was significantly higher than that previously recorded in insects. Where present, Cardinium infection occurred at medium prevalence without evidence of sex bias in prevalence that would indicate sex‐ratio distortion activity. Wolbachia was present in 37% of species, but revealed a gradation from being rare to very common. In one case, Wolbachia was found significantly more commonly in females than males, indicating it may act as a sex‐ratio distorter in some species. Breeding work conducted on two species confirmed that Wolbachia and Cardinium were transmitted maternally, which represents the first proof of inheritance of these symbionts in spiders. Overall, this study demonstrates that the majority of spider species are infected with inherited bacteria, and their role in host biology clearly requires determination.
The prognostic value of angiogenesis by Chalkley counting in a confirmatory study design on 836 breast cancer patients.

This study addresses the prognostic value of estimating angiogenesis by Chalkley counting in breast cancer. A population-based group consisting of 836 patients with operated primary, unilateral invasive breast carcinomas was included from a predefined region and period of time. The median follow-up time was 11 years and 4 months. The microvessels were immunohistochemically stained by antibodies against CD34. The Chalkley count was obtained by a 25-point grid within three, subjectively selected, vascular tumor areas of highest microvessel density. The Chalkley count was analyzed in three categories using predefined Chalkley cutoff points at five and seven. There were significant correlations between high Chalkley counts and axillary lymph node metastasis, large tumor size, high histological malignancy grade, and histological type. A high Chalkley count showed lower probabilities of recurrence-free survival (P < 0.0001) and overall survival (P < 0.0001). In the Cox multivariate analysis, the hazard ratio (and 95% confidence interval) showed that the increased risk to die were: 1.55 (1.19-2.03) with Chalkley counts between 5 and 7; 2.26 (1.72-2.98) with counts > or =7 compared with counts < or =5; and 1.46 (1.14-1.87) with counts > or =7 compared with counts between 5-7. The study confirmed that estimation of angiogenesis by Chalkley counting had independent prognostic value in breast cancer patients. The Chalkley count could be useful to stratify node-negative patients for adjuvant treatment.
A Combined Algorithm for Layout Analysis of Arabic Document Images and Text Lines Extraction

Text and not -text segmentation and text line extraction from document images are the most challenging problems of information indexing of Arabic document images such as books, technical articles, business letters and faxes in order to successfully process them in systems such as OCR. Researches on Arabic language related to documents digitization have been focusing on word and handwriting recognition. Few approaches have been proposed for layout analysis for Arabic scanned/captured documents. In this paper we present a page segmentation method that deals with the complexity of the Arabic language characteristics and fonts using the combination between two algorithms. The first method is the Run length Smoothing. The second method is the Connected Component Labeling algorithm for text and non-text classification using SVM. The combination of the two methods is based on Anding and Oring operations between the outputs of the two methods based on certain conditions. Then, dynamic horizontal projection based on dynamic updating of the threshold to commensurate with the noise associated with different documents and in between text lines. The performance evaluation is performed using manually generated ground truth representations from a dataset of Arabic document images captured using cameras and a hardware built for this purpose. Evaluation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed text extraction method is independent from different document size, text size, font, shape, and is robust to Arabic document segmentation and text lines extraction. General Terms Image processing, Pattern Recognition.
Metabolic engineering of isopropyl alcohol‐producing Escherichia coli strains with 13C‐metabolic flux analysis

Metabolic engineering of isopropyl alcohol (IPA)‐producing Escherichia coli strains was conducted along with 13C‐metabolic flux analysis (MFA). A metabolically engineered E. coli strain expressing the adc gene derived from Clostridium acetobutylicum and the IPADH gene from C. beijerinckii did not produce IPA during its exponential growth phase in the aerobic batch culture. 13C‐MFA was carried out, and revealed a deficiency in NADPH regeneration for IPA production in growth phase. Based on these findings, we used nitrogen‐starved culture conditions to reduce NADPH consumption for biomass synthesis. As a result, IPA yield was increased to 20% mol/mol glucose. 13C‐MFA revealed that the relative flux levels through the oxidative pentose phosphate (PP) pathway and the TCA cycle were elevated in nitrogen‐starved condition relative to glucose uptake rate. To prevent CO2 release in the 6‐phosphogluconate dehydrogenase (6PGDH) reaction, metabolism of this E. coli strain was further engineered to redirect glycolytic flux to the glucose 6‐phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PDH) and Entner‐Doudoroff (ED) pathway. IPA yield of 55% mol/mol glucose was achieved by combining the nitrogen‐starved culture condition with the metabolic redirection. The 13C‐MFA data and intracellular NADPH levels obtained under these IPA production conditions revealed linear correlations between the specific IPA production rate and NADPH concentration, as well as between IPA yield and the pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) flux. Our results showed that 13C‐MFA is a helpful tool for metabolic engineering studies, and that further improvement in IPA production by E. coli may be achieved by fine‐tuning the cofactor ratio and concentrations, as well as optimizing the metabolic pathways and culture conditions.
Out of focus blur estimation using genetic algorithm

Blur identification is the most important step of image restoration. Since now, many researchers have presented methods to estimate out of focus blur, but most of these methods suffer the additive noise. In this paper, a method is presented to estimate out of focus blur in noisy images precisely. Proposed method uses two rough estimate of blur function parameter, and then the real parameter is calculated using a genetic algorithm. The structure of out of focus blurring function was analyzed in frequency domain to develop a precise method. Experimental results showed proposed method was very precise.
A software framework for simulating eye trackers

We describe an open-source software framework that simulates the measurements made using one or several cameras in a video-oculographic eye tracker. The framework can be used to compare objectively the performance of different eye tracking setups (number and placement of cameras and light sources) and gaze estimation algorithms. We demonstrate the utility of the framework by using it to compare two remote eye tracking methods, one using a single camera, the other using two cameras.
Validity Study Relationship between Personality and Academy Performance

We investigated the relationship between scores on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PIR) and police academy performance for 74 cadets. The results indicated that scores on the values and trust subscales were positively related to academy academic performance and scores on the assertiveness subscale were negatively related to academy academic performance. Sample The sample consisted of 74 cadets enrolled in three consecutive police academy classes in the St. Louis, Missouri area during the year 2001. The mean age of sample participants was 25.13 years (SD = 3.7). The majority of the officers were white (79.0%) or African American (19.6%) with a small percentage of Hispanics/Latinos (1.6%). Men comprised 80.6% of the sample. The academy was 26 weeks long.
‘In this country, you suffer a lot’: Undocumented Mexican immigrant experiences

Facing poverty and an inability to support their families through work on small farms or in waged labor, Mexican workers have crossed the border in large numbers seeking work in the US. This study explores the experiences of Mexican workers who immigrated without authorization to find work in a US suburban community in construction and the service industry. Ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews reveal the relationship of macro-level policy choices in compelling impoverished, marginalized people to immigrate despite the real dangers of crossing the Mexican/US border.
Evaluating the robustness of privacy-sensitive audio features for speech detection in personal audio log scenarios

Personal audio logs are often recorded in multiple environments. This poses challenges for robust front-end processing, including speech/nonspeech detection (SND). Motivated by this, we investigate the robustness of four different privacy-sensitive features for SND, namely energy, zero crossing rate, spectral flatness, and kurtosis. We study early and late fusion of these features in conjunction with modeling temporal context. These combinations are evaluated in mismatched conditions on a dataset of nearly 450 hours. While both combinations yield improvements over individual features, generally feature combinations perform better. Comparisons with a state-of-the-art spectral based and a privacy-sensitive feature set are also provided.
Vitamin D affects survival independently of vascular calcification in chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Cardiovascular disease is the main cause of mortality in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients. Vitamin D might have beneficial effects on vascular health. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency (25-hydroxyvitamin D [25D] <or= 15 ng/ml) and insufficiency (25D levels between 16 and 30 ng/ml) in a cohort of patients at different CKD stages and the relationships between vitamin D serum levels, vascular calcification and stiffness, and the mortality risk. DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS & MEASUREMENTS One hundred forty CKD patients (85 men, mean age 67 +/- 12 yr; CKD stages 2 [8%], 3 [26%], 4 [26%], 5 [7%], and 5D [(33%]) were allocated for a prospective study. Serum levels of 25D and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, aortic calcification score, and pulse wave velocity (PWV) were evaluated. RESULTS There was a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency (42%) and insufficiency (34%). Patients with 25D <or= 16.7 ng/ml (median) had a significantly lower survival rate than patients with 25D >16.7 ng/ml (mean follow-up, 605 +/- 217 d; range, 10 to 889; P = 0.05). Multivariate adjustments (included age, gender, diabetes, arterial pressure, CKD stage, phosphate, albumin, hemoglobin, aortic calcification score and PWV) confirmed 25D level as an independent predictor of all-cause mortality. CONCLUSIONS Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency were highly prevalent in this CKD cohort. Low 25D levels affected mortality independently of vascular calcification and stiffness, suggesting that 25D may influence survival in CKD patients via additional pathways that need to be further explored.