Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Relationship among neuroimaging indices of cerebral health during normal aging

Sensitive measures of brain aging show great promise for gauging factors that affect aging and degenerative processes, such as risk genes or therapy. Here we examined age‐related trends for three indices of cerebral health: gyral gray matter (GM) thickness, dilation of sulcal spaces with CSF, and the volume of T2‐hyperintense white matter (HWM) lesions. The study involved 31 healthy adults age 57–82 years old. Measurements of average GM thickness, average sulcal span and HWM volume were performed using high‐resolution 3D T1‐ and T2‐weighted brain MR images. Age‐related trends for the three cerebral health indices were consistent with previously published work though the analysis of their covariance led to a previously unreported relationship. Simultaneous multiple regression found that dilation of cortical sulci were primarily (t = 2.59, P < 0.01) related to the increases in HWM volume and secondarily related (t = −2.51, P < 0.01) to the reductions of the cortical GM thickness. The are‐corrected correlation between reduction in GM thickness and increases in HWM volume, was not significant (P = 0.34). These findings are of interest in designing quantitative measures of brain aging for monitoring individual patients and in large‐scale clinical trials. Hum Brain Mapp 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Analyzing Regression Test Selection Techniques

Regression testing is a necessary but expensive maintenance activity aimed at showing that code has not been adversely affected by changes. Regression test selection techniques reuse tests from an existing test suite to test a modified program. Many regression test selection techniques have been proposed, however, it is difficult to compare and evaluate these techniques because they have different goals. This paper outlines the issues relevant to regression test selection techniques, and uses these issues as the basis for a framework within which to evaluate the techniques. The paper illustrates the application of the framework by using it to evaluate existing regression test selection techniques. The evaluation reveals the strengths and weaknesses of existing techniques, and highlights some problems that future work in this area should address.
On Optimality Test in Low Complexity Maximum Likelihood Decoding of Convolutional Codes

This paper considers the average complexity of maximum likelihood (ML) decoding of convolutional codes. ML decoding can be modeled as finding the most probable path taken through a Markov graph. Integrated with the Viterbi algorithm (VA), complexity reduction methods such as the sphere decoder often use the sum log likelihood (SLL) of a Markov path as a bound to disprove (or test) the optimality of other Markov path sets and to consequently avoid exhaustive path search. In this paper, it is shown that the SLL-based optimality tests are inefficient if one fixes the coding memory and takes the codeword length to infinity. Alternatively, the optimality of a source symbol at a given time index can be verified (or tested) using bounds based on partial log likelihood (PLL) of channel output symbols in a fixed-sized time neighborhood. The paper theoretically demonstrates that PLL-based optimality tests, whose efficiency does not depend on the codeword length, can bring significant complexity reduction to ML decoding of convolutional codes. The results are generalized to ML sequence detection in a class of discrete-time hidden Markov systems.
Prize-collecting Steiner problems on planar graphs

In this paper, we reduce Prize-Collecting Steiner TSP (PCTSP), Prize-Collecting Stroll (PCS), Prize-Collecting Steiner Tree (PCST), Prize-Collecting Steiner Forest (PCSF), and more generally Submodular Prize-Collecting Steiner Forest (SPCSF), on planar graphs (and also on bounded-genus graphs) to the corresponding problem on graphs of bounded treewidth. More precisely, for each of the mentioned problems, an α-approximation algorithm for the problem on graphs of bounded treewidth implies an (α + ∈)-approximation algorithm for the problem on planar graphs (and also bounded-genus graphs), for any constant ∈ > 0. PCS, PCTSP, and PCST can be solved exactly on graphs of bounded treewidth and hence we obtain a PTAS for these problems on planar graphs and bounded-genus graphs. In contrast, we show that PCSF is APX-hard to approximate on series-parallel graphs, which are planar graphs of treewidth at most 2. Apart from ruling out a PTAS for PCSF on planar graphs and bounded treewidth graphs, this result is also interesting since it gives the first provable hardness separation between the approximability of a problem and its prize-collecting version. We also show that PCSF is APX-hard on Euclidean instances.
Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform (DTCWT) based Adaptive Interpolation Technique for Enhancement of Image Resolution

Image resolution enhancement is one of the first steps in image processing. Enhancement of image with respect to spatial coordinates of the image, basically improves interpretability and perception of an image. Adaptive interpolation along with dual tree complex wavelet transform results in better quality superresoved images. Greater directional selectivity and phase information properties of redundant CWT implies superresolved image from original low resolution image. While improving the resolution of an image high frequency components are required to preserve other than enlarging the image. In this paper, dual tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT) based superresolved imaging system along with non iterative orientation interpolation process is proposed. Image quality measuring factors such as PSNR value, RSNI approximation proves that efficiency of images obtained by proposed method is better than state of the art system of resolution enhancement. General Terms Image resolution enhancement, Interpolation.
Immunologically Mediated Abortion (IMA)

Roughly 22% of all clinical pregnancies evolve into “spontaneous abortions. ”’ The causes of spontaneous abortion have been determined in under 60% of the total and comprise genetic, infectious, hormonal and immunological factors.2 In some cases the immune tolerance mechanism may be impaired and the fetus immunologically rejected (IMA = immunologically mediated ab~r t ion ) . ~ The frequency of recurrent abortion among pregnant women is about 0.4-0.8%. 4 The risk of recurrent abortion increases with the number of past abortions: after one abortion the risk is 24%; after two consecutive abortions it is 26%; after three abortions, 32%. ’
Novel high speed vedic mathematics multiplier using compressors

With the advent of new technology in the fields of VLSI and communication, there is also an ever growing demand for high speed processing and low area design. It is also a well known fact that the multiplier unit forms an integral part of processor design. Due to this regard, high speed multiplier architectures become the need of the day. In this paper, we introduce a novel architecture to perform high speed multiplication using ancient Vedic maths techniques. A new high speed approach utilizing 4:2 compressors and novel 7:2 compressors for addition has also been incorporated in the same and has been explored. Upon comparison, the compressor based multiplier introduced in this paper, is almost two times faster than the popular methods of multiplication. With regards to area, a 1% reduction is seen. The design and experiments were carried out on a Xilinx Spartan 3e series of FPGA and the timing and area of the design, on the same have been calculated.
MeerKAT—The South African Array With Composite Dishes and Wide-Band Single Pixel Feeds

The MeerKAT is a precursor for the ldquosmall dish plus single-pixel wide-band feedrdquo scenario for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The current goal specification is for an array of 80 12-m dishes operating over a continuous frequency range of 0.7-10 GHz, thus the individual receptors match the SKA draft specification for midband dishes. The proposed array configuration is centrally concentrated with 70% of the collecting area within a 700-m-diameter circle and the remaining 30% extending out to baselines of 10 km. The site for MeerKAT lies within a radio quiet reserve established in the remote and Northern Cape province of South Africa. The technologies and techniques that MeerKAT will develop and evaluate include wide-bandwidth feeds, low-cost dish antennas, instrumentation for high dynamic range observations, packet-switched array processing architectures, shielding of component radio-frequency interference (RFI), mitigation of external RFI, and low-cost and reliable remote telescope operation.
The Ticket to Work Program and Beneficiaries With Blindness or Low Vision

Using Social Security Administration data, the author evaluated the characteristics of beneficiaries who were blind and visually impaired and who assigned their tickets, the characteristics of beneficiaries who assigned their tickets to employment networks (ENs), and preliminary employment outcomes. The characteristics that predicted assignment of a ticket were younger age, higher education level, no additional disability, receipt of social security disability insurance, and African American or White race/ethnicity. The only substantial predictor of assignment of a ticket to an EN was race/ethnicity, with all minority groups more likely to assign to ENs than were White beneficiaries. Differences in employment outcomes based on assignment to an EN versus a state vocational rehabilitation agency were found, with preliminary evidence favoring outcomes for beneficiaries served by ENs.
Evaluation of information loss for privacy preserving data mining through comparison of fuzzy partitions

In this paper, we focus on the problem of preserving the data confidentiality when sharing the data for clustering. This problem poses new challenges for novel uses of privacy preserving data mining (PPDM) techniques. Specifically, this paper considers the synthetic data generation as a way to preserve the data privacy. One of the state of the art synthetic data generators is the IPSO family of methods. It has been stated that the use of IPSO to generate synthetic data is appropriate when the user plans to apply clustering to the data. Moreover, this paper aims to associate the same property to the FCRM synthetic data generator, and at the same time, to assess the relationship between the information loss produced when generating synthetic data with FCRM and the clustering similarity between the original and synthetic data.
Design of a naturally cooled high frequency integrated magnetic component

A methodology for designing naturally cooled high frequency integrated magnetic component is presented. Windings losses are analytically estimated, and then improved using finite elements calculation. The component geometry determines the maximal temperature on the surface of component by taking account the natural air convection and radiation effects. During its thermal stability, a magnetic component (windings, core, and isolation) could have a homogenous temperature in all its parts because of the good thermal conductivity of copper and ferrites. A prototype of 500 W, 48V half bridge integrated current- doubler rectifier is implemented. Component temperature was simply detected using infrared camera. This methodology could easily be integrated in computer aided design tools recently developed for designing magnetic component.
Fault diagnosis for vehicle lateral dynamics with robust threshold

This paper investigates the robust fault diagnosis problem for vehicle lateral dynamics, which play a key role in vehicle stability and driving safety. The proposed fault diagnosis system consists of two sub-systems: fault diagnosis observer and robust threshold. By treating faults as disturbances, Disturbance/Uncertainty Estimation technique is used as fault diagnosis observer to generate residuals. Considering that residuals of model-based fault diagnosis are subject to the effect of uncertainties and consequently large false alarm rate may be resulted in, a novel robust threshold is then proposed based on reachability analysis technique for uncertain systems. The proposed fault diagnosis system is finally applied to the accelerometer and gyrometer sensor fault diagnosis problem of vehicle lateral dynamics, where initial states and velocity are considered to be uncertain. Simulation study verifies the effectiveness of the proposed fault diagnosis system.
Cognitive Science and Psychology

The protocol algorithm abstracted from a human cognizer's own narrative in the course of doing a cognitive task is an explanation of the corresponding mental activity in Pylyshyn's (1984) virtual machine model of mind. Strong equivalence between an analytic algorithm and the protocol algorithm is an index of validity of the explanatory model. Cognitive psychologists may not find the index strong equivalence useful as a means to ensure that a theory is not circular because (a) research data are also used as foundation data, (b) there is no justification for the relationship between a to﷓be﷓validated theory and its criterion of validity, and (c) foundation data, validation criterion and to﷓be﷓validated theory are not independent in cognitive science. There is also the difficulty with not knowing what psychological primitives are.
High-throughput Binary Arithmetic Encoder architecture for CABAC in H.265/HEVC

Context adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) is the entropy coding tool applied in the latest video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (H.265/HEVC). CABAC achieves high coding efficiency but involves the bin-to-bin data dependency of Binary Arithmetic Encoder (BAE). This paper proposes a range updating structure with pre-bitwise-NOT (PBN) operation to shorten the critical paths in the range updating stage of the BAE, and also proposes a BAE architecture with optimized Lookahead rLPS. Synthesized results in SMIC 40nm show that the proposed architecture can operate at 436.7MHz and the throughput is 1777Mbin/s.
THE MAXIM OF SUICIDE: ONE ANGLE ON BIOMEDICAL ETHICS

Addressing the question in the form of Kant’s maxim, this paper moves on to a more controversial topic in biomedical ethics, physician-assisted suicide. However, my conclusion is tentative, and what is worse, negative: I partially approve suicide. It does not imply a moral hazard. The situation is opposite: in the present times, terminal patients seriously wish it. I, as an author, put an emphasis on this very respect. Now suicide is, for certain circles, nothing but justice. The arguments of thinkers who approve suicide are also cited from this angle.
Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity

Abstract This article reviews the research on resilience in order to delineate its significance and potential for understanding normal development. Resilience refers to the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances. Three resilience phenomena are reviewed: (a) good outcomes in high-risk children, (b) sustained competence in children under stress, and (c) recovery from trauma. It is concluded that human psychological development is highly buffered and that long-lasting consequences of adversity usually are associated with either organic damage or severe interference in the normative protective processes embedded in the caregiving system. Children who experience chronic adversity fare better or recover more successfully when they have a positive relationship with a competent adult, they are good learners and problem-solvers, they are engaging to other people, and they have areas of competence and perceived efficacy valued by self or society. Future studies of resilience will need to focus on processes that facilitate adaptation. Such studies have the potential to illuminate the range and self-righting properties of, constraints on, and linkages among different aspects of cognitive, emotional, and social development.
The Role of Risk Perceptions in Privacy Concerns Evaluation

The collection of information on individual persons for personal data intensive systems and services poses the risk of privacy violations and raises privacy concerns. Individuals' privacy concerns and risk perceptions affect their decision-making on personal data disclosure for services. In the research presented in this paper, data subjects' privacy concerns and risk perceptions were studied by surveying drivers on the possibility of collecting driving data on their vehicles. The research sought to explore the following questions: (1) How are data subjects' risk perceptions related to their privacy concerns, (2) how do risk perceptions and privacy concerns jointly affect willingness to disclose data, (3) how should risk perceptions be incorporated into evaluation of data subjects' privacy behavior? The study's primary findings were as follows: (1) surprisingly, clear dependencies between risk perceptions and privacy concerns were not found, (2) data subjects risk perceptions and two privacy concerns-related factors independently affected their willingness to disclose data -- the two privacy concerns-related factors were the data subjects' perceptions of other drivers' privacy concerns and their discussing information privacy with other drivers, (3) risk perceptions, in combination with privacy concerns, should be incorporated into the data subjects' privacy behavior evaluations. The results of the study contribute to improving the validity of privacy behavior measurements and models.
An embedded sectioning scheme for multiprocessor topology-aware mapping of irregular applications

We consider the problem of mapping irregular applications to multiprocessor architectures whose interconnect topologies affect the latencies of data movement across processor nodes. The starting point for solutions to this problem concerns suitable weighted graph representations of an irregular application and a processor topology. Prior results for this problem have demonstrated that graph partitioning approaches can provide high-quality solutions. Additionally, when coordinate information is available for the weighted graph of the application, the geometric mapping schemes can also provide high-quality solutions. We develop and present a scheme that we call ‘embedded sectioning’ that directly computes a locality enhancing embedding of the weighted graph representation which is then mapped to the processor topology using recursive coordinate bisection. Our scheme is specifically directed at gaining high-quality mappings for highly irregular applications where the amount of communication can vary greatly. We evaluate the quality of mappings produced by embedded sectioning for mesh-based processor topologies using well-accepted measures including congestion, dilation and their product, referred to as the communication volume. For a test suite of unit-weight graphs mapped to a 32 × 32 mesh of processors, our method improves congestion by 26%, dilation by 52% and communication volume by 64% relative to the best values of these measures from nine other schemes. Additionally, we observe that these improvements increase with an increase in the skewness of communication in applications. For a test suite with a skewness of two the corresponding improvements for congestion, dilation and communication volume are 72%, 52% and 87%, respectively.
Cost-effectiveness of ranibizumab in treatment of diabetic macular oedema (DME) causing visual impairment: evidence from the RESTORE trial

Background/aims To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of ranibizumab as either monotherapy or combined with laser therapy, compared with laser monotherapy, in the treatment of diabetic macular oedema (DME) causing visual impairment from a UK healthcare payer perspective. Methods A Markov model simulated long-term outcomes and costs of treating DME in one eye (BCVA ≤75 letters) based on data from the RESTORE Phase III trial. Outcomes measured in quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) were simulated for a 15-year time horizon based on 12-month follow-up from RESTORE and published long-term data. Costs included treatment, disease monitoring, visual impairment and blindness (at 2010 price levels). Results Ranibizumab monotherapy resulted in a 0.17 QALY gain at an incremental cost of £4191 relative to laser monotherapy, yielding an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of £24 028. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed a 64% probability of being cost-effective at a threshold of £30 000 per QALY. Combined ranibizumab and laser therapy resulted in a 0.13 QALY gain at an incremental cost of £4695 relative to laser monotherapy (ICER £36 106; 42% probability of ICER <£30 000). Conclusions Based on RESTORE 1-year follow-up data, ranibizumab monotherapy appears to be cost-effective relative to laser monotherapy, the current standard of care. Cost-effectiveness of combination therapy is less certain. Ongoing studies will further inform on disease progression and the need for additional ranibizumab treatment.
The “ Weak Generics ” Problem : Sources , Implications and Treatment

Generic design aims at achieving non-redundancy for simplification reasons, by unifying similarity patterns at design and code levels, whenever there is an engineering benefit of doing so. The extent of non-accidental repetitions recurring similar structures in programs suggests that the potential of generic design may not be fully exploited. Poor design and ad hoc maintenance are the two often mentioned reasons why programmers multiply similar code structures (often termed as clones in literature). At times, cloning is done in a good cause, for example, to speed up development, increase program’s performance or improve its reliability. Still, much unresolved similarity remains in newly developed, well-designed programs. Often a symptom of failure to achieve genericity (therefore, term “weak generics”), such situations were of our prime interest in the work reported in this paper. In the paper, we present results from four empirical studies in which we found over 60% of code contained in similar program structures, recurring many times in programs. In some cases, problems occurred, as using conventional methods a suitable generic solution was either complicated or conflicted with other design goals that could not be compromised. In yet other cases, existing mechanisms were not sufficient to define suitable generic design solutions. We believe the problems that we observed are not isolated but affect many other programs. We propose to strengthen generic design by applying meta-level parameterization and generation on top of conventional programs. We discuss one technique to realize such a “mixed strategy” solution and trade-offs involved in employing meta-level techniques. The approach is practical as it complements, rather than competes with other programming paradigms, and can be gradually adopted, starting with conventional programs. It has been successfully applied in industrial projects.