Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Systematic Review of Methods for Handling Missing Variance Data in Meta-Analyses of Interventions in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Aims Meta-analysis is of critical importance to decision makers to assess the comparative efficacy and safety of interventions and is integral to health technology assessment. A major problem for the meta-analysis of continuous outcomes is that associated variance data are not consistently reported in trial publications. The omission of studies from a meta-analysis due to incomplete reporting may introduce bias. The objectives of this study are to summarise and describe the methods used for handling missing variance data in meta-analyses in populations with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods Electronic databases, Embase, MEDLINE, and the Cochrane Library (accessed June 2015), were systematically searched to identify meta-analyses of interventions in patients with T2DM. Eligible studies included those which analysed the change in HbA1c from baseline. Results Sixty-seven publications reporting on meta-analyses of change in HbA1c from baseline in T2DM were identified. Approaches for dealing with missing variance data were reported in 41% of publications and included algebraic calculation, trial-level imputation, and no imputation. Conclusions Meta-analysis publications typically fail to report standardised approaches for dealing with missing variance data. While no particular imputation method is favoured, authors are discouraged from using a no-imputation approach. Instead, authors are encouraged to explore different approaches using sensitivity analyses and to improve the quality of reporting by documenting the methods used to deal with missing variance data.
Self‐assembled DNA Structures for Nanoconstruction

In recent years, a number of research groups have begun developing nanofabrication methods based on DNA self‐assembly. Here we review our recent experimental progress to utilize novel DNA nanostructures for self‐assembly as well as for templates in the fabrication of functional nano‐patterned materials. We have prototyped a new DNA nanostructure known as a cross structure. This nanostructure has a 4‐fold symmetry which promotes its self‐assembly into tetragonal 2D lattices. We have utilized the tetragonal 2D lattices as templates for highly conductive metallic nanowires and periodic 2D protein nano‐arrays. We have constructed and characterized a DNA nanotube, a new self‐assembling superstructure composed of DNA tiles. We have also demonstrated an aperiodic DNA lattice composed of DNA tiles assembled around a long scaffold strand; the system translates information encoded in the scaffold strand into a specific and reprogrammable barcode pattern. We have achieved metallic nanoparticle linear arrays template.
Saliency-based image retargeting in the compressed domain

In this paper, we propose a novel image retargeting algorithm to resize images based on the extracted saliency information from the compressed domain. Firstly, we utilize DCT coefficients in JPEG bitstream to perform saliency detection with the consideration of the human visual sensitivity. The obtained saliency information is used to determine the relative visual importance of each 8 x 8 block for the image. Furthermore, we propose a new adaptive block-level seam removal operation for connected blocks to resize the image. Thanks to the directly derived saliency information from the compressed domain, the proposed image retargeting algorithm effectively preserves the objects of attention, efficiently removes the less crucial regions, and therefore significantly outperforms the relevant state-of-the-art algorithms, as demonstrated with the careful analysis and in the extensive experiments.
Automatic discrimination of underwater acoustic signals generated by teleseismic P‐waves: A probabilistic approach

We propose a new probabilistic scheme for the automatic recognition of underwater acoustic signals generated by teleseismic P‐waves recorded by hydrophones in the ocean. The recognition of a given signal is based on the relative distribution of its power among different frequency bands. The signal's power distribution is compared with a statistical model developed by analyzing relative power distributions of many signals of the same origin and a numerical criterion is calculated, which can serve as a measure of the probability for the signal to belong to the statistical model. Our recognition scheme was applied to 6‐month‐long continuous records of seven ocean bottom hydrophones (OBH) deployed in the Ligurian Sea. A maximum of 94% of all detectable teleseismic P‐waves recorded during the deployment of the OBHs were recognized correctly with no false recognitions. The proposed recognition method will be implemented in autonomous underwater robots dedicated to detect and transmit acoustic signals generated by teleseismic P‐waves.
Are Peer Reviewers Encouraged to Use Reporting Guidelines? A Survey of 116 Health Research Journals

BACKGROUND Pre-publication peer review of manuscripts should enhance the value of research publications to readers who may wish to utilize findings in clinical care or health policy-making. Much published research across all medical specialties is not useful, may be misleading, wasteful and even harmful. Reporting guidelines are tools that in addition to helping authors prepare better manuscripts may help peer reviewers in assessing them. We examined journals' instructions to peer reviewers to see if and how reviewers are encouraged to use them. METHODS We surveyed websites of 116 journals from the McMaster list. Main outcomes were 1) identification of online instructions to peer reviewers and 2) presence or absence of key domains within instructions: on journal logistics, reviewer etiquette and addressing manuscript content (11 domains). FINDINGS Only 41/116 journals (35%) provided online instructions. All 41 guided reviewers about the logistics of their review processes, 38 (93%) outlined standards of behaviour expected and 39 (95%) contained instruction about evaluating the manuscript content. There was great variation in explicit instruction for reviewers about how to evaluate manuscript content. Almost half of the online instructions 19/41 (46%) mentioned reporting guidelines usually as general statements suggesting they may be useful or asking whether authors had followed them rather than clear instructions about how to use them. All 19 named CONSORT for reporting randomized trials but there was little mention of CONSORT extensions. PRISMA, QUOROM (forerunner of PRISMA), STARD, STROBE and MOOSE were mentioned by several journals. No other reporting guideline was mentioned by more than two journals. CONCLUSIONS Although almost half of instructions mentioned reporting guidelines, their value in improving research publications is not being fully realised. Journals have a responsibility to support peer reviewers. We make several recommendations including wider reference to the EQUATOR Network online library (www.equator-network.org/).
Substructure around M31: Evolution and Effects

We investigate the evolution of a population of 100 dark matter satellites orbiting in the gravitational potential of a realistic model of M31. We find that after 10 Gyr, seven subhalos are completely disrupted by the tidal field of the host galaxy. The remaining satellites suffer heavy mass loss and, overall, 75% of the mass initially in the subhalo system is tidally stripped. Not surprisingly, satellites with pericentric radius less than 30 kpc suffer the greatest stripping and leave a complex structure of tails and streams of debris around the host galaxy. Assuming that the most bound particles in each subhalo are kinematic tracers of stars, we find that the halo stellar population resulting from the tidal debris follows an r-3.5 density profile at large radii. We construct B-band photometric maps of stars coming from disrupted satellites and find conspicuous features similar in both morphology and brightness to the observed giant stream around Andromeda. While an assumed star formation efficiency of 5% in the simulated satellite galaxies results in good agreement with the observed V-band surface brightness of M31's stellar halo, an efficiency of 1%-2% accounts for the brightness of the giant stream. During the first 5 Gyr, the bombardment of the satellites heats and thickens the disk by a small amount. At about 5 Gyr, satellite interactions induce the formation of a strong bar, which, in turn, leads to a significant increase in the velocity dispersion of the disk.
Cognitive Factors Mediate Placebo Responses in Patients with House Dust Mite Allergy

Background Placebo effects have been reported in type I allergic reactions. However the neuropsychological mechanisms steering placebo responses in allergies are largely unknown. The study analyzed whether and to what extend a conditioned placebo response is affecting type I allergic reactions and whether this response can be reproduced at multiple occasions. Methods 62 patients with house dust mite allergy were randomly allocated to either a conditioned (n = 25), sham-conditioned (n = 25) or natural history (n = 12) group. During the learning phase (acquisition), patients in the conditioned group received the H1-receptor antagonist desloratadine (5mg) (unconditioned stimulus/US) together with a novel tasting gustatory stimulus (conditioned stimulus/CS). Patients in the sham-conditioned control group received the CS together with a placebo pill. After a wash out time of 9 days patients in the conditioned and sham-conditioned group received placebo pills together with the CS during evocation. Allergic responses documented by wheal size after skin prick test and symptom scores after nasal provocation were analyzed at baseline, after last desloratadine treatment and after the 1st and 5th CS re-exposure. Results Both conditioned and sham-conditioned patients showed significantly decreased wheal sizes after the 1st CS-evocation and significantly decreased symptom scores after the 1st as well as after the 5th evocation compared to the natural history control group. Conclusions These results indicate that placebo responses in type I allergy are not primarily mediated by learning processes, but seemed to be induced by cognitive factors such as patients’ expectation, with these effects not restricted to a single evocation.
Disciplined Imagination: From Scenarios to Strategic Options

Senior executives commonly ponder such questions as "What might give us continued competitive advantage? " and "What new product or markets should we enter and how? " Both questions go to the heart of a firm's strategic vision. Such a vision can be defined as the shared understanding of what the firm should be and how it must change. This paper presents a framework to answer such questions critically as well as creatively. Knowing the answers constitutes the difference between muddling through and running the business from day to day with confidence and foresight. The method consists of the following four steps:
Challenging practices: Challenging behaviour in people with Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities and its consequences for practice

Gedragsproblemen komen veel voor bij kinderen en volwassenen met ernstige verstandelijke en meervoudige beperkingen (EVMB), blijkt uit het promotieonderzoek van Petra Poppes. Het gaat dan om verschillende uitingsvormen: zelfverwondend gedrag, stereotype gedrag, teruggetrokken gedrag en agressief/destructief gedrag. Veel van deze typen gedragingen komen dagelijks of zelfs elk uur voor maar opvallend is dat begeleiders ervan uit gaan dat deze gedragingen geen grote gevolgen hebben voor kinderen en volwassenen met EVMB. Een mogelijke verklaring hiervoor is dat het gedrag gezien wordt als deel van de persoon, het gedrag is bij iemand gaan ‘horen’ of is in gedachten deel geworden van de beperking. Uit het onderzoek blijkt verder dat gedragsproblemen die wel gesignaleerd worden in de dagelijkse praktijk in meer dan de helft van de gevallen niet worden beschreven in het persoonlijk plan. Dat betekent ook dat er geen duidelijke afspraken zijn omtrent het voorkomen of verminderen van dergelijk gedrag. Een interventie gericht op kennisoverdracht over de mogelijke verklaringen voor- en gevolgen van gedragsproblemen is vervolgens ontwikkeld en in de praktijk geimplementeerd. De resultaten hiervan laten zien dat zorgprofessionals na het volgen van de interventie gedrag als ernstiger beoordelen, maar dit effect is beperkt. Verder onderzoek naar de wijze waarop het bewustzijn van zorgprofessionals ten aanzien van gedragsproblemen vergroot kan worden is belangrijk want het is geen optie eventuele gedragsproblemen niet op te merken en/of niet te behandelen. Dit leidt namelijk tot een situatie waarin we mensen met EVMB niet kunnen ondersteunen bij het behalen van hun levensdoelen en doelen die van belang zijn voor hun familie.
An interactive interface for directing virtual humans

Research on virtual humans spans from body animation to speech generation. In many cases research systems are isolated software pieces and can only be used after a steep learning curve. A novel system is presented which integrates a large repertoire of virtual human research into one piece of user-friendly software, the virtual human director (VHD). This software achieves two important goals without any decrease in real-time performance or graphics quality. One goal is the integration of all the existing real-time virtual human technology from two research laboratories into open software architecture. The other one is to develop an intuitive user interface, which allows artists and directors to work with virtual humans
Mycobacterium bovis shedding patterns from experimentally infected calves and the effect of concurrent infection with bovine viral diarrhoea virus

Concurrent infection of cattle with bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) and Mycobacterium bovis is considered to be a possible risk factor for onward transmission of bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in infected cattle and is known to compromise diagnostic tests. A comparison is made here of M. bovis shedding (i.e. release) characteristics from 12 calves, six experimentally co-infected with BVDV and six infected with M. bovis alone, using simple models of bacterial replication. These statistical and mathematical models account for the intermittent or episodic nature of shedding, the dynamics of within-host bacterial proliferation and the sampling distribution from a given shedding episode. We show that while there are distinct differences among the shedding patterns of calves given the same infecting dose, there is no statistically significant difference between the two groups of calves. Such differences as there are, can be explained solely in terms of the shedding frequency, but with all calves potentially excreting the same amount of bacteria in a given shedding episode post-infection. The model can be thought of as a process of the bacteria becoming established in a number of discrete foci of colonization, rather than as a more generalized infection of the respiratory tract. In this case, the variability in the shedding patterns of the infected calves can be explained solely by differences in the number of foci established and shedding being from individual foci over time. Should maximum exposure on a particular occasion be a critical consideration for cattle-to-cattle transmission of BTB, cattle that shed only intermittently may still make an important contribution to the spread and persistence of the disease.
Performance characterization of a high power dual active bridge DC/DC converter

The analysis, control, and performance of a high-power, high-power-density DC/DC power converter that is based on the single-phase dual active bridge topology is described. For high-output voltages, on the order of kilovolts, a cascaded output structure is considered. The impact of snubber capacitance and magnetizing inductance on the soft switching region and various control strategies are discussed. Computer simulation results of a current mode controller are presented. Since the leakage inductance of the transformer is the main energy transfer element, special transformer design techniques are utilized to carefully control this parameter. The layout for a completed prototype 50 kW, 50 kHz unit operating with an input voltage of 1600 VDC is presented. Some experimental results are also presented. <<ETX>>
Pre-B-cell leukemia homeobox interacting protein 1 is overexpressed in astrocytoma and promotes tumor cell growth and migration.

BACKGROUND Glial brain tumors cause considerable mortality and morbidity in children and adults. Innovative targets for therapy are needed to improve survival and reduce long-term sequelae. The aim of this study was to find a candidate tumor-promoting protein, abundantly expressed in tumor cells but not in normal brain tissues, as a potential target for therapy. METHODS In silico proteomics and genomics, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence microscopy validation were performed. RNA interference was used to ascertain the functional role of the overexpressed candidate target protein. RESULTS In silico proteomics and genomics revealed pre-B-cell leukemia homeobox (PBX) interacting protein 1 (PBXIP1) overexpression in adult and childhood high-grade glioma and ependymoma compared with normal brain. PBXIP1 is a PBX-family interacting microtubule-binding protein with a putative role in migration and proliferation of cancer cells. Immunohistochemical studies in glial tumors validated PBXIP1 expression in astrocytoma and ependymoma but not in oligodendroglioma. RNAi-mediated PBXIP1-knockdown in glioblastoma cell lines strongly reduced proliferation and migration and induced morphological changes, indicating that PBXIP1 knockdown decreases glioma cell viability and motility through rearrangements of the actin cytoskeleton. Furthermore, expression of PBXIP1 was observed in radial glia and astrocytic progenitor cells in human fetal tissues, suggesting that PBXIP1 is an astroglial progenitor cell marker during human embryonic development. CONCLUSION PBXIP1 is a novel protein overexpressed in astrocytoma and ependymoma, involved in tumor cell proliferation and migration, that warrants further exploration as a novel therapeutic target in these tumors.
Searching for my palm tree: Epistemological journeying of a child welfare doctoral student

This article explores a social work doctoral student’s self-reflexive journey in search of a suitable epistemology for her qualitative social work doctoral research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) youth in child welfare. It will highlight the deep influence that colonialism and imperialism can have on embodied knowledge and the importance of pushing against these paradigms to help bring forward the voices from the margins.
DORA : Exploring a Dynamic File Assignment Strategy with Replication

The problem of managing and distributing files to maximize disk performance has been a popular topic of many discussions [1][2][3][4][5]. There are several effective static algorithms that have addressed this issue such as the static round robin (SOR) algorithm. SOR has been proven to produce better response time than other static algorithms such as Greedy, Sort Partition (SP), and Hybrid Partition (HP) [1]. SOR is unique compared to the other static algorithms because it provides considerable performance improvements even if the workload assumption, which says that there is an inverse correlation between file size and its popularity (small files are more popular than large files), does not hold [1]. However, as its name states, it is a static algorithm, and its functionality is limited by the assumption that files and their access patterns do not change over time. In reality, however, this assumption is not accurate for all workloads. We, therefore, propose a new dynamic algorithm called dynamic round robin with replication (DORA). There are two main characteristics of DORA: first, it takes into account the dynamic nature of file or data access patterns to uniquely adapt to changing user demand, and second, it utilizes file replication to further minimize response time and maximize throughput. Moreover, experimental results will show that DORA performs significantly better than another dynamic algorithm, Cool Vanilla (C-V).
Region Diversity Maximization for Salient Object Detection

Salient object detection is an important technique for many content-based applications, but it becomes a challenging work when handling the cluttered saliency maps, which cannot completely highlight salient object regions and cannot suppress background regions. In this letter, we propose a novel approach to detect salient object from saliency map without manually setting any parameters. Region diversity maximization is used as the objective function to direct the object detection, and the optimal window for locating the salient object is obtained using an efficient iterative search scheme. Experimental results on different saliency maps demonstrate the overall better detection performance and computational efficiency of our approach.
Water Quality Modelling and Control in a Water Treatment Process

Drinking water quality is an important issue around the world since the low quality water causes health-related problems and economic losses. To ensure high quality water an efficient monitoring and control of a water treatment process is essential. In this study, two common quality variables of treated water, turbidity and residual aluminium, are modelled using the cross-validation method. Selected variables for developing the models are easy and reliable to measure on-line from raw water source. The linguistic equation (LE) approach based on nonlinear scaling and linear interactions produces models, which can be used in addition to predicting the water quality, for monitoring and controlling the water treatment process. The goal of the control simulation was to minimize the turbidity by controlling the coagulation chemical dose and see how this affects the residual aluminium level in drinking water. The results showed that the developed models were accurate and followed the changes in measured water quality variable. Results of the control simulation suggest that the water quality can be improved by proper control and optimizing the chemical dosing, as minimizing the turbidity reduces the residual aluminium level.
Dictionary design for sparse signal representations using K-SVD with sparse Bayesian learning

Sparse representations of signals in overcomplete basis have attracted much interest during the past two decades. One problem in the area of sparse signal representations is to find an ideal overcomplete basis (dictionary) to represent a given set of training signals appropriately. The K-SVD algorithm has achieved this feat with much success but suffers from the problem of underutilization of certain signal-atoms in the basis. This paper proposes to counter this problem by using Sparse Bayesian Learning in the initial stage of the K-SVD algorithm. Sparse Bayesian Learning offers gradual convergence of the learning algorithm from a non-sparse representation of the signals to a sparse representation as the iterations progress, giving the training vectors a good enough chance to “spread out” over the dictionary. The proposed algorithm is compared to the conventional K-SVD algorithm with promising results.