Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
“I Went to a Fight the Other Night and a Hockey Game Broke Out”

Background: The current study explored the relationship between fighting behavior and passage of time, across games and seasons, in an attempt to assess if violent behavior in hockey is impulsive or intentional. Hypothesis: Before engaging in fighting behavior, players assess the utility of their actions and thus will fight less when the game is on the line (third period) and when champions are crowned (postseason). Methods: An archival exploration utilizing open access databases from multiple Internet sources. Results: During the 2010-2011 National Hockey League (NHL) season, players were significantly less likely to be involved in a fight as the game was coming to a close than in its early stages. In addition, data from the past 10 NHL seasons showed that players were significantly more violent in preseason games than during the regular season. They were also least likely to be involved in a fight during the postseason. Conclusion: The converging evidence suggests that players take into account the penalties associated with fighting and are less likely to engage in violence when the stakes are high, such as at the end of a game or a season. This implies, in turn, that major acts of aggression in the league are more likely to be calculated rather than impulsive. The findings suggest that a more punitive system should diminish fighting behavior markedly.
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1) Outbreaks in Wild Birds and Poultry, South Korea

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) among wild birds emerged simultaneously with outbreaks in domestic poultry in South Korea during November 2010–May 2011. Phylogenetic analysis showed that these viruses belonged to clade 2.3. 2, as did viruses found in Mongolia, the People’s Republic of China, and Russia in 2009 and 2010.
Forces Applied to the Maxillary Incisors During Video-Assisted Intubation

BACKGROUND: Modern, video laryngoscopes provide an easier view of the glottis, possibly facilitating easier intubations. We describe an objective method for evaluating the benefits of video-assisted laryngoscopy, compared with standard techniques using force measurements. METHOD: Macintosh and video laryngoscopes (both Karl Storz, Tuttlingen, Germany) were used on the patients until the anesthesiologist was convinced he or she had the best possible view of the glottis. Actual intubation was only performed with the second of the laryngoscopes. Sensors measured the forces directly applied to the patients’ maxillary incisors. Additionally, common subjective pre- (e.g., Mallampati) and intraintubation (e.g., Cormack-Lehane [C&L]) metrics of intubation difficulty were evaluated by the anesthesiologists. RESULTS: All patients (24 female, [50 ± 16 yr], 20 male [56 ± 13 yr]) included in the study were successfully intubated with both the classic and video laryngoscopes. The forces recorded for the classic Macintosh blade ranged from 0 to 87.4 N with a median of 15.3 N, whereas the video laryngoscope forces ranged from 0 to 45.2 N, with a median of 2.1 N. The only factor determined to be significantly influential on the associated forces applied to the maxillary incisors was the laryngoscope type (P < 0.01). Video-assisted laryngoscopes reduced the applied forces over standard blades. Mallampati and C&L grade were not predictive of the forces applied. CONCLUSIONS: Video-assisted laryngoscopes seem beneficial when considering forces applied to the maxillary incisors as an objective metric of intubation difficulty. In this study, we could not support that Mallampati and C&L grades predict the forces that are applied to the maxillary incisors.
Laparoscopic excision of extraprostatic ejaculatory duct cyst

Our experiences with laparoscopic excisions of symptomatic extraprostatic ejaculatory duct cysts (EDCs) are reported. Three laparoscopic excisions of extraprostatic EDCs performed by one urologist in 2003 and 2004 were retrospectively reviewed. Investigations included history, physical examination, image analysis, semen analysis, operation time, estimated blood loss, time of post‐operative hospital stay, recovery time for regular activities, sexual function and complications. The laparoscopic excisions of EDCs were successful. The mean operation time was 105 min, and the mean estimated blood loss was 65 ml. The average post‐operative hospital stay was 3.0 days. All patients exhibited normal erection and normal ejaculation. Improvement in semen quality was observed in two patients. All patients remained free of symptoms, and recurrence of EDCs was not detected on transrectal ultrasonography over a mean 32‐month follow‐up period. It is concluded that laparoscopic excision of an EDC is feasible and effective. Due to minimal invasiveness, short post‐operative hospitalisation and rapid recovery, laparoscopic surgery is an attractive approach to managing symptomatic EDCs, especially for sizeable cysts or those including calculus.
Colorful XML: one hierarchy isn't enough

XML has a tree-structured data model, which is used to uniformly represent structured as well as semi-structured data, and also enable concise query specification in XQuery, via the use of its XPath (twig) patterns. This in turn can leverage the recently developed technology of structural join algorithms to evaluate the query efficiently. In this paper, we identify a fundamental tension in XML data modeling: (i) data represented as deep trees (which can make effective use of twig patterns) are often un-normalized, leading to update anomalies, while (ii) normalized data tends to be shallow, resulting in heavy use of expensive value-based joins in queries.Our solution to this data modeling problem is a novel multi-colored trees (MCT) logical data model, which is an evolutionary extension of the XML data model, and permits trees with multi-colored nodes to signify their participation in multiple hierarchies. This adds significant semantic structure to individual data nodes. We extend XQuery expressions to navigate between structurally related nodes, taking color into account, and also to create new colored trees as restructurings of an MCT database. While MCT serves as a significant evolutionary extension to XML as a logical data model, one of the key roles of XML is for information exchange. To enable exchange of MCT information, we develop algorithms for optimally serializing an MCT database as XML. We discuss alternative physical representations for MCT databases, using relational and native XML databases, and describe an implementation on top of the Timber native XML database. Experimental evaluation, using our prototype implementation, shows that not only are MCT queries/updates more succinct and easier to express than equivalent shallow tree XML queries, but they can also be significantly more efficient to evaluate than equivalent deep and shallow tree XML queries/updates.
Nonlinear speech analysis algorithms mapped to a standard metric achieve clinically useful quantification of average Parkinson's disease symptom severity

The standard reference clinical score quantifying average Parkinson's disease (PD) symptom severity is the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS). At present, UPDRS is determined by the subjective clinical evaluation of the patient's ability to adequately cope with a range of tasks. In this study, we extend recent findings that UPDRS can be objectively assessed to clinically useful accuracy using simple, self-administered speech tests, without requiring the patient's physical presence in the clinic. We apply a wide range of known speech signal processing algorithms to a large database (approx. 6000 recordings from 42 PD patients, recruited to a six-month, multi-centre trial) and propose a number of novel, nonlinear signal processing algorithms which reveal pathological characteristics in PD more accurately than existing approaches. Robust feature selection algorithms select the optimal subset of these algorithms, which is fed into non-parametric regression and classification algorithms, mapping the signal processing algorithm outputs to UPDRS. We demonstrate rapid, accurate replication of the UPDRS assessment with clinically useful accuracy (about 2 UPDRS points difference from the clinicians' estimates, p < 0.001). This study supports the viability of frequent, remote, cost-effective, objective, accurate UPDRS telemonitoring based on self-administered speech tests. This technology could facilitate large-scale clinical trials into novel PD treatments.
Does cigarette smoking influence disease expression, activity and severity in early rheumatoid arthritis patients?

OBJECTIVE To investigate the association of cigarette smoking with clinical expression, disease activity and severity in a cohort of Greek patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS From January 1993 until December 2002, 293 patients with early RA were diagnosed and followed up in our rheumatology clinic. All patients fulfilled the American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA, had disease duration of less than one year, without prior treatment of disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) or steroids. The patients were treated with at least one DMARD, and 287 of them had a last follow up during the year 2004. The demographic, personal, clinical, laboratory, radiological and therapeutic features were compared at entry and at the last follow-up, according to their smoking habits at entry. RESULTS Among the 293 patients, 6 were lost to follow-up, thus 287 patients were evaluated. There were 200 females (67.7%) and 87 males (30.3%). Eighty-two (28.6%) were current smokers, 21 (7.3%) ex-smokers and 184 (64.1%) non-smokers at presentation. RA smoker patients displayed the disease at a younger age than the non-smokers. Additionally, the smokers presented at disease onset more prominent features of articular involvement as was evaluated by the higher number of total joint count with tenderness and swelling and by the higher disease activity for 28 joint indices score (DAS-28). Smokers also presented a higher Larsen's score and higher frequency of IgM and IgA rheumatoid factors as compared to non-smokers. At the end of the study, the smoker patients presented more active and severe disease as evaluated by the higher total number of tender and swelling joint count, the higher DAS-28, and higher Larsen's score as compared to non-smokers. Furthermore, the smokers more frequently had rheumatoid nodules than the ex-smokers and non-smokers. The association of smoking with disease activity and severity was independent of sex, age, educational level, alcohol consumption, and follow-up duration. Finally, no significant differences were observed concerning the therapeutic procedure among the three groups. CONCLUSIONS In our early RA patients, cigarette smoking was associated with increased disease activity, and severity, independently of several other possible confounders and despite the early disease treatment.
Ensembles of multiple sensors for human energy expenditure estimation

Monitoring human energy expenditure is important in many health and sport applications, since the energy expenditure directly reflects the level of physical activity. The actual energy expenditure is unpractical to measure; hence, the field aims at estimating it by measuring the physical activity with accelerometers and other sensors. Current advanced estimators use a context-dependent approach in which a different regression model is invoked for different activities of the user. In this paper, we go a step further and use multiple contexts corresponding to multiple sensors, resulting in an ensemble of models for energy expenditure estimation. This provides a multi-view perspective, which leads to a better estimation of the energy. The proposed method was experimentally evaluated on a comprehensive set of activities where it outperformed the current state-of-the-art.
Suicidal Ideation and Depression among Institutionalized Elderly: The Influence of Residency Duration

An exploratory study of eighty-three randomly selected elderly persons relocated to a nursing home was conducted in the north of Israel. The aim was to examine the relationship between duration of residency and suicidal ideation. Elderly people in four different periods of residency were compared on three scales: the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Hopelessness Scale, and the Scale for Suicide Ideation. Participants at all four stages of relocation expressed high levels of suicidality, particularly those in their first seven months of residency. In addition, residents at different stages of adaptation to relocation at the nursing home expressed different levels of depression, suicidality, and hopelessness. It is suggested that special attention be paid to residents' subjective mental and emotional states, especially during the first period of relocation.
Production of N2 through Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation Coupled to Nitrate Reduction in Marine Sediments

ABSTRACT In the global nitrogen cycle, bacterial denitrification is recognized as the only quantitatively important process that converts fixed nitrogen to atmospheric nitrogen gas, N2, thereby influencing many aspects of ecosystem function and global biogeochemistry. However, we have found that a process novel to the marine nitrogen cycle, anaerobic oxidation of ammonium coupled to nitrate reduction, contributes substantially to N2 production in marine sediments. Incubations with 15N-labeled nitrate or ammonium demonstrated that during this process, N2 is formed through one-to-one pairing of nitrogen from nitrate and ammonium, which clearly separates the process from denitrification. Nitrite, which accumulated transiently, was likely the oxidant for ammonium, and the process is thus similar to the anammox process known from wastewater bioreactors. Anaerobic ammonium oxidation accounted for 24 and 67% of the total N2 production at two typical continental shelf sites, whereas it was detectable but insignificant relative to denitrification in a eutrophic coastal bay. However, rates of anaerobic ammonium oxidation were higher in the coastal sediment than at the deepest site and the variability in the relative contribution to N2 production between sites was related to large differences in rates of denitrification. Thus, the relative importance of anaerobic ammonium oxidation and denitrification in N2 production appears to be regulated by the availability of their reduced substrates. By shunting nitrogen directly from ammonium to N2, anaerobic ammonium oxidation promotes the removal of fixed nitrogen in the oceans. The process can explain ammonium deficiencies in anoxic waters and sediments, and it may contribute significantly to oceanic nitrogen budgets.
AUTOMATED DISCOVERY OF OPTIONS IN REINFORCEMENT LEARNING

AI planning benefits greatly from the use of temporally-extended or macroactions. Macro-actions allow for faster and more efficient planning as well as the reuse of knowledge from previous solutions. In recent years, a significant amount of research has been devoted to incorporating macro-actions in learned controllers, particularly in the context of Reinforcement Learning. One general approach is the use of options (temporally-extended actions) in Reinforcement Learning [22]. While the properties of options are well understood, it is not clear how to find new options automatically. In this thesis we propose two new algorithms for discovering options and compare them to one algorithm from the literature. We also contribute a new algorithm for learning with options which improves on the performance of two widely used learning algorithms. Extensive experiments are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
Optimizing haemodiafiltration: tools, strategy and remaining questions.

Haemodiafiltration (HDF) is considered the best dialysis therapy currently available in terms of optimal removal of both small and middle molecules. This is obtained by combining diffusive and convective clearance. The efficacy of diffusive transport is usually quantified and monitored by the assessment of small molecule clearance. For this purpose, urea clearance expressed as Kt/Vurea has been widely accepted and used as a parameter for dialysis adequacy. In contrast, it is currently unclear how the efficacy of convective transport should be quantified and monitored.
Nonequilibrium Capillary Electrophoresis of Equilibrium Mixtures (NECEEM): A Novel Method for Biomolecular Screening

Nonequilibrium capillary electrophoresis of equilibrium mixtures (NECEEM) is a new separation-based affinity method. It has kinetic capabilities exceeding those of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and does not require immobilization of molecules on the surface. Another distinctive feature of NECEEM is that—if it is combined with an advanced method for the mixing solutions inside a capillary, termed transverse diffusion of laminar flow profiles (TDLFP)—it requires only nanoliter volumes of solutions. The proven applications of NECEEM to biomolecular screening include 1) measuring kinetic and thermodynamic parameters of protein-ligand interactions, 2) quantitative affinity analyses of proteins and hybridization analyses of DNA and RNA, and 3) selection of binding ligands from combinatorial libraries. NECEEM is easy to automate and parallelize. Because of its simplicity and analytical power, NECEEM has the potential to become a workhorse in studies of biomolecular interactions. The author reviews theoretical bases of NECEEM and its applications to biomolecular screening.
The effect of pre-treatment and modified atmosphere packaging on contents of phenolic compounds and sensory and microbiological quality of shredded celeriac.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to determine the effect of washing (4 °C, 120 s) or soaking (4 °C, 600 s) of shredded celeriac in tap water on changes in contents of phenolic compounds, including furanocoumarins, and sensory and microbiological quality during 12 days of storage. The product was packaged in air or modified atmosphere containing 2/10/88 kPa O2/CO2/N2. RESULTS The applied pre-treatment consisting of washing or soaking of shredded celeriac in water resulted in decreases in 8-methoxypsoralen content by approximately 50 and 70% respectively and phenolic content by 30% compared with samples that were not subjected to pre-treatment. During storage of shredded celeriac, a further significant (P ≤ 0.05) reduction in phenolic compounds and an approximately 2.5-fold increase in the total content of furanocoumarins were found. The application of modified atmosphere packaging had a significant effect on the maintenance of good sensory and microbiological quality of the tested product. CONCLUSION Modified atmosphere packaging of shredded celeriac not subjected to pre-treatment made it possible to obtain a product with good sensory and microbiological quality and the highest content of phenolic compounds. The level of furanocoumarins recorded in the tested product does not constitute a health hazard.
A Cloud HUB for Brokering Business Processes as a Service: A "Rendezvous" Platform that Supports Semi-automated Background Checked Partner Discovery for Cross-Enterprise Collaboration

The management and coordination of cross-enterprise collaboration is changing due to globalization, specialization and innovation; furthermore, it is changing also due to the adoption of service-oriented cloud computing (SOCC). SOCC provides means for value-chain automation that is supported by many service-oriented industry standards. In this new environment, enterprises face new challenges. Firstly, they need to semi-automatically find collaboration parties and learn about their identity, services, and reputation. Second, they need to source Business-Processes-as-a-Service (BPaaS) from these newly found third parties to provide them service value that they do not create in-house due to lack of resources or know-how. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes a BPaaS-HUB architecture that enables speedy business-partner discovery and support for on-the-fly background checking. The architecture addresses the domain-independent requirements of the functionality, data-exchange protocol, and system behavior. Second, it indicates how to populate the architecture with existing services, thus, illustrating a rapid domain-specific instantiation of the BPaaS-HUB. The existence of BPaaS-HUB-type of services as "rendezvous locations" is required for the broad adoption of cross-enterprise collaboration (CeC) in a SOCC environments.
Learning Disabilities and School Problems in a Regional Cohort of Extremely Low Birth Weight (< 1000 G) Children: A Comparison with Term Controls

We compared the prevalence of learning disabilities at age 8 years in a subgroup of 68 of 129 (53%) regional cohort of extremely low birth weight (ELBW) children who were considered “normal‘’ neurologically and intellectually (IQ ± 85) with that of 114 term group matched controls (C). Both groups were tested with a battery of psychoeducational measures, and parents and teachers completed questionnaires on the school performance of the children. ELBW children were comparable with C on measures of intelligence (ELBW 101 ± 8, C 104 ± 11), language, and academic achievement but fared significantly less well in motor performance (p < .0001). The prevalence of learning disabilities (by predefined criteria) in ELBW children (26%) was not increased compared with C (19%). However, teachers rated significantly more ELBW children as performing below grade level than were C (31% vs 16%, p < .05), and by parent report, a higher proportion of ELBW children had received special assistance in school compared with C (37% vs 16%, p < .001). We conclude that although the prevalence of learning disabilities in normal ELBW children was not different from that in controls, ELBW children did less well and utilized more special resources.
Cross-Layer Opportunistic Scheduling for Device-to-Device Video Multicast Services

In this article, we address the problem of how to make the wireless device-to-device (D2D) video multicast systems have better quality provision with consideration of internet-of-things (IoT) applications. We propose an opportunistic transmission and fair resource allocation framework, including joint application-layer and physical-layer transmission and optimization. First, we use a parallel subchannels structure by concatenating the Fountain codes and diversity-embedded space-time block codes to provide reliable and flexible transmission in heterogeneous circumstances. Second, we exploit the quality of heterogeneous user experience (quality of experience) metric under D2D video multicast systems, with consideration of various channel states, device capability, video content urgency, and the number of demanding users. Third, we formulate reliable multiple video streams broadcasting to heterogeneous devices as an aggregate maximum utility achieving problem, and we use opportunistic scheduling to select suitable users in each transmission interval to improve the broadcasting utility. Fourth, we use the utility fair scheme to guide rate allocation among multicontent video multicast. Extensive performance comparison and analysis are presented to demonstrate efficiency of the proposed solution.
TESLA - THE RANGE OF SURVEY AND ALIGNMENT WORK

A superconducting electron-positron linear collider (TESLA) of about 33km length with an x-ray free electron user facility is currently being planned and developed by an international collaboration at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY. For the realization of the TESLA project a lot of basic survey and geodata are necessary and requested by design and construction. To operate the accelerator successfully a very high accuracy is required during installation and future service periods.