Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy

Radiation therapy is a tricky business. The goal is to deliver as much radiation as possible to a tumor while sparing nearby noncancerous tissue. A newer approach, called intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), relaxes the requirement for a uniform dose distribution, yet delivers the radiation more accurately to the cancerous region. This dose distribution, created by small beamlets that can differ in intensity, is expected to produce a treatment field that better conforms to the shape of the tumor. The linear accelerators that deliver radiation to cancer patients now rely on embedded computers for control. The ability to dynamically form and modulate radiation beamlets requires the use of real-time feedback loops. Successful use of embedded computers to control such loops requires the use of radiation-hardened components.
A System for Approximate Tree Matching

Ordered, labeled trees are trees in which each node has a label and the left-to-right order of its children (if it has any) is fixed. Such trees have many applications in vision, pattern recognition, molecular biology, programming compilation, and natural language processing. Many of the applications involve comparing trees or retrieving/extracting information from a repository of trees. Examples include classification of unknown patterns, analysis of newly sequenced RNA structures, semantic taxonomy for dictionary definitions, generation of interpreters for nonprocedural programming languages, and automatic error recovery and correction for programming languages. Previous systems use exact matching (or generalized regular expression matching) for tree comparison. This paper presents a system, called approximate-tree-by-example (ATBE), which allows inexact matching of trees. The ATBE system interacts with the user through a simple but powerful query language; graphical devices are provided to facilitate inputing the queries. The paper describes the architecture of ATBE, illustrates its use and describes some aspects of ATBE implementation. We also discuss the underlying algorithms and provide some sample applications. >
Current Methods in Health Behavior Research Among U.S. Community College Students

The majority of health behavior research involving college students in the United States has focused on 4-year college students. Two-year or community college students have been less studied, although a significant proportion of U.S. undergraduates, primarily those from disadvantaged socioeconomic and/or racial/ethnic background, are enrolled in community colleges. Thus, there is a need to enhance health behavior and health promotion research among community college students. This study systematically reviewed 42 published, peer-reviewed health behavior studies conducted among U.S. community college students in order to determine the current state of research in the area with regard to behaviors studied, research designs used, recruitment and data collection strategies practiced, rates of student participation, and characteristics of the participants represented. Findings identified the methodological limitations of current research and suggested optimal recruitment and data collection methods suitable for various research needs. Findings are discussed in the context of enhancing health behavior research among U.S. community college students.
Low‐altitude Terrestrial Spectroscopy from a Pushbroom Sensor

Hyperspectral cameras sample many different spectral bands at each pixel, enabling advanced detection and classification algorithms. However, their limited spatial resolution and the need to measure the camera motion to create hyperspectral images makes them unsuitable for nonsmooth moving platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). We present a procedure to build hyperspectral images from line sensor data without camera motion information or extraneous sensors. Our approach relies on an accompanying conventional camera to exploit the homographies between images for mosaic construction. We provide experimental results from a low‐altitude UAV, achieving high‐resolution spectroscopy with our system.
PHYSIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS' NUMBERS IN MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS AND HOSPITAL COST-EFFECTIVE OPERATION

In paper, we are providing a novel concept of analyzing physiological systems in terms of non-dimensional physiological indices (NDPIs), for quantifying patient health and disease status as well as patient improvement. We have developed NDPI's for several physiological phenomena and systems, and indicated as to how they can be employed diagnostically. NDPIs have been formulated and evaluated for (i) left-ventricular pumping performance, (ii) cardiac fitness and conditioning, (iii) lung ventilatory function, (iv) Oral glucose tolerance test, (v) arteriosclerosis, (vi) atherosclerosis and peripheral resistance, (vii) mitral valve property, and (viii) osteoporosis. We have then also applied these NDPI's for (i) formulating and assessing the performance indices of hispital units and (ii) determining the resource index for cost-effective operation, contributory to hospital management-science.
Is the Chronic Care Model Integrated Into Research Examining Culturally Competent Interventions for Ethnically Diverse Adults With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus? A Review

The chronic care model (CCM) concerns both the medical and the cultural and linguistic needs of patients through the inclusion of cultural competence in the delivery system design. This literature review attempted to@@ identify the domains of the CCM culturally competent (CC) interventions that the adults from ethnic minorities suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus report. We identified the CCM and the CC components in the relevant studies published between 2005 and 2014. Thirty-two studies were included. Thirty-one articles focused on self-management and 20 on community resources. Twenty-three interventions integrated cultural norms from the patients’ backgrounds. CC interventions reported the CCM at the individual level but need to address the organizational level more effectively. The scope of CC interventions should be expanded to transform health care organizations and systems.
A perspective on the evolution of mobile communications

This article outlines the current state of mobile communications and presents some of the future directions in research and development from the perspective of NTT DoCoMo with special emphasis on the market in Japan. It first describes the directions in which mobile communications are expected to forge ahead in the future, and the service implementation strategies they could employ. Then it describes an example of mobile multimedia services and present an outline of the Freedom of Mobile Multimedia Access (FOMA), which is a service based on the 3G mobile communications system called International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT2000). This is followed by an overview of our R&D approach to 4G systems, which constitute mobile communications systems of the future, and the profile of technologies to make these happen. Finally, it reviews our approach to future technologies that are expected to be realized in 4G and subsequent systems, and illustrate it with an example of a research project.
Helping Hospitals Improve Patient Centeredness: Assessing the Impact of Feedback Following a Best Practices Workshop

Regularly reported patient surveys are an important dimension of hospital quality management. This study investigates whether providing hospital staff with interim feedback on patient survey results following a best practices workshop can help hospitals improve patient centeredness. Standardized surveys with consecutive patient samples were administered in accredited breast cancer center (BCC) hospitals in one German state (18 million inhabitants), over a 6-month period, in 2012. Two studies were conducted by applying a combination of regression point displacement (RPD) and interrupted time series (ITS) designs. In Study 1, 2 of the 27 hospitals that had previously participated in a best practices workshop to discuss patient-centeredness issues were randomly chosen and were provided interim feedback of patient survey results and workshop minutes. In Study 2, 4 randomly chosen hospitals of 32 that had not participated in the workshop also received interim feedback but no workshop minutes. Control hospitals in both studies neither received feedback nor workshop minutes. The impact of interim feedback was evaluated by applying graphical assessments and multiple regression analyses. Both graphical assessments (locally weighted scatterplot smoothing (LOESS) lines, RPD plots) suggested an effect of interim feedback. Multiple regression results did not unambiguously support these findings. The suggested design approach may prove particularly useful to assess effects in pilot studies, when resources are not available to conduct a randomized study or when its conduct is contingent on initial, positive evidence.
Flexible and Wearable Fiber Microsupercapacitors Based on Carbon Nanotube-Agarose Gel Composite Electrodes.

Fiber electrodes provide interesting opportunities for energy storage by providing both mechanical flexibility and the opportunity to impart multifunctionality to fabrics. We show here carbon nanotube (CNT)-embedded agarose gel composite fiber electrodes, with a diameter of ∼120 μm, consisting of 60 wt % CNTs that can serve as the basis for flexible and wearable fiber microsupercapacitors (mSCs). Via an extrusion process, CNT bundles are induced to align in an agarose filament matrix. Due to the shear alignment of the CNT bundles, the dehydrated filaments have an electrical conductivity as high as 8.3 S cm-1. The composite fiber electrodes are mechanically stable, enabling formation of twisted two-ply fiber mSCs integrated with a solid electrolyte. The fiber mSC shows a high capacitance (∼1.2 F cm-3), good rate retention (∼90%) at discharge current densities ranging from 5.1 to 38 mA cm-3, long cycle life under repeated charging/discharging (10% fade after 10 000 cycles) and good performance after at least 1000 cycles of deformation, with a radius of curvature of 12.3 mm (90° bend). After being coated with a thin layer of poly(dimethylsiloxane), the fiber mSCs could be cycled over 10 000 times under water. Impedance studies indicate that the superior performance is due to the high electrical conductivity along the aligned CNTs and the large electrode surface area that is accessible through the ion-conducting agarose.
Interference-free broadband single- and multicarrier DS-CDMA

The choice of the direct sequence spreading code in DS-CDMA predetermines the properties of the system. This contribution demonstrates that the family of codes exhibiting an interference-free window (IFW) outperforms classic spreading codes, provided that the interfering multi-user and multipath components arrive within this IFW, which may be ensured with the aid of quasi-synchronous adaptive timing advance control. It is demonstrated that the IFW duration may be extended with the advent of multicarrier DS-CDMA proportionately to the number of subcarriers. Hence, the resultant MC DS-CDMA system is capable of exhibiting near-single-user performance without employing a multi-user detector. A limitation of the system is that the number of spreading codes exhibiting a certain IFW is limited, although this problem may be mitigated with the aid of novel code design principles
Wizard: A Database Inference Analysis and Detection System

The database inference problem is a well-known problem in database security and information system security in general. In order to prevent an adversary from inferring classified information from combinations of unclassified information, a database inference analyst must be able to detect and prevent possible inferences. Detecting database inference problems at database design time provides great power in reducing problems over the lifetime of a database. We have developed and constructed a system called Wizard to analyze databases for their inference problems. The system takes as input a database schema, its constituent instances (if available) and additional human-supplied domain information, and provides a set of associations between entities and/or activities that can be grouped by their potential severity of inference vulnerability. A knowledge acquisition process called microanalysis permits semantic knowledge of a database to be incorporated into the analysis using conceptual graphs. These graphs are then analyzed with respect to inference-relevant domains we call facets using tools we have developed. We can determine inference problems within single facets as well as some inference problems between two or more facets. The architecture of the system is meant to be general so that further refinements of inference information subdomains can be easily incorporated into the system.
Visual‐inertial curve simultaneous localization and mapping: Creating a sparse structured world without feature points

We present a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm that uses Bézier curves as static landmark primitives rather than feature points. Our approach allows us to estimate the full six degrees of freedom pose of a robot while providing a structured map that can be used to assist a robot in motion planning and control. We demonstrate how to reconstruct the three‐dimensional (3D) location of curve landmarks from a stereo pair and how to compare the 3D shape of curve landmarks between chronologically sequential stereo frames to solve the data association problem. We also present a method to combine curve landmarks for mapping purposes, resulting in a map with a continuous set of curves that contain fewer landmark states than conventional point‐based SLAM algorithms. We demonstrate our algorithm's effectiveness with numerous experiments, including comparisons to existing state‐of‐the‐art SLAM algorithms.
Adult Child Caregiver Health Trajectories and the Impact of Multiple Roles Over Time

Guided by stress process and life course theory, the purpose of this study was to examine adult child caregivers’ psychological and physical health trajectories and how their multiple family (caregiving, marital, and parenting) and nonfamily (employment) roles contributed to these health outcomes over time. Seven waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study were analyzed for 1,300 adult child caregivers using latent growth curve models. Adult child caregivers have distinct psychological and physical health trajectories that are related to their roles over time. The importance of any given role varies by the type of health outcome and timing in the life course. Caregiving alone does not contribute to adult child caregivers’ psychological and physical health; marital and employment roles also contribute significantly to caregivers’ life courses.
On effective offloading services for resource-constrained mobile devices running heavier mobile Internet applications

Rapid advances in wireless mobile network technologies and mobile handsets (MHs) facilitate ubiquitous infrastructure that can support a range of mobile services and applications in addition to conventional mobile Internet access. One recent trend is to effectively run desktop PC-oriented heavier applications on MHs. However, due to their miniature, portable size, MHs are resource-constrained and therefore, running these applications directly on an MH is not satisfactory given a user's expectations. To cope with this problem, this article proposes a novel offloading service that can seamlessly offload some of the tasks of a mobile application from an MH to nearby, resource-rich PCs (called surrogates). The system architecture and key components of the proposed offloading service are presented, prototyped, and evaluated. The results of experiments and simulations have demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of this offloading service for mobile applications.
Vaccine Controversies in Canada

Vaccine controversies in Canada immunization and provision of clean water are undoubtedly the most effective public health measures worldwide. However, immunization’s success has resulted in a cohort of parents who have never seen a case of polio, measles, or other vaccinepreventable diseases, and so question the need to immunize their children. the following article examines and responds to some common concerns.
GMPLS controlled ethernet: an emerging packet-oriented transport technology

Most of the world's traffic is now packet-based. While SONET/SDH transport technology continues to evolve, there are now major standardization efforts to develop a native packet-oriented transport technology. Ethernet, long dominant in the enterprise, is one of the fastest developing technologies for the transport layer. GMPLS, based on mature signaling and routing protocols, is gaining traction as a transport control plane, providing fast restoration and supporting automation of provisioning. We will briefly highlight recent Ethernet standardization and then introduce the concepts and standards work allowing GMPLS to control Ethernet.
Beacon-less geographic routing made practical: challenges, design guidelines, and protocols

Geographic routing has emerged as one of the most efficient and scalable routing solutions for wireless sensor networks. In traditional geographic routing protocols, each node exchanges periodic one-hop beacons to determine the position of its neighbors. Recent studies proved that these beacons can create severe problems in real deployments due to the highly dynamic and error-prone nature of wireless links. To avoid these problems, new variants of geographic routing protocols that do not require beacons are being proposed. In this article we review some of the latest proposals in the field of beacon-less geographic routing and introduce the main design challenges and alternatives. In addition, we perform an empirical study to assess the performance of beacon-based and beacon-less routing protocols using a real WSN deployment.
Intelligent transportation spaces: vehicles, traffic, communications, and beyond

Recent years have witnessed numerous technical breakthroughs in electronics, computing, sensing, robotics, control, signal processing, and communications. These have significantly advanced the state of applications of intelligent transportation systems. More recently, as one leading effort toward the cyber-physical-social system, the concept of intelligent transportation spaces was proposed to further improve the vehicles, traffic, and transportation safety, efficiency and sustainability. ITSp integrate not only various ITS modules, but also pedestrians, vehicles, roadside infrastructures, traffic management centers, sensors, and satellites. With distributed and pervasive intelligence, ITSp clearly impose some stringent requirements on the information exchange among all entities within the ITSp, in terms of the information availability, reliability, fidelity, and timeliness. These requirements, together with the high mobility of vehicles and the highly variable network topology, make the communications and networking for ITSp very challenging. This article will introduce the concept of ITSp and analyze possible communication technology candidates for ITSp. Further discussions will also be provided at the end of this article.
Collision avoidance by fuzzy logic control for automated guided vehicle navigation

A fuzzy approach to collision avoidance for automated guided vehicle (AGV) navigation is proposed. Static obstacles with no a priori position information as well as moving obstacles with unknown trajectories are considered in this study. Intuitive and subjective human ideas of collision avoidance are modeled into fuzzy rules. Fuzzy logic is applied in the inference procedure for AGV navigation, such that the AGV is guided from the starting point toward the target without colliding with obstacles. Furthermore, the proposed method can also be used for the navigation of multiple AGVs, where each AGV must avoid other AGVs as well as obstacles in the environment. Simulation results are presented to show the feasibility of the proposed fuzzy approach. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The identification of barriers to the recognition of, and response to, dementia in primary care using a modified focus group approach

This study reports upon the identification of barriers to the recognition of and response to dementia in primary care as perceived by general practitioners and highlights areas of information and training need. The study took a qualitative approach involving group work with 144 general practitioners in three purposively selected settings using adapted nominal group data collection methods. Six key themes were identified that explain the complexity of dementia diagnosis and management: (1) the pre-eminence of problem-solving over differential diagnosis as a working style; (2) the existence of gaps in support services; (3) problems of confidentiality; (4) the importance of ‘red flags’; (5) rules governing disclosure of diagnoses; and (6) heuristics for distinguishing dementia from normal ageing or other pathologies. In addition the practitioners identified principles governing medication use, issues around carers’ needs and implications for professional education. The National Service Framework for Older People emphasizes the need for early detection and diagnosis of dementia in primary care. This study identified barriers to be overcome by targeted educational interventions and through service provision. There is an uneven geographical distribution of support and diagnostic services and a lack of awareness of how to access these, and this needs addressing. A stepwise educational method is recommended as opposed to promotion of a formal syllabus.
Real-time direct kinematics of general six-degree-of-freedom parallel manipulators with minimum-sensor data

We present a formulation of the direct kinematics of a general six-degree-of-freedom parallel manipulator, sometimes referred to as the generalized Steward platform, whereby the positioning and orientation problems are decoupled by introducing two auxiliary coordinates in the forms of either two angles or two lengths. This is in accordance with the type of extra sensors, i.e., rotary or translational, that are collocated on a leg of the manipulator. Moreover, a real-time implementation of extra-sensor data, with a unique direct kinematics solution, is proposed by resorting to an eigenvalue problem. The parallelism in the proposed formulation enables the user to benefit from a parallel computing environment. Hence, we introduce a parallel computing algorithm that highly increases the robustness of the computational algorithm. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
IEEE 802.15.7 visible light communication: modulation schemes and dimming support

Visible light communication refers to shortrange optical wireless communication using visible light spectrum from 380 to 780 nm. Enabled by recent advances in LED technology, IEEE 802.15. 7 supports high-data-rate visible light communication up to 96 Mb/s by fast modulation of optical light sources which may be dimmed during their operation. IEEE 802.15. 7 provides dimming adaptable mechanisms for flicker-free high-data-rate visible light communication.