Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Active Learning to Dedicated Collaborative Interactive Learning

Active learning (AL) is a machine learning paradigm where an active learner has to train a model (e.g., a classifier) which is in principle trained in a supervised way. AL has to be done by means of a data set where a low fraction of samples (also termed data points or observations) are labeled. To obtain labels for the unlabeled samples, the active learner has to ask an oracle (e.g., a human expert) for labels. In most cases, the goal is to maximize some metric assessing the task performance (e.g., the classification accuracy) and to minimize the number of queries at the same time. In this article, we first briefly discuss the state-of-the-art in the field of AL. Then, we propose the concept of dedicated collaborative interactive learning (D-CIL) and describe some research challenges. With D-CIL, we will overcome many of the harsh limitations of current AL. In particular, we envision scenarios where the expert may be wrong for various reasons. There also might be several or even many experts with different expertise who collaborate, the experts may label not only samples but also supply knowledge at a higher level such as rules, and we consider that the labeling costs depend on many conditions. Moreover, human experts may even profit by improving their own knowledge when they get feedback from the active learner.
Cognitive Impairment in Cancer Pain Patients Receiving Opioids: A Pilot Study

This study aimed to compare cognitive function of cancer pain patients being given opioids during their cancer treatment (n = 14) with that of patients receiving treatment without opioids (n = 12). Correlations between cognitive function, pain intensity, and opioid dose were analyzed. Patients were assessed 3 times in a 1-month period, using the Trail-Making Test, Mini-Mental State Examination, Digit Span, and Brief Cognitive Screening Battery. Opioid use was not associated with clear cognitive impairment. Patients being treated without opioids did perform better in the Digit Span Test reverse-order test (P = .029) and the clock drawing test (P = .023), but the differences arose in just 1 assessment in each case. Pain intensity correlated negatively with scores in the Mini-Mental State Examination (P = .001) and some Brief Cognitive Screening Battery tests (incidental recall, immediate recall, and late recall; P ≤ .042) in the group receiving opioids. Opioid dose did not correlate with any of the measures of cognitive performance. However, the patients with the worst performance scores were those with more severe pain. Further studies are needed to clearly distinguish between the effects of opioids versus the effects of pain.
A novel polymorphic purine complex at the 1.5 kb upstream region of the human caveolin‐1 gene and risk of Alzheimer's disease; Extra‐short alleles and accumulated allele homozygosity

Crucial interaction of caveolin‐1 (CAV1) with β‐ and γ‐secretases, and aberrant expression of the gene encoding this protein in Alzheimer's disease (AD) support a role for CAV1 in the pathophysiology of this disease. We report a novel polymorphic purine complex stretching ∼150 bp of genomic DNA at the 1.5 kb upstream region of the human CAV1 gene, alleles and genotypes of which are associated with sporadic late‐onset AD. Extra‐short alleles were observed in the case group that were absent in the control subjects. Remarkably, 63% of these alleles were observed to be homozygous in length, forming 23.7% of the homozygote length compartment in the AD cases (χ2 = 19.08, df = 1, P < 0.000007). Increased homozygosity for length was also observed at this region in the Alzheimer's cases, for the allele lengths shared by the case and control groups [(χ2 = 30.75, df = 1, P < 0.0000000, OR = 4.54, CI 95% (2.56–8.3)]. This region contains GGAA and GAAA motifs, the consensus binding sites for the Ets and IRF family transcription factors, respectively, and is highly conserved in distantly related non‐human primates in respect with location and motif sequence. The effect of this complex sequence on the expression of CAV1, and the related mechanisms in the pathophysiology of AD remain to be clarified. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Monitoring the phonological responding to global changing in Northeast Asia based on remotely sensed vegetation index

Taking IGBP/GCTE terrestrial transects (NETC and CST) as study areas, the present work extracted NDVI of terrestrial eco-regions in the transects using the MODIS/16-day NDVI from 2004.04 to 2010.08, to investigate the phonological responding of different ecosystems to global changing in Northeast Asia through monitoring the pheological trends such as Onp, EndP, DurP, MaxP, MaxV and RanV from actual temporal NDVI profile. The results show in CST, the OnPs almost appeared an obviously advancing trend, and the DuePs extended in varying degrees while that in NETC mainly showed shortened. The MaxVs in NETC showed a gradually increasing, and MaxPs in the latter appeared an advancing tendency. However, in CST, the MaxVs and MaxPs showed decreasing and delayed respectively. For RanV, in CST, most eco-regions appeared decreasing trend, while those of eco-regions in NETC were relatively stable.
Five-year incidence of bilateral cause-specific visual impairment in the Melbourne Visual Impairment Project.

PURPOSE To describe the age-, gender-, and cause-specific 5-year incidence of bilateral visual impairment in participants in the Melbourne Visual Impairment Project, Victoria, Australia. METHODS Participants aged 40 years and older were recruited from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, by random cluster sampling. The mean age of the 3271 (83% of the eligible) participants was 59 +/- 12 (SD) years. Of the participants, 54% were female. The initial baseline study (1992-1994) was followed by a 5-year incidence study (1997-1999). At both time points of the study, participants underwent a standardized testing procedure. Distance and near vision was tested using logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) charts, followed by refraction if needed. Visual fields were assessed by the 24-2 Humphrey field test (FastPac, Humphrey Field Analyzer; Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA). Also, intraocular pressure, ocular motility, dilated ophthalmoscopy, and photography of the lens and the fundus were conducted. Furthermore, an interview included demographic characteristics, history of eye disease, medical history, and medication use. For classification of visual impairment, both visual acuity (VA) and visual fields (VF) examination results were used. Four levels of bilateral presenting visual impairment were defined: mild (VA, <20/40-20/60, and/or VF, homonymous hemianopia), moderate (VA, <20/60-20/200, and/or VF, constriction <20 degrees to 10 degrees from fixation), severe (VA, <20/200-10/200, and/or VF, constriction <10 degrees to 5 degrees from fixation), and profound (VA, <10/200, and/or VF, constriction <5 degrees from fixation). For all participants found to be visually impaired, the major cause was identified. RESULTS Of the 3040 people eligible to attend follow-up 2594 (85%) participated. Data were available for 2530 (98%) participants. In 105 participants (4.22%; 95% confidence limit 2.58-5.85) some degree of visual impairment developed. The main causes were undercorrected refractive error (59%), age-related macular degeneration, cataract and neuro-ophthalmic disorders (7% each), glaucoma (3%), and diabetic retinopathy (1%). The main cause of severe and profound visual impairment was age-related macular degeneration (37%). CONCLUSIONS Undercorrected refractive error was the primary cause of new cases of visual impairment in this population. Further research is needed to understand the origin of this and to develop appropriate prevention measures. Age-related macular degeneration is the primary cause of severe or profound vision loss in Australia. This disease requires further investigation for effective cure and preventive strategies.
Direction-of-arrival estimation for noncircular signals

 This work is partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant #61072098 and #61072099). Abstract Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation for nearcompletely noncircular signals is considered in this paper, and two DOA estimators based on Widely Linear Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (WL-MVDR) beamforming are proposed, called the spatial conjugate power spectrum (SCPS) method and subspace matching (MBNB) method, respectively. The performance of the proposed DOA estimators is illustrated via numerical examples and compared with other estimators. Index Terms array signal processing; direction-of-arrival estimation; noncircular signal
Key recovery attacks on Grain family using BSW sampling and certain weaknesses of the filtering function

A novel internal state recovery attack on the whole Grain family of ciphers is proposed in this work. It basically uses the ideas of BSW sampling along with employing a weak placement of the tap positions of the driving LFSRs. The currently best known complexity trade-offs are obtained, and due to the structure of Grain family these attacks are also key recovery attacks. It is shown that the internal state of Grain-v1 can be recovered with the time complexity of about 2 operations using a memory of about 2 bits, assuming availability of 2 keystream sequences each of length 2 bits generated for different initial values. Moreover, for Grain-128 or Grain-128a, the attack requires about 2 operations using a memory of about 2 bits, assuming availability of 2 keystream sequences each of length 2 bits generated for different initial values. These results further show that the whole Grain family, due to the choice of tap positions mainly, does not provide enough security margins against internal state recovery attacks. A simple modification of the selection of the tap positions, as a countermeasure against the attacks described here, is given.
Non-tuberculous mycobacterial infection in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.

OBJECTIVES Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are susceptible to opportunistic infections. To examine the clinical manifestations of non-tuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) infections with those of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infections in SLE patients. METHODS Medical records of a cohort of 725 SLE patients were reviewed for previous NTM infections. Demographic characteristics, predisposing factors and clinical outcomes were compared with patients who had previous MTB infections (n = 39). RESULTS Eleven (nine female and two male) cases were identified (prevalence 1.5%). The mean +/- S.D. age at the time of infection was 42.8 +/- 13.9 yrs, 9.3 +/- 5.8 yrs after the onset of SLE. The mean +/- S.D. time taken from onset of symptoms to the diagnosis of NTM infection was 5.7 +/- 7.2 months. Sites of involvement included skin and soft tissue (n = 8), chest (n = 2) and disseminated infection (n = 1). NTM infections were more likely to involve extrapulmonary sites (P = 0.006), presented in patients with longer lupus disease duration (P < 0.001), occurred in older patients (P < 0.001) and in those who had a higher cumulative dose of prednisolone (P = 0.01) than MTB infections. Using a stepwise logistic regression, disease duration was found to be the only independent predictive factor (P = 0.005) for NTM infections. Ten (25.6%) patients with MTB infections but none of the patients with NTM infections presented concomitantly at the onset of SLE (P = 0.09). There were no differences in the recurrence rate (P = 0.64) and frequency of disseminated infections (P = 0.40) between NTM and MTB infections. CONCLUSIONS NTM infections tended to develop in SLE patients later in their disease course than MTB infections. A high index of suspicion is required for its diagnosis.
Spineless provides a little backbone for dendritic morphogenesis.

References http://www.genesdev. org/cgi/content/full/20/20/2773#References This article cites 34 articles, 12 of which can be accessed free at: service Email alerting click here top right corner of the article or Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article sign up in the box at the Topic collections (23 articles) Neurobiology  Articles on similar topics can be found in the following collections
A New Cryptosystem using Vigenere and Metaheuristics for RGB Pixel Shuffling

In this article we present a new approach using Vigenere and metaheuristics to resolve a problem of pixel shuffling to cipher an image. First the image is adapted to match the resolution system by transforming it to a list of intensities and coordinates. The idea is to use Vigenere encryption to maximize the confusion by widening the domain of intensities. Then, metaheuristics play the major role of encryption, generating an appropriate Meta key in order to shuffle the lists. Thus, both Vigenere key and Meta-key are used for encryption and later in decryption by the recipient. Finally, a comparison of different metaheuristics is proposed to find the most suitable one for this cryptosystemt.
Taxable Income as a Performance Measure: The Effects of Tax Planning and Earnings Quality

Extant research suggests that book-tax differences are useful measures in evaluating firm performance. There is little evidence, however, regarding taxable income as an alternative performance measure to book income. We examine firm characteristics that mitigate or enhance the ability of taxable income to inform investors regarding firm performance. We find that the relative and incremental information content of estimated taxable income to book income is lower for high tax planning firms and higher for low earnings quality firms. Our results suggest that tax planning and low earnings quality have contrasting effects on the information content of estimated taxable income. These findings are pertinent to recent research examining book-tax differences as a measure of earnings quality and taxable income as an alternative performance measure.
Analysis of Photon Detection Efficiency and Dynamic Range in SPAD-Based Visible Light Receivers

We investigate the photon detection efficiency (PDE) and the dynamic range for digital silicon photomultipliers (dSiPMs) over a selection of design parameters: dSiPM unit cell dead time, PDE, unit cell area and fill factor, number of cells, and total dSiPM active area. Two receiver scaling scenarios are considered: varying the number of cells for 1) a fixed unit cell area or 2) a fixed total dSiPM area. Theoretical and simulated results are confirmed with experimental data from a selection of dSiPMs realised on a test chip in 130-nm CMOS process.
Implicación, Compromiso y Centralidad con el Trabajo: ¿Es o no es el mismo concepto?

This is a theoretical study about the meaning of the difference between job involvement, commitment and centrality. Conceptual differences are discussed following a literature review of theoretical and empirical contributions. There is also a discussion about how research has addressed these concepts. The authors of this paper wonder whether these are different concepts or just the same construct with different names. Some conclusions are offered for a discussion on the existence of a common construct.
The game has changed… but it still needs to be played: the role of imaging tests using ionising radiation in the practice of sports medicine

The editorial by Orchard et al 1 is a timely reminder of the mounting evidence of the negative bioeffects of imaging studies utilising ionising radiation in paediatric populations. This applies especially to CT and nuclear medicine, in which the doses are higher than X-rays, and which are much more commonly performed than in fluoroscopy. As the authors point out, these considerations are highly relevant to the practice of sports medicine, as the patients are often young, and bony injuries are commonly investigated using CT and nuclear medicine. So how are clinicians to integrate data from these increasingly well-designed studies2 into recommendations that will still allow accurate and timely diagnosis of sports-related pathology? As a professor of musculoskeletal radiology, I share the following thoughts: There have been a number of studies that correctly point out the need …
Effect of obesity on pulmonary functions among Saudi Children

The possible relationship between the severity of obesity and the ventilatory function parameters among Saudi male children has been investigated. In addition to comparing the ventilatory function of of Saudi male children with different body weights to their age matching Caucasian reference values. Healthy Saudi male school children participated in this study. Selected children were divided into three groups, group I (normal weight children), group II (overweight children), and group III (obese children). Ventilatory function tests were conducted using portable Spirometer. Comparing the ventilatory function of the three groups of Saudi children showed that increasing degree of obesity have negative effect on ventilatory function among Saudi children as the ventilatory function of the obese Saudi children were much lower, than their age matching overweight and normal weight Saudi children but with non statistically significant differences between the three groups. Statistical analysis of the data also showed that Saudi children have ventilatory function much lower than the predicted reference values based on the age/sex specific BMI percentiles. Conclusion: Over weight and obese Saudi male children have much lower ventilatory function compared to their age matched normal weight Saudi children and their age matchedreference predicted values in away that could restrict their lung expansion and affect their exercise capacity.
Testing in Resource-Constrained Environments

In recent software development environments, resources including time, memory, and power constrain the execution of software test cases. Often the cost of running all test cases is prohibitively expensive, necessitating techniques to select test cases of the highest quality for test execution. While many test case selection and prioritization techniques exist to select test cases that are more likely to find faults, none take the resource constraints under which the tests will operate directly into consideration. Another cost in test case execution comes from structural testing. Structural testing is an important technique in which during execution test cases are also evaluated for structural coverage. This is typically performed through the use of code instrumentation. However, instrumentation incurs high overhead in terms of time and code growth, making it di cult to use in resource-constrained environments such as mobile device testing. This thesis develops and evaluates techniques for e cient and e↵ective execution of test cases in resource-constrained environments. The first set of techniques selects high quality test cases from test suites while taking resource constraints into account. The resulting test selection is guaranteed to execute within the specified resource constraints, and the resulting test cases have the highest possible potential for overall fault detection during their constrained execution. The selected tests are additionally ordered in a way that is likely to find faults earlier in test execution rather than later. These techniques represent the first to guarantee that test selections will execute within a given constraint, and they o↵er a spectrum of options for selecting tests to execute in resource-constrained environments. The second set of techniques evaluates the quality of test cases during execution with-
Fluid Resuscitation: A Defence Medical Services Delphi Study into Current Practice

A Delphi study was carried out to investigate recent changes in the fluid resuscitation of patients. A thirty member panel was selected primarily from the UK Defence Medical Services but also included contributors from other NATO members and civilian practice. The study was carried out in two rounds and achieved consensus on a range of statements relating to fluid resuscitation. Key recommendations are grouped by category. Statements reaching consensus included the use of adult intraosseous access, limited hypotensive resuscitation and goal directed therapy in trauma patients. Consensus was not achieved with respect to the selection of non-oxygen carrying synthetic colloids. The study provides a broad review of current practice and adds to previous consensus publications on fluid resuscitation.
Performance investigation of SRAM cells based on gate-all-around (GAA) Si nanowire transistor for ultra-low voltage applications

In this paper, the performance metrics (i.e., read and write margins, operation speed, power consumption) of 6T SRAM cell based on gate-all-around (GAA) Si nanowire transistor (SNWT) at 16nm technology node are investigated, as well as the impacts of device variations on GAA SNWT SRAM cells. The results indicate that GAA SNWT SRAM cells have larger read static noise margin, less power-delay product and better tolerance to process variations than planar bulk SRAM cells. And through cell ratio optimization, the GAA SNWT SRAM cells can satisfy the six-sigma (6σ) yield at VDD=0.3V.
Left middle temporal gyrus activation during a phonemic discrimination task

There is considerable evidence that receptive language processing depends, at least in part, on cortical tissue in the temporal lobe. Few studies, however, have investigated the neural basis of phonemic discrimination while controlling for non-linguistic and attentional components. In this study nine healthy volunteers discriminated sets of phonemes and tones interspersed by rest periods in a block design paradigm while undergoing fMRI. A comparison of phonemic discrimination with tone discrimination revealed pure left lateralized superior and middle temporal gyrus activations. A comparison of phonemic discrimination with the rest blocks resulted in areas of activations encompassing the language and non-language components of the task. Our findings are consistent with prior reports demonstrating the involvement of the superior and middle temporal gyrus in phonemic discrimination and stronger left temporal lobe activation during speech compared to non-speech sounds. This study also demonstrates the advantage of tone discrimination control blocks as opposed to conventional rest periods to isolate the pure language component of phonemic discrimination.
A micro creeping robot for colonoscopy based on the earthworm

Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has become one of the most important research areas in the field of medical engineering. Robotic colonoscopy is a typical medical procedure that complies with the requirements of MIS. In this paper, a new novel miniature robot for intestinal inspection based on the earthworm is described; its diameter and length are 7.5 mm and 120 mm respectively. The micro robot is driven by a DC motor which has good performance and sufficient power. In this paper the structure and locomotion mechanism of this robot are introduced; the mechanical model is built; and simulation is carried out. The control system and software design are also discussed in detail. Some actuating characteristic experiments have been performed, where the micro robot creeps in declining rubber tubes. The experimental results are in accord with simulation results, and show that this kind of robot can move reliably in horizontal and certain declining tubes. This research has laid a foundation for the application of the miniature robot endoscope.