Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Cyber Physical System for 3-D Imaging of the Small Intestine In Vivo

Small intestine is the longest organ in the gastrointestinal tract where much of the digestion and the food absorption take place. Wireless video capsule endoscope (VCE) is the first device taking 2-D pictures from the lesions and the abnormalities in the entire length of the small intestine. Since precise localization and mapping inside the small intestine is a very challenging problem, we cannot measure the distance traveled by the VCE to associate lesions and abnormalities to locations inside the small intestine, and we cannot use the 2-D pictures to reconstruct the 3-D image of interior of the entire small intestine in vivo. This paper presents the architectural concept of a novel cyber physical system (CPS), which can utilize the 2-D pictures of the small intestine taken by the VCE to reconstruct the 3-D image of the small intestine in vivo. Hybrid localization and mapping techniques with millimetric accuracy for inside the small intestine is presented as an enabling technology to facilitate the reconstruction of 3-D images from the 2-D pictures. The proposed CPS architecture provides for large-scale virtual experimentations inside the human body without intruding the body with a sizable equipment using reasonable clinical experiments for validation. The 3-D imaging of the small intestine in vivo allows a lesion to be pinpointed for follow-up diagnosis and/or treatment and the abnormalities may be observed from different angles in 3-D images for more thorough examination.
Video Streaming in the Multiuser Indoor Visible Light Downlink

Indoor visible light communication (VLC) using a light emitting diode (LED) transmitter provides a high-signal-to-noise (SNR) link, which is ideal for video transmission. The LED lights illuminate their own attocells and convey video streams in the downlink to multiple mobile terminals (MTs). Three different transmission schemes are considered, namely: the unity frequency reuse, the higher frequency reuse factor-based transmission, and the novel vectored transmission. We then formulate the optimization problems aiming at minimizing the video distortion. This paper commences by evaluating the performance of the MT at specific positions and continues by characterizing the peak SNR (PSNR) degradation across the room. Finally, we quantify the average performance of multiple MTs randomly walking in the room. By investigating the PSNR degradation, the video rate achieved, the energy consumed, and the effects of buffering delay on the video distortion, we demonstrate that the proposed VLC system is capable of supporting high-quality multimedia transmissions.
Simulation study comparing exposure matching with regression adjustment in an observational safety setting with group sequential monitoring

Sequential methods are well established for randomized clinical trials (RCTs), and their use in observational settings has increased with the development of national vaccine and drug safety surveillance systems that monitor large healthcare databases. Observational safety monitoring requires that sequential testing methods be better equipped to incorporate confounder adjustment and accommodate rare adverse events. New methods designed specifically for observational surveillance include a group sequential likelihood ratio test that uses exposure matching and generalized estimating equations approach that involves regression adjustment. However, little is known about the statistical performance of these methods or how they compare to RCT methods in both observational and rare outcome settings. We conducted a simulation study to determine the type I error, power and time‐to‐surveillance‐end of group sequential likelihood ratio test, generalized estimating equations and RCT methods that construct group sequential Lan–DeMets boundaries using data from a matched (group sequential Lan–DeMets‐matching) or unmatched regression (group sequential Lan–DeMets‐regression) setting. We also compared the methods using data from a multisite vaccine safety study. All methods had acceptable type I error, but regression methods were more powerful, faster at detecting true safety signals and less prone to implementation difficulties with rare events than exposure matching methods. Method performance also depended on the distribution of information and extent of confounding by site. Our results suggest that choice of sequential method, especially the confounder control strategy, is critical in rare event observational settings. These findings provide guidance for choosing methods in this context and, in particular, suggest caution when conducting exposure matching. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Underwater Optical Wireless Communication

Underwater wireless information transfer is of great interest to the military, industry, and the scientific community, as it plays an important role in tactical surveillance, pollution monitoring, oil control and maintenance, offshore explorations, climate change monitoring, and oceanography research. In order to facilitate all these activities, there is an increase in the number of unmanned vehicles or devices deployed underwater, which require high bandwidth and high capacity for information transfer underwater. Although tremendous progress has been made in the field of acoustic communication underwater, however, it is limited by bandwidth. All this has led to the proliferation of underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC), as it provides higher data rates than the traditional acoustic communication systems with significantly lower power consumption and simpler computational complexities for short-range wireless links. UOWC has many potential applications ranging from deep oceans to coastal waters. However, the biggest challenge for underwater wireless communication originates from the fundamental characteristics of ocean or sea water; addressing these challenges requires a thorough understanding of complex physio-chemical biological systems. In this paper, the main focus is to understand the feasibility and the reliability of high data rate underwater optical links due to various propagation phenomena that impact the performance of the system. This paper provides an exhaustive overview of recent advances in UOWC. Channel characterization, modulation schemes, coding techniques, and various sources of noise which are specific to UOWC are discussed. This paper not only provides exhaustive research in underwater optical communication but also aims to provide the development of new ideas that would help in the growth of future underwater communication. A hybrid approach to an acousto-optic communication system is presented that complements the existing acoustic system, resulting in high data rates, low latency, and an energy-efficient system.
On a Training-Less Solution for Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring Using Graph Signal Processing

With ongoing large-scale smart energy metering deployments worldwide, disaggregation of a household's total energy consumption down to individual appliances using analytical tools, also known as non-intrusive appliance load monitoring (NALM), has generated increased research interest lately. NALM can deepen energy feedback, support appliance retrofit advice, and support home automation. However, despite the fact that NALM was proposed over 30 years ago, there are still many open challenges with respect to its practicality and effectiveness at low sampling rates. Indeed, the majority of NALM approaches, supervised or unsupervised, require training to build appliance models, and are sensitive to appliance changes in the house, thus requiring regular re-training. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by proposing an NALM approach that does not require any training. The main idea is to build upon the emerging field of graph signal processing to perform adaptive thresholding, signal clustering, and pattern matching. We determine the performance limits of our approach and demonstrate its usefulness in practice. Using two open access datasets-the US REDD data set with active power measurements downsampled to 1 min resolution and the UK REFIT data set with 8-s resolution, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for typical smart meter sampling rate, with the state-of-the-art supervised and unsupervised NALM approaches as benchmarks.
Development and validation of a new self-report instrument for measuring sedentary behaviors and light-intensity physical activity in adults.

BACKGROUND Low levels of physical activity and high levels of sedentary behavior (SB) are major public health concerns. This study was designed to develop and validate the 7-day Sedentary (S) and Light Intensity Physical Activity (LIPA) Log (7-day SLIPA Log), a self-report measure of specific daily behaviors. METHOD To develop the log, 62 specific SB and LIPA behaviors were chosen from the Compendium of Physical Activities. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 32 sedentary volunteers to identify domains and behaviors of SB and LIPA. To validate the log, a further 22 sedentary adults were recruited to wear the GT3x for 7 consecutive days and nights. RESULTS Pearson correlations (r) between the 7-day SLIPA Log and GT3x were significant for sedentary (r = .86, P < .001), for LIPA (r = .80, P < .001). Lying and sitting postures were positively correlated with GT3x output (r = .60 and r = .64, P < .001, respectively). No significant correlation was found for standing posture (r = .14, P = .53). The kappa values between the 7-day SLIPA Log and GT3x variables ranged from 0.09 to 0.61, indicating poor to good agreement. CONCLUSION The 7-day SLIPA Log is a valid self-report measure of SB and LIPA in specific behavioral domains.
Compressive Video Sensing: Algorithms, architectures, and applications

The design of conventional sensors is based primarily on the Shannon? Nyquist sampling theorem, which states that a signal of bandwidth W Hz is fully determined by its discrete time samples provided the sampling rate exceeds 2 W samples per second. For discrete time signals, the Shannon? Nyquist theorem has a very simple interpretation: the number of data samples must be at least as large as the dimensionality of the signal being sampled and recovered. This important result enables signal processing in the discrete time domain without any loss of information. However, in an increasing number of applications, the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem dictates an unnecessary and often prohibitively high sampling rate (see &ldquo;What Is the Nyquist Rate of a Video Signal? &rdquo;). As a motivating example, the high resolution of the image sensor hardware in modern cameras reflects the large amount of data sensed to capture an image. A 10-megapixel camera, in effect, takes 10 million measurements of the scene. Yet, almost immediately after acquisition, redundancies in the image are exploited to compress the acquired data significantly, often at compression ratios of 100:1 for visualization and even higher for detection and classification tasks. This example suggests immense wastage in the overall design of conventional cameras.
Improved Room Temperature NO2 Sensing Performance of Organic Field-Effect Transistor by Directly Blending a Hole-Transporting/Electron-Blocking Polymer into the Active Layer.

Over the past decades, organic field-effect transistor (OFET) gas sensors have maintained a rapid development. However, the majority of OFET gas sensors show insufficient detection capability towards oxidizing gases such as nitrogen oxide, compared with the inorganic counterpart. In this paper, a new strategy of OFET nitrogen dioxide (NO2) gas sensor, consisting of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) and poly(9-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) blend, is reported. Depending on the gate voltage, this sensor can operate in two modes at room temperature. Of the two modes exposed to NO2 for 5 min, when the gate voltage is 0 V, the highest NO2 responsivity of this OFET is >20 000% for 30 ppm (≈700% for 600 ppb) with the 1:1 P3HT/PVK blend, it is ≈40 times greater than that with the pure P3HT. The limit of detection of ≈300 ppb is achieved, and there is still room for improvement. While in the condition of -40 V, the response increases by 15 times than that with the pure P3HT. This is the first attempt to improve the OFET sensing performance using PVK, which usually functions as a hole-transport layer in the light- emitting device. The enhancement of sensing performance is attributed to the aggregation-controlling and hole-transporting/electron-blocking effect of PVK. This work demonstrates that the hole-transport material can be applied to improve the NO2 sensor with simple solution process, which expands the material choice of OFET gas sensors.
Achieving page-mapping FTL performance at block-mapping FTL cost by hiding address translation

Flash Translation Layer (FTL) is one of the most important components of SSD, whose main purpose is to perform logical to physical address translation in a way that is suitable to the unique physical characteristics of the Flash memory technology. The pure page-mapping FTL scheme, arguably the best FTL scheme due to its ability to map any logical page number (LPN) to any physical page number (PPN) to minimize erase operations, cannot be practically deployed since it consumes a prohibitively large RAM (SRAM or DRAM) space to store the page-mapping table for an SSD of moderate to large size. Alternatives to the pure page-mapping FTL, such as block-mapping FTLs, hybrid FTLs (e.g., FAST) and the latest demand-based page-mapping FTLs (e.g., DFTL), require significantly less RAM space but suffer from a few performance issues. Block-mapping FTLs perform poorly with higher erasure counts, particularly under random write workloads. Hybrid FTL schemes incur costly merge operations that hurt performance and increase the erasure counts. Performances of demand-based FTLs heavily depend on workload characteristics such as access locality, read/write ratio and request arrival interval time. This paper proposes a new FTL scheme, called HAT, to achieve the performance of a pure page-mapping FTL at the RAM cost of a block-mapping FTL while consuming lower energy, by hiding the address translation (HAT). The basic idea behind our scheme is to create a separate access path to read/write the address mapping information to significantly Hide the Address-Translation latency by incorporating a low energy-consuming solid-state memory device that stores the entire page mapping table. We implement an SSD simulator, SSDsim, to validate our HAT design and evaluate its performance. The extensive trace-driven simulation results show that the performance of HAT is within 0.8% of the pure page-mapping FTL, while consuming about 50% of the energy.
Simple generalized estimating equations (GEEs) and weighted generalized estimating equations (WGEEs) in longitudinal studies with dropouts: guidelines and implementation in R

Missing data are a common problem in clinical and epidemiological research, especially in longitudinal studies. Despite many methodological advances in recent decades, many papers on clinical trials and epidemiological studies do not report using principled statistical methods to accommodate missing data or use ineffective or inappropriate techniques. Two refined techniques are presented here: generalized estimating equations (GEEs) and weighted generalized estimating equations (WGEEs). These techniques are an extension of generalized linear models to longitudinal or clustered data, where observations are no longer independent. They can appropriately handle missing data when the missingness is completely at random (GEE and WGEE) or at random (WGEE) and do not require the outcome to be normally distributed. Our aim is to describe and illustrate with a real example, in a simple and accessible way to researchers, these techniques for handling missing data in the context of longitudinal studies subject to dropout and show how to implement them in R. We apply them to assess the evolution of health‐related quality of life in coronary patients in a data set subject to dropout. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Choices for Healthy Outcomes In Caring for End Stage Renal Disease

In the CHOICE study, a multidisciplinary research team is conducting several complementary research projects designed to better understand how dialysis care practice influences health outcomes and costs. The study places a special emphasis on the perspective of the patient. The effort includes the development of patient‐centered instruments for assessment of health‐related quality of life, patient preferences and patient satisfaction. Our hope is to provide information and tools to guide physicians and providers in selecting optimal dialysis practices for their patients with ESRD.
Where are Children Active and Does it Matter for Physical Activity? A Latent Transition Analysis.

BACKGROUND Numerous studies have focused on the role of environments in promoting physical activity, but few studies have examined the specific locations where children are active and whether being active in these locations is associated with physical activity levels over time. METHODS Self-reported locations of where physical activity occurred and physical activity measured via accelerometry were obtained for a cohort of 520 children in 5th and 6th grades. Latent class analysis was used to generate classes of children defined by the variety of locations where they were active (ie, home, school grounds, gyms, recreational centers, parks or playgrounds, neighborhood, and church). Latent transition analyses were used to characterize how these latent classes change over time and to determine whether the latent transitions were associated with changes in physical activity levels. RESULTS Two latent classes were identified at baseline with the majority of children in the class labeled as 'limited variety. ' Most children maintained their latent status over time. Physical activity levels declined for all groups, but significantly less so for children who maintained their membership in the 'greater variety' latent status. CONCLUSIONS Supporting and encouraging physical activity in a variety of locations may improve physical activity levels in children.
Energy Cost of Free-Play Activities in 10- to 11-Year-Old Children.

OBJECTIVE This study sought to ascertain the energy expenditure (EE) associated with different sedentary and physically active free-play activities in primary school-aged children. METHODS Twenty-eight children (13 boys; 11.4 ± 0.3 years; 1.45 ± 0.09 m; 20.0 ± 4.7 kg∙m-2) from 1 primary school in Northwest England engaged in 6 activities representative of children's play for 10 minutes (drawing, watching a DVD, playground games and free-choice) and 5 minutes (self-paced walking and jogging), with 5 minutes rest between each activity. Gas exchange variables were measured throughout. Resting energy expenditure was measured during 15 minutes of supine rest. RESULTS Child (Schofield-predicted) MET values for watching a DVD, self-paced jogging and playing reaction ball were significantly higher for girls (P < .05). CONCLUSION Utilizing a field-based protocol to examine children's free-living behaviors, these data contribute to the scarcity of information concerning children's EE during play to update the Compendium of Energy Expenditures for Youth.
Faster-Than-Nyquist Signaling: An Overview

Faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling can improve the bandwidth utilization. In this paper, we will provide a comprehensive survey on the topic. The history and the applications of FTN signaling are first introduced. Then, the basic principles and the system framework of FTN signaling are presented. Next, more details on transmitter and receiver optimization are discussed. Finally, the current research challenges on FTN signaling are identified and conclusions are provided.
Energy Expenditure in Vinyasa Yoga Versus Walking.

BACKGROUND Whether the energy cost of vinyasa yoga meets the criteria for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity has not been established. PURPOSE To compare energy expenditure during acute bouts of vinyasa yoga and 2 walking protocols. METHODS Participants (20 males, 18 females) performed 60-minute sessions of vinyasa yoga (YOGA), treadmill walking at a self-selected brisk pace (SELF), and treadmill walking at a pace that matched the heart rate of the YOGA session (HR-Match). Energy expenditure was assessed via indirect calorimetry. RESULTS Energy expenditure was significantly lower in YOGA compared with HR-Match (difference = 79.5 ± 44.3 kcal; P < .001) and SELF (difference = 51.7 ± 62.6 kcal; P < .001), but not in SELF compared with HR-Match (difference = 27.8 ± 72.6 kcal; P = .054). A similar pattern was observed for metabolic equivalents (HR-Match = 4.7 ± 0.8, SELF = 4.4 ± 0.7, YOGA = 3.6 ± 0.6; P < .001). Analyses using only the initial 45 minutes from each of the sessions, which excluded the restorative component of YOGA, showed energy expenditure was significantly lower in YOGA compared with HR-Match (difference = 68.0 ± 40.1 kcal; P < .001) but not compared with SELF (difference = 15.1 ± 48.7 kcal; P = .189). CONCLUSIONS YOGA meets the criteria for moderate-intensity physical activity. Thus, YOGA may be a viable form of physical activity to achieve public health guidelines and to elicit health benefits.
Physiological versus clinical consequences of left recurrent laryngeal neuropathy (LRLN)

Summary The clinical implications of ventilatory alterations induced by left recurrent laryngeal neuropathy (LRLN) are reduced performance due to increased metabolic requirements for breathing and a reduction in peak aerobic power (VO2peak). To test this hypothesis, the metabolic cost of locomotion (MCL) and peak aerobic power (VO2peak) were measured in 4 non racing crossbred horses (low VO2peak) with reversibly induced LRLN using an incremental treadmill exercise test. Reversible LRLN was achieved with regional anaesthesia. These results were compared to previous measurements in 4 Thoroughbred racehorses (high VO2peak, Ehrlich et al. 1993). No significant difference in MCL (based on VO2 and venous lactate) was found in either group of horses at exercise intensities where VO2 < VO2peak (<9 m/s). Peak aerobic power decreased by 15.3% (140.0 ± 3.2 vs. 165.3 ± 3.4 ml/kg/min ± s.e., in the Thoroughbred racehorses (high VO2peak) with induced LRLN but not in the non racing horses with lower VO2peak (135.0 ± 4.5 ml/kg/min ± s.e. The results of these 2 studies indicate that alterations in ventilation due to LRLN cause a significant reduction in VO2peak only in horses with high VO2peak. At exercise intensities where VO2 < VO2peak, MCL was not increased in either group of horses despite ventilatory alterations induced by LRLN.