Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A DETECTION OF WEAK-LENSING MAGNIFICATION USING GALAXY SIZES AND MAGNITUDES

Weak lensing is commonly measured using shear through galaxy ellipticities or using the effect of magnification bias on galaxy number densities. Here, we report on the first detection of weak-lensing magnification with a new, independent technique using the distribution of galaxy sizes and magnitudes. These data come for free in galaxy surveys designed for measuring shear. We present the magnification estimator and apply it to an X-ray-selected sample of galaxy groups in the COSMOS Hubble Space Telescope survey. The measurement of the projected surface density Σ(r) is consistent with the shear measurements within the uncertainties and has roughly 40% of the signal to noise of the latter. We discuss systematic issues and challenges to realizing the potential of this new probe of weak lensing.
220-MHz monolithically integrated optical sensor with large-area integrated PIN photodiode

We propose a PIN photodiode integrated in a BiCMOS process which combines a quantum efficiency of nearly 100% for red light, fast response times, and a low junction capacitance. Bandwidths of 720 MHz at 660 nm and 683 MHz at 850 nm are achieved for this PIN photodiode. It allows the design of fast optoelectronic integrated circuits for many advanced applications in optical sensing, optical storage systems, and optical data transmission for optical wavelengths ranging at least from 660 to 850 nm. Because of the low photodiode capacitance of 0.01 fF//spl mu/m/sup 2/, it is possible to achieve high bandwidths, even with large photodetector areas. The proposed optical receiver employing a PIN photodiode with a diameter of 500 /spl mu/m and a capacitance of only 2.2 pF attains a -3-dB bandwidth of 220 MHz, which corresponds to a maximum nonreturn-to-zero data rate of 300 Mbit/s.
Changes in dimeric inhibin A and B during normal early puberty in boys and girls

OBJECTIVE Although recently developed specific and sensitive assays of bioactive dimeric inhibin A and B have given new insights into the pituitary‐gonadal axis in adult men and during the adult female menstrual cycle, there have been no reports on circulating inhibin A and B during normal human puberty. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship of dimeric inhibin A and B to pubertal stage, FSH and testosterone or oestradiol in late prepuberty and in early puberty.
Metformin for preventing gestational diabetes in women with polycystic ovarian syndrome.

OBJECTIVE To assess the effect of metformin in controlling Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) in women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). STUDY DESIGN Comparative cohort study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY Gynecology Clinics of Mamji Hospital, Karachi, from 2008 to 2010. METHODOLOGY Patients who had been diagnosed Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) with hyperinsulinemia and conceived and continued pregnancy, were divided in two groups; 50 patients received metformin throughout pregnancy and 32 did not. Development of GDM was ascertained in both groups. The patients were followed throughout pregnancy and in puerperium with OGTT as per WHO criteria. Primary outcome measure was development of gestational diabetes mellitus. Comparison of continuous variables was done using student 't' test. For categorical variables, frequency and percentages are reported while, odds ratio is also estimated for GDM during pregnancy. RESULTS A total of 82 women with PCOS were included in this study, out of whom, 50 patients received metformin treatment while 32 patients did not. Pregnant women with PCOS in both groups were comparable in age, weight, parity and BMI. Mean fasting insulin levels at beginning of study entry were 17.22 ± 2.3 mIU/L and 16.93 ± 2.28 mIU/L in metformin and no metformin group respectively (p=0.589). Mean fasting blood sugar levels were 94.54 mg/dl in metformin and 99.59 mg/dl in no metformin group p < 0.001. A total of 5 (10%) patients in metformin group developed GDM while 11 (34.37% OR 4.71, p = 0.01) developed GDM in no metformin group. Patients not receiving metformin were 4.7 times likely to have GDM (OR: 4.71) compared to those who received it. CONCLUSION The frequency of gestational diabetes, was significantly higher in patients with PCOS who had not received metformin compared to those who did.
A simple model of inter-metallic connections (vias) in CMOS resonant rotary traveling wave oscillator (RTWO)

In this work, a simple electric circuit model for the evaluation of the impact of vias (inter-metallic vertical connections) in resonant rotary traveling wave oscillator (RTWO) is proposed. A test structure was designed to quantify the degradation on the signal integrity of RTWOs caused by these vias. The test structure and the RTWO were designed according to the rules of the 130 nm commercial mixed mode, Single-Poly 8-Metal (1P8M), P-substrate, RFCMOS technology. The vias test structure consist of vertical inter-metallic connections and respective metallic pads. According to the used technology, the test structure was implemented using copper for all the metals layers. Simulations were performed using advanced tools: a 3D electromagnetic simulator (EMpro) for the extraction of the electrical properties of the test structure, HSPICE for electrical simulation and Mentor Graphics IC Studio for the geometric pattern (layout) design of the test structure. Finally, a 26.87 GHz RTWO was designed to quantify the performance of the oscillator under the effect of the vias.
Efficacy of microencapsulated lactic acid bacteria in Helicobater pylori eradication therapy

Background: Probiotic delivery systems are widely used nutraceutical products for the supplementation of natural intestinal flora. These delivery systems vary greatly in the effectiveness to exert health benefits for a patient. This study focuses on providing probiotic living cells with a physical barrier against adverse environmental conditions. Materials and Methods: Microencapsulation of the selected lactic acid bacteria (LAB) using chitosan and alginate was performed. Physical examination of the formulated LAB microcapsules was observed using phase contrast inverted microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Finally, the survival of microencapsulated and noncapsulated bacteria was cheeked in the simulated human gastric tract (GT). The potential antimicrobial activity of the most potent microencapsulated LAB strain was in vivo evaluated in rabbit models. Results: Microencapsulated L. plantarum, L. acidophilus, and L. bulgaricus DSMZ 20080 were loaded with 1.03 × 1010 CFU viable bacteria/g, 1.9 × 1010 CFU viable bacteria/g, and 5.5 × 109 CFU viable bacteria/g, respectively. The survival of microencapsulated cells was significantly higher than that of the free cells after exposure to simulated gastric juice (SGJ) at pH 2. Additionally, in simulated small intestine juice (SSJ), larger amounts of the selected LAB cells were found, whereas in simulated colon juice (SCJ), the released LAB reached the maximum counts. In vivo results pointed out that an 8-week supplementation with a triple therapy of a microencapsulated L. plantarum, L. acidophilus, and L. bulgaricus DSMZ 20080 might be able to reduce H. pylori. Conclusion: Microencapsulated probiotics could possibly compete with and downregulate H. pylori infection in humans.
Bug Severity Assessment in Cross Project Context and Identifying Training Candidates

The automatic bug severity prediction will be useful in prioritising the development efforts, allocating resources and bug fixer. It needs historical data on which classifiers can be trained. In the absence of such historical data cross project prediction provides a good solution. In this paper, our objective is to automate the bug severity prediction by using a bug metric summary and to identify best training candidates in cross project context. The text mining technique has been used to extract the summary terms and trained the classifiers using these terms. About 63 training candidates have been designed by combining seven datasets of Eclipse projects to develop the severity prediction models. To deal with the imbalance bug data problem, we employed two approaches of ensemble by using two operators available in RapidMiner: Vote and Bagging. Results show that k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN) performance is better than the Support Vector Machine (SVM) performance. Naive Bayes f-measure performance is poor, i.e. below 34.25%. In case of k-NN, developing training candidates by combining more than one training datasets helps in improving the performances (f-measure and accuracy). The two ensemble approaches have improved the f-measure performance up to 5% and 10% respectively for the severity levels having less number of bug reports in comparison of major severity level. We have further motivated the paper with a cross project bug severity prediction between Eclipse and Mozilla products. Results show that Mozilla products can be used to build reliable prediction models for Eclipse products and vice versa in case of SVM and k-NN classifiers.
Experimental validation of active frontend — Backend stateful PCE operations in flexgrid optical network re-optimization

A PCE-based strategy for LSP re-optimization in flexgrid optical networks is experimentally validated. A front- and back-end stateful PCE architecture is deployed, wherein automatic and coordinated operations (e.g., computation delegation, database synchronization, etc.) are demonstrated using PCEP and BGP-LS protocols.
ALMA REVEALS WEAK [N ii] EMISSION IN “TYPICAL” GALAXIES AND INTENSE STARBURSTS AT z = 5–6

We report interferometric measurements of [N ii] 205 μm fine-structure line emission from a representative sample of three galaxies at z = 5–6 using the Atacama Large (sub)Millimeter Array (ALMA). These galaxies were previously detected in [C ii] and far-infrared continuum emission and span almost two orders of magnitude in star formation rate (SFR). Our results show at least two different regimes of ionized interstellar medium properties for galaxies in the first billion years of cosmic time, separated by their ratio. We find extremely low [N ii] emission compared to [C ii] ( ) from a “typical” star-forming galaxy, likely directly or indirectly (by its effect on the radiation field) related to low dust abundance and low metallicity. The infrared-luminous modestly star-forming Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) in our sample is characterized by an ionized-gas fraction ( typical of local star-forming galaxies and shows evidence for spatial variations in its ionized-gas fraction across an extended gas reservoir. The extreme SFR, warm and compact dusty starburst AzTEC-3 shows an ionized fraction higher than expected given its SFR surface density ( ) suggesting that [N ii] dominantly traces a diffuse ionized medium rather than star-forming H ii regions in this type of galaxy. This highest redshift sample of [N ii] detections provides some of the first constraints on ionized and neutral gas modeling attempts and on the structure of the interstellar medium at z = 5–6 in “normal” galaxies and starbursts.
LONG-TERM SURGICAL OUTCOMES AFTER VITRECTOMY FOR SYMPTOMATIC LAMELLAR MACULAR HOLES

Purpose: To determine long-term surgical findings and outcomes after vitrectomy for symptomatic lamellar macular holes. Methods: This is a retrospective, consecutive, interventional case series. Sixteen patients (31 eyes) with lamellar macular holes and central visual loss participated in the study. All patients underwent 3-port pars plana vitrectomy with membranectomy and/or internal limiting membrane peeling and gas tamponade under the care of one author. Best-corrected visual acuity and optical coherence tomography appearance were determined preoperatively and postoperatively. Results: Final visual acuity improved more than 2 lines postoperatively in 18 eyes (58.1%) and decreased in 2 eyes (6.5%) leading to a mean gain of 0.18 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution visual acuity during the mean follow-up period of 39 ± 24 months (12–85 months). Twenty-eight eyes (90.3%) improved or normalized in foveal appearance on postoperative optical coherence tomography images of the macula, 1 eye remained unchanged, and 1 eye (3.2%) had chronic cystoid macular edema, 1 eye was unchanged, and 1 eye showed recurrence of lamellar macular hole. Conclusion: In patients with central visual loss from lamellar macular holes, vitrectomy, membranectomy, and/or internal limiting membrane peeling and gas tamponade appear to have a beneficial effect for a mean of 3 years.
Towards detection and prevention of malicious activities against web applications and internet services

Das Internet hat in den letzten Jahren ein enormes Wachstum erfahren. Mit der steigenden Popularitat des Internets wuchs auch das Interesse von Angreifern, die nach Schwachstellen in den Computern suchen, um sich diese zu Eigen zu machen. Was als eine Art Wettkampf begann, ist heute eine Schattenwirtschaft. Angreifer versuchen, anfallige Computer unter ihre Kontrolle zu bekommen, um schadliche Aktivitaten durchfuhren. In dieser Dissertation wenden wir uns von zwei Seiten den Risiken zu, mit denen Internet Benutzer taglich konfrontiert sind. Erstens untersuchen wir, wie infizierte Computer in einem Botnetz Angriffe ausuben und entwickeln neue Methoden zur Schadensbegrenzung, die infizierte Computer davon abhalten die Befehle eines Botmasters auszufuhren. Zweitens untersuchen wir verschiedene Methoden, mit denen die Angreifer uber das Web neue Computer infizieren. Aufbauend auf unseren Untersuchungen schlagen wir ein System vor, das Anwendern helfen kann sicher im Web zu surfen.
Dental demolition.

A proportion of our chairside time is spent in replacing defective restorations. However, many of the well known textbooks on restorative dentistry describe how high quality restorations should be produced, but not the techniques for removing faulty ones. This article discusses some of these techniques. It examines the removal of nonadhesive and adhesive plastic restorations, veneers, inlays, root fillings, crowns and bridges. The removal of foreign objects and posts from root canals has been described elsewhere and so will not be discussed here.
Antimycobacterial and Synergistic Effects of 18β‐Glycyrrhetinic Acid or Glycyrrhetinic acid‐30‐piperazine in Combination with Isoniazid, Rifampicin or Streptomycin against Mycobacterium bovis

18ß‐Glycyrrhetinic acid (18ßGA) is a major bioactive component of liquorice with known activity. In this study, we found that both 18ßGA and its derivative glycyrrhetinic acid‐30‐piperazine (PGA), have potent antimycobacterial properties against the drug‐susceptible and drug‐resistant Mycobacterium bovis. More importantly, they exhibited synergistic effects with the first‐line drugs isoniazid (INH), rifampicin (RIF) and streptomycin (SM) against clinical M. bovis isolates, including drug‐resistant strains. In combination with a subinhibitory concentration of 18ßGA, the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of the anti‐tuberculosis agents decreased, ranging from 4‐ to 16‐, 4‐ to 8‐ and 4‐ to 8‐fold for INH (fractional inhibitory concentration index (FICI) 0.125–0.375), RIF (FICI 0.118–0.281) and SM (FICI 0.094–0.275), respectively. In the presence of PGA, MICs for the first‐line agents resulted in a 4–16‐fold decrease for INH (FICI 0.094–0.266, RIF (FICI 0.114–0.313) and SM (FICI 0.094–0.281). Additionally, the MICs of 18ßGA or PGA alone showed significant decreases ranging from 8‐ to 16‐, 8‐ to 64‐ and 8‐ to 128‐fold in the presence of INH, RIF and SM, respectively. These findings indicate that 18ßGA and its derivatives might serve as potential therapeutic compounds for future antimycobacterial drug development. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Identification of a Novel Oligomerization Disrupting Mutation in CRYΑA Associated with Congenital Cataract in a South Australian Family

Congenital cataract is a heterogeneous disorder causing severe visual impairment in affected children. We screened four South Australian families with autosomal dominant congenital cataract for mutations in 10 crystallin genes known to cause congenital cataract. We identified a novel segregating heterozygous mutation, c.62G>A (p.R21Q), in the CRYΑA gene in one family. Western blotting of proteins freshly extracted from cataractous lens material of the proband demonstrated a marked reduction in the amount of the high‐molecular‐weight oligomers seen in the lens material of an unaffected individual. We conclude that the p.R21Q mutation, which is located in the highly conserved and structurally significant N‐terminal region of the protein, is responsible for the cataract phenotype observed in the family as this mutation likely reduces the formation of the functional oligomeric alpha‐crystallin.
The longitudinal relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and perceived social support in survivors of traumatic injury

Background Although perceived social support is thought to be a strong predictor of psychological outcomes following trauma exposure, the temporal relationship between perceived positive and negative social support and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms has not been empirically established. This study investigated the temporal sequencing of perceived positive social support, perceived negative social support, and PTSD symptoms in the 6 years following trauma exposure among survivors of traumatic injury. Method Participants were 1132 trauma survivors initially assessed upon admission to one of four Level 1 trauma hospitals in Australia after experiencing a traumatic injury. Participants were followed up at 3 months, 12 months, 24 months, and 6 years after the traumatic event. Results Latent difference score analyses revealed that greater severity of PTSD symptoms predicted subsequent increases in perceived negative social support at each time-point. Greater severity of PTSD symptoms predicted subsequent decreases in perceived positive social support between 3 and 12 months. High levels of perceived positive or negative social support did not predict subsequent changes in PTSD symptoms at any time-point. Conclusions Results highlight the impact of PTSD symptoms on subsequent perceived social support, regardless of the type of support provided. The finding that perceived social support does not influence subsequent PTSD symptoms is novel, and indicates that the relationship between PTSD and perceived social support may be unidirectional.
On Bayesian Channel Estimation and FFT-Based Symbol Detection in MIMO Underwater Acoustic Communications

Reliable channel estimation and effective interference cancellation are essential for enhancing the performance of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) underwater acoustic communication (UAC) systems. In this paper, an efficient user-parameter-free Bayesian approach, referred to as sparse learning via iterative minimization (SLIM), is presented. SLIM provides good channel estimation performance along with reduced computational complexity compared to iterative adaptive approach (IAA). Moreover, RELAX-BLAST, which is a linear minimum mean-squared error (MMSE)-based symbol detection scheme, is implemented efficiently by making use of the conjugate gradient (CG) method and diagonalization properties of circulant matrices. The proposed algorithm requires only simple fast Fourier transform (FFT) operations and facilitates parallel implementations. These MIMO UAC techniques are evaluated using both simulated and in-water experimental examples. The 2008 Surface Processes and Acoustic Communications Experiment (SPACE08) experimental results show that the proposed MIMO UAC schemes can enjoy almost error-free performance even under severe ocean environments.
Contextual Visual Recognition from Images and Videos

Object recognition from images and videos has been a topic of great interest in the computer vision community. Its success directly impacts a wide variety of real-world applications; from surveillance and health care to self-driving cars and online shopping.Objects exhibit organizational structure in their real-world setting (Biederman et al., 1982). Contextual reasoning is part of human's visual understanding and has been modeled by various efforts in computer vision in the past (Torralba, 2001). Recently, object recognition has reached a new peak with the help of deep learning. State-of-the-art object recognition systems use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to classify regions of interest in an image. The visual cues extracted for each region are limited to the content of the region and ignore the contextual information from the scene. So the question remains, how can we enhance convolutional neural networks with contextual reasoning to improve recognition? Work presented in this manuscript shows how contextual cues conditioned on the scene and the object can improve CNNs' ability to recognize difficult, highly contextual objects from images. Turning to the most interesting object of all, people, contextual reasoning is a key for the fine-grained tasks of action and attribute recognition. Here, we demonstrate the importance of extracting cues in an instance-specific and category-specific manner tied to the task in question. Finally, we study motion which captures the change in shape and appearance in time and is a way to extract dynamic contextual cues. We show that coupling motion with the complementary signal of static visual appearance leads to a very effective representation for action recognition from videos.
Business Process Maturity In Small And Mediumsized Enterprises

Business process management in an enterprise is an approach to management that concentrates on optimizing the ways business processes in organisation’s run. The business process maturity of the organization is one of the success factors. From this perspective, the constant advancing the process maturity level is the relevant economic task and the area is still an important issue requiring investigation. The article presents the results of empirical research - the survey was conducted in 2015 on a group of 138 enterprises in Poland. The main aim of this article is the identification and analysis of business process maturity in small and medium-sized enterprises in Poland, as well as finding the areas that require the intensification of process management.
What is a “unimodal” cell population? Using statistical tests as criteria for unimodality in automated gating and quality control

Many automated gating algorithms for flow cytometry data are based on the concept of unimodal cell populations. However, in this article, we show that criteria previously used to make decisions on unimodality cannot adequately distinguish unimodal from bimodal densities. We show that dip and bandwidth tests for unimodality, taken from the statistics literature, can do this with consistent and low error rates. These tests also have the possibility to adjust the significance level to handle the trade‐off between failing to detect a second mode and seeing a second mode when there is none. The differences between the dip and bandwidth tests are elucidated using real data from the FlowCAP I challenge, also guidelines for flow cytometry data preprocessing are given. © 2017 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry