Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oral health-related quality of life of implant-supported overdentures versus conventional complete prostheses: Retrospective study of a cohort of edentulous patients

Background This work aims to confirm if implant-supported overdentures are a good treatment option for edentulous patients and offer an improvement in quality of life compared with traditional complete prostheses (dentures). Material and Methods This retrospective clinical descriptive study included three evaluation groups: validation group (n=57); control group of patients with complete removeable prostheses (n=56); study group of patients with implant-supported overdentures retained with the Locator® system (n=80). The study also validated the Oral Health Impact Profile-20 questionnaire. Individual protocols were created that included socio-demographic data, the Oral Health Impact Profile-20 (OHIP-20) questionnaire and Oral Satisfaction Scale (OSS). Descriptive and bivariate statistical analysis was carried out applying χ², Pearson, Kruskal-Wallis, and Student t tests, transferring data into SPSS-Windows® software from a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet. Results The OHIP-20 proved to be a valid instrument and provided reliable assessment of health-related quality of life among both the Spanish general population and edentulous patients. The control and study groups proved comparable, showing socio-demographic homogeneity. For patients with overdentures retained by means of the Locator® system, these restorations had significantly lower impact on quality of life (19 vs 33), both generally and for each individual questionnaire item, and much higher satisfaction with the state of their oral cavities (8.3 vs 5.3) than patients wearing dentures; both sets of data showed a direct linear relationship, so that as the level of impact on quality of life increased, perceived oral satisfaction worsened. Conclusions Patients rehabilitated with implant supported overdentures retained by the Locator® system, presented significantly lower levels of impact on their quality of life and significantly higher oral satisfaction than patients with conventional complete prostheses. Key words: Oral health-related quality of life, OHIP-20, OSS, overdentures, dental implants, complete prostheses, Locator® system.
Cell death in the mammalian visual system during normal development: II. Superior colliculus

Degenerating cells may be observed with light microscopy in the hamster superior colliculus during early postnatal development. In the superficial gray layer and stratum opticum, 1.8 degenerating cells for each 1,000 live cells could be seen on the first postnatal day. This rate increased to 5.6 degenerating cells per 1,000 live cells by postnatal day 5, and declined to 2.6 per 1,000 live cells by postnatal day 8. The rate of cell degeneration was consistently elevated at the medial, lateral, and caudal margins of the superficial gray layer relative to the center. In the intermediate and deep gray layers, the rate of cell death was consistently higher, starting at three degenerating cells per 1,000 on the first postnatal day, increasing to 15 per 1,000 on postnatal day 5, and declining to 4.7 per 1,000 by postnatal day 8. In contrast to the superficial gray layer, the number of degenerating cells in the central versus peripheral segments of the intermediate and deep gray layers was quite similar.
MATCH: multimodal access to city help

Interfaces to mobile information access devices need to allow users to interact using whichever mode or combination of modes are most appropriate, given their user preference, task at hand, and physical and social environment. This paper describes a multimodal application architecture which facilitates rapid prototyping of flexible next-generation multimodal interfaces. Our sample application MATCH (Multimodal Access To City Help) provides a mobile multimodal speech-pen interface to restaurant and subway information for New York City. Finite-state multimodal language processing technology enables input in pen, speech, or integrated combinations of the two. The system also features multimodal generation capabilities providing speech output synchronized with dynamic graphical displays.
Time Domain Identification of PWM Converters for Digital Controllers Design

A discrete time-domain based system identification method for PWM DC-DC converters is presented. The proposed procedure is capable of successfully reconstructing the system's model from an arbitrary excitation at the command input. In this study, a step perturbation was applied, which is simple to apply and has an intuitive interpretation of the output response. The effects of switching and quantization noise were overcome by choosing the sampling instance to be after the switching oscillations decay significantly and by averaging the responses of synchronously perturbed sequences. The proposed method was evaluated on Buck and Boost converters. The digital data acquisition procedure was implemented on a TMS320F2407 DSP core. Excellent agreement was found between simulations and experimental results.
Psychotic versus nonpsychotic depression in hospitalized adolescents

One hundred fifty adolescent inpatients with major depression were systematically assessed for demographic and clinical differences between psychotic and nonpsychotic depression. Delusions and/or hallucinations were present in 10% of the subjects. The psychotic group had significantly more frequent and severe suicidal ideation. Posttraumatic stress disorder was also more frequent in the psychotic group. Depression and Anxiety 6:40–42, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Federal Government Budget Deficits and Interest Rates: A Brief Note

This empirical note investigates the impact of the federal budget deficit upon the nominal long term rate of interest. The analysis differs from the existing literature on a number of counts. To begin with, the analysis uses the most updated evidence available on the structural deficit, as well as newly available data on inflationary expectations. Next, unlike previous studies, the variable federal purchases of goods and services is expressly introduced into the model as an explanatory variable. In addition, since the total federal deficit is in this paper broken into its two component parts, the structural deficit (which is exogenous) and the cyclical deficit (which is not exogenous), the model expressly deals with the problem of simultaneity bias involving the cyclical deficit. Finally, the monetary policy measure, government purchases of goods and services, and the two deficit measures are not only expressed in real terms but also are divided by trend real GNP; this is because monetary policy actions, government purchases of goods and services, and the budget deficit must all be judged relative to the size of the economy. The 2SLS estimation reveals that federal budget deficits act to elevate the nominal long term interest rate.
The gray prediction search algorithm for block motion estimation

Due to the temporal and spatial correlation of the image sequence, the motion vector of a block is highly related to the motion vectors of its adjacent blocks in the same image frame. If we can obtain useful and enough information from the adjacent motion vectors, the total number of search points used to find the motion vector of the block may be reduced significantly. Using that idea, an efficient gray prediction search (GPS) algorithm for block motion estimation is proposed in this paper. Based on the gray system theory, the GPS can determine the motion vectors of image blocks quickly and correctly. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other search algorithms, such as 3SS, CS, PHODS, 4SS, BBGDS, SES and PSA, in terms of six different measures: (1) average mean square error per pixel; (2) average peak signal-to-noise ratio; (3) average prediction errors per pixel; (4) average entropy of prediction errors; (5) average percentage of unpredictable pels per frame; and (6) average search points per block.
Wi-Fi Indoor Positioning System Based on RSSI Measurements from Wi-Fi Access Points -A Tri-lateration Approach

Positioning is the most attractive technology today. Various technologies are used now days for positioning purpose. GPS is mainly used for outdoor environment. Non-suitability of GPS in indoor conditions because of its NLOS conditions and signal attenuation has lead to several other techniques of indoor positioning. This paper compares few indoor positioning methods and proposes indoor positioning system using tri-lateration method which uses RSSI data from wi-fi access points to do localization in indoor environment.
Behavior of the minimum singular value of a random Vandermonde matrix

In this work we examine the behavior of the minimum singular value of random Vandermonde matrices. In particular, we prove that the minimum singular value s1(N) is at most N exp(-C√N) where N is the dimension of the matrix and C is a constant. Furthermore, the value of the constant C is determined explicitly. The main result is obtained in two different ways. One approach uses techniques from stochastic processes and in particular, a construction related to the Brownian bridge. The other one is a more direct analytical approach involving combinatorics and complex analysis. As a consequence, we obtain a lower bound on the maximum absolute value of a random polynomial on the unit circle, which may be of independent mathematical interest.
CASTED: Core-Adaptive Software Transient Error Detection for Tightly Coupled Cores

Aggressive silicon process scaling over the last years has made transistors faster and less power consuming. Meanwhile, transistors have become more susceptible to errors. The need to maintain high reliability has led to the development of various software-based error detection methodologies which target either single-core or multi-core processors. In this work, we present CASTED, a Core-Adaptive Soft- ware Transient Error Detection methodology that focuses on improving the impact of error detection overhead on single- chip scalable architectures that are composed of tightly coupled cores. The proposed compiler methodology adaptively distributes the error detection overhead to the available resources across multiple cores, fully exploiting the abundant ILP of these architectures. CASTED adapts to a wide range of architecture configurations (issue-width, inter-core delay). We evaluate our technique on a range of architecture configurations using the MediabenchII video and SPEC CINT2000 benchmark suites. Our approach successfully adapts to (and regularly outperforms by up to 21.2%) the best fixed state-of- the-art approach while maintaining the same fault coverage.
Impacts of the Continuous Cash Benefit Programme on Family Welfare

The Beneficio de Prestacao Continuada (BPC ? Continuous Cash Benefit) programme grants a non-contributory benefit of the amount of one minimum wage to elderly people (65 or older) and those with disabilities that make them unfit to live and work independently. To qualify, there must be evidence that the monthly household income per capita is less than a quarter of the minimum wage currently in effect. It is, therefore, aimed at very poor families. The BPC is a right guaranteed by the 1988 Federal Constitution and regulated by the Lei Orgânica de Assistencia Social (LOAS ? Organic Law on Social Assistance). The cash transfers began in 1996. (? )
Complete remission with tyrosine kinase inhibitors in renal cell carcinoma

In the era of cytokine therapy, although response rates of interleukin-2 (IL-2) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (m-RCC) were not satisfactory, a small percentage of complete remission (CR) was achieved (1). Recently, targeted therapy has replaced cytokine therapy. Sunitinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), has been especially effective in tumor reduction but has rarely induced CR (1). Because of the unique and characteristic adverse effects (AEs) of targeted drugs, this study highlights the importance of maintaining therapy in patients who have achieved CR with TKIs. A multicenter study on m-RCC patients who achieved CR with either TKI (sorafenib, sunitinib) alone or in combination with local treatment (surgery, radiotherapy, radiofrequency ablation) was performed retrospectively. The subjects of the study were 64 patients who achieved CR: 36 were treated with TKI alone and 28 with TKI plus local treatment. The denominator of all patients treated with TKIs was not available, but the incidence of CR from a part of them was 1.7%. This rate is in line with data from other studies (1,2). The aim of this study is to characterize the patients, to assess the indication of discontinuing targeted therapy, and to define the subsequent therapeutic implications.
Combinations of Different Raters for Text Summarization

Because of the unprecedented growth of information on the web it became difficult to decide what information is truly relevant. We present a method of personalized summarization based on a combination of different raters that process the additional information, such as user characteristics or document metadata to extract from the document information that is important for a particular user or in a chosen domain, thus decreasing the information overload. We have experimented with the proposed method in the adaptive web-based educational system ALEF. Our results suggest that user-added annotations can be used to improve the summaries’ quality compared to the generic variant.
Decay of magnetic fields in Kaluza-Klein theory.

Magnetic fields in five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory compactified on a circle correspond to ``twisted'' identifications of five-dimensional Minkowski space. We show that a five-dimensional generalization of the Kerr solution can be analytically continued to construct an instanton that gives rise to two possible decay modes of a magnetic field. One decay mode is the generalization of the ``bubble decay'' of the Kaluza-Klein vacuum described by Witten. The other decay mode, rarer for weak fields, corresponds in four dimensions to the creation of monopole-antimonopole pairs. An instanton for the latter process is already known and is given by the analytic continuation of the Kaluza-Klein Ernst metric, which we show is identical to the five-dimensional Kerr solution. We use this fact to illuminate further properties of the decay process. It appears that fundamental fermions can eliminate the bubble decay of the magnetic field, while allowing the pair produciton of Kaluza-Klein monopoles. \textcopyright{} 1995 The American Physical Society.
Quantifying the Independence of Human Finger Movements: Comparisons of Digits, Hands, and Movement Frequencies

To determine whether other digits move when normal humans attempt to move just one digit, we asked 10 right-handed subjects to move one finger at a time while we recorded the motion of all five digits simultaneously with both a video motion analysis system and an instrumented glove. We quantified the independence of the digits to compare (1) the different digits, (2) the right versus the left hand, and (3) movements at a self-paced frequency versus externally paced movements at 3 Hz. We also quantified the degree to which motion occurred at the proximal, middle, or distal joint of each digit. Even when asked to move just one finger, normal human subjects produced motion in other digits. Movements of the thumb, index finger, and little finger typically were more highly individuated than were movements of the middle or ring fingers. Fingers of the dominant hand were not more independent than were those of the nondominant hand. Self-paced movements made at ∼2 Hz were more highly individuated than were externally paced movements at 3 Hz. Angular motion tended to be greatest at the middle joint of each digit, with increased angular motion at the proximal and distal joints during 3 Hz movements. Simultaneous motion of noninstructed digits may result in part from passive mechanical connections between the digits, in part from the organization of multitendoned finger muscles, and in part from distributed neural control of the hand.
Efficient ML training of CDHMM parameters based on prior evolution, posterior intervention and feedback

We present an efficient maximum likelihood (ML) training procedure for Gaussian mixture continuous density hidden Markov model (CDHMM) parameters. This procedure is proposed using the concept of approximate prior evolution, posterior intervention and feedback (PEPIF). In a series of experiments for training CDHMMs for a continuous Mandarin Chinese speech recognition task, the new PEPIF procedure achieves a 4-fold speed-up in terms of user CPU time over that of the Baum-Welch algorithm in producing models of given likelihood or recognition accuracy.
Reward Shaping by Demonstration

Potential-based reward shaping is a theoretically sound way of incorporating prior knowledge in a reinforcement learning setting. While providing flexibility for choosing the potential function, under certain conditions this method guarantees the convergence of the final policy, regardless of the properties of the potential function. However, this flexibility of choice may cause confusion when making a design decision for a specific domain, as the number of possible candidates for a potential function can be overwhelming. Moreover, the potential function either can be manually designed, to bias the behavior of the learner, or can be recovered from prior knowledge, e.g. from human demonstrations. In this paper we investigate the efficacy of two different methods of using a potential function recovered from human demonstrations. Our first approach uses a mixture of Gaussian distributions generated by samples collected during demonstrations (Gaussian-Shaping), and the second approach uses a reward function recovered from demonstrations with Relative Entropy Inverse Reinforcement Learning (RE-IRL-Shaping). We present our findings in Cart-Pole, Mountain Car, and Puddle World domains. Our results show that Gaussian-Shaping can provide an efficient reward heuristic, accelerating learning through its ability to capture local information, and RE-IRL-Shaping can be more resilient to bad demonstrations. We report a brief analysis of our findings and we aim to provide a future reference for reinforcement learning agent designers who consider using reward shaping by human demonstrations.
Trajectory planning method of guide robots for a achieving the guidance

Recently, human-friendly robots are expected to support human daily life at home, office, medical treatment and welfare scene with rapid development of declining children population and increasing aging community. Our research addresses to develop the guide robot that can be used in hospitals, welfare facilities, and etc. In order to achieve the same performance as human guidance on a robot, it is necessary to extract human's guidance knowledge. In this paper, firstly, the advanced guidance knowledge is formulated using production rules based on linguistic variables. Secondly, the trajectory planning of guide robot is implemented by the quantified knowledge and distance-type fuzzy reasoning method. The distance-type fuzzy reasoning method is a fuzzy reasoning method by considering the distance value between two fuzzy sets, and is effective even when the common set between an antecedent and a fact is an empty set. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed trajectory planning method is illuminated by the experiment of guidance considering relative distance and speed to person
Student Work Issues: Implications for College Transition and Retention.

Spring 2003 • Volume 10, Number 2 William Hey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation at Jacksonville State University. Kristine S. Calderon is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, and Denise Seabert is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at Purdue University. ARTICLE
Novelty Bundling Markets

An NBM is a market form in that it is made of institutions and business models. It arises in a particular context where abundant novelty issuing from the producer side meets substantial search costs and evaluation difficulties on the consumer side. In a NBM consumers don't necessarily know what they are searching for. These difficulties on the demand side are specifically caused by the fact that novel goods, which are experience goods, often require new "rules for choice" as new suites of evaluative criteria.
Analysis and synthesis of nonlinear reversible cellular automata in linear time

Cellular automata (CA) have been found as an attractive modeling tool for various applications, such as, pattern recognition, image processing, data compression, encryption, and specially for VLSI design & test. For such applications, mostly a special class of CA, called as linear/additive CA, have been utilized. Since linear/additive CA refer a limited number of candidate CA, while searching for solution to a problem, the best result may not be expected. The nonlinear CA can be a better alternative to linear/additive CA for achieving desired solutions in different applications. However, the nonlinear CA are yet to be characterized to fit the design for modeling an application. This work targets characterization of the nonlinear CA to utilize the huge search space of nonlinear CA while developing applications in VLSI domain. An analytical framework is developed to explore the properties of CA rules. The characterization is directed to deal with the reversibility, as the reversible CA are primarily targeted for VLSI applications. The reported characterization enables us to design two algorithms of linear time complexities -- one for identification and nother for synthesis of nonlinear reversible CA. Finally, the CA rules are classified into 6 classes for developing further efficient synthesis algorithm.
Boredom and homelessness: A scoping review

ABSTRACT Background: Emerging literature suggests that boredom is a frequent problem experienced by homeless persons that may influence their health and well-being. Purpose: The range and breadth of literature exploring boredom among homeless persons is unknown. We initiated this study to fill this gap in existing literature. Method: Using the method advanced by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), and furthered by Levac, Colquhoun and O’Brien (2010), we carried out a scoping review to identify the range and breadth of literature exploring boredom among homeless persons. Two independent raters screened titles and abstracts and evaluated full-text articles against a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria established by all authors. A descriptive analysis and inductive narrative synthesis were performed. Findings: Our search yielded 4536 citations following the removal of duplicates. A total of 17 articles were included in our descriptive analysis and narrative synthesis. Five themes emerged from the included studies: Boredom as a feature of the homeless experience; Coping with boredom; Impact of boredom; Environment as a determinant of boredom; and Interventions for boredom. Only two of the included articles focused on boredom as a central construct, with all others identifying boredom as an experience of homeless persons while investigating related phenomena. Implications: Boredom is a critical topic of study for occupational science, and specifically as it relates to disadvantaged populations. Future research exploring the specific impacts of boredom on homeless persons, and research identifying and evaluating interventions to effectively reduce boredom in this population are needed.