Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effectiveness of Flexible Ureterorenoscopy and Laser Lithotripsy for Multiple Unilateral Intrarenal Stones Smaller Than 2 cm

Purpose. To evaluate the safety and efficacy of RIRS for the treatment of multiple unilateral intrarenal stones smaller than 20 mm. Methods. Between March 2007 and April 2013, patients with multiple intrarenal stones smaller than 20 mm were treated with RIRS and evaluated retrospectively. Each patient was evaluated for stone number, stone burden (cumulative stone length), operative time, SFRs, and complications. Results. 173 intrarenal stones in 48 patients were included. Mean age, mean number of stones per patient, mean stone burden, and mean operative time were 40.2 ± 10.9 years (23–63), 3.6 ± 3.0 (2–18), 22.2 ± 8.4 mm (12–45), and 60.3 ± 22.0 minutes (30–130), respectively. The overall SFR was 91.7%. SFRs for patients with a stone burden less and greater than 20 mm were 100% (23/23) and 84% (21/25), respectively (χ 2 = 26.022, P < 0.001). Complications occurred in six (12.5%–6/48) patients, including urinary tract infection or high-grade fever >38.5°C in three cases, prolonged hematuria in two cases, and ureteral perforation in one case, all of whom were treated conservatively. No major complications occurred. Conclusions. RIRS is an effective treatment option in patients with multiple unilateral intrarenal stones especially when the total stone burden is less than 20 mm.
Bioremediation of Pulp and Paper mill Effluent by Dominant Aboriginal Microbes and Their Consortium

Paper mills are characterized as polluting industries, these use pulping process for papermanufacturing, due to which toxic chemicals released into environment. Therefore, the biological oxygendemand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the emanating stream is high and dissolved oxygen (DO) is low. To resolve this predicament, two dominant bacteria Bacillus subtilis and Micrococcus luteus, and one fungi Phanerochaete crysosporium was isolated from pulp and paper mills effluent (PPME) soils. Thesemicrobes were individually and in consortium were inoculated in (PPME) without diluting and no addition ofcarbon or nitrogen sources. Experiment was conducted under shaking and stationary conditions for nine days. These microbes were found competent of reducing BOD up to 87.2 %, COD up to 94.7% and lignin content up to 97% after 9 d under shaking conditions and brought down pH of raw PPME to neutral and increased DO from 0.8 mg/L to 6.8 mg/L.
Lecture 15 : Communication Algorithms via Deep Learning

Today’s lecture is about using deep learning to construct new error correcting codes (ECCs). ECCs are an important set of tools that enable robust communication over noisy channels, with applications such as telecommunications and data storage. Prof. Pramod Viswanath of UIUC has recently worked on applying deep learning to construct better ECCs [1, 2], as part of a broader research program to resolve issues of algorithmic complexity (see below) with machine learning. The goal of the lecture is to give an overall picture of this research program, as well as two concrete instantiations of these ideas in terms of constructing ECCs through deep learning.
On the settling time of the congested GI/G/1 queue

We analyze a stable GI/G/ 1 queue that starts operating at time t = 0 with N 0 ≠ 0 customers. First, we analyze the time required for this queue to empty for the first time. Under the assumption that both the interarrival and the service time distributions are of the exponential type, we prove that , where λ and μ are the arrival and the service rates. Furthermore, assuming in addition that the interarrival time distribution is of the non-lattice type, we show that the settling time of the queue is essentially equal to N 0 /( μ –λ ); that is, we prove that where is the total variation distance between the distribution of the number of customers in the system at time t and its steady-state distribution. Finally, we show that there is a similarity between the queue we analyze and a simple fluid model.
A resistorless switched bandgap voltage reference with offset cancellation

This work presents a novel Switched-capacitor Bandgap Voltage Reference (SCBGR) circuit that dispenses entirely the use of resistors. The vEB negative drift and the thermal voltage (VT) positive drift voltages are both generated by the same PNP vertical bipolar transistor, avoiding diode mismatch problems. The current sources that are used to generate different junction current densities are averaged in the switching process, reducing their mismatch impact on the circuit performance. A switched-capacitor circuit stores and processes these voltages, generating the bandgap reference voltage after 5 clock cycles. Since capacitors are used instead of resistors, variability problems like average process spread and device mismatches are reduced. The proposed topology was designed and simulated in CMOS for 180 nm process. This paper presents a systematic comparison to the traditional dual-BJT BGR and demonstrates the better performance of this new topology with respect to the former. Monte Carlo simulation shows significantly lower spread resulting from variations in the output reference voltage and in its temperature coefficient (TC).
BREEDING COMPETITION IN A PACIFIC SALMON (COHO: ONCORHYNCHUS KISUTCH): MEASURES OF NATURAL AND SEXUAL SELECTION

In the breeding system of Pacific salmon, females compete for oviposition territories, and males compete to fertilize eggs. The natural selection in females and sexual selection in males likely has been responsible for their elaborate breeding morphologies and the dimorphism between the sexes. We quantified direct‐selection intensities during breeding on mature coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), measured for seven phenotypic characters, including three secondary sexual characters. Wild and sea‐ranched hatchery coho were used to enhance the range of phenotypes over which selection could be examined. The fish were allowed to breed in experimental arenas where we could quantify components of breeding success as well as estimate overall breeding success. We found that without competition, natural selection acts only on female body size for increased egg production; there is no detectable selection on males for the phenotypic distribution we used. Under competition, the opportunity for selection increased sixfold among females. Natural selection favored female body size and caudal‐peduncle (tail) depth. Increased body size meant increased egg production and access to nesting territories. The caudal peduncle, used in burst swimming and nest digging, influenced both successful egg deposition and nest survival. Increasing density increased competition among females, though it did not significantly intensify natural selection on their characters. In males, competition increased the opportunity for selection 52‐fold, which was nine times greater than for females. Sexual selection favored male body size and hooked snout length, both characters directly influencing male access to spawning opportunities. Selection on male body size was also affected significantly by breeding density. The ability of large males to control access to spawning females decreased at higher densities reflecting an increase in the operational sex ratio. Further, the relative success of small males, which could sneak access to spawning females, appeared to increase as that of intermediate‐sized males decreased. Such disruptive selection may be responsible for the evolution of alternative reproductive tactics in salmon.
Native Rodent Species Are Unlikely Sources of Infection for Leishmania (Viannia) braziliensis along the Transoceanic Highway in Madre de Dios, Peru

An estimated 2.3 million disability-adjusted life years are lost globally from leishmaniasis. In Peru's Amazon region, the department of Madre de Dios (MDD) rises above the rest of the country in terms of the annual incidence rates of human leishmaniasis. Leishmania (Viannia) braziliensis is the species most frequently responsible for the form of disease that results in tissue destruction of the nose and mouth. However, essentially nothing is known regarding the reservoirs of this vector-borne, zoonotic parasite in MDD. Wild rodents have been suspected, or proven, to be reservoirs of several Leishmania spp. in various ecosystems and countries. Additionally, people who live or work in forested terrain, especially those who are not regionally local and whose immune systems are thus naïve to the parasite, are at most risk for contracting L. (V.) braziliensis. Hence, the objective of this study was to collect tissues from wild rodents captured at several study sites along the Amazonian segment of the newly constructed Transoceanic Highway and to use molecular laboratory techniques to analyze samples for the presence of Leishmania parasites. Liver tissues were tested via polymerase chain reaction from a total of 217 rodents; bone marrow and skin biopsies (ear and tail) were also tested from a subset of these same animals. The most numerous rodent species captured and tested were Oligoryzomys microtis (40.7%), Hylaeamys perenensis (15.7%), and Proechimys spp. (12%). All samples were negative for Leishmania, implying that although incidental infections may occur, these abundant rodent species are unlikely to serve as primary reservoirs of L. (V.) braziliensis along the Transoceanic Highway in MDD. Therefore, although these rodent species may persist and even thrive in moderately altered landscapes, we did not find any evidence to suggest they pose a risk for L. (V.) braziliensis transmission to human inhabitants in this highly prevalent region.
The Protection of Substation Communications

The last few years have seen considerable investment in the security of industrial control systems. In the power sector, there has been a focus on operational measures directed by NERC, while technical solutions have been proposed through the IEC and the ISA. Many of these proposals use cryptography to secure communications, so that some of the defensive eﬀort can be moved from the perimeter to the end systems. However the security mechanisms need to take into account implementation costs as well as operational challenges. In this paper, we discuss these challenges in the context of protecting communications within substations. Proposals to use digital signatures are impractical because of both performance and cost. We analyse the complexities of these solutions both from security economics as well as engineering perspectives and argue that the right technology for this application is shared-key, namely message authentication codes: it gives the necessary performance at a fraction of the cost.
A 9b 14µW 0.06mm2 PPM ADC in 90nm digital CMOS

As CMOS dimensions scale down, time-domain resolution of digital signals improves but the voltage resolution of analog signals degrades [1]. In this paper, we introduce an ADC architecture based on Pulse Position Modulation (PPM), which relies more on time resolution than on amplitude resolution. In PPM (Fig. 9.4.1(a)), a continuous-time comparator compares the input signal with a voltage ramp. The time interval between the ramp starting point, which is synchronous with the reference clock, and the instant the input signal crosses the ramp (i.e. [t1, t2, t3, Ω] in Fig. 9.4.1(a)) is measured by a 2-step time-to-digital converter. Assuming the ramp slope is constant, we can calculate the input-signal amplitude from the measured time vector.
DUPLACCESSORIUS ANDINUS N. GEN., N. SP. (DACTYLOGYRIDAE: ANCYROCEPHALINAE) FROM THE GILLS OF PERCICHTHYS TRUCHA (PERCIFORMES: PERCICHTHYIDAE) IN PATAGONIA, ARGENTINA

During a parasitological survey of Patagonian freshwater fishes, specimens of a new species of Monogenea were collected from the gills of Percichthys trucha (Perciformes: Percichthyidae). This species is described as the only member of a newly proposed genus of Ancyrocephalinae. Duplaccessorius n. gen. (Dactylogyridae, Ancyrocephalinae) is characterized by hooks with 2 subunits, gonads in tandem, a coiled male copulatory organ with counterclockwise rings, an accessory piece formed by 2 distinct parts, and a nonsclerotized sinistrolateral vagina with a funnel shape vestibule. Duplaccessorius andinus n. sp. infects the gills of P. trucha (Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1840) from Andean Patagonian lakes, being the first species of Ancyrocephalinae described from a South American percichthyid.
Quantum discord in quantum computation

Quantum discord is a measure of the quantumness of correlations. After reviewing its different versions and properties, we apply it to the questions of quantum information processing. First we show that changes in discord in the processed unentangled states indicate the need for entanglement in the distributed implementation of quantum gates. On the other hand, it was shown that zero system-environment discord is a necessary and sufficient condition for applicability of the standard completely positive description of the system's evolution. We demonstrate that this result does not translate into useful quantum process tomography. Depending on the details of the preparation procedure only absence of any initial correlations may guarantees consistency of the process tomography.
Extracting Biomedical Events and Modifications Using Subgraph Matching with Noisy Training Data

The Genia Event (GE) extraction task of the BioNLP Shared Task addresses the extraction of biomedical events from the natural language text of the published literature. In our submission, we modified an existing system for learning of event patterns via dependency parse subgraphs to utilise a more accurate parser and significantly more, but noisier, training data. We explore the impact of these two aspects of the system and conclude that the change in parser limits recall to an extent that cannot be offset by the large quantities of training data. However, our extensions of the system to extract modification events shows promise.
Airline Network Design

The goal of this paper is to understand choices of networks and schedules by a profit maximizing airline. By "network" we mean the routing pattern for planes and by "schedule" we mean the frequency of service between cities and the amount of time put into the schedule to assure on-time arrival. This paper analyzes network and schedule choice using an "idealized" model that permits derivation of analytic, closed form expressions for airline and passenger costs. Many important conclusions are obtained. It is optimal for a profit maximizing airline to design its network and schedule to minimize the sum of airline and passenger costs. Profit maximizing choice of schedule frequency depends on the network. Direct service has lower schedule frequency than other networks. Parametric studies are performed on the effect of distance between cities, demand rate, and the number of cities served on the choice of the network. Some conclusions are: (1) If the distance between cities is very small, then direct service is optimal; otherwise, other networks, such as hub and spoke are optimal. (2) Similarly, for very high demand rates, direct service is optimal; and for intermediate values, hub and spoke is optimal. (3) If the number of cities is small, direct service dominates; and if it is large, hub and spoke is optimal. We note that any airline's schedule includes safety time as a buffer against delays, and we demonstrate that schedule reliability is highest for direct routing. Surprisingly, the amount of time that is added to the schedule to buffer delays is relatively less in direct networks than in other networks. This can explain the superior on-time performance and high equipment utilization of direct carriers such as Southwest Airlines.
An Estimation Model for Hypertension Drug Demand in Retail Pharmacies with the Aid of Big Data Analytics

The unpredictability of consumer preference observed in the last few years has coincided with the global digital data explosion as consumers are increasingly relying on the internet information to guide their buying behaviour. The emergence of this trend has resulted in demand volatility and uncertainty in the retail industry, leading to negative consequences on inventory control and on shareholder profits in the long-run. This paper examines whether retail pharmacies in Abuja, Nigeria may exploit the increasing availability of relevant big data (structured, semi-structured and unstructured) from different sources to anticipate the changes on demand profiles for antihypertensive medication. In order to examine this, we consider a VARX model with non-structured data as exogenous to obtain the best estimation
Dynamic LCA queries on trees

We show how to maintain a data structure on trees which allows for the following operations, all in worst-case constant time: insertion of leaves and internal nodes, deletion of leaves, deletion of internal nodes with only one child, determining the least common ancestor of any two nodes. We also generalize the Dietz--Sleator "cup-filling" scheduling methodology, which may be of independent interest.
Active Contours with Thresholding Value for Image Segmentation

In this paper, we propose an active contour with threshold value to detect objects and at the same time get rid of unimportant parts rather than extract all information. The basic ideal of our model is to introduce a weight matrix into region-based active contours, which can enhance the weight for the main parts while filter the weak intensity, such as shadows, illumination and so on. Moreover, we can choose threshold value to set weight matrix manually for accurate image segmentation. Thus, the proposed method can extract objects of interest in practice. Coupled partial differential equations are used to implement this method with level set algorithms. Experimental results show the advantages of our method in terms of accuracy for image segmentation.
Origin of branches in native dextrans

According to the proposed mechanism for the enzymatic formation of dextran, branches of different length are formed in a reaction between a so‐called acceptor dextran molecule and an active reaction complex; propagation of the dextran chain occurs by an insertion‐type polymer growth. To investigate this branching reaction, radioactive labeled acceptor dextran of relatively low molecular weight was added to a dextran synthesizing system and the native high molecular weight dextran separated by a fractionation method. From the specific radioactivity of the isolated native dextran, and assuming a molecular weight of 2.5 × 105, the average number of acceptor molecules incorporated into native dextran is calculated to be about unity, as predicted by the proposed mechanism. Analogous results have been obtained in the reaction of two different dextran sucrases from Leuconostoc mesenteroides B512F and B1307, respectively.
Effect of Lactic Acid Administration in the Drinking Water During Preslaughter Feed Withdrawal on Salmonella and Campylobacter Contamination of Broilers 2

The crop is a known source of Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination. We evaluated the use of selected organic acids (0.5% acetic, lactic, or formic) in drinking water during a simulated 8-h pretransport feed withdrawal (FW). Salmonella typhimurium was recovered from 53/100 control crops and from 45/100 of crops from acetic acid-treated broilers. However, treatment with lactic acid (31/100) or formic acid (28/76) caused significant (P < 0.05) reduction in incidence. Reductions of recovered incidence were also associated with reduced numbers of S. typhimurium recovered (e.g., control, log 1.45 cfu/crop; lactic acid, 0.79 cfu/crop). In an additional commercial farm study, broilers were provided 0.44% lactic acid during a 10-h FW (4 h on the farm and 6 h transport) and pre-FW crop, post-FW crop, and pre-chill carcass wash (
Multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann simulations of turbulent pipe flows

Turbulent pipe flows are encountered in a multitude of engineering applications. Some of the examples include removal of moisture, odors and other harmful gases using exhaust pipes; transporting crude oil and cooling water in oil refineries; circulation of coolants through the engine in automobiles and motorcycles; etc. They have been studied experimentally for more than a century and by direct numerical simulations (DNS) for more than two decades. Over the past twenty years, there has been an increase in the involvement of computation in studying turbulent flows, including turbulent pipe flows. The low cost and time consumption of computer simulations, along with the ability to study complex dynamic processes that are practically intractable at all scales, have resulted in the increase in their use in research. At the same time, the presence of curved boundary remains a challenge for accurate DNS of this simple flow. In the recent past, lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has emerged as an attractive option for simulating wall-bounded turbulent flows. It offers several advantages compared to the conventional models of computational fluid dynamics, due to the local nature of operations involved and easy implementation of boundary conditions. Despite the advantages posed by the LBM, no DNS of turbulent pipe flow has been reported using LBM. Hence, the objective of this study is to develop a lattice Boltzmann model to simulate turbulent pipe flow and implement it into a computer code using FORTRAN and MPI. This code is then used to simulate fully developed turbulent pipe flow and validate the results with the existing benchmark data. In this thesis, the lattice Boltzmann model in three spatial dimensions using 27 mesoscopic velocities on a cubic grid was designed using an “inverse design” analysis. Yu et al.’s double interpolation scheme was used to satisfy the no-slip condition at the solid-liquid interface.
Rational mappings, arborescent iterations, and the symmetries of integrability.

We describe a class of nonlinear birational representations of groups generated by a finite number of involutions. These groups are symmetries of the Yang-Baxter equations and their higher-dimensional generalizations. They provide discrete dynamical systems with a variety of behaviors, from chaotic to integrable, according to the number of invariants of the representation.