Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conducting physician mail surveys on a limited budget. A randomized trial comparing $2 bill versus $5 bill incentives.

OBJECTIVES The effects of incentive size on physicians' response rates to a mail survey were determined. METHODS One thousand US primary care physicians were assigned randomly to receive a survey with either a $5 bill or a $2 bill as an incentive. For each of the two incentive groups, the overall response rate for three mailing waves, the total cost, and the total cost per usable response were measured. RESULTS The response rate among those receiving the $5 bill (61%) was 32% higher than the response rate among those receiving the $2 bill (46%); overall costs were slightly higher in the $5 group, but the cost per response for each group was similar ($15.46 versus $14.93). For the same cost, a higher response rate could have been achieved in the $2 group if costs saved from foregoing the third mailing were instead used to increase the incentive for a portion of the subjects. CONCLUSIONS A $5 bill incentive yielded a higher response rate among the physicians in this study than did a $2 bill incentive. Moreover, the powerful effect of the incentive size, combined with the consequent decline in the costs of subsequent mailing waves, suggests that resources in a fixed survey budget are allocated more efficiently to increasing the initial incentive rather than to providing a third wave to nonresponders.
Machine Learning-augmented Predictive Modeling of Turbulent Separated Flows over Airfoils

A modeling paradigm is developed to augment predictive models of turbulence by effectively utilizing limited data generated from physical experiments. The key components of our approach involve inverse modeling to infer the spatial distribution of model discrepancies, and, machine learning to reconstruct discrepancy information from a large number of inverse problems into corrective model forms. We apply the methodology to turbulent flows over airfoils involving flow separation. Model augmentations are developed for the Spalart Allmaras (SA) model using adjoint-based full field inference on experimentally measured lift coefficient data. When these model forms are reconstructed using neural networks (NN) and embedded within a standard solver, we show that much improved predictions in lift can be obtained for geometries and flow conditions that were not used to train the model. The NN-augmented SA model also predicts surface pressures extremely well. Portability of this approach is demonstrated by confirming that predictive improvements are preserved when the augmentation is embedded in a different commercial finite-element solver. The broader vision is that by incorporating data that can reveal the form of the innate model discrepancy, the applicability of data-driven turbulence models can be extended to more general flows.
Indoor Scene Point Cloud Registration Algorithm Based on RGB-D Camera Calibration

With the increasing popularity of RGB-depth (RGB-D) sensor, research on the use of RGB-D sensors to reconstruct three-dimensional (3D) indoor scenes has gained more and more attention. In this paper, an automatic point cloud registration algorithm is proposed to efficiently handle the task of 3D indoor scene reconstruction using pan-tilt platforms on a fixed position. The proposed algorithm aims to align multiple point clouds using extrinsic parameters of the RGB-D camera obtained from every preset pan-tilt control point. A computationally efficient global registration method is proposed based on transformation matrices formed by the offline calibrated extrinsic parameters. Then, a local registration method, which is an optional operation in the proposed algorithm, is employed to refine the preliminary alignment result. Experimental results validate the quality and computational efficiency of the proposed point cloud alignment algorithm by comparing it with two state-of-the-art methods.
Turku: Semantic Dependency Parsing as a Sequence Classification

This paper presents the University of Turku entry to the SemEval-2015 task on BroadCoverage Semantic Dependency Parsing. The system uses an existing transition-based parser as a sequence classifier to jointly predict all arguments of one candidate predicate at a time. Compared to our 2014 entry, the 2015 system gains about 3pp in terms of F-score for a fraction of the development time. Depending on the subtask, the difference between our entry and the winning system ranges between 1 and 5pp.
Fabrication and contacting of single Bi nanowires

Bismuth nanowires with diameters between 80 and 500 nm are electrochemically fabricated in etched single-pore membranes. By means of two macroscopic planar electrodes on either side of the membrane, single nanowires are successfully contacted with contact resistances of only several ohms. The contacting method is presented and the measured resistance-versus-diameter behaviour of Bi nanowires is discussed, considering both electron scattering at the wire surface and that at the grain boundaries. Since the wires remain embedded in the membrane, lithographic processes and direct exposure of the wires to air are avoided.
Co-Design of Highly Efficient Power Amplifier and High-$Q$ Output Bandpass Filter

This paper reports the first co-design configuration of a power amplifier (PA) in cascade with a high- Q bandpass filter. By matching the filter's input port directly to the transistor's drain node, the conventional output matching network (OMN) of a PA is entirely eliminated. This leads to smaller size/volume, minimized loss, and enhanced overall performance. To enable this co-design method, the matching-filter synthesis theory is proposed and investigated in detail in this paper. Based on this theory, a 3% bandwidth (centered at 3.03 GHz) two-pole filter, implemented using high- Q evanescent-mode cavity resonators, is designed as the PA OMN to provide optimized fundamental and harmonic impedances for a commercial 10-W GaN transistor. Simulation and measured results show that the co-designed PA-filter module yields a desired Chybeshev filter behavior while maintaining excellent PA performance in the passband with 72% efficiency, 10-W output power, >10-dB gain, and 60-dBm output third-order intercept point. This co-designed module experimentally presents a 8% higher overall efficiency compared to a control group developed using a conventional independent PA and filter, which further validates the effectiveness of this method.
Determination the optical constants of hafnium oxide film by Spectroscopic ellipsometry with various dispersion models

Optical constants of vacuum-deposited hafnium oxide film (HfO2) from infrared to ultraviolet spectral region (215nm-1700nm) have been determined by variable angle Spectroscopic ellipsometry with Cauchy dispersion model, Sellmeier dispersion model, Cauchy-Urbach dispersion model and Tauc-Lorentz dispersion model, respectively. The optical constants of the HfO2 film which were extracted with the four dispersion models have been compared. The surface roughness layer between HfO2 film and air and the interface layer between the film and the substrate have also been modeled with Bruggeman effective medium approximation (BEMA).
Effect of Educational Program and Learning Environment in Japanese Schools of Medicine

In this paper, we analyzed Japanese schools of medicine to assess the effects of learning environment and devised teaching methods. In addition, we assessed the mechanism of school factors and educational outcome. From the results of multiple logistic regression analysis, we confirmed that learning environment didn't affect educational outcome and devised teaching methods did. Then, analysis by structural equation modeling suggested that the model we hypothesized would be valid as the mechanism. Finally, we discuss these results and mentioned our study's limitations.
DNA microarray reveals changes in gene expression of shear stressed human umbilical vein endothelial cells

Using DNA microarray screening (GeneFilter 211, Research Genetics, Huntsville, AL) of mRNA from primary human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC), we identified 52 genes with significantly altered expression under shear stress [25 dynes/cm2 for 6 or 24 h (1 dyne = 10 μN), compared with matched stationary controls]; including several genes not heretofore recognized to be shear stress responsive. We examined mRNA expression of nine genes by Northern blot analysis, which confirmed the results obtained on DNA microarrays. Thirty-two genes were up-regulated (by more than 2-fold), the most enhanced being cytochromes P450 1A1 and 1B1, zinc finger protein EZF/GKLF, glucocorticoid-induced leucine zipper protein, argininosuccinate synthase, and human prostaglandin transporter. Most dramatically decreased (by more than 2-fold) were connective tissue growth factor, endothelin-1, monocyte chemotactic protein-1, and spermidine/spermine N1-acetyltransferase. The changes observed suggest several potential mechanisms for increased NO production under shear stress in endothelial cells.
Minor structural brain changes in young drug abusers

Twenty‐three drug abusers and seventeen controls underwent clinical neurological examinations and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain. The drug abuse encompassed cannabis, inhalants, opiates, psychedelics, amphetamines, and cocaine but not necessarily all drugs in all persons. The drug abuse was always combined with heavy alcohol consumption. One drug abuser had abnormal neurological findings which consisted of lower limb ataxia and 3 others had mild imbalance. MRI examinations did not show differences in width of the third, fourth or lateral ventricles nor the diameter of the cerebral aqueduct but the drug abusers had significantly smaller vermes cerebelli compared to controls. White matter changes also occurred more often in the drug abuser group. These findings are not consistent with known side‐effects of the narcotic drugs but more probably a result of very high alcohol consumptions in parallel with drug abuse. Alcohol is clearly a much more potent brain toxic agent than are the most commonly abused narcotic drugs.
Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) Simulations of Liquid Steel Infiltration in Ceramic Foam Structures. Part I: Fundamentals and Validation

The infiltration of liquid TRIP steel into a porous zirconium dioxide foam ceramics is a possible production line for a new composite material. This composite is currently under investigation in a joint research project, which should explore the basic features and possible designs of the new material. The paper presents a pore‐scale model for the numerical simulation of the infiltration process. Such simulations should help to develop optimised production processes for the composite. The qualitative and quantitative performance of the model is evaluated by comparison of simulation results with data from corresponding water model experiments. Good agreement between the numerical and the experimental results is found.
ProRea: live database migration for multi-tenant RDBMS with snapshot isolation

The consolidation of multiple tenants onto a single RDBMS instance turned out to be benefical with respect to resource utilization and scalability. The consolidation implies that multiple tenants share the physical resources available for the RDBMS instance. If the available resources tend to get insufficient to meet the SLAs agreed with the tenants, migration of a tenant's database from one RDBMS instance to another is compelling. Highly available services demand for live migration techniques that come with minimal service interruption and low performance impact. This paper meets the demand for live migration techniques by contributing ProRea. ProRea is a live database migration approach designed for multi-tenant RDBMS that run OLTP workloads under snapshot isolation. ProRea extends concepts of existing live database migration approaches to accomplish minimal service interruption, high efficiency and very low migration overhead. Measurements of a prototypical ProRea implementation underpin its good performance.
Exercise Endurance before and after Long-Term Noninvasive Ventilation in Patients with Chronic Respiratory Failure

Background: Noninvasive mechanical ventilation (NIV) is known to reduce hypoventilation and improves respiratory and peripheral muscle endurance in patients with chronic respiratory failure (CRF) due to thoracic restriction. Objectives: To compare the effect of short-term NIV on endurance in patients with CRF due to thoracorestriction and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and to evaluate differences in spiroergometric data during exercise testing. Methods: Thirty-five patients with CRF due to COPD and 24 patients with CRF due to thoracorestriction entered the trial. Constant work rate exercise testing at 75% of the maximal workload, pulmonary function and arterial blood gas testing were performed before and after 3 months of NIV. Measurements were compared between and within groups. Results: The non-COPD group increased their exercise time significantly from 4.7 ± 1.81 to 6.59 ± 3.15 min (p = 0.0032). There was no change in the COPD group (4.57 ± 2.19 min before and 5.39 ± 3.09 min after NIV, p = 0.09). CO2 levels at rest fell in both groups (COPD 52.30 ± 7.77 to 46.06 ± 4.61 mm Hg and non-COPD 47.82 ± 5.19 to 43.79 ± 4.15 mm Hg). While COPD patients increased their minute ventilation (13.47 ± 2.73 to 14.88 ± 2.67 l/min), non-COPD patients decreased their oxygen uptake from 6.27 ± 1.61 to 5.54 ± 1.35 ml/kg. Conclusions: NIV improved endurance only in the non-COPD group. This and the reduction in CO2 are achieved by lowering energetic requirements. COPD patients though decreased their resting CO2 by increased minute ventilation.
Multiple sensory afferents to ferret pseudosylvian sulcal cortex

While the ferret cerebral cortex is being used with increasing frequency in studies of neural processing and development, little is known regarding the organization of its associational sensory and multisensory regions. Therefore, the present investigation used neuroanatomical methods to identify non-primary visual and somatosensory representations and their potential for multisensory convergence. Tracer injections made into V1 or SI cortex labeled axon terminals within the pseudosylvian sulcal cortex (PSSC). These inputs were distributed according to modality, with visual inputs identified in the lateral aspects of the posterior dorsal bank, and somatosensory inputs found anterior along the dorsal bank, fundus and ventral bank. Somatosensory inputs showed a topographic arrangement, with inputs representing face found more anteriorly than those representing trunk regions. Overlap between these different sensory projections occurred posteriorly in the PSSC and may represent a zone of multisensory convergence. These data are consistent with the presence of associational visual, somatosensory, and multisensory areas within the PSSC.
WRKY transcription factors

WRKY transcription factors are one of the largest families of transcriptional regulators found exclusively in plants. They have diverse biological functions in plant disease resistance, abiotic stress responses, nutrient deprivation, senescence, seed and trichome development, embryogenesis, as well as additional developmental and hormone-controlled processes. WRKYs can act as transcriptional activators or repressors, in various homo- and heterodimer combinations. Here we review recent progress on the function of WRKY transcription factors in Arabidopsis and other plant species such as rice, potato, and parsley, with a special focus on abiotic, developmental, and hormone-regulated processes.
Successive Standardization of Rectangular Arrays

In this note we illustrate and develop further with mathematics and examples, the work on successive standardization (or normalization) that is studied earlier by the same authors in [1] and [2]. Thus, we deal with successive iterations applied to rectangular arrays of numbers, where to avoid technical difficulties an array has at least three rows and at least three columns. Without loss, an iteration begins with operations on columns: first subtract the mean of each column; then divide by its standard deviation. The iteration continues with the same two operations done successively for rows. These four operations applied in sequence completes one iteration. One then iterates again, and again, and again, … In [1] it was argued that if arrays are made up of real numbers, then the set for which convergence of these successive iterations fails has Lebesgue measure 0. The limiting array has row and column means 0, row and column standard deviations 1. A basic result on convergence given in [1] is true, though the argument in [1] is faulty. The result is stated in the form of a theorem here, and the argument for the theorem is correct. Moreover, many graphics given in [1] suggest that except for a set of entries of any array with Lebesgue measure 0, convergence is very rapid, eventually exponentially fast in the number of iterations. Because we learned this set of rules from Bradley Efron, we call it "Efron's algorithm". More importantly, the rapidity of convergence is illustrated by numerical examples.
Caffeine vs Caffeine-Free Sports Drinks: Effects on Urine Production at Rest and During Prolonged Exercise

We compared the effects of caffeinated vs non-caffeinated carbohydrate electrolyte (CE) drinks on urine volume (UV), free water clearance (CH2O), fractional excretion of water (FEH2O), and osmolar excretion during 4 h of rest or 1 h rest followed by 3 h of cycling at 60% VO2max in six subjects. We also tested maximal performance at 85% VO2max following the 3-h exercise trials. Throughout the two resting trials and the two rest + exercise trials, subjects ingested CE (total volume = 35 ml/kg) without (PLAC) or with (CAFF) caffeine (25 mg/dl). Blood samples were collected, and body weight and UV were recorded every hour. Urine and blood were analyzed for osmolality and creatinine, and plasma catecholamine concentrations were determined. At rest, mean (+/-SE) UV between 60 min and 240 min was greater for CAFF (1843 +/- 166 ml) vs PLAC (1411 +/- 181 ml) (p < 0.01); during exercise the difference in UV between CAFF (398 +/- 32 ml) and PLAC (490 +/- 57 ml) was not significant. Cycling performance was unaffected by caffeine. Plasma catecholamine concentrations were not different between PLAC and CAFF but were greater during exercise than rest (p < 0.01) and may have counteracted the diuretic effect of caffeine observed at rest. Thus, CAFF consumed in CE during moderate endurance exercise apparently does not compromise bodily hydration status.
Evaluation of some biochemical markers as prognostic factors in malignant lymphoma.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is one of the most important malignant diseases worldwide. Cytokines may contribute to the clinical and histopathological alterations of the disease, while CD44, the lymphocyte homing receptor, is a putative determinant of lymphoma dissemination. To assess their value in NHL, the levels of TNFα, IL-2 and sCD44 were measured in patients with different stages of NHL and the relation between these levels and tumor burden, presence of B symptoms and other prognostic criteria of the disease was evaluated. Fiftytwo patients with NHL before administration of treatment as well as 20 age- and gender-matched controls were enrolled in this study. Clinical and laboratory assessment was done for the studied patients and the levels of TNFα, IL-2 and sCD44 were estimated by enzyme immunoassay. Laboratory assessment included measurement of Creactive protein (CRP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and albumin. LDH and CRP levels were more significantly higher, while albumin level was significantly lower among patients with stage IV as compared to that of patients with stages I/II or III. The levels of TNF-α, IL-2 and sCD44 were significantly higher in NHL patients than in controls. The levels of both TNF-α and IL-2 were positively correlated with LDH and CRP and negatively correlated with albumin. However, TNF-α, but not IL-2, was negatively correlated with hemoglobin (HB). The level of sCD44 was negatively correlated with both albumin and HB and positively correlated with CRP. There were significant positive correlation between the levels of TNF-α, IL-2 and sCD44. There was a significant association between the levels of both TNF-α and sCD44 and the presence of B symptoms. In conclusion, the occurrence of B symptoms in NHL may be attributed, at least in part, to high level of TNF-α. The increased levels of TNF-α IL-2 and sCD44 are associated with high tumor burden and poor prognostic criteria and it is suggest that they can be used as prognostic markers in NHL.
Issues of agent-based distributed data mining

Matthias Klusch Deduction and Multiagent Systems German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 66123 Saarbruecken, Germany klusch@dfki.de Stefano Lodi Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems IEIIT-BO/CNR University of Bologna Viale Risorgimento 2 40136 Bologna BO, Italy slodi@deis.unibo. it Gianluca Moro Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems University of Bologna Via Rasi e Spinelli 176 47023 Cesena FC, Italy gmoro@deis.unibo. it
The Asymmetric Effects of Uncertainty on Inflation and Output Growth

We study the effects of growth volatility and inflation volatility on average rates of output growth and inflation for post-war U.S. data. Our results suggest that growth uncertainty is associated with higher average growth and lower average inflation. Inflation uncertainty is significantly negatively correlated with both output growth and average inflation. Both inflation and growth display evidence of significant asymmetric response to positive and negative shocks of equal magnitude.
Channel Parameter Estimation in the CDMA Multiuser Detection Problem

Channel state information (CSI) is often required for efficient digital wireless communication. We discuss channel state estimation in the CDMA multiuser detection problem. An iterative scheme for joint channel state estimation and multiuser detection is discussed. For channel state estimation two heuristic methods are formulated. Their dynamical behaviors are studied analytically and numerically.
Real-time replication garbage collection

We have implemented the first copying garbage collector that permits continuous unimpeded mutator access to the original objects during copying. The garbage collector incrementally replicates all accessible objects and uses a mutation log to bring the replicas up-to-date with changes made by the mutator. An experimental implementation demonstrates that the costs of using our algorithm are small and that bounded pause times of 50 milliseconds can be readily achieved.