Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rapid Recovery from Sevoflurane and Desflurane with Hypercapnia and Hyperventilation

BACKGROUND: Hypercapnia with hyperventilation shortens the time between turning off the vaporizer (1 MAC) and when patients open their eyes after isoflurane anesthesia by 62%. METHODS: In the present study we tested whether a proportional shortening occurs with sevoflurane and desflurane. RESULTS: Consistent with a proportional shortening, we found that hypercapnia with hyperventilation decreased recovery times by 52% for sevoflurane and 64% for desflurane (when compared with normal ventilation with normocapnia). CONCLUSION: Concurrent hyperventilation to rapidly remove the anesthetic from the lungs and rebreathing to induce hypercapnia can significantly shorten recovery times and produce the same proportionate decrease for anesthetics that differ in solubility.
Imaging method for highly squinted synthetic aperture radar with under-sampled echo data

Abstract. The amount of echo data is very large in highly squinted synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging with high resolution. To solve this problem, an imaging method for highly squinted SAR with under-sampled echo data based on compressed sensing (CS) is put forward. First, the echo signal model of highly squinted SAR is analyzed and a nonlinear chirp scaling (NCS) imaging method with the Nyquist-sampled echo data is proposed, with which the range walk is corrected and the range-azimuth coupling is mitigated. Based on the imaging method, the NCS operator is established. Combining the NCS operator and CS theory, a highly squinted SAR imaging scheme is formulated. The modified iterative thresholding algorithm is utilized to solve the imaging scheme, which forms a highly squinted SAR imaging method. With the proposed method, just a small amount of imaging data is required for highly squinted SAR imaging. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is proven by the simulations.
Unsynchronized parallel discrete event simulation

Distributed synchronization for parallel simulation is generally classified as being either optimistic or conservative. While considerable investigations have been conducted to analyze and optimize each of these synchronization strategies, very little study on the definition and strictness of causality have been conducted. Do we really need to preserve causality in all types of simulations? The paper attempts to answer this question. We argue that significant performance gains can be made by reconsidering this definition to decide if the parallel simulation needs to preserve causality. We investigate the feasibility of unsynchronized parallel simulation through the use of several queuing model simulations and present a comparative analysis between unsynchronized and Time Warp simulation.
Inner Source in Platform-Based Product Engineering

Inner source is an approach to collaboration across intra-organizational boundaries for the creation of shared reusable assets. Prior project reports on inner source suggest improved code reuse and better knowledge sharing. Using a multiple-case case study research approach, we analyze the problems that three major software development organizations were facing in their product line engineering efforts. We find that a root cause, the separation of product units as profit centers from a platform organization as a cost center, leads to delayed deliveries, increased defect rates, and redundant software components. All three organizations assume that inner source can help solve these problems. The article analyzes the expectations that these companies were having towards inner source and the problems they were experiencing in its adoption. Finally, the article presents our conclusions on how these organizations should adapt their existing engineering efforts.
Inter-Neuronal Correlation Distinguishes Mechanisms of Direction Selectivity in Cortical Circuit Models

Direction selectivity is a fundamental physiological property that arises from primary visual cortex (V1) circuitry, yet basic questions of how direction-selective (DS) receptive fields are constructed remain unanswered. We built a set of simple, plausible neuronal circuits that produce DS cells via different mechanisms and tested these circuits to determine how they can be distinguished experimentally. Our models consisted of populations of spiking units representing physiological cell classes ranging from LGN cells to V1 complex DS cells. They differed in network architecture and DS mechanism, including linear summation of non-DS simple-cell inputs or nonlinear pairwise combinations of non-DS inputs. The circuits also varied in the location of the DS time delay and whether the DS interaction was facilitatory or suppressive. We tested the models with visual stimuli often used experimentally, including sinusoidal gratings and flashed bars, and computed shuffle-corrected cross-correlograms (CCGs) of spike trains from pairs of units that would be accessible to extracellular recording. We found that CCGs revealed fundamental features of the DS models, including the location of signal delays in the DS circuit and the sign (facilitatory or suppressive) of DS interactions. We also found that correlation was strongly stimulus-dependent, changing with direction and temporal frequency in a manner that generalized across model architectures. Our models make specific predictions for designing, optimizing, and interpreting electrophysiology experiments aimed at resolving DS circuitry and provide new insights into mechanisms that could underlie stimulus-dependent correlation. The models are available and easy to explore at www.imodel. org.
Saving Newborn Babies – The Benefits of Interventions in Neonatal Care in Norway over More Than 40 Years

The aim of this study was to examine the effect that the introduction of new medical interventions at birth has had on mortality among newborn babies in Norway during the period 1967-2011. During this period, there has been a significant decline in mortality, in particular for low birth weight infants. We identified four interventions that together explained about 50% of the decline in early neonatal and infant mortality: ventilators, antenatal steroids, surfactant and insure. The analyses were performed on a large set of data, encompassing more than 1.6 million deliveries (Medical Birth Registry of Norway). The richness of the data allowed us to perform several robustness tests. Our study indicates that the introduction of new medical interventions has been a very important channel through which the decline in mortality among newborn babies occurred during the second half of the last century. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Analysis and design of two-hop diffusion-based molecular communication networks

In this paper, we consider a two-hop molecular communication network consisting of one nanotransmitter, one nanoreceiver, and one nanotransceiver acting as a relay. We consider two different schemes for relaying to improve the range of diffusion-based molecular communication. In the first scheme, two different types of messenger molecules are utilized at the relay node for transmission and detection. In the second scheme, we assume that there is only one type of molecule available to be used as an information carrier. We identify self-interference as the performance-limiting effect for the second relaying scheme. Self-interference occurs when the relay must detect the same type of molecule that it also emits. Furthermore, we consider two relaying modes analogous to those used in wireless communication systems, i.e., full-duplex and half-duplex. In particular, while our main focus is on full-duplex relaying, half-duplex relaying is employed as a means to mitigate self-interference. In addition, we propose the adaptation of the decision threshold as an effective mechanism to mitigate self-interference at the relay for full-duplex transmission. We derive closed-form expressions for the expected error probability of the network for both considered relaying schemes.
The role of N-acetylneuraminic (sialic) acid in the pH dependence of influenza virion fusion with planar phospholipid membranes

It is known that fusion of influenza virus to host cell membranes is strongly promoted by acidic pH. We have determined conditions required to obtain pH-dependent fusion of influenza virus to planar bilayer membranes. The rate of viral fusion was determined from the flash rate of R18-labeled virions delivered to the surface of the planar membrane by pressure-ejection from a pipette. For a bilayer formed only of phospholipids and cholesterol, the fusion rate was independent of pH and unaffected by the phospholipid composition. When the gangliosides GD1a + GT1b were included in the planar membrane, however, the fusion rate varied steeply with pH. The rate at pH 7.4 in the presence of the gangliosides was about an order of magnitude less than in their absence. At pH less than approximately 5.5, the rate was about an order of magnitude greater in the presence of gangliosides than in their absence. The fusion rate with planar membranes containing globoside, a ceramide-backboned glycolipid, was also independent of pH, indicating that the pH dependence required sialic acid on the carbohydrate moiety of the glycolipid. The gangliosides GM1a and GM3, both of which possess sialic acid, produced the same pH-dependent fusion rate as seen with GD1a + GT1b, indicating that the presence, but not the location, of terminal sialic acids is critical. Incubating virus with soluble sialyllactose blocked fusion to both ganglioside-free and ganglioside- containing planar membranes. These results show that the pH dependence of influenza virion fusion arises from the interaction of the sialic acid receptor with the influenza hemagglutinin. A model for sialic acid- hemagglutinin interactions accounting for pH-dependent fusion is presented.
Incremental Dialogue Processing in a Micro-Domain

This paper describes a fully incremental dialogue system that can engage in dialogues in a simple domain, number dictation. Because it uses incremental speech recognition and prosodic analysis, the system can give rapid feedback as the user is speaking, with a very short latency of around 200ms. Because it uses incremental speech synthesis and self-monitoring, the system can react to feedback from the user as the system is speaking. A comparative evaluation shows that naive users preferred this system over a non-incremental version, and that it was perceived as more human-like.
Towards automatic transcription of expressive oral percussive performances

We describe a tool for transcribing voice generated percussive rhythms. The system consists of: (a) a segmentation component which separates the monophonic input stream into percussive events (b) a descriptors generation component that computes a set of acoustic features from each of the extracted segments, (c) a machine learning component which assigns to each of the segmented sounds of the input stream a symbolic class. We describe each of these components and compare different machine learning strategies that can be used to obtain a symbolic representation of the oral percussive performance.
Corneal Alterations Induced by Topical Application of Commercial Latanoprost, Travoprost and Bimatoprost in Rabbit

Prostaglandin (PG) analogs, including latanoprost, travoprost, and bimatoprost, are currently the most commonly used topical ocular hypotensive medications. The purpose of this study was to investigate the corneal alterations in rabbits following exposure to commercial solution of latanoprost, travoprost and bimatoprost. A total of 64 New Zealand albino rabbits were used and four groups of treatments were constituted. Commercial latanoprost, travoprost, bimatoprost or 0.02% benzalkonium chloride (BAK) was applied once daily to one eye each of rabbits for 30 days. The contralateral untreated eyes used as controls. Schirmer test, tear break-up time (BUT), rose Bengal and fluorescein staining were performed on days 5, 10, 20, and 30. Central corneal changes were analyzed by in vivo confocal microscopy, and the corneal barrier function was evaluated by measurement of corneal transepithelial electrical resistance on day 5. Whole mount corneas were analyzed by using fluorescence confocal microscopy for the presence of tight-junction (ZO-1, occludin) and adherens-junction (E-cadherin, β-catenin) proteins, actin cytoskeleton, proliferative marker Ki67 and cell apoptosis in the epithelium. Topical application of commercial PG analogs resulted in significant corneal epithelial and stromal defects while no significant changes in aqueous tear production, BUT, rose bengal and fluorescein staining scores on day 5. Commercial PG analogs induced dislocation of ZO-1 and occludin from their normal locus, disorganization of cortical actin cytoskeleton at the superficial layer, and disruption of epithelial barrier function. The eyes treated with 0.02% BAK and latanoprost exhibited significantly reduced Schirmer scores, BUT, and increased fluorescein staining scores on days 10 and 30, respectively. Topical application of commercial PG analogs can quickly impair the corneal epithelium and stroma without tear deficiency. Commercial PG analogs break down the barrier integrity of corneal epithelium, concomitant with the disruption of cell junction and actin cytoskeleton between superficial cells in the corneal epithelium in vivo.
SAR and InSAR for flood monitoring: Examples with COSMO/SkyMed data

We apply high-resolution, X-band, stripmap COSMO/SkyMed data to the monitoring of a flood event in Southern Basilicata region (Italy), where a multi-temporal dataset is available, allowing interferometric processing. We show how the use of the interferometric phase information can actually help to detect precisely the areas affected by the flood, using e.g. RGB composites of various information layers derived from the data. We also present results of unsupervised clustering of the multi-temporal data, which allow to shed some light on the physical interpretation of some of the identified clusters.
Approximation of Ontologies in CASL

In this paper we present methods to generate a Description Logic (DL) theory from a given First Order Logic (FOL) theory, such that each DL axiom is entailed by the given FOL theory. This is obtained by transforming the given FOL formulas. If this method is applied to an ontology specification in FOL, the resulting DL specification is still grounded on the same semantics but clearly weaker than the FOL specification. The benefit of specification in DL is that efficient reasoning procedures are available as implemented in tools such as Racer, Fact++ or Pellet. Such ontologies in DL could be used for knowledge representation systems and the semantic web where efficient reasoning plays a major role. This method can be used to compile a foundational ontology formalized in FOL, like DOLCE (Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering), into DL for use with domain ontologies formalized in DL, or for the development of domain ontologies based on the compiled foundational ontology. These weakening strategies are described using CASL (Common Algebraic Specification Language) and CASL-DL, and will be integrated into HETS (Heterogeneous Tool Set). Furthermore, this paper includes examples from DOLCE.
Software Effort Estimation with Ridge Regression and Evolutionary Attribute Selection

Software cost estimation is one of the prerequisite managerial activities carried out at the software development initiation stages and also repeated throughout the whole software life-cycle so that amendments to the total cost are made. In software cost estimation typically, a selection of project attributes is employed to produce effort estimations of the expected human resources to deliver a software product. However, choosing the appropriate project cost drivers in each case requires a lot of experience and knowledge on behalf of the project manager which can only be obtained through years of software engineering practice. A number of studies indicate that popular methods applied in the literature for software cost estimation, such as linear regression, are not robust enough and do not yield accurate predictions. Recently the dual variables Ridge Regression (RR) technique has been used for effort estimation yielding promising results. In this work we show that results may be further improved if an AI method is used to automatically select appropriate project cost drivers (inputs) for the technique. We propose a hybrid approach combining RR with a Genetic Algorithm, the latter evolving the subset of attributes for approximating effort more accurately. The proposed hybrid cost model has been applied on a widely known high-dimensional dataset of software project samples and the results obtained show that accuracy may be increased if redundant attributes are eliminated.
Tissue birefringence characterization by use of fiber-based polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

A fiber-based polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography system was described. The polarization modulator in this system was introduced in the reference arm rather than in the source arm, providing an increased power delivered from light source to sample. Based on angle preservation of Stokes vectors in the PS-OCT system, Stokes parameters of backscattered light measured at the detection arm were used to determine the phase retardation of birefringence samples as a function of depth. With the developed PS-OCT system, investigation on birefringence alternation of ligament under different physical condition was carried out.
Strategies to Investigate Circulating Endothelial Cells in Cancer

There is an increasing evidence of the crucial role of angiogenesis in cancer, and randomized studies have indicated that a "pure" anti-angiogenic drug (the anti-VEGF antibody Avastin) is very effective in colorectal cancer. In addition, this and other anti-angiogenic drugs have demonstrated activity and are currently under clinical investigation in a variety of other cancer types. At the present time, however, there is a scarcity of useful endpoints for treatment outcome beside survival. Using flow cytometry, quantitative PCR and cell culture we have found that circulating endothelial cells and progenitors are increased in cancer patients, and that measuring their viability and kinetics may offer significant clinical insight in the management of cancer patients.
Distributed Fault Detection for Wireless Sensor Based on Weighted Average

This paper presents a distributed fault detection algorithm for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) by exploring the weighted average value scheme. Considering the spatial correlations in WSNs, a faulty sensor can diagnose itself through comparing its own sensed data with the average of neighbors’ data. Simulation results show that sensor nodes with permanent faults are identified with high accuracy for a wide range of fault rate, and keep false alarm rate for different levels of sensor fault model.
Nonlinear Analysis and Control of PEM Fuel Cells

The present contribution deals with the model-based analysis, the model reduction and the control of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). In the first part of this work a bifurcation analysis of a PEM fuel cell under two-phase conditions, i.e. the parallel presence of liquid water and water vapor inside the cell, is performed. A steady-state multiplicity is found by this analysis that results from different liquid water contents in the cell that are close to flooding. This multiplicity is physically explained and the dependency on different and significant fuel cell parameters is investigated. Finally, the dynamic behavior of the system in the parameter region, where multiple steady states occur, is also studied in order to completely characterize the multiplicity and therefore increase the knowledge about two-phase PEMFCs close to flooding conditions. After this analysis, the two-phase model is reduced by applying simplifying physical assumptions in order to obtain a low-order model that can be used for the design of process control strategies in a real-time environment. For this purpose, the reduced model should conserve the qualitative as well as the quantitative behavior of the original model. This is accomplished and shown by comparing steady state and dynamic simulation results of both models. Prior to the control design, an analysis of the PEM fuel cell and common DC-DC converters is done in order to find out if multiplicities or instabilities are introduced by the coupling of both systems. First of all, the influence of the switching ripples of the DC-DC converters upon the PEMFC is considered. They introduce oscillations in the fuel cell. Their origin is explained, discussed and possibilities for their suppression are given. After this, the overall behavior of the fuel cell and the converters is examined. It is shown mathematically that the coupling between PEM fuel cells and DC-DC converters neither leads to stationary multiplicities nor to oscillations in the coupled system. Therefore, it is not necessary to develop integrated control approaches for the coupled system and one can instead design separate control approaches for both systems. Finally in this contribution, a passivity-based control approach is developed for a
Acoustic compensation methods for body transmitted speech conversion

Statistical voice conversion is very effective for enhancing body transmitted speech recorded with Non-Audible Murmur (NAM) microphone. In this method, a probabilistic model to convert body transmitted speech into natural speech is trained previously. Because acoustic characteristics of body transmitted speech is sensitive to recording conditions such as a location of NAM microphone, significant degradation of the conversion performance is often caused in practical situations by acoustic mismatches between training and conversion processes. To alleviate this problem, we propose unsupervised acoustic compensation methods for body transmitted voice conversion. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed methods significantly reduce the quality degradation of converted speech caused by the acoustic mismatches.