Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical use of bone densitometry: scientific review.

CONTEXT Osteoporosis causes substantial morbidity and costs $13.8 billion annually in the United States. Measurement of bone mass by densitometry is a primary part of diagnosing osteoporosis and deciding a preventive treatment course. Bone mineral densitometry has become more widely available and commonly used in practice. OBJECTIVE To review evidence about the value of various clinical applications of bone densitometry. DATA SOURCES A MEDLINE search was performed to update previous meta-analyses of the relationship between various measurements of bone density and risk of vertebral and hip fracture. We used data from the prospective Study of Osteoporotic Fractures to estimate risk of fracture from bone density and age in postmenopausal women. STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION When available, meta-analyses and systematic reviews are emphasized in the review. DATA SYNTHESIS Bone mineral density (BMD) predicts fracture and can be used in combination with age to estimate absolute risk of fractures in postmenopausal white women. Hip BMD predicts hip fracture more strongly than other measurements of BMD. There are insufficient data to translate BMD results into risk of fracture for men and nonwhite women. The benefits of treatments to prevent fractures depend on BMD: women with osteoporosis have a greater risk of fractures and greater benefit from treatments than women without osteoporosis. CONCLUSIONS Guidelines based on systematic reviews and a cost-effectiveness analysis have suggested that it is worthwhile to measure BMD in white women older than 65 years and perhaps to use risk factors to select younger postmenopausal women for densitometry. Other potential clinical applications of BMD that have not yet been adequately studied include screening men or nonwhite women, monitoring BMD in patients receiving treatment, and using BMD to identify patients who should be evaluated for secondary causes of osteoporosis.
Double Bicategories and Double Cospans

Interest in weak cubical n-categories arises in various contexts, in particular in topological field theories. In this paper, we describe a concept of double bicategory, namely a strict model of the theory of bicategories in Bicat. We show that in a special case one can reduce this to what we call a Verity double bicategory, after Domenic Verity. This is a weakened version of a double category, in the sense that composition in both horizontal and vertical directions satisfy associativity and unit laws only up to (coherent) isomorphisms. We prove that there are examples in the form of double bicategories of "double cospans" (or "double spans") in any category with pushouts (pullbacks, respectively), and give a construction from this which involves taking isomorphism classes of objects, and gives a Verity double bicategory of double cospans. We describe cobordisms with corners as an example of this construction.
Baryon Loading of Gamma-Ray Burst by Neutron Pickup

It is proposed that the baryons in gamma-ray burst (GRB) fireballs originate as "pickup" neutrons that leak in sideways from surrounding baryonic matter and convert to protons in a collision avalanche. The asymptotic Lorentz factor is estimated and, in the absence of collimation, is shown to be angle-dependent. Reasonable agreement is obtained with existing limits on the GRB baryonic component. The charged decay and collision products of the neutrons become ultrarelativistic immediately, and an ultra-high-energy neutrino burst is produced with an efficiency that can exceed 0.5. Other signatures may include lithium, beryllium, and/or boron lines in the supernova remnants associated with GRBs and the high polarization of the gamma rays.
Robustness analysis of 3D feature descriptors for object recognition using a time-of-flight camera

In this paper we propose to analyze characteristics of the feature descriptors in terms of robustness against typical disturbances in the context of the object recognition pipeline for depth data with intensity information. In terms of robustness the focus was on the occlusion handling, segmentation errors, sub-sampling of data as well as the presence of Gaussian noise in data. For this analyses we considered a set of real life data captured in an indoor environment using a time-of-flight sensor returning depth and intensity data. According to our test results the intensity spin estimator and the ensemble of shape functions type of feature descriptors proved to be the most suitable variant for such object recognition tasks.
Recovery of transverse velocities of steadily rotating patterns in flat galaxies

The transverse velocities of steadily rotating, non-axisymmetric patterns in flat galaxies may be determined by a purely kinematic method, using two-dimensional maps of a tracer surface brightness and radial current density. The data maps could be viewed as the zeroth and first velocity moments of the line-of-sight velocity distribution, which is the natural output of integral-field spectrographs. Our method is closely related to the Tremaine-Weinberg method of estimating pattern speeds of steadily rotating patterns, when the tracer surface brightness satisfies a source-free continuity equation. We prove that, under identical assumptions concerning the pattern, two-dimensional maps may be used to recover not just one number (the pattern speed), but the full vector field of tracer flow in the disc plane. We illustrate the recovery process by applying it to simulated data and test its robustness by including the effects of noise.
Mobility management in optical mobile network

In this paper a novel mobility management scheme is proposed that is based on optical packet switching. Optical Packet based Mobility Management (OPMM) is proved to be more efficient for mobile traffic transport compared to conventional GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) regarding packet overhead, transport latency and energy consumption. Meanwhile, OPMM reduces the complexity of the mobility management procedure. The system design is validated in a simulator and the performance is compared with the standard 3GPP implementation in realistic scenarios with a reference architecture.
Governance, Institutional Quality and the Euro Area Crisis: What Lessons to East Asian Integration?

We find that institutional quality of an individual country was highly and significantly correlated with its economic performance in the euro area. We argue that governance reforms proposed at present do not suffice to resolving the fundamental problems of the EMU governance system unless disparities of institutional quality in member states are dissolved. Regarding regional integration, East Asia is far behind the Eurozone not only in institutional elements of the governance system but also in institutional quality at the level of individual nations.
Heart rate sensors acceptability: Data reliability vs. ease of use

In the present study we focused on heart rate sensors and compared the acceptability and usability of the various devices candidates to feed the PRECIOUS (PREventive Care Infrastructure based On Ubiquitous Sensing) system. More precisely, smart-watch, chest-belt and 2-points-electrodes have been tested by users during 24 hours. Each device test lead to consult lifestyle reports about stress, sleep and physical activity. During this experimentation 11 participants completed different acceptability questionnaires. The first results interpretation revealed which sensor is the most acceptable and gave insight into how data reliability of the different devices influenced their respective acceptability in the daily life.
Suprafenacine, an Indazole-Hydrazide Agent, Targets Cancer Cells Through Microtubule Destabilization

Microtubules are a highly validated target in cancer therapy. However, the clinical development of tubulin binding agents (TBA) has been hampered by toxicity and chemoresistance issues and has necessitated the search for new TBAs. Here, we report the identification of a novel cell permeable, tubulin-destabilizing molecule - 4,5,6,7-tetrahydro-1H-indazole-3-carboxylic acid [1p-tolyl-meth-(E)-ylidene]-hydrazide (termed as Suprafenacine, SRF). SRF, identified by in silico screening of annotated chemical libraries, was shown to bind microtubules at the colchicine-binding site and inhibit polymerization. This led to G2/M cell cycle arrest and cell death via a mitochondria-mediated apoptotic pathway. Cell death was preceded by loss of mitochondrial membrane potential, JNK - mediated phosphorylation of Bcl-2 and Bad, and activation of caspase-3. Intriguingly, SRF was found to selectively inhibit cancer cell proliferation and was effective against drug-resistant cancer cells by virtue of its ability to bypass the multidrug resistance transporter P-glycoprotein. Taken together, our results suggest that SRF has potential as a chemotherapeutic agent for cancer treatment and provides an alternate scaffold for the development of improved anti-cancer agents.
Partnership in Practice

As Probation Committees anticipate their new scope under the Criminal Justice Act 1991 to grant-aid voluntary projects, Harriet Bretherton, an Inner London probation officer seconded as a team leader to a residential alcohol recovery project, describes the reality of a working relationship between the Probation Service and the Independent Sector, as promoted in the April 1990 consultation paper 'Partnership in Dealing with Offenders in the Community'. The Home Office's decision on future arrangements is expected this Autumn.
Modeling deflection networks: design and specification

This paper presents a formal specification for the deflection network, which has been proposed for high speed metropolitan area communication infrastructures in recent years. The network is modeled as a closed system with unbounded I/O queues. UNITY (Unbounded Nondeterministic Iterative Transformations) logic, which is a fragment of linear temporal logic, is used to formulate the properties of the network. In the UNITY model, a system is viewed as a mathematical object; the properties of the system are expressed by using a set of logical relations. A topology independent specification that clarifies the nodal structure and processing of the deflection network is developed.
Recovering Social Networks by Observing Votes

We investigate how to reconstruct social networks from voting data. In particular, given a voting model that considers social network structure, we aim to find the network that best explains the agents' votes. We study two plausible voting models, one edge-centric and the other vertex-centric. For these models, we give algorithms and lower bounds, characterizing cases where network recovery is possible and where it is computationally difficult. We also test our algorithms on United States Senate data. Despite the similarity of the two models, we show that their respective network recovery problems differ in complexity and involve distinct algorithmic challenges. Moreover, the networks produced when working under these models can also differ significantly. These results indicate that great care should be exercised when choosing a voting model for network recovery tasks.
A Service Recommendation Algorithm Based on Modeling of Implicit Demands

The results from using the current service recommendation algorithms are still unable to meet the dynamic and diverse demands of users. Therefore, a recommendation algorithm is proposed to take into account the dynamic and diverse demands of users. This algorithm extracts the user-implicit-demand-factors from the Latent Dirichlet Allocation model in the field of machine learning, and uses both explicit and implicit demand as the intermediary variable to generate a service recommendation list for the user. Experimental results on a real-world data set regarding service composition show that the proposed algorithm can represent a variety of user demands, and the performance of the proposed algorithm is better than the existing algorithms in terms of accuracy, novelty and timeliness.
An Adjustable and Reversible Data Hiding Method Based on Multiple-base Notational System without Location Map

The reversible image hiding method is one data hiding technique for pro- tecting secret data or copyright. The reversible image hiding method can completely reconstruct the cover image from the stego-image after the embedded secret data are com- pletely extracted. However, many proposed reversible image hiding methods require a location map to restore the cover images. Although the location map can be compressed by a lossless compression algorithm, it will decrease the embedding capacity and increase the computational cost. This paper presents a new type of adjustment reversible image hiding method without a location map. The proposed method applies the multiple-base notational system to embed the secret data into a cover image with minimal distortion and provides several advantages: (1) the location map is not required; (2) the embed- ding capacity can be adjusted according to the user's practical applications; (3) a high embedding capacity with pleasing visual image quality, especially the smooth images, is achieved. Furthermore, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves a higher embedding capacity and satisfactory visual image quality.
Targeting outcomes redux

". There are sharply divergent views as to how much narrowly targeted interventions actually benefit the poor. These result from differing assessments of three issues: whether better targeting outcomes are likely to be achieved, whether such methods are cost-effective, and whether the living standards of the poor are improved by such targeted interventions. This paper focuses on the first issue. Using a newly constructed database of targeted interventions, it addresses three questions: (1) What targeting outcomes are observed? (2) Are there systematic differences in targeting performance by targeting methods and other factors? (3) What are the implications for such systematic differences for the design and implementation of targeted interventions? " from Authors' Abstract.
Pricing Policies for Perishable Products with Demand Substitution

This paper studies optimal pricing policies for a family of substitute perishable products with demand correlation. Potential buyers arrive according to an exogenous stochastic process. At each demand epoch, the arriving customer observes the set of substitute products for which there is still inventory available together with their corresponding prices. Based on this information, the customer either buys one of the available products at the posted price, or leaves the system without purchasing anything. We propose a simple choice model to capture buyers’ purchasing behavior from which a price-sensitive demand function is derived. In this context, we study the seller’s problem of optimally selecting a pricing policy that maximizes expected cumulative revenues over a finite selling horizon.
In pursuit of sex parity: are girls becoming more educated than boys?

Leaders of 189 countries, including the Philippines, gathered in 2000 for the Millennium Summit and committed to achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. These goals include the completion by all boys and girls of a full course of primary schooling (MDG2) and the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education (MDG3). These MDGs on education are part of the goals of the Education for All (EFA) global initiative that seeks to bring the benefits of education to every citizen in every society.
Fish consumption among young overweight European adults and compliance to varying seafood content in four weight loss intervention diets

Abstract Background Fish is considered an important part of a healthy diet and is frequently recommended as a main course at least twice a week. Objective To study the frequency of fish consumption among young overweight European adults and their compliance to varying seafood consumption in weight loss intervention diets. Design After meeting the inclusion criteria, the subject’s seafood intake was evaluated. Subjects were randomly assigned into four groups and were advised energy-restricted diets for 8 weeks, including no seafood (control), cod, salmon or fish oil. A validated FFQ was used to evaluate the consumption of seafood at baseline, midpoint and endpoint, and long-chain n-3 fatty acids in blood erythrocytes were measured. Setting Iceland, Ireland and Spain. Subjects The sample (n 324); 20–40-year-olds with BMI = 27·5–32·5 kg/m2; 85 % participated. Results At baseline, 34 % of the participants reported eating fish at least twice a week as the main course. During the intervention, six participants reported that they did not finish their fish portions, 15 % of the participants consumed small amount of fish additional to the study protocol in weeks 1–4 and 23 % in weeks 5–8 (P = 0·010). Changes in erythrocyte long-chain n-3 fatty acids confirmed good compliance, with increases in the salmon (P < 0·001) and fish oil (P < 0·001) groups, smaller increase in the cod group (P = 0·037) and decrease in the control group (P = 0·030). Conclusion Frequency of fish consumption among 66 % of young European overweight adults is lower than frequently recommended. Compliance to varying seafood consumption was good. Therefore, including more fish in the diet of this group should be encouraged.
Generation of Embedded Hardware/Software from SystemC

Designers increasingly rely on reusing intellectual property (IP) and on raising the level of abstraction to respect system-on-chip (SoC) market characteristics. However, most hardware and embedded software codes are recoded manually from system level. This recoding step often results in new coding errors that must be identified and debugged. Thus, shorter time-to-market requires automation of the system synthesis from high-level specifications. In this paper, we propose a design flow intended to reduce the SoC design cost. This design flow unifies hardware and software using a single high-level language. It integrates hardware/software (HW/SW) generation tools and an automatic interface synthesis through a custom library of adapters. We have validated our interface synthesis approach on a hardware producer/consumer case study and on the design of a given software radiocommunication application.
Cardiomyocyte Imaging Using Real-Time Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM)

Spatial light interference microscopy (SLIM) is a highly sensitive quantitative phase imaging method, which is capable of unprecedented structure studies in biology and beyond. In addition to the π/2 shift introduced in phase contrast between the scattered and unscattered light from the sample, 4 phase shifts are generated in SLIM, by increments of π/2 using a reflective liquid crystal phase modulator (LCPM). As 4 phase shifted images are required to produce a quantitative phase image, the switching speed of the LCPM and the acquisition rate of the camera limit the acquisition rate and, thus, SLIM's applicability to highly dynamic samples. In this paper we present a fast SLIM setup which can image at a maximum rate of 50 frames per second and provide in real-time quantitative phase images at 50/4 = 12.5 frames per second. We use a fast LCPM for phase shifting and a fast scientific-grade complementary metal oxide semiconductor (sCMOS) camera (Andor) for imaging. We present the dispersion relation, i.e. decay rate vs. spatial mode, associated with dynamic beating cardiomyocyte cells from the quantitative phase images obtained with the real-time SLIM system.
Hydronephrosis associated with antiurothelial and antinuclear autoantibodies in BALB/c-Fcgr2b −/− Pdcd1 −/− mice

Because most autoimmune diseases are polygenic, analysis of the synergistic involvement of various immune regulators is essential for a complete understanding of the molecular pathology of these diseases. We report the regulation of autoimmune diseases by epistatic effects of two immunoinhibitory receptors, low affinity type IIb Fc receptor for IgG (FcγRIIB) and programmed cell death 1 (PD-1). Approximately one third of the BALB/c-Fcgr2b −/− Pdcd1 −/− mice developed autoimmune hydronephrosis, which is not observed in either BALB/c-Fcgr2b −/− or BALB/c-Pdcd1 −/− mice. Hydronephrotic mice produced autoantibodies (autoAbs) against urothelial antigens, including uroplakin IIIa, and these antibodies were deposited on the urothelial cells of the urinary bladder. In addition, ∼15% of the BALB/c-Fcgr2b −/− Pdcd1 −/− mice produced antinuclear autoAbs. In contrast, the frequency of the autoimmune cardiomyopathy and the production of anti–parietal cell autoAb, which were observed in BALB/c-Pdcd1 −/− mice, were not affected by the additional FcγRIIB deficiency. These observations suggest cross talk between two immunoinhibitory receptors, FcγRIIB and PD-1, on the regulation of autoimmune diseases.
Improving Genre Annotations for the Million Song Dataset

Any automatic music genre recognition (MGR) system must show its value in tests against a ground truth dataset. Recently, the public dataset most often used for this purpose has been proven problematic, because of mislabeling, duplications, and its relatively small size. Another dataset, the Million Song Dataset (MSD), a collection of features and metadata for one million tracks, unfortunately does not contain readily accessible genre labels. Therefore, multiple attempts have been made to add song-level genre annotations, which are required for supervised machine learning tasks. Thus far, the quality of these annotations has not been evaluated. In this paper we present a method for creating additional genre annotations for the MSD from databases, which contain multiple, crowd-sourced genre labels per song (Last.fm, beaTunes). Based on label co-occurrence rates, we derive taxonomies, which allow inference of top-level genres. These are most often used in MGR systems. We then combine multiple datasets using majority voting. This both promises a more reliable ground truth and allows the evaluation of the newly generated and pre-existing datasets. To facilitate further research, all derived genre annotations are publicly available on our website.
WIRELESS AD-HOC NETWORK ROUTING PROTOCOLS: PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Recently it is observed that there is an an exponential increase in the use of advanced wireless mobile computing technology centered round the IP protocol suite. MANETs (Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks) support robust and efficient operation by incorporating routing functionality into mobile nodes. These networks have a dynamic rapidly changing topology that is bandwidth constrained. Different protocols are available today that support the network infrastructure but adaptation is required in order to be useful within a network no longer connected to the Internet infrastructure. Protocols that build routes “on demand” minimize control traffic overhead whereas Table driven protocols produce extra control traffic, which is required to constantly update antiquated route entries. This paper evaluates the performance of such protocols under different circumstances.
Model order reduction of nonlinear systems: status, open issues, and applications

In this document we review the status of existing techniques for non-linear model order reduction by investigating how well these techniques perform for typical industrial needs. In particular the TPWL-method (Trajectory Piecewise Linear-method) and the POD-approach (Proper Orthogonal Decomposion) is taken under consideration. We address several questions that are (closely) related to both the theory and application of nonlinear model order reduction techniques. The goal of this document is to provide an overview of available methods together with a classification of nonlinear problems that in principle could be handled by these methods.