Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A review of the epidemiological and clinical aspects of West Nile virus

The resurgence of West Nile virus (WNV) in North America and Europe in recent years has raised the concerns of local authorities and highlighted that mosquito-borne disease is not restricted to tropical regions of the world. WNV is maintained in enzootic cycles involving, primarily, Culex spp. mosquitoes and avian hosts, with epizootic spread to mammals, including horses and humans. Human infection results in symptomatic illness in approximately one-fifth of cases and neuroinvasive disease in less than 1% of infected persons. The most consistently recognized risk factor for neuroinvasive disease is older age, although diabetes mellitus, alcohol excess, and a history of cancer may also increase risk. Despite the increasing public health concern, the current WNV treatments are inadequate. Current evidence supporting the use of ribavirin, interferon α, and WNV-specific immunoglobulin are reviewed. Nucleic acid detection has been an important diagnostic development, which is particularly important for the protection of the donated blood supply. While effective WNV vaccines are widely available for horses, no human vaccine has been registered. Uncertainty surrounds the magnitude of future risk posed by WNV, and predictive models are limited by the heterogeneity of environmental, vector, and host factors, even in neighboring regions. However, recent history has demonstrated that for regions where suitable mosquito vectors and reservoir hosts are present, there will be a risk of major epidemics. Given the potential for these outbreaks to include severe neuroinvasive disease, strategies should be implemented to monitor for, and respond to, outbreak risk. While broadscale mosquito control programs will assist in reducing the abundance of mosquito populations and subsequently reduce the risks of disease, for many individuals, the use of topical insect repellents and other personal protective strategies will remain the first line of defense against infection.
STEREO-BASED IMAGE AND VIDEO ANALYSIS FOR MULTIMEDIA APPLICATIONS

In this paper we utilize stereo images and video frames of real scenes to automatically generate artistic stereoscopic views with a hand-painted appearance (“painterly rendering”). The approach is motivated by contemporary artists who painted stereo image pairs on canvases. Although a variety of monoscopic painterly rendering algorithms have been proposed in the literature, the design of painterly rendering algorithms suited to stereo views of real scenes presents a largely unexplored field. In our approach, we use stereo analysis to generate a disparity map which is then employed by the stereoscopic rendering algorithm to preserve coherence between the brush strokes of the two stereo views. The painting of the occluded regions is incorporated as a separate step into the rendering procedure. We utilize the disparity map to prevent paint spilling between surfaces located at different depths. Stereoscopic viewing of the stereo paintings produced by our algorithm demonstrates that the aesthetic impression resulting from the hand-painted appearance of the individual images has been enhanced with an additional perception of depth. * Corresponding author
Harmonic calls and indifferent females: no preference for human consonance in an anuran

The human music faculty might have evolved from rudimentary components that occur in non-human animals. The evolutionary history of these rudimentary perceptual features is not well understood and rarely extends beyond a consideration of vertebrates that possess a cochlea. One such antecedent is a preferential response to what humans perceive as consonant harmonic sounds, which are common in many animal vocal repertoires. We tested the phonotactic response of female túngara frogs (Physalaemus pustulosus) to variations in the frequency ratios of their harmonically structured mating call to determine whether frequency ratio influences attraction to acoustic stimuli in this vertebrate that lacks a cochlea. We found that the ratio of frequencies present in acoustic stimuli did not influence female response. Instead, the amount of inner ear stimulation predicted female preference behaviour. We conclude that the harmonic relationships that characterize the vocalizations of these frogs did not evolve in response to a preference for frequency intervals with low-integer ratios. Instead, the presence of harmonics in their mating call, and perhaps in the vocalizations of many other animals, is more likely due to the biomechanics of sound production rather than any preference for ‘more musical’ sounds.
Baseband processor for IEEE 802.11a standard with embedded BIST

In this paper results of an IEEE 802.11a compliant low-power baseband processor implementation are presented. The detailed structure of the baseband pro- cessor and its constituent blocks is given. A design for testability strategy based on Built-In Self-Test (BIST) is proposed. Finally, implementational results and power estimation are reported.
Optimal charging and discharging for multiple PHEVs with demand side management in vehicle-to-building

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) will be widely used in future transportation systems to reduce oil fuel consumption. Therefore, the electrical energy demand will be increased due to the charging of a large number of vehicles. Without intelligent control strategies, the charging process can easily overload the electricity grid at peak hours. In this paper, we consider a smart charging and discharging process for multiple PHEVs in a building's garage to optimize the energy consumption profile of the building. We formulate a centralized optimization problem in which the building controller or planner aims to minimize the square Euclidean distance between the instantaneous energy demand and the average demand of the building by controlling the charging and discharging schedules of PHEVs (or ‘users’). The PHEVs' batteries will be charged during low-demand periods and discharged during high-demand periods in order to reduce the peak load of the building. In a decentralized system, we design an energy cost-sharing model and apply a non-cooperative approach to formulate an energy charging and discharging scheduling game, in which the players are the users, their strategies are the battery charging and discharging schedules, and the utility function of each user is defined as the negative total energy payment to the building. Based on the game theory setup, we also propose a distributed algorithm in which each PHEV independently selects its best strategy to maximize the utility function. The PHEVs update the building planner with their energy charging and discharging schedules. We also show that the PHEV owners will have an incentive to participate in the energy charging and discharging game. Simulation results verify that the proposed distributed algorithm will minimize the peak load and the total energy cost simultaneously.
Folded-Slot Integrated Antenna Array for Millimeter-Wave CMOS Applications on Standard HR SOI Substrate

Silicon-based technology is now able to address new applications such as Wireless HDMI. Performances of CMOS and BiCMOS transistors enable RF designers to integrate the entire front-end. The last building block of the integration is the antenna. A folded-slot antenna and 4-antenna linear array layouts on HR SOI silicon using standard CMOS process BEOL are described. In this paper, return loss and gain measurements are performed on both structures to show the interest of an array to improve the global performances of the RF chain. The measured gain is increased from -4.7 dBi (folded-slot) to -1.8 dBi (4-element array), which is compatible with a 2 meter wireless link at 60 GHz. Moreover, an antenna radiation pattern measurement setup which is at the R&D State-of-the-Art is described and exploited for extracting radiation patterns from on-silicon mmWave antennas.
The IT Impact in Management Decision Making in Romanian Companies: A Case Study

The aim of this paper is to present a case study regarding the information technologies impact in decision making process on the management of some Romanian companies. The main parameters which can define the IT impact were established. The results of investigation and the most important correlations between the monitored parameters are also presented. At the end of the paper there are the conclusions on the impact of information technologies obtained from the case study.
First documented rhythm and clinical outcome from in-hospital cardiac arrest among children and adults.

CONTEXT Cardiac arrests in adults are often due to ventricular fibrillation (VF) or pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VT), which are associated with better outcomes than asystole or pulseless electrical activity (PEA). Cardiac arrests in children are typically asystole or PEA. OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that children have relatively fewer in-hospital cardiac arrests associated with VF or pulseless VT compared with adults and, therefore, worse survival outcomes. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS A prospective observational study from a multicenter registry (National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) of cardiac arrests in 253 US and Canadian hospitals between January 1, 2000, and March 30, 2004. A total of 36,902 adults (> or =18 years) and 880 children (<18 years) with pulseless cardiac arrests requiring chest compressions, defibrillation, or both were assessed. Cardiac arrests occurring in the delivery department, neonatal intensive care unit, and in the out-of-hospital setting were excluded. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Survival to hospital discharge. RESULTS The rate of survival to hospital discharge following pulseless cardiac arrest was higher in children than adults (27% [236/880] vs 18% [6485/36,902]; adjusted odds ratio [OR], 2.29; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.95-2.68). Of these survivors, 65% (154/236) of children and 73% (4737/6485) of adults had good neurological outcome. The prevalence of VF or pulseless VT as the first documented pulseless rhythm was 14% (120/880) in children and 23% (8361/36,902) in adults (OR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.44-0.65; P<.001). The prevalence of asystole was 40% (350) in children and 35% (13 024) in adults (OR, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.10-1.40; P = .006), whereas the prevalence of PEA was 24% (213) in children and 32% (11,963) in adults (OR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.57-0.78; P<.001). After adjustment for differences in preexisting conditions, interventions in place at time of arrest, witnessed and/or monitored status, time to defibrillation of VF or pulseless VT, intensive care unit location of arrest, and duration of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, only first documented pulseless arrest rhythm remained significantly associated with differential survival to discharge (24% [135/563] in children vs 11% [2719/24,987] in adults with asystole and PEA; adjusted OR, 2.73; 95% CI, 2.23-3.32). CONCLUSIONS In this multicenter registry of in-hospital cardiac arrest, the first documented pulseless arrest rhythm was typically asystole or PEA in both children and adults. Because of better survival after asystole and PEA, children had better outcomes than adults despite fewer cardiac arrests due to VF or pulseless VT.
Efficient Algorithms for Automatic Detection of Cracks on a Concrete Bridge

In the bridge inspection, the information of cracks is important to maintain a bridge. Therefore, automatic crack detection is highly desirable for efficiency and objectivity of crack assessment. However, in general, it is very difficult to detect cracks automatically from noisy concrete surfaces. In this paper, we propose a machine vision system for automatic inspection of bridges. The proposed machine vision system can detect cracks in real time, and it has some utility functions for supervised manipulation. The performance of the proposed system has been evaluated with 100 noisy images. In terms of accuracy in detecting cracks, experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to the conventional methods for detecting cracks.
Continuous phoneme recognition in Cued Speech for French

Cued Speech is a visual communication mode, which uses hand shapes and lip shapes making all the sounds of spoken language clearly understandable to deaf and hearing-impaired people. Using Cued Speech the problems of lipreading can be overcome resulting thus in understanding of full spoken language by deaf children and adults. In automatic recognition of Cued Speech, lip shape recognition, gesture recognition, and integration of the two modalities are required. Previously, the authors have reported studies on vowel-, consonant, and isolated word recognition in Cued Speech for French. In the current study, continuous phoneme recognition experiments are presented using data from a normal-hearing and a deaf cuer. In the case of the normal-hearing cuer, the obtained phoneme correct was 82.9%, and in the case of the deaf cuer 81.5%. The results showed, that automatic recognition of Cued Speech shows similar performance in both normalhearing and deaf cuers.
The parcellation of the medial geniculate body of the cat defined by the auditory response properties of single units

Single unit responses were recorded in the medial geniculate body (MGB) of anesthetized cats. In response to acoustical stimulation the properties of response latency, discharge pattern, frequency tuning, binaural interaction, and habituation were examined to allow an appraisal of the differentiation of the MGB by electrophysiological means. It is found that definite boundaries can be determined at which there is a distinct change in response properties; the position of these “physiological boundaries” seems to correspond with the boundaries between the seven subnuclei of the MGB described by Morest (Morest, D. K. (1964) J. Anat. 98: 611–630) in Golgi-stained material. Using these physiological boundaries to determine unit locations, population comparisons are made allowing the description of each subnucleus in terms of its auditory response properties. It is suggested that these properties, together with the limited information gained from Nissl cytoarchitecture, are sufficient to describe the location of physiological recording sites in the MGB.
Rotating, tilting, bouncing: using an interactive chair to promote activity in office environments

A typical office worker nowadays spends the majority of his time sedentary in the course of his working life. In this paper, we address the problem of sedentariness in the context of office work through smooth integration of light physical activity into the daily work routine. Equipping a flexible office chair with motion sensing functionality, the chair becomes a ubiquitous input device that provides an office worker with the possibility to use the movements of his body for tilting, rotating, or bouncing to control his workplace computer. Based on this idea, we apply an existing gesture taxonomy to body movements on an active office chair, and explore different application scenarios for ubiquitous gestural chair interaction.
Explicit Capacity-achieving Codes for Worst-Case Additive Errors

For every p in (0,1/2), we give an explicit construction of binary codes of rate approaching "capacity" 1-H(p) that enable reliable communication in the presence of worst-case additive errors}, caused by a channel oblivious to the codeword (but not necessarily the message). Formally, we give an efficient "stochastic" encoding E(\cdot,\cdot) of messages combined with a small number of auxiliary random bits, such that for every message m and every error vector e (that could depend on m) that contains at most a fraction p of ones, w.h. p over the random bits r chosen by the encoder, m can be efficiently recovered from the corrupted codeword E(m,r) + e by a decoder without knowledge of the encoder's randomness r. Our construction for additive errors also yields explicit deterministic codes of rate approaching 1-H(p) for the "average error" criterion: for every error vector e of at most p fraction 1's, most messages m can be efficiently (uniquely) decoded from the corrupted codeword C(m)+e. Note that such codes cannot be linear, as the bad error patterns for all messages are the same in a linear code. We also give a new proof of the existence of such codes based on list decoding and certain algebraic manipulation detection codes. Our proof is simpler than the previous proofs from the literature on arbitrarily varying channels.
An alternative non-invasive treatment for Peyronie's disease.

OBJECTIVE Surgical correction of the deformity and plaque caused by Peyronie's disease has some important disadvantages and extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) emerged as a new promising therapy. We evaluated prospectively the efficacy and safety of the association of high dose vitamin E and ESWT as a non-invasive treatment for the disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty-five patients 42 to 68 years old (mean = 54) presenting penile deviation and sexual distress caused by Peyronie's disease were treated in a non-invasive manner. The time of penile deviation ranged from 16 to 52 months (mean = 30). All patients had previous unsuccessful treatment for Peyronie's disease. The angulation's deformity of the penis was assessed by photography at home. The patients received vitamin E (l.200 mg daily) during 3 months and underwent 3 to 6 sessions (mean = 3) of ESWT (3,000 to 4,000 shockwaves) at a power level of l to 2 at 1-week intervals. RESULTS From 25 patients treated, 16 (64%) reported an improvement in penile angulation, with a mean reduction of 21 degrees (10 to 40). Eight patients reported improvement in their spontaneous erections. Overall, the patients presented only minimal bruising at the site of treatment and skin hematoma. Four patients presented urethral bleeding. The mean angulation after treatment in the control group was 48.67 degrees (30 - 70) and in the study group was 24.42 degrees (0 - 70), statistically significant. CONCLUSION Considering the common complications and the unsatisfactory outcome of the surgical correction for Peyronie's disease, the association of high dose vitamin E and ESWT represents a good option for a non-invasive, effective and safe treatment of the penile deformity.
Band Limited Signals Observed Over Finite Spatial and Temporal Windows: An Upper Bound to Signal Degrees of Freedom

The study of degrees of freedom of signals observed within spatially diverse broadband multipath fields is an area of ongoing investigation and has a wide range of applications, including characterising broadband MIMO and cooperative networks. However, a fundamental question arises: given a size limitation on the observation region, what is the upper bound on the degrees of freedom of signals observed within a broadband multipath field over a finite time window? In order to address this question, we characterize the multipath field as a sum of a finite number of orthogonal waveforms or spatial modes. We show that (i) the "effective observation time" is independent of spatial modes and different from actual observation time, (ii) in wideband transmission regimes, the "effective bandwidth" is spatial mode dependent and varies from the given frequency bandwidth. These findings clearly indicate the strong coupling between space and time as well as space and frequency in spatially diverse wideband multipath fields. As a result, signal degrees of freedom does not agree with the well-established degrees of freedom result as a product of spatial degrees of freedom and time-frequency degrees of freedom. Instead, analogous to Shannon's communication model where signals are encoded in only one spatial mode, the available signal degrees of freedom in spatially diverse wideband multipath fields is the time-bandwidth product result extended from one spatial mode to finite modes. We also show that the degrees of freedom is affected by the acceptable signal to noise ratio (SNR) in each spatial mode.
Offline Synthesis of Online Dependence Testing: Parametric Loop Pipelining for HLS

Loop pipelining is probably the most important optimization method in high-level synthesis (HLS), allowing multiple loop iterations to execute in a pipeline. In this paper, we extend the capability of loop pipelining in HLS to handle loops with uncertain memory behaviours. We extend polyhedral synthesis techniques to the parametric case, offloading the uncertainty to parameter values determined at run time. Our technique then synthesizes lightweight runtime checks to detect the case where a low initiation interval (II) is achievable, resulting in a run-time switch between aggressive (fast) and conservative (slow) execution modes. This optimization is implemented into an automated source-to-source code transformation framework with Xilinx Vivado HLS as one RTL generation backend. Over a suite of benchmarks, experiments show that our optimization can implement transformed pipelines at almost same clock frequency as that generated directly with Vivado HLS, but with approximately 10× faster initiation interval in the fast case, while consuming approximately 60% more resource.
Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics

I am delighted to welcome you to the 42nd meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL'04 in Barcelona.In keeping with the tradition of ACL conferences, we present you with a scientific programme of cutting-edge research in our field, in the form of papers, demonstrations and posters, supported by tutorials and workshops and complemented by an ACL-endorsed associated conference. The programme continues to show a healthy mixture of high standards of selectivity coupled with wide participation from our scientific community: ACL'04 received 619 submissions to the technical sessions and workshops (not including 260 to EMNLP) of which 221 were accepted, providing an overall acceptance rate of 36%. Over the three days of the main conference, there will be 137 presentations, distributed over three parallel sessions, in addition to a fourth session on Day 2 when the Student Research Workshop will take place. We are continuing the format for Demonstrations and Interactive Posters introduced so successfully by our colleagues in Sapporo last year: in the first session of each day there will be short formal presentations of each system to be demonstrated, and poster to be (interactively) displayed, later that day. As in the last two years, the ACL executive committee will be presenting an ACL Lifetime Achievement Award to a distinguished researcher for his or her pioneering work in Computational Linguistics. Previous recipients have been Aravind Joshi and Makato Nagao. The winner of this year's award will be announced by the ACL Executive Committee at a special plenary session on Day 2, followed by a lecture by the recipient of the award. Also as in previous years, the Programme Chairs of the Main Session will be announcing, at the end of the Conference, the recipient of the Best Paper Award; this year the Chairs of the Student Research Workshop will also present an award, for the best Student Paper.This scientific programme will be accompanied by a special programme of social events: you are all invited to join us at the Welcome Reception on the evening of the 21st July. I hope we will choose to also join us at the Conference Banquet on the 23rd in the medieval Salo de Contractacions at the nearby Llotja, which will be a feast of local Catalan cuisine and wines, and will be the venue for the Presidental Address by Johanna Moore.