Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An in-place search algorithm for the resource constrained scheduling problem during high-level synthesis

We propose an in-place search algorithm for computing the exact solutions to the resource constrained scheduling problem. This algorithm supports operation chaining, pipelining and multicycling in the underlying scheduling problem. Based on two lower-bound estimation mechanisms that are capable of predicting the criterion values of search nodes represented by partially scheduled data flow graphs, the proposed algorithm can effectively prune the nonpromising search space and finds the optimum usually several times faster than existing techniques. As opposed to existing search-based scheduling techniques whose space complexity is squared or exponential in the search depth, our approach requires only a constant storage space during the traversal of the search tree. The low space complexity is accomplished by using a combination-generating algorithm, which leads our approach to visit search nodes in such a way that each one is obtained by making only a small change to its sibling without keeping any parent nodes in memory. Experimental results on several well known benchmarks with varying resource constraints show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Inbound Mobility Management on LTE-Advanced Femtocell Topology Using X2 Interface

The femtocell access point of LTE-Advanced system, which can be deployed under macrocell coverage, was applied to the paper. The paper consists of two analyses which are the interference impact by the femtocell and the macrocell at a user equipment and the load impact to the control plane in evolved packet core network by X2 and S1 handover signaling messages. On the results of investigations by performance simulations with regard to the receiving power and signal-to-noise ratio at a user equipment side, the unavailable zone to the inbound handover from macrocell to femtocell occurred due to a severe intercell interference depending on a femtocell topology. Therefore, we found that an intercell interference coordination between macrocell and femtocell in order to make an inbound handover is needed and that X2 interface is the better solution rather than S1 interface for an inbound handover by investigating the X2 and S1 handover procedure of 3GPP. Ultimately, it is shown that the X2 interface between macrocell and femtocell can play an important role in an high reliable inbound handover and a simple interference control implementation on femtocell environment.
School of Management Suffolk University David Sharp Richard Ivey School of Management The University of Western Ontario

Agency theory predicts that the presence of both information asymmetry and incentives encourages managers to maximize their self-interest at the expense of the firm's owners. However, anomalies in some experimental studies (Young 1985; Waller 1988; and Chow et al. 1988) have led to speculation that ethical factors such as "integrity" or "conscience" may limit purely self-interested behavior. This study examines the effect of moral development and perceived equity on intention to take a questionable action, and on the agency theory predictions of self-interested behavior. One hundred and sixty three managers responded to a cost allocation case in which we manipulated information asymmetry (absent or present) and incentive (absent, low or high). Subjects also completed instruments measuring moral development and their perception of the moral equity of their action. Results indicate that in the presence of information asymmetry and incentive to shirk, subjects exhibited the self-interested behavior predicted by agency theory, and both their moral development and perception of the equity of the action strongly predicted intention. We also found that the agency effect was much weaker among those who perceived the action to be inequitable. However, contrary to expectations, we found that the self-interested agency effect was stronger among the respondents with higher levels of moral development. Implications for research and for the design of management control systems are discussed.
CXCL17 Expression by Tumor Cells Recruits CD11b+Gr1highF4/80− Cells and Promotes Tumor Progression

Background Chemokines are involved in multiple aspects of pathogenesis and cellular trafficking in tumorigenesis. In this study, we report that the latest member of the C-X-C-type chemokines, CXCL17 (DMC/VCC-1), recruits immature myeloid-derived cells and enhances early tumor progression. Methodology/Principal Findings CXCL17 was preferentially expressed in some aggressive types of gastrointestinal, breast, and lung cancer cells. CXCL17 expression did not impart NIH3T3 cells with oncogenic potential in vitro, but CXCL17-expressing NIH3T3 cells could form vasculature-rich tumors in immunodeficient mice. Our data showed that CXCL17-expressing tumor cells increased immature CD11b+Gr1+ myeloid-derived cells at tumor sites in mice and promoted CD31+ tumor angiogenesis. Extensive chemotactic assays proved that CXCL17-responding cells were CD11b+Gr1highF4/80− cells (∼90%) with a neutrophil-like morphology in vitro. Although CXCL17 expression could not increase the number of CD11b+Gr1+ cells in tumor-burdened SCID mice or promote metastases of low metastatic colon cancer cells, the existence of CXCL17-responding myeloid-derived cells caused a striking enhancement of xenograft tumor formation. Conclusions/Significance These results suggest that aberrant expression of CXCL17 in tumor cells recruits immature myeloid-derived cells and promotes tumor progression through angiogenesis.
Assessing the population impact of low rates of breast feeding on asthma, coeliac disease and obesity: the use of a new statistical method

Background: Lack of breast feeding has been reported to be associated with a number of chronic childhood disorders. Aim: To use a recently described measure, the population impact number of eliminating a risk factor over a time period (PIN-ER-t), to quantify the burden of low rates of breast feeding in a UK population of babies born in 2002 with regard to asthma, coeliac disease and obesity. Methods: We performed literature searches for systematic reviews with meta-analyses that had investigated the association between breast feeding and asthma, coeliac disease and obesity. Based on these data, and published data on the prevalence of breast feeding and the prevalence of the disorders, we calculated PIN-ER-t and estimated the number of cases of each disorder which could be prevented by eliminating “no breast feeding” as a risk factor. Results: In the population of the 596 122 babies born in England and Wales in 2002, the number of cases of asthma, coeliac disease and obesity that could be prevented over 7–9 years if “no breast feeding” as a risk factor was eliminated were 33 100 (95% CI 17 710 to 47 543), 2655 (95% CI 1937 to 3343) and 13639 (95% CI 7838 to 19308), respectively. Conclusions: The population burden of low breast feeding rates is high with regard to these chronic disorders. The use of PIN-ER-t allows the population burden of low breast feeding rates to be quantified and communicated in a way that will make it easier for both the general public and decision makers to understand.
Treatment outcome and factors affecting time to recovery in children with severe acute malnutrition treated at outpatient therapeutic care program

Background The outpatient therapeutic care program (OTP) of children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) has been decentralized to health post level in Ethiopia since 2008–2009. However, there is a lack of evidence regarding treatment outcomes and factors related to the duration of stay on treatment after its decentralization to health post level. Objective This study was aimed to assess treatment outcome and factors affecting time to recovery in children with SAM treated at OTP. Design Health facility–based retrospective cohort study was conducted using data from 348 patient cards. The outcome variable was time to recovery. Descriptive analysis was done using percentages for categorical data and mean/median for continuous variables. A robust method of analyzing time to event data, the Cox proportional-hazard regression, was used. All statistical tests in this study are declared significant at p<0.05. Result 89.1% of children with kwashiorkor and 69.4% of children with marasmus were recovered. Of the total children studied, 22% were readmitted cases. The median time of recovery was 35 days for children with kwashiorkor and 49 days for children with marasmus. Children older than 3 years were 33% less likely to achieve nutritional recovery [adjusted hazard ratio, AHR=0.67, 95% confidence interval, CI (0.46, 0.97)]. Similarly, marasmic children stayed longer on treatment [AHR=0.42, 95% CI (0.32, 0.56)]. However, children who gained Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) ≥ 0.24 mm/day were 59% more likely to recover faster [AHR=1.59, 95% CI (1.23, 2.06)]. Conclusions Close monitoring of weight and MUAC gain to assess nutritional improvement with due emphasis given to children with lower admission weight, children of age 3 years and above and marasmic children will have a positive effect on treatment duration and outcome.
Estimating the Confidence Level of White Matter Connections Obtained with MRI Tractography

Background Since the emergence of diffusion tensor imaging, a lot of work has been done to better understand the properties of diffusion MRI tractography. However, the validation of the reconstructed fiber connections remains problematic in many respects. For example, it is difficult to assess whether a connection is the result of the diffusion coherence contrast itself or the simple result of other uncontrolled parameters like for example: noise, brain geometry and algorithmic characteristics. Methodology/Principal Findings In this work, we propose a method to estimate the respective contributions of diffusion coherence versus other effects to a tractography result by comparing data sets with and without diffusion coherence contrast. We use this methodology to assign a confidence level to every gray matter to gray matter connection and add this new information directly in the connectivity matrix. Conclusions/Significance Our results demonstrate that whereas we can have a strong confidence in mid- and long-range connections obtained by a tractography experiment, it is difficult to distinguish between short connections traced due to diffusion coherence contrast from those produced by chance due to the other uncontrolled factors of the tractography methodology.
Associations of Serum Ferritin and Transferrin % Saturation With All-cause, Cancer, and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Follow-up Study

Objectives Even though experimental studies have suggested that iron can be involved in generating oxidative stress, epidemiologic studies on the association of markers of body iron stores with cardiovascular disease or cancer remain controversial. This study was performed to examine the association of serum ferritin and transferrin saturation (%TS) with all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality. Methods The study subjects were men aged 50 years or older and postmenopausal women of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1988-1994. Participants were followed-up for mortality through December 31, 2006. Results Serum ferritin was not associated with all-cause, cancer, or cardiovascular mortality for either men or postmenopausal women. However, all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality were inversely associated with %TS in men. Compared with men in the lowest quintile, adjusted hazard ratios for all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality were 0.85, 0.86, 0.76, and 0.74 (p for trend < 0.01), 0.82, 0.73, 0.75, and 0.63 (p for trend < 0.01), and 0.86, 0.81, 0.72, and 0.76 (p for trend < 0.01), respectively. For postmenopausal women, inverse associations were also observed for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, but cancer mortality showed the significantly lower mortality only in the 2nd quintile of %TS compared with that of the 1st quintile. Conclusions Unlike speculation on the role of iron from experimental studies, %TS was inversely associated with all-cause, cancer and cardiovascular mortality in men and postmenopausal women. On the other hand, serum ferritin was not associated with all-cause, cancer, or cardiovascular mortality.
CYFRA 21-1 is an early predictor of chemotherapeutic effectiveness in advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer

AbstractSerum cytokeratin 19 fragment (CYFRA21-1) has been found to be a useful prognostic marker in lung cancer. Previous studies have revealed that change in CYFRA21-1 synchronously predicted therapeutic effectiveness in advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after the second cycle of chemotherapy. The objective of this study was to investigate the early predictive value of percentage change in serum CYFRA21-1 from pretreatment to completion of the first cycle of chemotherapy for chemotherapeutic effectiveness in advanced NSCLC patients.Ninety-seven advanced NSCLC patients with elevated serum CYFRA21-1 level (≥3.8 &mgr;g/L), who received 2 platinum-containing drugs, were included in this retrospective study. Serum CYFRA21-1 had been assayed before and after the first cycle of chemotherapy. To evaluate the effectiveness of chemotherapy, patients were allocated to disease control (DC) and progressive disease groups. The percentage changes of serum CYFRA21-1 concentration before and after first-cycle chemotherapy that occurred in each group were evaluated for their ability to predict achievement of radiologic DC, that is, to predict therapeutic effectiveness.The percentage change of serum CYFRA21-1 and the prevalence of ≥5% weight loss were higher in patients with progressive disease than in those with DC. The differences in other clinical and pathological variables including age, sex, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status, cigarette smoking, histological type, gross type, clinical stage, and chemotherapy regimens of the 2 groups were not significant. Both multiple generalized linear model analysis and linear trend tests indicated that the percentage change of serum CYFRA21-1 concentration was independently and negatively linked to the effectiveness of chemotherapy for NSCLC (P < 0.01). The area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of the percentage change in prediction of DC was 0.84 and the optimal cut-off value was17.5% (P < 0.001). The percentage change of serum CYFRA21-1 after completing the first cycle of chemotherapy was predictive of treatment effects and might be helpful in making early decisions to change chemotherapy regimens in patients with advanced NSCLC.
EMG-force-sensorless power assist system control based on Multi-Class Support Vector Machine

This paper aims to describe a framework implementing Multi-Class Support Vector Machine (MCSVM)-based motion intention recognition. To this end, we primarily constructed a wearable exoskeleton robot of lower body (TTI-Exo) which is employed as the experimentation platform to test the proposed method of motion intention recognition based on MCSVM and the assist effectiveness as well. Experiments of stand-to-sit and sit-to-stand movements were carried out to test the MCSVM method and TTI-Exo's motion assist. Having disclosed prototype development, experimental results are presented. We verified that our proposed method based on MCSVM obtained a better recognition accuracy than a conventional method based on threshold values. Muscle activities when subjects wearing TTI-Exo were much smaller than when subjects not wearing the exoskeleton, thus implying the assist efficacy of our power assist system.
An independently dated 2000-yr volcanic record from Law Dome, East Antarctica, including a new perspective on the dating of the 1450s CE eruption of Kuwae, Vanuatu

Volcanic eruptions are an important cause of nat- ural climate variability. In order to improve the accuracy of climate models, precise dating and magnitude of the climatic effects of past volcanism are necessary. Here we present a 2000-yr record of Southern Hemisphere volcanism recorded in ice cores from the high accumulation Law Dome site, East Antarctica. The ice cores were analysed for a suite of chemistry signals and are independently dated via annual layer counting, with 11 ambiguous years at 23 BCE, which has presently the lowest error of all published long Antarc- tic ice cores. Independently dated records are important to avoid circular dating where volcanic signatures are assigned a date from some external information rather than using the date it is found in the ice core. Forty-five volcanic events have been identified using the sulphate chemistry of the Law Dome record. The low dating error and comparison with the NGRIP (North Greenland Ice Core Project) volcanic records (on the GICC05 timescale) suggest Law Dome is the most accurately dated Antarctic volcanic dataset, which will im- prove the dating of individual volcanic events and potentially allow better correlation between ice core records, leading to improvements in global volcanic forcing datasets. One of the most important volcanic events of the last two millennia is the large 1450s CE event, usually assigned to the eruption of Kuwae, Vanuatu. In this study, we review the evidence sur- rounding the presently accepted date for this event, and make the case that two separate eruptions have caused confusion in the assignment of this event. Volcanic sulphate deposition es- timates are important for modelling the climatic response to eruptions. The largest volcanic sulphate events in our record are dated at 1458 CE (Kuwae? , Vanuatu), 1257 and 422 CE (unidentified).
Comparisons of Prognosis between Surgically and Clinically Diagnosed Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Using Gap Model

AbstractAlthough a multidisciplinary approach has become an important criterion for an idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) diagnosis, lung biopsies remain crucial. However, the prognosis of patients with surgically diagnosed IPF (sIPF) is uncertain. We aimed to investigate the prognosis of patients with clinically diagnosed IPF (cIPF) and sIPF.In this retrospective observational study, the Korean Interstitial Lung Disease Study Group conducted a national survey to evaluate the clinical, physiological, radiological, and survival characteristics of patients with IPF from January 1, 2003 to December 31, 2007. Patients were recruited from 54 universities and teaching hospitals across the Republic of Korea. IPF diagnoses were established according to the 2002 American Thoracic Society (ATS)/European Respiratory Society criteria (ERS) guideline. A total of 1685 patients with IPF (1027 cIPF and 658 sIPF) were enrolled.Patients with sIPF were significantly younger, predominantly female, and nonsmokers (all P < 0.001). sIPF group had significantly better initial pulmonary function. The proportion of computed tomography-based honeycomb findings of patients with cIPF was higher than in those with sIPF (P < 0.001). A Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the sIPF group had a better prognosis (P = 0.001). A survival analysis showed that age, pulmonary function parameters, pulmonary oxygen tension, honeycombing change, and combined lung cancer had a significant influence on patient prognosis. However, there was no significant difference in prognosis between the cIPF and sIPF groups after adjusting for GAP (gender, age, physiology) stage.The patients with sIPF had better clinical features than those with cIPF. However, after adjusting for GAP stage, the sIPF group showed similar prognoses as the cIPF group. This study showed that after adjusting for GAP stage, the prognosis of patients with IPF is the same regardless of the diagnostic method used.
Cache-based language model adaptation using visual attention for ASR in meeting scenarios

In a typical group meeting involving discussion and collaboration, people look at one another, at shared information resources such as presentation material, and also at nothing in particular. In this work we investigate whether the knowledge of what a person is looking at may improve the performance of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). A framework for cache Language Model (LM) adaptation is proposed with the cache based on a person's Visual Attention (VA) sequence. The framework attempts to measure the appropriateness of adaptation from VA sequence characteristics. Evaluation on the AMI Meeting corpus data shows reduced LM perplexity. This work demonstrates the potential for cache-based LM adaptation using VA information in large vocabulary ASR deployed in meeting scenarios.
What moderates implicit—explicit consistency?

Implicit and explicit indicators of attitudes or personality traits are positively, and variably, related. This review places the question of implicit ‐ explicit consistency into the tradition of attitude/trait ‐ behaviour consistency (e.g., Wicker, 1969). Drawing on dual-process models, such as the recent distinction between associative and propositional representations (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), we identify a working model of implicit ‐ explicit consistency that organises the empirical evidence on implicit ‐ explicit moderation into five factors: translation between implicit and explicit representations (e.g., representational strength, awareness), additional information integration for explicit representations (e.g., need for cognition), properties of explicit assessment (e.g., social desirability concerns), properties of implicit assessment (e.g., situational malleability), and research design factors (e.g., sampling bias, measurement correspondence).
Natural image statistics: Energy-based models estimated by score matching

Score matching is recent framework for parameter estimation in energy based models. In this class of probabilistic models, the intractable partition function has classically made learning a computationally expensive process necessitating the use of approximations, but with score matching this is no longer the case. This makes it straightforward to estimate models of natural images that have an intractable partition function, but offer advantages over classical model such as ICA by allowing for overcompleteness or nonlinear representations. Here we present two such models for natural images. The first is a hierarchical model with two layers estimated from the data, where the second layer serves to capture variance dependencies between first layer outputs. The second model we consider is an extension of ICA to a Markov random field, which allows us to generalize the ICA framework to images of arbitrary size.
Phase Model Reduction and Synchronization of Periodically Forced Nonlinear oscillators

Phase models represent the ideal framework to investigate the synchronization of a nonlinear oscillator with an external forcing. While many researches focused the attention to their analysis, little work has been done about the reduction of a physical system to the corresponding phase model. In this paper we show how, resorting to averaging techniques, it is possible to obtain the phase model corresponding to a given set of state equations. As examples, we derive the phase equations and investigate the synchronization properties of two popular nonlinear oscillators.