Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The IoT hub: a fog node for seamless management of heterogeneous connected smart objects

The Internet of Things (IoT) will interconnect billions of devices, denoted as “smart objects,” deployed pervasively, which will be extremely heterogeneous, in terms of hardware (i.e., computational power and available memory), software (i.e., operating systems, applications), and communication interfaces. Traditional Internet actors, such as personal computers, mobile devices, and cloud servers, will also communicate with smart objects, thus creating even more complexity. The IoT has so far grown as several vertical silos, with the purpose of demonstrating the concept of the IoT, rather than focusing on the actual construction of a highly interoperable infrastructure for the development of applications. The Internet Protocol (IP) stack (in particular, HTTP and CoAP) has been foreseen as the driver for integration and interoperability among devices and basis for the evolution of the Web of Things. However, in order to manage the physical diversity of devices and to create an IP-based infrastructure, the presence of network elements able to bridge different networks to enable direct end-to-end communication is required. Moreover, effective interaction with applications might require the presence of intermediaries, such as proxies, which may optionally implement protocol and data format translation functionalities. Given the above considerations, we propose a Fog node, denoted as “IoT Hub,” placed at the edge of multiple networks, which enhances the networks capabilities by implementing the following functions: border router; cross-proxy; cache; and resource directory. An implementation of the IoT Hub is presented together with a performance evaluation in a real-world IoT testbed.
Rat Models of Autoimmune Uveitis

Experimental autoimmune uveitis (EAU) in Lewis rats is a well-established model for human uveitis. During the last years we used this model to demonstrate extraocular induction of uveitis by antigenic mimicry of environmental antigens with retinal autoantigen and investigated the migration and intraocular reactivation of autoreactive green fluorescent protein (GFP)+ T cells. We could also elaborate several differences between EAU induced with S-antigen peptide PDSAg or R14, a peptide derived from interphotoreceptor retinoid-binding protein, suggesting two differently regulated diseases in the same rat strain. R14-mediated EAU in Lewis rats has been shown to relapse, thus we have a new model to test therapeutic approaches in an ongoing immune response instead of just preventing disease. Finally, we show antigenic mimicry of PDSAg and an HLA-B peptide for oral tolerance induction. After the successful first therapeutic trial this approach will now proceed with international multicenter clinical trials.
Detection of p16 promoter hypermethylation in serum of gastric cancer patients

For the early detection of tumor‐related aberrant DNA in the serum of patients, we examined promoter hypermethylation of the p16 gene using methylation‐specific PCR (MSP) in paired tumor and serum samples of 60 gastric cancer patients. Aberrant p16 methylation was found in 23 of 60 (38%) primary gastric cancers, but in none of the corresponding gastric mucosae. Of these 23 patients, 6 (26%) exhibited the same alteration in their serum DNA. As a control, we screened for aberrant methylation in the serum DNA of 37 patients with gastric cancers whose corresponding tumor DNA had no methylation in the p16 promoter. We also screened for methylation in the serum DNA of 16 non‐cancer individuals. No methylation was found in serum DNA of these control groups. Our results suggest that p16 methylation would be a good marker for the detection of tumor DNA in the serum of primary gastric cancer patients. (Cancer Sci 2003; 94: 418–420)
Factors influencing the quality of postoperative epidural analgesia: an observational multicenter study

Background Epidural analgesia (EDA) is used widely for postoperative pain treatment. However, studies have reported a failure rate of EDA of up to 30%. We aimed to evaluate the quality of postoperative EDA in patients undergoing a laparotomy in five Norwegian hospitals. Methods This was a multicenter observational study in patients undergoing a laparotomy with epidural-based postoperative analgesia. Data were registered at three time points. Technical aspects, infusion rates, pain intensity, assessment procedures, side effects, and satisfaction of patients and health personnel were recorded. The use of other pain medications and coanalgesics was registered. Results Three hundred and seventeen patients were included. Pain control at rest was satisfactory in 89% of patients at 24 hours and in 91% at 48 hours. Pain control when coughing was satisfactory in 62% at 24 hours and in 59% at 48 hours. The spread of hypoesthesia was consistent for each individual patient but varied between patients. The hypoesthetic area was not associated with pain intensity, and the precision of the EDA insertion point was not associated with the pain score. Few side effects were reported. EDA was regarded as effective and functioning well by 64% of health personnel. Conclusion EDA was an effective method for postoperative pain relief at rest but did not give sufficient pain relief during mobilization. The use of cold stimulation to assess the spread of EDA had limited value as a clinical indicator of the efficacy of postoperative pain control. Validated tools for the control of EDA quality are needed.
Diseases of the reproductive system.

Introduction Although there are a few distinguishable diseases that impact the reproductive system, the impacts of many challenges, not necessarily thought of as a disease, impact reproductive performance of sows and gilts. Homeostasis, a perception that the sow’s physiological state is normal, is essential to allow her to initiate cycles, conceive and maintain pregnancy. Each of these stages of reproductive life of females have detectable interferences due to infectious diseases and some non-infectious conditions caused by flow, housing, nutrition and other management influences. As presented in Figure 1, the sow regulates cycles based on her perception of well-being. Understanding and controlling management influences will allow the produced to recognize and minimize the impact of true reproductive diseases.
IF MEMS filters for mobile communication

For the past few years, the mobile phone market has been facing fast growth. However, the first generations of mobile telecommunications were based on several different standards over the world, and even at the time major operators negotiate for the third generation licenses, it seems UMTS, CDMA2000 and TD-SCDMA cannot achieve one single standard. A great challenge would be to develop flexible, re-configurable mobile phone handsets that could switch from one standard to another. To do so, MEMS technology is expected as a promising solution to provide tiny, low-consumption tunable components. Moreover, enhancing MEMS technologies to be compatible with IC processing, a novel architecture can be used for a MEMS-based transceiver that could reach the ultimate goal of a fully-integrated single-chip system. Indeed, it has been recently demonstrated that every off-chip, bulky, and expensive passive component present in a typical superheterodyne transceiver front-end could be advantageously replaced by an RF-MEMS counterpart. For example, micro-mechanical resonators could avoid the use of ceramic, SAW, and quartz off-chip resonators to allow low-loss filtering, mixing and carrier generation. But that kind of micro-scale resonators requires high quality factor and temperature stability to achieve highly selective filtering and low phase-noise frequency references. So, to demonstrate this ability, resonators and filters with center frequency up to 300 MHz were designed, and for their fabrication, two processes have been undertaken: an epitaxial thick-film polysilicon industrial technology and a thin-film polysilicon-based technology made compatible with a CMOS-SOI technology.
Multi‐modal robust inverse‐consistent linear registration

Registration performance can significantly deteriorate when image regions do not comply with model assumptions. Robust estimation improves registration accuracy by reducing or ignoring the contribution of voxels with large intensity differences, but existing approaches are limited to monomodal registration. In this work, we propose a robust and inverse‐consistent technique for cross‐modal, affine image registration. The algorithm is derived from a contextual framework of image registration. The key idea is to use a modality invariant representation of images based on local entropy estimation, and to incorporate a heteroskedastic noise model. This noise model allows us to draw the analogy to iteratively reweighted least squares estimation and to leverage existing weighting functions to account for differences in local information content in multimodal registration. Furthermore, we use the nonparametric windows density estimator to reliably calculate entropy of small image patches. Finally, we derive the Gauss–Newton update and show that it is equivalent to the efficient second‐order minimization for the fully symmetric registration approach. We illustrate excellent performance of the proposed methods on datasets containing outliers for alignment of brain tumor, full head, and histology images. Hum Brain Mapp 36:1365–1380, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
10-Year Outcomes after Monitoring, Surgery, or Radiotherapy for Localized Prostate Cancer.

BACKGROUND The comparative effectiveness of treatments for prostate cancer that is detected by prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing remains uncertain. METHODS We compared active monitoring, radical prostatectomy, and external-beam radiotherapy for the treatment of clinically localized prostate cancer. Between 1999 and 2009, a total of 82,429 men 50 to 69 years of age received a PSA test; 2664 received a diagnosis of localized prostate cancer, and 1643 agreed to undergo randomization to active monitoring (545 men), surgery (553), or radiotherapy (545). The primary outcome was prostate-cancer mortality at a median of 10 years of follow-up. Secondary outcomes included the rates of disease progression, metastases, and all-cause deaths. RESULTS There were 17 prostate-cancer-specific deaths overall: 8 in the active-monitoring group (1.5 deaths per 1000 person-years; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.7 to 3.0), 5 in the surgery group (0.9 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 0.4 to 2.2), and 4 in the radiotherapy group (0.7 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 0.3 to 2.0); the difference among the groups was not significant (P=0.48 for the overall comparison). In addition, no significant difference was seen among the groups in the number of deaths from any cause (169 deaths overall; P=0.87 for the comparison among the three groups). Metastases developed in more men in the active-monitoring group (33 men; 6.3 events per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 4.5 to 8.8) than in the surgery group (13 men; 2.4 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 1.4 to 4.2) or the radiotherapy group (16 men; 3.0 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 1.9 to 4.9) (P=0.004 for the overall comparison). Higher rates of disease progression were seen in the active-monitoring group (112 men; 22.9 events per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 19.0 to 27.5) than in the surgery group (46 men; 8.9 events per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 6.7 to 11.9) or the radiotherapy group (46 men; 9.0 events per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 6.7 to 12.0) (P<0.001 for the overall comparison). CONCLUSIONS At a median of 10 years, prostate-cancer-specific mortality was low irrespective of the treatment assigned, with no significant difference among treatments. Surgery and radiotherapy were associated with lower incidences of disease progression and metastases than was active monitoring. (Funded by the National Institute for Health Research; ProtecT Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN20141297 ; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02044172 .).
Temperature regulates hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) in a poikilothermic vertebrate, crucian carp (Carassius carassius)

SUMMARY Hypoxia-inducible transcription factor-1 (HIF-1) is a master regulator of hypoxia-induced gene responses. To find out whether HIF-1 function is involved in gene expression changes associated with temperature acclimation as well as in hypoxia adaptation in poikilotherms, we studied HIF-1 DNA binding activity and HIF-1α expression in normoxia and during hypoxia (0.7 mg l–1 O2) in crucian carp at temperatures of 26, 18 and 8°C. Temperature had a marked influence on HIF-1 in normoxia. Although HIF-1α mRNA levels remained unaltered, cold acclimation (8°C) increased HIF-1α protein amounts in the liver, gills and heart and HIF-1 DNA binding activity in the heart, gills and kidney of crucian carp by two- to threefold compared to warm acclimated fish (26°C). In the heart and kidney HIF-1 activity was already significantly increased in the 18°C acclimated fish. Temperature also affected hypoxic regulation of HIF-1. Although hypoxia initially increased amounts of HIF-1α protein in all studied tissues at every temperature, except for liver at 18°C, HIF-1 activity increased only in the heart of 8°C acclimated and in the gills of 18°C acclimated fish. At 8°C HIF-1α mRNA levels increased transiently in the gills after 6 h of hypoxia and in the kidney after 48 h of hypoxia. In the gills at 26°C HIF-1α mRNA levels increased after 6 h of hypoxia and remained above normoxic levels for up to 48 h of hypoxia. These results show that HIF-1 is involved in controlling gene responses to both oxygen and temperature in crucian carp. No overall transcriptional control mechanism has been described for low temperature acclimation in poikilotherms, but the present results suggest that HIF-1 could have a role in such regulation. Moreover, this study highlights interaction of the two prime factors defining metabolism, temperature and oxygen, in the transcriptional control of metabolic homeostasis in animals.
Bachelor-Arbeit Using spinImages for 3 D object classification

The subject of this thesis is to evaluate if a combination of spin images and Bag of Features classification can be used to categorize point clouds representing real world objects. At first, for each point cloud spin images are created as descriptors for the cloud’s points. Then vector quantization is used to learn prototypes in the spin image space. These prototypes are then used as a codebook for extracting features for each point cloud in the training set, which means, that standard bag of features approach is used. Afterwards these features are used to train a support vector machine. Using test sets disjunct from the training set, best parameters for the SVM as well as for spin image generation will be computed. Two different datasets will be used, to evaluate the approach. One of these consists of handmade 3d models as found in a subset of the Princeton Shape Benchmark and one consists of 3D scans obtained by using a range scanner on real objects. Both used datasets consist of models which represent furniture of different kinds.
Abrupt mortality of marine invertebrates at the Younger Dryas-Holocene transition in a shallow inlet of the Goldthwait Sea

The late Pleistocene–early Holocene transition period was characterized by rapid environmental change. Here, we investigate the impact of these changes on the marine invertebrates living in a shallow inlet of the post-glacial Goldthwait Sea. The site is located near Baie-Comeau (QC, Canada), where a number of remarkably well-preserved shell deposits are found along the Rivière aux Anglais Valley on the north shore of the St. Lawrence maritime estuary. Seven phyla of marine invertebrates with a minimum of 25 species or taxa were inventoried in a shell deposit, dominated by a community of Hiatella arctica with Mytilus edulis and barnacles composing the subcommunity. The majority of taxa identified in the shell deposit are boreal and sub-Arctic species; however, temperate species that exist today in the St. Lawrence maritime estuary have not been found. Based on marine invertebrate diversity and δ18O(CaCO3) of Mytilus edulis, the water in the shallow inlet of the Goldthwait Sea must have been cold and saline. The range of AMS 14C ages from 15 Mytilus edulis, constrained to 10,900 and 10,690 cal. yr BP, and exceptional state of preservation of adult and juvenile molluscan specimens suggest the abrupt mortality of entire invertebrate communities due to changing hydrodynamic conditions that included the combined effect of freshwater discharge from the receding Laurentide Ice Sheet and rapid isostatic uplift.
From feeding one to feeding many: hormone‐induced changes in bodyweight homeostasis during pregnancy

Pregnancy is associated with hyperphagia, increased fat mass, hyperleptinaemia and hyperprolactinaemia. The neuroendocrine control of bodyweight involves appetite‐regulating centres in the hypothalamus, containing both orexigenic and anorexigenic neurons that express leptin receptors (LepR). In the rat, central leptin resistance develops during mid pregnancy, well after hyperphagia becomes apparent, to negate the appetite suppressing effects of leptin. We have investigated the hypothalamic response to leptin during pregnancy and examined the role of pregnancy hormones in inducing these changes. We have shown that there are multiple levels of leptin resistance during pregnancy. Despite elevated serum leptin, neuropeptide Y and agouti related peptide mRNA in the arcuate nucleus are not suppressed and may even be increased during pregnancy. LepR mRNA and leptin‐induced pSTAT3 expression, however, are relatively normal in the arcuate nucleus. In contrast, both LepR and leptin‐induced pSTAT3 are reduced in the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus. Injecting α‐melanocyte‐stimulating hormone (α‐MSH) into the brain, to bypass the first‐order leptin‐responsive neurons in the arcuate nucleus, also fails to suppress food intake during pregnancy, suggesting that pregnancy is also a melanocortin‐resistant state. Using a pseudopregnant rat model, we have demonstrated that in addition to the changes in maternal ovarian steroid secretion, placental lactogen production is essential for the induction of leptin resistance in pregnancy. Thus, hormonal changes associated with pregnancy induce adaptive changes in the maternal hypothalamus, stimulating food intake and then allowing elevated food intake to be maintained in the face of elevated leptin levels, resulting in fat deposition to provide energy stores in preparation for the high metabolic demands of late pregnancy and lactation.
A Survey on Financial Fraud Detection Methodologies

to levitate and rapid escalation of E-Commerce, cases of financial fraud allied with it are also intensifying and which results in trouncing of billions of dollars worldwide each year. Fraud detection involves scrutinizing the behavior of populations of users in order to ballpark figure, detect, or steer clear of objectionable behavior: Undesirable behavior is a extensive term including delinquency: swindle, infringement, and account evasion. Factually, swindle transactions are speckled with genuine transactions and simple pattern matching techniques are not often sufficient to detect those frauds accurately. In this survey we, will focuses on classifying fraudulent behaviors, identifying the major sources and characteristics of the data based on which fraud detection has been conducted. This paper provide a comprehensive survey and review of different techniques to detect the financial fraud detection used in various fraud like credit card fraud detection, online auction fraud, telecommunication fraud detection, and computer intrusion detection.
Lifetime Cost of Ischemic Stroke in Germany: Results and National Projections From a Population-Based Stroke Registry: The Erlangen Stroke Project

Background and Purpose— The number of stroke patients and the healthcare costs of strokes are expected to rise. The objective of this study was to determine the direct costs of first ischemic stroke and to estimate the expected increase in costs in Germany. Methods— An incidence-based, bottom-up, direct-cost-of-ischemic-stroke study from the third-party payer’s perspective was performed, incorporating 10-year survival data and 5-year resource use data from the Erlangen Stroke Registry. Discounted lifetime year 2004 costs per case were obtained and applied to the expected age and sex evolution of the German resident population in the period 2006 to 2025. Results— The overall cost per first-year survivor of first-ever ischemic stroke was estimated to be 18 517 euros (EUR). Rehabilitation accounted for 37% of this cost, whereas in subsequent years outpatient care was the major cost driver. Discounted lifetime cost per case was 43 129 EUR overall and was higher in men (45 549 EUR) than in women (41 304 EUR). National projections for the period 2006 to 2025 showed 1.5 million and 1.9 million new cases of ischemic stroke in men and women, respectively, at a present value of 51.5 and 57.1 billion EUR, respectively. Conclusions— The number of stroke patients and the healthcare costs of strokes in Germany will rise continuously until the year 2025. Therefore, stroke prevention and reduction of stroke-related disability should be made priorities in health planning policies.
Symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among Urban Residents

Previous studies indicate a high risk of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among women and low-income, urban-residing African-Americans. This study examined PTSD symptoms among urban-residing, socioeconomically diverse, working-age African-Americans and whites. The participants completed the PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version. Of the 2104 participants, 268 (12.7%) were screened positive for PTSD symptoms. Women (13.8%) were more likely than men (11.3%), white participants (13.8%) were more likely than African-Americans (11.9%), and younger participants (16.1%) were more likely than older participants (10.2%) to screen positive for PTSD symptoms. A significant interaction (p = 0.05) revealed that white women living below the 125% poverty level were most likely to report PTSD symptoms. These findings highlight the importance of PTSD screening in low-income urban neighborhoods.
MAV-Vis: A notation for model uncertainty

We apply the “Physics of Notations” theory to design MAV-Vis, a concrete syntax for partial models, i.e., models where design uncertainty is explicitly captured. To validate our implementation of this theory in creating MAV-Vis, we designed and executed an empirical user study comparing the cognitive effectiveness of MAV-Vis with the existing, ad-hoc notation, MAV-Text. We measured the ease, speed, and accuracy of each notation for reading and writing partial models.
The synchronicity of dynamic epistemic logic

In a recent paper, van Benthem, Gerbrandy, Hoshi and Pacuit gave a natural translation of dynamic epistemic logic (DEL) into epistemic temporal logic (ETL) and proved a representation theorem, characterizing those ETL models that are translations of some DEL protocol; among the characterizing properties we also find synchronicity. In this paper, we argue that synchronicity is not an inherent property of DEL, but rather of the translation that van Benthem et al. used. We provide a different translation that produces asynchronous ETL models and discuss a minimal temporal extension of DEL that removes the ambiguities between the possible translations. This allows us a first attempt at assessing which of the epistemic-temporal properties are intrinsic to DEL and which are properties of the translation.