Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimization of feedforward neural network by Multiple Particle Collision Algorithm

Optimization of neural network topology, weights and neuron activation functions for given data set and problem is not an easy task. In this article, a technique for automatic configuration of parameters topology for feedforward artificial neural networks (ANN) is presented. The determination of optimal parameters is formulated as an optimization problem, solved with the use of meta-heuristic Multiple Particle Collision Algorithm (MPCA). The self-configuring networks are applied to predict the mesoscale climate for the precipitation field. The results obtained from the neural network using the method of data reduction by the Theory of Rough Sets and the self-configuring network by MPCA were compared.
The effect of dietary antioxidant on the COPD risk: the community-based KoGES (Ansan–Anseong) cohort

Background Dietary antioxidants have been suggested to have protective role against chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but few prospective studies examined this relationship. The prospective study was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary antioxidants on COPD risk and lung function in the Korean population. Methods The data were collected from the community-based Korean Genome Epidemiology Study (KoGES) cohort. To diagnose COPD, forced expiratory volume (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC) were measured by spirometry. The dietary intake of antioxidant vitamins was estimated from validated Food-Frequency Questionnaire. For the analysis, 325 COPD patients and 6,781 at risk subjects were selected from the cohort of 10,038 subjects. Multiple logistic regression models were used to examine the odds ratio (OR) after adjusting for age, sex, marital status, income, history of asthma, history of tuberculosis, and smoking. Results The risk of COPD was positively associated with aging, low education, low household income, lower body mass index, and cigarette smoking. The risk of COPD decreased with increase in the dietary vitamin C (ORQ1 vs Q5=0.66, Ptrend=0.03) and vitamin E (ORQ1 vs Q5=0.56, Ptrend=0.05) intake, predominantly, in men (Ptrend=0.01 and 0.05 for vitamins C and E, respectively). In addition, the lung function was significantly improved with increase in vitamins C (FEV1, P=0.04; FVC, P=0.03) and E (FEV1, P=0.03; FVC, P=0.04) intake. No statistically significant interactions were observed between smoking and vitamin C or E intake in relation to COPD risk among men. Conclusion Our results suggest the independent beneficial effect of antioxidants, particularly vitamins C and E, on COPD risk and lung function in men.
Just Results: Ethical Foundations for Policy Analysis

(Menzel), and community building (Berman and Bonczek). Kellar completes the volume by identifying serious ethical issues in human relations important to local government officials, both elected and appointed. The topics in part 3 have for quite a while had much impact on the professional lives of public administrators. In the 1987 book Privatization, for example, Savas traces the entry of privatization as public policy to the early 1970s. Yet the ethical concerns of these vital topics, as well as the ethical initiatives and activities, have been introduced only recently and are generally overlooked. Thus the well-written, timely, and wellplaced articles in part 3 call attention to ethics in building public organizations of integrity. Two of the seven "Frontiers" selections examine fitness of character (Bowman) and trust (Berman). Both issues have lately stimulated a blossoming of interest by researchers. Pointing to the need to hark back to President George Washington's criteria for public employment, Bowman reminds us that ethical bearing plus technical competence is vital. Remarking on the public cynicism, alienation, and anomie in local government, Berman cites a survey in which one-third of cities with populations over 50,000 report high levels of cynicism. His article examines the need to heighten trust within local government organizations. The articles in The Ethics Edge and the material in Ethics in Action are targeted for local government application. The editors have wisely selected articles, however, that can be offered more broadly to officials in other levels of government; indeed, most would also be helpful to private and nonprofit managers. Given the fine work of the International City/ County Management Association to strengthen the professionalism of local managers, this reviewer would have welcomed a selection or two on international ethics as well.
Intestinal CD103+, but not CX3CR1+, antigen sampling cells migrate in lymph and serve classical dendritic cell functions

Chemokine receptor CX3CR1+ dendritic cells (DCs) have been suggested to sample intestinal antigens by extending transepithelial dendrites into the gut lumen. Other studies identified CD103+ DCs in the mucosa, which, through their ability to synthesize retinoic acid (RA), appear to be capable of generating typical signatures of intestinal adaptive immune responses. We report that CD103 and CX3CR1 phenotypically and functionally characterize distinct subsets of lamina propria cells. In contrast to CD103+ DC, CX3CR1+ cells represent a nonmigratory gut-resident population with slow turnover rates and poor responses to FLT-3L and granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor. Direct visualization of cells in lymph vessels and flow cytometry of mouse intestinal lymph revealed that CD103+ DCs, but not CX3CR1-expressing cells, migrate into the gut draining mesenteric lymph nodes (LNs) under steady-state and inflammatory conditions. Moreover, CX3CR1+ cells displayed poor T cell stimulatory capacity in vitro and in vivo after direct injection of cells into intestinal lymphatics and appeared to be less efficient at generating RA compared with CD103+ DC. These findings indicate that selectively CD103+ DCs serve classical DC functions and initiate adaptive immune responses in local LNs, whereas CX3CR1+ populations might modulate immune responses directly in the mucosa and serve as first line barrier against invading enteropathogens.
Compressive large-scale image sensing

Cost-efficient compressive sensing of large-scale images with fast reconstructed high-quality results is very challenging. In this paper, we propose a new compressive large-scale image sensing method, composed of operator-based strategy in the context of fixed point continuation technique and weighted LASSO with tree structure sparsity pattern. The main characteristic of our method is free from any assumptions and restrictions. The feasibility of our method is verified via computational complexity and convergence analyses, extensive simulations, and comparisons with state-of-the-art algorithms.
J 2 3 High-Dimensional Fitness Landscapes and Speciation

The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s remains the paradigm of evolutionary biology (Futuyma 1998; Gould 2002; Pigliucci 2007; Ridley 1993). The progress in understanding the process of evolution made during that period had been a direct result of the development of theoretical population genetics by Fisher, Wright, and Haldane, who built a series of mathematical models, approaches, and techniques showing how natural selection, mutation, drift, migration, and other evolutionary factors are expected to shape the genetic and phenotypic characteristics of biological populations. These theoretical advances provided “a great impetus to experimental work on the genetics of populations” (Sheppard 1954) and a “guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation and observation” (Dobzhansky 1955), and had many other far-reaching implications. According to Provine (1978), the work of Fisher, Wright, and Haldane had significant influence on evolutionary thinking in at least four ways. First, their models showed that the processes of selection, mutation, drift, and migration were largely sufficient to account for microevolution. Second, they showed that some directions explored by biologists were not fruitful. Third, the models complemented and lent greater significance to particular results of field and laboratory research. Fourth, they stimulated and provided framework for later empirical research. Since the time of the Modern Synthesis, evolutionary biology has arguably remained one of the most mathematized branches of the life sciences, in which mathematical models and methods continuously guide empirical research, provide tools for testing hypotheses, explain complex interactions between multiple evolutionary factors, train biological intuition, identify crucial parameters and factors, evaluate relevant temporal and spatial scales, and point to the gaps in biological knowledge, as well as provide simple and intuitive tools and metaphors for thinking about complex phenomena.
Comparison of bathophenanthroline sulfonate and ferene as chromogens in colorimetric measurement of low hepatic iron concentration.

Sensitive and accurate measurement of hepatic iron concentration (HIC) is required to investigate liver fibrogenesis (1) and its influence on the outcome of interferon therapy for chronic viral hepatitis C (2)(3). Hepatic iron content can be measured by a quantitative chemical method and/or evaluated by semiquantitative histologic scoring. Quantitative chemical methods assess all liver iron forms, whereas histologic scoring evaluates only the hemosiderin form. A colorimetric method using bathophenanthroline sulfonate as chromogen was recommended in 1978 by the International Committee for Standardization in Hematology (ICSH) for determination of serum iron (4)(5). It was adapted by Barry and Sherlock (6) to the determination of HIC, and we recently evaluated it for measurement of low HIC (7). In 1990, the ICSH replaced bathophenanthroline sulfonate with ferene, a more sensitive chromogen, in the determination of serum iron (8). The aim of the present study was to evaluate the replacement of bathophenanthroline sulfonate with ferene to improve the sensitivity of the colorimetric determination of low HIC. We used samples of a frozen Wistar rat liver for quality control and determination of reliability criteria of both assays. We compared the results obtained with the two chromogens on 66 liver biopsies from patients with chronic liver diseases hospitalized in the Department of Hepatogastroenterology of the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital. The clinical diagnoses of these patients are summarized in Table 1⇓ . We determined the CV for HIC measurements on two separate samples from the same liver specimen for each chromogen on 38 human liver biopsies. Histologic iron scoring was according to the method of Deugnier et al. (9); among the 66 biopsies, 20 had no stainable iron (score of 0), and the 46 others exhibited iron overload (score ≥6). Biopsies were fixed in 40 g/L formaldehyde and embedded in paraffin as part of …
Comptonization of an isotropic distribution in moving media: relativistic effects

We consider the Comptonization of an isotropic radiation field by a thermal distribution of electrons with non-vanishing bulk velocity. We include all relativistic effects, including induced scattering and electron recoil, in the derivation of a kinetic equation which is correct to O(θ e , βθ 2 e , β 2θe), where β is the bulk velocity (in units of c) and θe is the ratio of the electron temperature to mass. The result given here manifestly conserves photon number, and easily yields the energy transfer rate between the radiation and electrons. We also confirm recent calculations of the relativistic corrections to the thermal and kinematic SunyaevZel’dovich effect. Subject headings: radiation mechanisms: thermal — radiative transfer — scattering
The Mediator: An Artificial Actor Integrated in a Cooperative Design System

In this paper we present the specification of the interactions between an artificial actor mediator and the cooperative actors of a design system, developed to give support to mechanical system designer activities. The use of cooperative systems must contain a sufficient level of assistance to facilitate and coordinate the actor's activities (control of tasks and collective problem resolution). To accomplish this goal we introduce an artificial actor: the Mediator. To illustrate our approach we will present the specification of the interaction of a system of mediation, embedded in a cooperative functional analysis toolbox. We consider two interaction levels: the interactions between actors (natural and artificial), and the interactions between the agents who compose the mediating actor.
Syntactic Flexibility in the Noun: Evidence from Picture Naming

Does syntactic information affect the production of bare nouns? Research into this issue has explored word-specific features (e.g., gender). However, word-independent syntactic distributions may also play a role. For example, studies of word recognition have uncovered strong effects of the diversity of a word's syntactic distribution – its syntactic flexibility – on response times in the lexical decision paradigm. By contrast, studies of sentence production have produced strong but conflicted effects of syntactic flexibility. We propose that syntactic flexibility also affects production of individual words. We reanalyze a database of previously collected timed picture naming data using two novel measures of syntactic flexibility, one based on the relations stemming from the noun, and one based on the relations extending to the noun. Our results show that nouns that project a diverse array of structures are produced faster, and those that are integrated into a diverse array of structures are produced slower.
Anemia Is Common in Heart Failure and Is Associated With Poor Outcomes: Insights From a Cohort of 12 065 Patients With New-Onset Heart Failure

Background—Although previous work has suggested that anemia is associated with an increased mortality in selected patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), little is known about the prevalence and predictors of anemia, or whether anemia is an independent prognostic factor in unselected, community-based patients with CHF. Methods and Results—We analyzed a population-based cohort of patients with new-onset CHF from a database of patients discharged from 138 acute-care hospitals in Alberta, Canada, between April 1993 and March 2001. Logistic regression, Kaplan-Meier survival analyses, and Cox proportional hazards model were used. Among the 12 065 patients with CHF (median age 78 years), 17% had anemia, 58% of whom had anemia of chronic disease. After adjustment for clinical and demographic variables, patients with anemia were more likely to be older (odds ratio [OR] 1.01 per year) and female (OR 1.2 [95% confidence interval 1.1 to 1.3]) and to have a history of chronic renal insufficiency (OR=3.2 [95% confidence interval 2.8 to 3.6]), or hypertension (OR 1.3 [95% confidence interval 1.2 to 1.5]). Hazard ratios for mortality, adjusting for covariates, were 1.34 (1.24 to 1.46) in anemic patients, and 1.36 (1.23 to 1.50) in those patients with anemia of chronic disease. Conclusions—In this large cohort of community-dwelling patients with CHF, anemia is common and an independent prognostic factor for mortality. Further research into the mechanisms of anemia in CHF and randomized controlled trials to test whether correction of anemia improves prognosis in CHF are needed.
Rerouting: Scalable NoC self-optimization by distributed hardware-based connection reallocation

Networks-on-Chip (NoC) are the most promising candidates for scalable communication infrastructures in manycore architectures. To ensure scalability, distributed management of communication resources needs to replace centralized approaches. Hence, distributed adaptive routing schemes in combination with selection strategies are used to take semi-optimal routing decisions according to the current NoC utilization. Once these routing decisions are taken for guaranteed service connections, which are established for longer periods, the load situation can change during their lifetime. For such connections taken routing decisions might be poor at a later point in time due to dynamically changing communication workload. The proposed hardware-based mechanism called rerouting reacts on changing load conditions and reallocates existing connections transparently. This balances the NoC load and allows to increase the number of guaranteed service connections. Throughput and delay of existing connections can also be improved by rerouting. The concept is investigated using synthetic traffic patterns and distributed video processing applications. ASIC and FPGA synthesis results are presented to investigate the implementation costs.
Simulation of three dimensional grain growth for Cu-interconnects

The temporal evolution and morphology of three-dimensional (3-D) grain growth in Cu interconnect are simulated by phase-field model techniques. In the simulation, a new local free energy density function is proposed in which the field variables can be reduced from 200 to 20. By restraining the grain orientations in the side face of interconnect, the model is applicable to simulating the microstructure evolution of polycrystalline Cu-lines in addition to the conventional 2-D or 3-D grain topology. The dependence of grain size on the line width is analyzed systematically. With the obtained topology of Cu grains and morphology of the line boundary, the resistivity of Cu interconnects is estimated by conventional Monte Carlo simulation which are tested with different experimental data. These results are important for evaluation and optimization the Cu interconnect process.
Transitions between states of magnetotail–ionosphere coupling and the role of solar wind dynamic pressure: the 25 July 2004 interplanetary CME case

Abstract. In a case study, we investigate transitions between fundamental magnetosphere–ionosphere (M-I) coupling modes during storm-time conditions (SYM-H between −100 and −160 nT) driven by an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME). We combine observations from the near tail, at geostationary altitude (GOES-10), and electrojet activities across the auroral oval at postnoon-to-dusk and midnight. After an interval of strong westward electrojet (WEJ) activity, a 3 h long state of attenuated/quenched WEJ activity was initiated by abrupt drops in the solar wind density and dynamic pressure. The attenuated substorm activity consisted of brief phases of magnetic field perturbation and electron flux decrease at GOES-10 near midnight and moderately strong conjugate events of WEJ enhancements at the southern boundary of the oval, as well as a series of very strong eastward electrojet (EEJ) events at dusk, during a phase of enhanced ring current evolution, i.e., enhanced SYM-H deflection within −120 to −150 nT. Each of these M-I coupling events was preceded by poleward boundary intensifications and auroral streamers at higher oval latitudes. We identify this mode of attenuated substorm activity as being due to a magnetotail state characterized by bursty reconnection and bursty bulk flows/dipolarization fronts (multiple current wedgelets) with associated injection dynamo in the near tail, in their braking phase. The latter process is associated with activations of the Bostrom type II (meridional) current system. A transition to the next state of M-I coupling, when a full substorm expansion took place, was triggered by an abrupt increase of the ICME dynamic pressure from 1 to 5 nPa. The brief field deflection events at GOES-10 were then replaced by a 20 min long interval of extreme field stretching (Bz approaching 5 nT and Bx ≈ 100 nT) followed by a major dipolarization (Δ Bz ≈ 100 nT). In the ionosphere the latter stage appeared as a "full-size" stepwise poleward expansion of the WEJ. It thus appears that the ICME passage led to fundamentally different M-I coupling states corresponding to different levels of dynamic pressure (Pdyn) under otherwise very similar ICME conditions. Full WEJ activity, covering a wide latitude range across the auroral oval in the midnight sector, was attenuated by the abrupt dynamic pressure decrease and resumed after the subsequent abrupt increase.
Acute Necrotizing Encephalopathy: Diffusion MR Imaging and Localized Proton MR Spectroscopic Findings in Two Infants

In this report, we describe the findings of diffusion MR imaging and proton MR spectroscopy in two infants with acute necrotizing encephalopathy in which there was characteristic symmetrical involvement of the thalami. Diffusion MR images of the lesions showed that the observed apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) decrease was more prominent in the first patient, who had more severe brain damage and a poorer clinical outcome, than in the second. Proton MR spectroscopy detected an increase in the glutamate/glutamine complex and mobile lipids in the first case but only a small increase of lactate in the second. Diffusion MR imaging and proton MR spectroscopy may provide useful information not only for diagnosis but also for estimating the severity and clinical outcome of acute necrotizing encephalopathy.
Numerical Model of Streaming DEP for Stem Cell Sorting

Neural stem cells are of special interest due to their potential in neurogenesis to treat spinal cord injuries and other nervous disorders. Flow cytometry, a common technique used for cell sorting, is limited due to the lack of antigens and labels that are specific enough to stem cells of interest. Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a label-free separation technique that has been recently demonstrated for the enrichment of neural stem/progenitor cells. Here we use numerical simulation to investigate the use of streaming DEP for the continuous sorting of neural stem/progenitor cells. Streaming DEP refers to the focusing of cells into streams by equilibrating the dielectrophoresis and drag forces acting on them. The width of the stream should be maximized to increase throughput while the separation between streams must be widened to increase efficiency during retrieval. The aim is to understand how device geometry and experimental variables affect the throughput and efficiency of continuous sorting of SC27 stem cells, a neurogenic progenitor, from SC23 cells, an astrogenic progenitor. We define efficiency as the ratio between the number of SC27 cells over total number of cells retrieved in the streams, and throughput as the number of SC27 cells retrieved in the streams compared to their total number introduced to the device. The use of cylindrical electrodes as tall as the channel yields streams featuring >98% of SC27 cells and width up to 80 µm when using a flow rate of 10 µL/min and sample cell concentration up to 105 cells/mL.
Mortality Due to Chagas Disease in Brazil According to a Specific Cause

A century after its discovery, Chagas disease (CD) is still considered a public health problem. Mortality caused by CD between 2000 and 2010 was described according to the specific underlying cause, year of occurrence, gender, age range, and region of Brazil. The standardized mortality rate decreased 32.4%, from 3.4% in 2000 to 2.3% in 2010. Most of the deaths (85.9%) occurred in male patients who were > 60 years of age caused by cardiac involvement. The mortality rate caused by cardiac involvement decreased in all regions of Brazil, except in the North region, where it increased by 1.6%. The Northeast had the smallest and the Central-West had the largest decrease. The mortality rate caused by a compromised digestive tract increased in all regions. Despite the control of transmission by vector and blood transfusions, CD should remain on the list of priority diseases for the public health service in Brazil, and surveillance actions cannot be interrupted.