Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Compiling SyncCharts to Synchronous C

SyncCharts are a synchronous Statechart variant to model reactive systems with a precise and deterministic semantics. The simulation and software synthesis for SyncCharts usually involve the compilation into Esterel, which is then further compiled into C code. This can produce efficient code, but has two principal drawbacks: 1) the arbitrary control flow that can be expressed with SyncChart transitions cannot be mapped directly to Esterel, and 2) it is very difficult to map the resulting C code back to the original SyncChart, which hampers traceability. This paper presents an alternative software synthesis approach for SyncCharts that compiles SyncCharts directly into Synchronous C (SC). The compilation preserves the structure of the original SyncChart, which is advantageous for validation and possibly certification. We present a static thread-scheduling scheme that reflects data dependencies and optimizes both the number of used threads as well as the maximal used priorities. This results in SC code with competitive speed and little memory requirements.
Reductions in Regimen Distress Are Associated With Improved Management and Glycemic Control Over Time

OBJECTIVE Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations among regimen distress (RD), self-management, and glycemic control were undertaken to explore mechanisms of operation among these variables. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In a behavioral randomized control trial (RCT) to reduce RD, 392 adults with type 2 diabetes were assessed for RD, diet, exercise, medication adherence, and HbA1c at baseline and at 4 and 12 months. Associations among RD, self-management, and HbA1c were examined in cross-sectional analyses at baseline, in prospective analyses using baseline values to predict change over time, and in time-varying analyses. RESULTS At baseline, greater RD and poorer medication adherence were independently associated with higher HbA1c (P = 0.05 and P < 0.001, respectively), and greater RD was associated with poorer medication adherence (P = 0.03). No consistent pattern of significant prospective associations was found. Significant time-varying findings showed that decreases in RD were associated with improvements in medication adherence (P < 0.01), physical activity (P < 0.001), and HbA1c (P = 0.02) over time following intervention. Changes in self-management were not associated with changes in HbA1c over time. CONCLUSIONS In the context of an RCT to reduce distress, RD, self-management, and HbA1c were interrelated in cross-sectional and time-varying analyses. Decreases in RD were associated with improvements in both self-management and HbA1c over 12 months. Findings point to the complex and likely multifaceted pathways of association among these key constructs, with results indicating significant linkages between RD and both self-management and glycemic control over time.
The relationship between tumour stroma percentage, the tumour microenvironment and survival in patients with primary operable colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND Tumour stroma percentage (TSP) has previously been reported to predict survival in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC); however, whether this is independent of other aspects of the tumour microenvironment is unknown. In the present study, the relationship between TSP, the tumour microenvironment and survival was examined in patients undergoing elective, curative CRC resection. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients undergoing resection at a single centre (1997-2008) were identified from a prospective database. TSP was measured at the invasive margin and its association with cancer-specific survival (CSS) and clinicopathological characteristics examined. RESULTS Three hundred and thirty-one patients were included in the analysis. TSP was associated with CSS in patients with stage I-III disease [hazard ratio (HR) 1.84, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.17-2.92, P = 0.009], independent of age, systemic inflammation, N stage, venous invasion and Klintrup-Mäkinen score. Furthermore, TSP was associated with reduced CSS in patients with node-negative disease (HR 2.14, 95% CI 1.01-4.54, P = 0.048) and those who received adjuvant chemotherapy (HR 2.83, 95% CI 1.23-6.53, P = 0.015), independent of venous invasion and host inflammatory responses. TSP was associated with several adverse pathological characteristics, including advanced T and N stage. Furthermore, TSP was associated with an infiltrative invasive margin and inversely associated with necrosis. CONCLUSIONS The TSP was a significant predictor of survival in patients undergoing elective, curative CRC resection, independent of adverse pathological characteristics and host inflammatory responses. In addition, TSP was strongly associated with local tumour growth and invasion.
Carbon supported Ag nanoparticles as high performance cathode catalyst for H2/O2 anion exchange membrane fuel cell

A solution phase-based nanocapsule method was successfully developed to synthesize non-platinum metal catalyst—carbon supported Ag nanoparticles (Ag/C). XRD patterns and TEM image show Ag nanoparticles with a small average size (5.4 nm) and narrow size distribution (2–9 nm) are uniformly dispersed on the carbon black Vulcan XC-72 support. The intrinsic activity and pathway of oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on the Ag/C and commercial Pt/C were investigated using rotating ring disk electrode (RRDE) tests at room temperature. The results confirmed that the 4-electron pathway of ORR proceeds on small Ag nanoparticles, and showed comparable ORR activities on the self-prepared Ag/C and a commercial Pt/C. A single H2-O2 anion exchange membrane fuel cell (AEMFC) with the Ag/C cathode catalyst exhibited an open circuit potential of 0.98 V and a peak power density of 190 mW/cm2 at 80°C.
Predicting long-term impact of CQA posts: a comprehensive viewpoint

Community Question Answering (CQA) sites have become valuable platforms to create, share, and seek a massive volume of human knowledge. How can we spot an insightful question that would inspire massive further discussions in CQA sites? How can we detect a valuable answer that benefits many users? The long-term impact (e.g., the size of the population a post benefits) of a question/answer post is the key quantity to answer these questions. In this paper, we aim to predict the long-term impact of questions/answers shortly after they are posted in the CQA sites. In particular, we propose a family of algorithms for the prediction problem by modeling three key aspects, i.e., non-linearity, question/answer coupling, and dynamics. We analyze our algorithms in terms of optimality, correctness, and complexity. We conduct extensive experimental evaluations on two real CQA data sets to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithms.
Clodronate Reduces Vertebral Fracture Risk in Women With Postmenopausal or Secondary Osteoporosis: Results of a Double‐Blind, Placebo‐Controlled 3‐Year Study

The efficacy of oral clodronate 800 mg daily to reduce vertebral fractures was studied in 593 women with postmenopausal or secondary osteoporosis. The incidence of vertebral fractures was significantly reduced by 46%. The effect was not modified by the underlying cause of osteoporosis or other baseline factors including bone mineral density, QUS, weight, and smoking.
High YKL-40 Serum Concentration Is Correlated with Prognosis of Chinese Patients with Breast Cancer

This study aimed to investigate the association between serum YKL-40 and prognosis of breast cancer in a Chinese population. Expression of YKL-40 of 120 Chinese patients with breast cancer and 30 controls (benign breast lesions) was measured in tumor tissue by immunohistochemistry and in serum by ELISA. Differences in YKL-40 positivity grouped by specific patients’ characteristics were compared using Pearson Chi-square test for rates of intratumoral staining, one-way ANOVA with a Bonferroni post-hoc comparison, or two-sample t-test for mean YKL-40 serum concentrations. Factors associated with overall survival were identified by univariate and multivariate cox-regression analyses. YKL-40 was elevated in approximately 75% of Chinese patients with breast cancer. A significantly higher percentage of patients with YKL-40 positive tumors had larger tumor size, higher TNM stage, and/or lymph node metastasis. Significantly higher mean YKL-40 serum concentrations were observed in patient subgroups with invasive lobular carcinoma (P<0.0167), higher TNM stage (P<0.001), and positive lymph node metastasis (P<0.001). The estimated mean survival time of patients with YKL-40 positive tumors was significantly shorter than for patients with YKL-40 negative tumors (55.13 months vs 65.78 months, P = 0.017). Multivariable Cox-regression analysis identified a significant association of overall survival time with YKL-40 serum concentration. Patients with YKL-40 positive tumors had significantly shorter disease free survival times than those with YKL-40 negative tumors. We propose that the potential utility of YKL-40 intratumoral staining or serum concentration as a biomarker for breast cancer is greatest within 5 years of diagnosis.
Leveraging Small Multilingual Corpora for SMT Using Many Pivot Languages

We present our work on leveraging multilingual parallel corpora of small sizes for Statistical Machine Translation between Japanese and Hindi using multiple pivot languages. In our setting, the source and target part of the corpus remains the same, but we show that using several different pivot to extract phrase pairs from these source and target parts lead to large BLEU improvements. We focus on a variety of ways to exploit phrase tables generated using multiple pivots to support a direct source-target phrase table. Our main method uses the Multiple Decoding Paths (MDP) feature of Moses, which we empirically verify as the best compared to the other methods we used. We compare and contrast our various results to show that one can overcome the limitations of small corpora by using as many pivot languages as possible in a multilingual setting. Most importantly, we show that such pivoting aids in learning of additional phrase pairs which are not learned when the direct sourcetarget corpus is small. We obtained improvements of up to 3 BLEU points using multiple pivots for Japanese to Hindi translation compared to when only one pivot is used. To the best of our knowledge, this work is also the first of its kind to attempt the simultaneous utilization of 7 pivot languages at decoding time.
A recurrent neural approach for modeling non-reproducible behavior of PEM fuel cell stacks

This work presents a recurrent neural model for PEM fuel cell stacks based on NARX and NOE neural structures. The practical difficulties to employ electrochemical models and the causes of the odd behavior observed in some PEM stacks are discussed. The model developed predicts the terminal voltage of a stack even in the situation where it presents a non-reproducible behavior, such as unexpected voltage fluctuations. The predictive capacity of the model is evaluated in two different scenarios, showing good agreement with the measured data.
Clarifying the subtypes of impulsivity and their cognitive and behavioural underpinnings

Investigators have suggested impulsivity consists of several behavioural subtypes including ‘reflection’- (decision-making without evaluation of information), ‘temporal’- (failure to delay gratification) and ‘motor’- (failure to inhibit a motor response) impulsivity. These facets of impulsivity are thought to be dissociable, but to share some common underlying processes. The current studies investigated such processes. Study 1 investigated speed and accuracy biases, using instructions and cognitive priming to challenge impulsivity. Study 2 & 3 challenged inhibitory control resources, via a dual task and alcohol challenge, to investigate the effect on impulsivity. Study 3 also investigated the effect of alcohol outcome expectancies on impulsivity. The factor structure of impulsivity was also investigated using exploratory factor analysis (study 4), to establish whether the primary measures of the proposed subtypes can indeed be categorised into these three factors. Study 4 also investigated the relationship of participant demographics to impulsivity. The studies support the suggestion of a distinct subtype of reflection-impulsivity. Inhibitory control processes do not appear to underlie performance, however biases in speed/accuracy trade-offs have implications for this subtype. Behavioural inhibitory control was found to be the primary process underlying motor-impulsivity whilst biases for speed/accuracy have implications for Go-responses. The factor analysis provided preliminary evidence that there may be two distinct facets of motor-impulsivity: action cancellation and action restraint. Inhibitory control processes were not found to underlie temporal-impulsivity on an experiential task. Biases for speed/accuracy were found to contribute to performance on pen-and-paper measures. However, subsequent factor analysis provided evidence that experiential tasks may actually be more closely related to a form of cognitive control, instead of temporal-impulsivity. In conclusion, the studies found that the three proposed factors of impulsivity differentially rely on inhibitory control processes and biases for speed/accuracy. However, factor analysis indicated that additional factors may be required to fully characterise impulsivity.
Systemic Increase in the Ratio between Foxp3+ and IL-17-Producing CD4+ T Cells in Healthy Pregnancy but Not in Preeclampsia1

Preeclampsia is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in pregnancy. Although the etiology of preeclampsia is still unclear, it is believed to involve rejection of the fetus, possibly due to an imbalance between regulatory (Treg) and effector T cells. To test this, we compared the frequencies of circulating CD4+ T cells expressing Foxp3, IFN-γ, IL-10, or IL-17 at the end of the third trimester of healthy and preeclamptic pregnancies. The size of the Treg cell compartment, defined by the frequency of CD4+CD25high, CD4+CD127lowCD25+, and CD4+Foxp3+ cells was significantly higher in normal compared with preeclamptic pregnancies. CD4+CD25high and CD4+CD127lowCD25+ populations in preeclampsia were not significantly different from those in nonpregnant controls, whereas CD4+Foxp3+ cells numbersre slightly lower in preeclampsia. The suppressive activity of ex vivo-sorted CD4+CD127lowCD25+ Treg cells was not significantly different between the three study groups. The percentage of CD4+IL-17-producing T cells decreased significantly in healthy compared with preeclamptic pregnancies and nonpregnant controls, whereas CD4+IL-10- and CD4+IFN-γ-producing cells remained unchanged. Consequently, the ratio of Foxp3+ Treg to IL-17-expressing CD4+ T cells was significantly increased in healthy but not in preeclamptic pregnancies. Thus, preeclampsia is associated with the absence of normal systemic skewing away from IL-17 production toward Foxp3+ expression. Finally, preeclamptic women had significantly higher levels of soluble endoglin, an inhibitor of TGF-β receptor signaling, which may bias toward IL-17 production. These results suggest that homeostasis between regulatory and proinflammatory CD4+ T cells might be pivotal for the semiallogeneic fetus to be tolerated within the maternal environment.
Brain estrogens rapidly strengthen auditory encoding and guide song preference in a songbird

Higher cognitive function depends on accurate detection and processing of subtle features of sensory stimuli. Such precise computations require neural circuits to be modulated over rapid timescales, yet this modulation is poorly understood. Brain-derived steroids (neurosteroids) can act as fast signaling molecules in the vertebrate central nervous system and could therefore modulate sensory processing and guide behavior, but there is no empirical evidence for this possibility. Here we report that acute inhibition of estrogen production within a cortical-like region involved in complex auditory processing disrupts a songbird’s ability to behaviorally respond to song stimuli. Identical manipulation of local estrogen levels rapidly changes burst firing of single auditory neurons. This acute estrogen-mediated modulation targets song and not other auditory stimuli, possibly enabling discrimination among species-specific signals. Our results demonstrate a crucial role for neuroestrogen synthesis among vertebrates for enhanced sensory encoding. Cognitive impairments associated with estrogen depletion, including verbal memory loss in humans, may therefore stem from compromised moment-by-moment estrogen actions in higher-order cortical circuits.
Interpersonal Communication in the Context of Dementia: Examining Family Caregivers' Appraisals and Burden

INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF DEMENTIA: EXAMINING FAMILY CAREGIVERS’ APPRAISALS AND BURDEN Stacy L. Barnes, B.A., M.G. S. Marquette University, 2014 Purpose and Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore dementia family caregivers’ appraisals of communication behaviors and strategies, and their relationships to caregiver burden. Study objectives were to investigate: 1) the relationship between frequency of dementia-related communication behaviors and caregivers’ appraisals of frustration; 2) the relationship between caregivers’ use of communication strategies and appraisals of helpfulness; 3) the structural relationships between communication behavior appraisal, communication strategy appraisal, problem behaviors, and caregiver burden; and 4) caregiver education level as a moderating variable of the final structural model. Methods: A written, mailed questionnaire was developed to capture dementia family caregivers’ perceptions of communication behaviors, communication strategies, problem behaviors, and caregiver burden (N = 239). Results: Frequency and appraised frustration of the relatives’ communication behaviors were significantly correlated (rs = 0.631, p < 0.001). Pairwise comparisons of frequency and appraisal revealed significant differences for 18 of 32 communication behaviors. The two behaviors rated highest for both frequency and frustration were: failure to retain instructions and repeated questions/comments. Frequency of use and appraised helpfulness of the caregivers’ communication strategies were also significantly correlated (rs = 0.631, p < 0.001). Pairwise comparison of use and appraisal revealed strategy use was significantly greater than appraised helpfulness for 18 of 19 strategies. The two strategies rated highest for both use and helpfulness were: pay attention/actively listen and ask one question/give one instruction at a time. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that problem behaviors partially mediated the relationship between communication behavior appraisal and caregiver burden (z = 2.98, SE = 0.065, p < 0.003). Caregivers’ education level did not moderate the mediated relationship. Caregivers’ appraisals of communication strategies did not predict problem behaviors or caregiver burden. Conclusions: Findings underscore the importance of understanding communication in the context of dementia family caregiving and dementia family caregivers’ perceptions of it. This study expands upon previous empirical investigations of the relationships between communication, problem behaviors, and caregiver burden.
Exponential parameter and tracking error convergence guarantees for adaptive controllers without persistency of excitation

In model reference adaptive control (MRAC) the modelling uncertainty is often assumed to be parameterised with time-invariant unknown ideal parameters. The convergence of parameters of the adaptive element to these ideal parameters is beneficial, as it guarantees exponential stability, and makes an online learned model of the system available. Most MRAC methods, however, require persistent excitation of the states to guarantee that the adaptive parameters converge to the ideal values. Enforcing PE may be resource intensive and often infeasible in practice. This paper presents theoretical analysis and illustrative examples of an adaptive control method that leverages the increasing ability to record and process data online by using specifically selected and online recorded data concurrently with instantaneous data for adaptation. It is shown that when the system uncertainty can be modelled as a combination of known nonlinear bases, simultaneous exponential tracking and parameter error convergence can be guaranteed if the system states are exciting over finite intervals such that rich data can be recorded online; PE is not required. Furthermore, the rate of convergence is directly proportional to the minimum singular value of the matrix containing online recorded data. Consequently, an online algorithm to record and forget data is presented and its effects on the resulting switched closed-loop dynamics are analysed. It is also shown that when radial basis function neural networks (NNs) are used as adaptive elements, the method guarantees exponential convergence of the NN parameters to a compact neighbourhood of their ideal values without requiring PE. Flight test results on a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.
Social Support Network Outreach: A No-Cost Intervention to Improve Resident Well-Being.

P hysician well-being has received increasing attention, as the medical community is coming to appreciate the toll that burnout, depression, and suicide are taking on trainees and physicians in practice. Due to the time commitment of training, residents are seen most by their colleagues, and much less frequently by their preexisting social supports. There has been an effort to encourage physicians to take care of one another, and although this is certainly worthwhile, a resident’s colleagues may not be the group best equipped to prevent, assess, and intervene on that resident’s burnout or depression. Each resident’s preexisting social support network (family, friends, significant other) knows the resident better, is motivated to assist their loved one, and may encounter fewer barriers to intervention than colleagues. Most members of the general public are not well acquainted with the issues of burnout, depression, and suicide. It is easy to imagine a resident’s social supports assuming that a depressed resident’s isolation, for example, is a normal consequence of the consuming nature of residency education. It would, therefore, be advantageous for each resident’s existing social support network to be educated about the stress, burnout, and depression that can be associated with residency, to improve communication and emotional support, and to reduce barriers to intervention. The New York-Presbyterian Resident Forum (RF), led by the institution’s designated institutional official, deliberated on optimal ways to reach out to the members of the social support network of our residents. The RF’s initiative has 4 objectives: