Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A methodological framework for investigating age factors on the performance of biometric systems

Any individual's biometric data are likely to change with the passage of time and, as a result, developing biometric applications for long-term use is a challenging task. One of the factors which increases the challenge of dealing with ageing effects in biometric systems is that the age of an individual is a continuous variable, and it is impossible to investigate and understand ageing issues in biometric systems other than using discrete age "bands". However, this division of a given population into age-bands has generally been a rather arbitrary exercise, making it difficult to optimise or compare results in different studies. In this paper, we will investigate, document and analyse the effects of age-band assignment, improving our understanding of how to manage age-related data and pointing to the possibility of more objectively determining optimal age-bands which offer a greater possibility of minimizing the sensitivity of a system which relies on such information. We study specifically the iris (physiological) and signature (behavioural) modalities.
Invasive Aspergillosis in a Renal Transplant Recipient Successfully Treated with Interferon-Gamma

Invasive aspergillosis is a serious complication of solid organ transplantation. An early diagnosis is hampered by the lack of reliable serum markers and, even if appropriately diagnosed and treated with current antifungal agents, has a high mortality rate. We report a case of invasive pulmonary and cerebral aspergillosis in a renal transplant patient treated with IFN-γ in conjunction with combination anti-fungal therapy for six weeks in whom complete resolution of the fungal infection was achieved. Renal function remained intact throughout the treatment period. Surveillance CT scans of the chest and head showed resolution of prior disease but revealed a new left upper lobe mass four months after completion of treatment with IFN-γ. Biopsy of the lesion was positive for primary lung adenocarcinoma, for which she underwent left upper lobe resection. The pathology report confirmed clear surgical margins and lymph nodes and no evidence of fungal hyphae. IFN-γ should be considered early in the management of invasive aspergillosis in renal transplant patients. To date, allograft rejection has not been encountered.
Can Aidi injection alleviate the toxicity and improve the clinical efficacy of radiotherapy in lung cancer?

Background/Introduction:Aidi injection plus radiotherapy is widely used for lung cancer in China. Can Aidi injection alleviate the toxicity and improve the clinical efficacy of radiotherapy in lung cancer? Has Aidi injection the attenuation and synergistic efficacy to radiotherapy? There is lack of strong evidence to prove it. Objectives:To reveal its real attenuation and synergistic efficacy to radiotherapy and provide sufficient evidence for adjuvant chemotherapy strategies to lung cancer, we systematically evaluated all related studies. Data Sources:We collected all studies about Aidi injection plus radiotherapy for lung cancer in Medline, Embase, Web of Science, China national knowledge infrastructure database (CNKI), Chinese scientific journals full-text database (VIP), Wanfang database, China biological medicine database (CBM) (established to June 2015), and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (June 2015), evaluated their quality according to the Cochrane evaluation handbook of randomized controlled trials (5.1.0), extracted data following the PICO principles and synthesized the data by Meta analysis. Results:Sixteen randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with 1192 lung cancer patients were included, with general methodological quality in most trials. The merged relative risk (RR) values and their 95% CI of meta-analysis for objective response rate (ORR), disease control rate (DCR), and quality of life (QOL) were as follows: 1.54, (1.39,1.70), 1.10 (1.02, 1.19), and 2.13 (1.68, 2.68). The merged RR values and their 95% CI of meta-analysis for myelosuppression and neutropenia, radiation pneumonitis, and radiation esophagitis were as follows: 0.51 (0.38, 0.69), 0.53 (0.42, 0.65), 0.52 (0.41, 0.67), and 0.52 (0.40, 0.68). All were statistically significant. The possibility of publication bias was small which objectively reported the results. Conclusions:The evidence available indicates that Aidi injection plus radiotherapy can significantly improve the clinical efficacy and QOL of patients with lung cancer. Aidi injection can alleviate the myelosuppression, radiation pneumonitis, and radiation esophagitis of radiotherapy. It has the attenuation and synergistic efficacy to radiotherapy.
Network-coded broadcast incremental power algorithm for energy-efficient broadcasting in wireless ad-hoc network

An important operation in multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks is broadcasting, which propagates information throughout the network. We are interested to explore the issue of broadcasting, where all nodes of the network are sources that want to transmit information to all other nodes, in an ad-hoc wireless network. Our performance metric is energy efficiency, a vital defining factor for wireless networks as it directly concerns the battery life and thus network longevity. We show the benefits network coding has to offer in a wireless ad-hoc network as far as energy-savings is concerned, compared to the store-and-forward strategy. Network coded broadcasting concentrates on reducing the number of transmissions performed by each forwarding node in the all-to-all broadcast application, where each forwarding node combines the incoming messages for transmission. The total number of transmissions can be reduced using network coding, compared to broadcasting using the same forwarding nodes without coding. In this paper, we present the performance of a network coding-based Broadcast Incremental Power (BIP) algorithm for all-to-all broadcast. Simulation results show that optimisation using network coding method lead to substantial improvement in the cost associated with BIP.
Bonding with Robotic Pets. Children’s Cognitions, Emotions and Behaviors towards Pet-Robots. Applications in a Robot Assisted Quality of Life Intervention in a Pediatric Hospital

This dissertation addresses the emergence of emotional involvement in the interaction with social robots. More specifically, we investigate the dynamics of children bonding with robotic pets to design robot based programs to improve patients’ experience in pediatric hospitals. Pet-robots are robots that mimic real pets as dogs or cats, both in appearance and in behavior. We assume that gaining understanding of the emotional dimension of children/pet-robots interaction would contribute to evaluate the impact of pet-robots in children’s lives, and to inform both robots’ design and robot-based applications for health and wellbeing. First, this research presents a novel model of bonding with robotic pets inspired in the human-animal affiliation and particularly in child-dog relatedness, where bonding is envisaged as a process towards companionship that evolves through three stages –first impression, short-term interaction and lasting relationship- characterized by distinguishable patterns of behaviors, cognitions and feelings that can be identified and measured. Secondly, a behavioral analysis of children interacting with the Pleo robot -a robotic pet shaped as a baby dinosaur-, with an emphasis on the interactional surface and particularly on the sequences of dyad’s reciprocal exchange is presented. The outcomes are twofold: the ethograms and coding schemes of Pleo’s and children’s behaviors and a higher level categorization of behaviors involved in bond forming that can be applied to other platforms and users. Thirdly, a naturalistic study carried out in a pediatric hospital to observe the interactive practices with the Pleo robot in the wild and to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a Pleo-based intervention to accompany children is analyzed and discussed. Inspired on the beneficial effects of real pets’ company, the study consisted in an intensive ethnography, a systematic observation of a group play session and a follow-up case study of an experience of adopting a Pleo. Our results show that the key mechanism driving bond forming is the robot’s capability to deploy credible attachment behaviors –proximity seeking and resource soliciting- that elicit complementary nurturing and play behaviors in children. Beyond the novelty effect, self-reinforcing processes as learning and evolution can keep children engaged in rewarding interaction with the robot over time. Moreover, Pleo’s versatility allows diverse modalities of interaction and individual and group play, satisfying different needs as company, technological curiosity, entertainment and social facilitation both for normatively developed children and for children with special needs and their families. In general, the introduction of robot-based play was regarded by the hospital professionals not only as compatible with their daily day practice but valuable as a regular resource to smooth children’s stay at the hospital.
A fast computable delay model for subthreshold circuit

The subthreshold circuit is a promising ultra-low-power solution for such applications that don't require high speed but are extremely power-stringent. The characteristic of the current under subthreshold voltage is different from the normal domain. A delay model is essential to predict the performance, analyze the variation impacts and optimize the design. This paper proposes a fast computable delay model for subthreshold circuit. The model requires a few parameters and is easy to calculate quickly. A 32-stage inverter-chain designed by 180nm process is used to verify the model and the calculated results indicate that the model error is less than 10% compared with HSPICE.
A Parallel Skeleton for the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2

This work presents a skeleton for the resolution of multi-objective optimization problems using the improved version of the strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm (SPEA2). From the same problem specification, the skeleton derives sequential and distributed parallel solvers. The user interface for the problem definition consists of a set of classes and methods which are described in detail. The internal implementation of both solvers and their configuration parameters are explained. An application example to solve the optimization of a broadcasting strategy in metropolitan MANETs is given. The computational results obtained for this example in a homogeneous cluster of PCs give evidence of the quality of the approach
Pattern-Based Task Management as Means of Organizational Knowledge Maturing

This paper presents the principles of pattern-based task management (PBTM) that aims at knowledge maturing based on the integration of task and knowledge management. It takes into account that knowledge does not only manifest in artifacts but also in actions. The approach supports knowledge workers in the execution of their tasks by offering guiding task patterns without restricting their freedom of execution. Task patterns are collaboratively managed and support the sharing and development of work experience in a way, which makes this experience easily applicable to new tasks. The collaborative origin of task patterns requires offering obvious benefits to knowledge workers to motivate their contributions. In this regard, PBTM establishes an organizational knowledge maturation process that prevents the loss and ensures the development of organizational knowledge.
Monitoring Health by Detecting Drifts and Outliers for a Smart Environment Inhabitant 1

To many people, home is a sanctuary. For those people who need sp cial medical care, they may need to be pulled out of their home to meet th ir medical needs. As the population ages, the percentage of people in th is group is increasing and the effects are expensive as well as unsatisfying. We hyp ot esize that many people with disabilities can lead independent lives in thei r own homes with the aid of at-home automated assistance and health monitoring. In o rder to accomplish this, robust methods must be developed to collect relevant dat a and process it to detect and/or predict threatening long-term trends or immedi at crises. The main objective of this work is to design techniques for usi ng agent-based smart home technologies to provide this at-home health monitori g and assistance. Specifically, we address the following technologica l ch llenges: 1) identifying lifestyle trends, 2) detecting anomalies in current da ta, nd 3) designing a reminder assistance system. We discuss one such smart environme nt implementation in the MavHome project and present results from testing t hese techniques in simulation and with a volunteer in an apartment setting.
Innovative and Successful Approaches to Improving Care Transitions From Hospital to Home.

Effective transitions to home care have been identified as among the factors leading to reducing hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge and improvements on various other quality measures. Innovative applications of published evidence-based models and best practices designed to improve care transitions have been implemented in various settings across the country in an effort to enhance quality performance. For this article, The Joint Commission collected a series of case examples to examine how evidence-based innovations in care transitions are reducing readmissions and improving other quality outcomes. The organizations providing the case examples were interviewed and asked to provide performance data demonstrating quality improvement, as well as information about their care processes and data-gathering techniques. Their innovative approaches are reducing hospital readmissions; improving patient safety, satisfaction, and engagement; and contributing to other positive outcomes.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivitives 3.0 License, where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0.
Reverse-engineering of Individual and Inter-Personal Work Practices : A Context-based Approach

Current enterprise modeling approaches allow representing organization’s design. This paper describes a context-based approach to discover and represent issues of the organization’s implementation, for analysis purposes. In particular, it addresses the discovery of personal contexts and elaboration of depictions of individual and inter-personal work practices from action repositories. All representations are situated within their execution contexts. The approach is illustrated with sample graphics from two case studies. Results on the automatic discovery of personal action contexts are also reported.
Inflammatory Cell Adhesion Molecules in Ischemic Cerebrovascular Disease

Background— In this review we discuss the role of inflammatory cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) in ischemic stroke and in delayed cerebral ischemia after subarachnoid hemorrhage. Vascular endothelial cells and leukocytes express several inflammatory adhesion receptors, the most important of which are the selectins, immunoglobulin gene superfamily CAMs, and &bgr;2 integrins. They mediate the transmigration process of leukocytes to the abluminal side of the endothelium. Summary of Review— There is ample evidence from animal models of middle cerebral artery occlusion that expression of CAMs is associated with cerebral infarct size. Absence of CAMs in knockout animals resulted in reduced infarct size. When middle cerebral artery occlusion in experimental stroke was followed by reperfusion, administration of anti-CAM antibodies decreased infarct size. Thus far, anti-CAM treatment has not been successful in patients with ischemic stroke. Inflammatory CAM may also play a role in the pathogenesis of delayed cerebral ischemia after subarachnoid hemorrhage. In animal models, increased expression of CAMs has been observed in vasospastic arteries. Increased concentrations of CAMs have also been found in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage. Conclusions— Further research on the role of inflammatory CAMs in the pathogenesis of ischemic cerebrovascular disorders should lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.
The Formation of Rhythmic Categories and Metric Priming

Two experiments on categorical rhythm perception are reported, the object of which was to investigate how listeners perceive discrete rhythmic categories while listening to rhythms performed on a continuous time scale. This is studied by considering the space of all temporal patterns (all possible rhythms made up of three intervals) and how they, in perception, are partitioned into categories, ie where the boundaries of these categories are located. This process of categorisation is formalised as the mapping from the continuous space of a series of time intervals to a discrete, symbolic domain of integer-ratio sequences. The methodological framework uses concepts from mathematics and psychology (eg convexity and entropy) that allow precise characterisations of the empirical results. In the first experiment, twenty-nine participants performed an identification task with 66 rhythmic stimuli (a systematic sampling of the performance space). The results show that listeners do not just perceive the time intervals between onsets of sounds as placed in a homogeneous continuum. Instead, they can reliably identify rhythmic categories, as a chronotopic time clumping map reveals. In a second experiment, the effect of metric priming was studied by presenting the same stimuli but preceded with a duple or triple metre subdivision. It is shown that presenting patterns in the context of a metre has a large effect on rhythmic categorisation: the presence of a specific musical metre primes the perception of specific rhythmic patterns.
Rip Van Winkle'S Grandchildren

In recent years, several wide-ranging and systematic studies have demonstrated that rural development, as 'opposed to urban growth, contributed most heavily to a 30% decline in fertility in the United States in the period 1800-1860. ' Those who have advanced this point, of course, do not doubt that fertility declined rapidly in American cities during this period, but correctly point out that in 1800, and even in 1860, the urban population was too small to have had any profound effect on the national fertility rate. This fact alone suffices to tell us that the pronounced decline in American fcrtility occurred on farms and in country towns, where, as late as 1860, more than four-fifths of the American population resided. Still, it is curious that those who have so meticulously analyzed the rural contribution to fertility decline have given so little effort to comparing fertility rates in particular localities of differing size and ~ha rac t e r . ~ It is regrettable that they have not considered the influence of cities on the formation of rural families. Both of these tasks, as well as others relating to the precise structure of rural and urban households, are best accomplished in the context of the developing economic region.
Statistical manipulation learning of unknown objects by a multi-fingered robot hand

This paper proposes a learning method for multi-fingered manipulation of unknown objects. The method is a combination of higher-order local autocorrelation (HLAC), principal components analysis (PGA), and mean-shft clustering. Our results show that the different geometric restrictions of manipulation maximize the variance in the space of Feature vectors identified by HLAC analysis. As a result, the data corresponding to each manipulatory act are clustered in a high-dimensional space in accordance with the restrictions via PCA. Mean shift clustering method classify the clusters which correspond the restrictions. The efficacy of the proposed method is shown by means OF handling experiments of given diameter caps subjected to rotational restriction.
System delay and mortality among patients with STEMI treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention.

CONTEXT Timely reperfusion therapy is recommended for patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), and door-to-balloon delay has been proposed as a performance measure in triaging patients for primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, focusing on the time from first contact with the health care system to the initiation of reperfusion therapy (system delay) may be more relevant, because it constitutes the total time to reperfusion modifiable by the health care system. No previous studies have focused on the association between system delay and outcome in patients with STEMI treated with primary PCI. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the associations between system, treatment, patient, and door-to-balloon delays and mortality in patients with STEMI. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Historical follow-up study based on population-based Danish medical registries of patients with STEMI transported by the emergency medical service and treated with primary PCI from January 1, 2002, to December 31, 2008, at 3 high-volume PCI centers in Western Denmark. Patients (N = 6209) underwent primary PCI within 12 hours of symptom onset. The median follow-up time was 3.4 (interquartile range, 1.8-5.2) years. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Crude and adjusted hazard ratios of mortality obtained by Cox proportional regression analysis. RESULTS A system delay of 0 through 60 minutes (n = 347) corresponded to a long-term mortality rate of 15.4% (n = 43); a delay of 61 through 120 minutes (n = 2643) to a rate of 23.3% (n = 380); a delay of 121 through 180 minutes (n = 2092) to a rate of 28.1% (n = 378); and a delay of 181 through 360 minutes (n = 1127) to a rate of 30.8% (n = 275) (P < .001). In multivariable analysis adjusted for other predictors of mortality, system delay was independently associated with mortality (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.10 [95% confidence interval, 1.04-1.16] per 1-hour delay), as was its components, prehospital system delay and door-to-balloon delay. CONCLUSION System delay was associated with mortality in patients with STEMI treated with primary PCI.
Predicate logic unplugged

Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde im Rahmen des Verbundvorhabens Verbmobil vom Bundes-ministerium f ur Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (BMBF) unter dem FF orderkennzeichen 01 IV 101 R geff ordert. Die Verantwortung f ur den Inhalt dieser Arbeit liegt bei dem Autor.
Steady state analysis of an output signal based combination of two NLMS adaptive filters

This paper studies an affine combination of two NLMS adaptive filters, which is an interesting way of improving the performance of adaptive algorithms. The structure consists of two adaptive filters that adapt on the same input signal, one with a large and the other one with a small step size. The outputs of the individual filters are combined together with help of a parameter λ. Such a combination is capable of achieving fast initial convergence and small steady state error at the same time. In this paper we propose to compute the combination parameter λ from output signals of the individual filters and investigate the steady state performance of the resulting combined algorithm.