Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel fiber optic temperature monitoring sensor using hard-polymer-clad fiber and an optical time-domain reflectometer

Hard-polymer-clad fiber is a specific type of optical fiber, in which a hard polymer cladding made of fluoroacrylate acts as a protective coating for an inner silica core. An optical time-domain reflectometer is an optical loss measurement system that provides optical loss and event distance measurement in real time. This study proposes a novel fiber optic temperature monitoring sensor system using an economical optical time-domain reflectometer and hard-polymer-clad fiber. Sensor nodes were economically and quickly made by locally stripping hard-polymer-clad fiber clad through photothermal and photochemical processes using a continuous/pulse hybrid-mode laser. The core length exposed was easily controlled by adjusting the laser beam diameter, and the exposed core created a backscattering signal in the optical time-domain reflectometer attenuation trace. The backscattering peak was sensitive to the temperature variation. Since the elaborated hard-polymer-clad fiber temperature sensor was insensitive to strain applied to the sensor node and to temperature variation in the normal hard-polymer-clad fiber line, neither strain compensation nor isolation technique is required. These characteristics are important advantages for using as structure-integrated temperature sensors. The performance characteristics of the sensor nodes included an operating range of up to 120 °C, a resolution of 1.52 °C, a tensile strain resistance of 13%, and a temperature sensitivity of −0.01 dB/°C.
Understanding of diabetes mellitus and health-preventive behaviour among Singaporeans.

INTRODUCTION To study the understanding and perceived vulnerability of diabetes mellitus among Singapore residents, and determine the predictors associated with screening for diabetes mellitus among the people without the condition. MATERIALS AND METHODS A population-based survey was conducted from December 2004 to October 2005 involving Singapore residents aged 15 to 69 years. Using a standard questionnaire, Health Survey Officers interviewed household members on their understanding and perceived vulnerability of diabetes mellitus and associated cardiovascular risk factors. Data were analysed using SPSS v13. RESULTS The response rate was 84.5%. Of 2,632 respondents, 291 (11.1%) have diabetes mellitus. Compared to respondents without diabetes, respondents with the disease had better understanding of diabetes and they had favourable health practice of screening for cardiovascular risk factors. Having diabetes mellitus was not associated with a healthier lifestyle. Among non-diabetics, those who had a family history of diabetes had better knowledge and health practices than those who had not. They were significantly more likely to recognise the symptoms and signs (61.5% vs 54.5%) and the causes of diabetes (70% vs 58.2%); and were more likely to have ever tested for diabetes (76.1% vs 60.4%), with P <0.001. Socio-demographic characteristics, family history, understanding and perception on the vulnerability of diabetes were identified as predictors associated with health screening for the disease. CONCLUSION Among all respondents, better understanding was found to be associated with favourable health-preventive behaviours. However, it did not translate into healthier lifestyle. Cultural and socio-demographic profiles must be factored in for any effort on lifestyle modifications.
Simplified three-strip coupled-line section as microwave sensor for dielectric materials measurement

This paper presents novel microwave sensor constructed of simplified three-strip coupled-line section featuring increased sensitivity allowing for measurement of small dielectric material samples for industrial and medical applications. To characterize the sample which at least must be of size of the distance between coupled-strips, a differential excitation is provided to the sensor since the sample significantly more affects the mutual capacitance existing between sensors' coupled strips than the self-capacitance, which is created between the strips and the ground area. The proposed sensor has been theoretically and experimentally investigated and obtained performance has been compared to performance of recently developed two-strip coupled-line sensor. The obtained results proved the correctness and usability of the proposed circuit.
Nexus: A Common Substrate for Cluster Computing

Cluster computing has become mainstream, resulting in the rapid creation and adoption of diverse cluster computing frameworks. We believe that no single framework will be optimal for all applications, and that organizations will instead want to run multiple frameworks in the same cluster. Furthermore, to ease development of new frameworks, it is critical to identify common abstractions and modularize their architectures. To achieve these goals, we propose Nexus, a low-level substrate that provides isolation and efficient resource sharing across frameworks running on the same cluster, while giving each framework maximum control over the scheduling and execution of its jobs. Nexus fosters innovation in the cloud by letting organizations run new frameworks alongside existing ones and by letting framework developers focus on specific applications rather than building one-size-fits-all frameworks.
High-performance all-software distributed shared memory

The C Region Library (CRL) is a new all-software distributed shared memory (DSM) system. CRL requires no special compiler, hardware, or operating system support beyond the ability to send and receive messages between processing nodes. It provides a simple, portable, region-based shared address space programming model that is capable of delivering good performance on a wide range of multiprocessor and distributed system architectures. Each region is an arbitrarily sized, contiguous area of memory. The programmer defines regions and delimits accesses to them using annotations. CRL implementations have been developed for two platforms: The Thinking Machines CM-5, a commercial multicomputer, and the MIT Alewife machine, an experimental multiprocessor offering efficient hardware support for both message passing and shared memory. Results are presented for up to 128 processors on the CM-5 and up to 32 processors on Alewife. Using Alewife as a vehicle, this thesis presents results from the first completely controlled comparison of scalable hardware and software DSM systems. These results indicate the CRL is capable of delivering performance that is competitive with hardware DSM systems: CRL achieves speedups within 15% of those provided by Alewife''s native hardware-suported shared memory, even for challenging aplications (e.g., Barnes-Hut) and small problem sizes. A second set of experimental results provides insight into the sensitivity of CRL''s performance to increased communication costs (both higher latency and lower bandwidth). These results demonstrate that even for relatively challenging applivcations, CRL should be capable of delivering reasonable performance on current-generation distributed systems. Taken together, these reults indicate the substancial promise of CRL and other all-software approaches to providing shared memory funtionality and suggest that in many cases specvial-purpose hardware support for shared memory may not be necessary.
Surface electrical stimulation for the affected shoulder after stroke: reconsidering the findings of church and colleagues.

To the Editor: We would like to raise serious methodological concerns with Church et al’s recent article, “Randomized Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Effect of Surface Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation to the Shoulder After Acute Stroke. ”1 First, we are perplexed by the authors’ choice for a primary outcome measure, the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT), and their use of the Frenchay Activities Index (FAI) as an outcome measure. Sixteen of the 19 ARAT items assess affected hand and finger movement. The FAI asks patients to rate how often they have undertaken valued activities (eg, preparing meals). Most items comprising these measures evaluate active movement in the distal regions of the affected arm. However, …
Advanced Ultrahigh Strength Bainitic Steels

The addition of about 2 wt. % of silicon to steel enables the production of a distinctive microstructure consisting of a mixture of bainitic ferrite, carbon-enriched retained austenite, and some martensite. With careful design, impressive combinations of strength and toughness have been reported for high-silicon bainitic steels. More recently, it has been demonstrated experimentally that models based on phase transformation theory can be applied successfully to the design of carbide-free bainitic steels. Toughness values of nearly 130 MPa m1/2 were obtained for strength in the range of 1600–1700 MPa. However, the concepts of bainite transformation theory can be exploited even further to design steels that transform to bainite at temperatures as low as 150°C. Microstructure obtained is so refined that it is possible to achieve a strength in excess of 2.5 GPa in a material which has considerable toughness (30 MPa m1/2). Such properties have never been achieved before with bainite. It is intended to provide a description of the characteristics and significance of this remarkable microstructure in the context of the mechanism of transformation.
Intermediate filament protein profiles of human testicular non-seminomatous germ cell tumors: correlation of cytokeratin synthesis to cell differentiation.

The patterns of cytoskeletal differentiation were studied in 20 testicular non-seminomatous germ cell tumors by immunohistochemistry, using diverse monoclonal antibodies specific for different intermediate filament (IF) proteins and for desmoplakin. Immunofluorescence and immunoperoxidase methods on both formalin-fixed and frozen tissues were applied, in some cases together with a gel electrophoretic analysis of IF proteins. The tumors examined included embryonal carcinoma (EC), endodermal sinus tumor (EST), choriocarcinoma and teratoma. Nine of the tumors were composed of only one histological type, the others showed mixed components. Cytokeratins 8 and 18 were identified in all these neoplasms, but their immunostaining was weak in ECs. Cytokeratin 19 was absent or very scarce in ECs, but strongly expressed in ESTs, choriocarcinomas and teratomas, thus allowing the identification of small EST and choriocarcinoma elements in ECs even when they were morphologically not obvious. Occasionally, some cells in ECs and ESTs also stained for cytokeratins 4 and/or 17, indicating potential for epithelial stratification. The majority of the germ cell tumors showed varied amounts of vimentin, often in co-existence with cytokeratins. Neurofilaments were demonstrated in scattered tumor cells in a single case of EST. In the teratomas studied, each type of tissue component present showed the expected IF protein. However, in many germ cell tumors some stromal cells and blood vessels contained, in addition to vimentin and desmin, also cytokeratins 8 and 18. This heterogeneity of the cytoskeletal profile of germ cell tumors is indicative of the varied differentiation potential inherent in these neoplasms. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Bounding the effect of partition camping in GPU kernels

Current GPU tools and performance models provide some common architectural insights that guide the programmers to write optimal code. We challenge and complement these performance models and tools, by modeling and analyzing a lesser known, but very severe performance pitfall, called Partition Camping, in NVIDIA GPUs. Partition Camping is caused by memory accesses that are skewed towards a subset of the available memory partitions, which may degrade the performance of GPU kernels by up to seven-fold. There is no existing tool that can detect the partition camping effect in GPU kernels. Unlike the traditional performance modeling approaches, we predict a performance range that bounds the partition camping effect in the GPU kernel. Our idea of predicting a performance range, instead of the exact performance, is more realistic due to the large performance variations induced by partition camping. We design and develop the prediction model by first characterizing the effects of partition camping with an indigenous suite of micro-benchmarks. We then apply rigorous statistical regression techniques over the micro-benchmark data to predict the performance bounds of real GPU kernels, with and without the partition camping effect. We test the accuracy of our performance model by analyzing three real applications with known memory access patterns and partition camping effects. Our results show that the geometric mean of errors in our performance range prediction model is within 12% of the actual execution times. We also develop and present a very easy-to-use spreadsheet based tool called CampProf, which is a visual front-end to our performance range prediction model and can be used to gain insights into the degree of partition camping in GPU kernels. Lastly, we demonstrate how CampProf can be used to visually monitor the performance improvements in the kernels, as the partition camping effect is being removed.
Increasing Turnover Through Time in Tropical Forests

Tree turnover rates were assessed at 40 tropical forest sites. Averaged across inventoried forests, turnover, as measured by tree mortality and recruitment, has increased since the 1950s, with an apparent pantropical acceleration since 1980. Among 22 mature forest sites with two or more inventory periods, forest turnover also increased. The trend in forest dynamics may have profound effects on biological diversity.
NTCIR-5 Patent Retrieval Experiments at RICOH

Focusing on the IPC (International Patent Classification) of patent, two retrieval methods were examined. One is to use the IPC code of the query patent and the other is to exploit the codes assigned to topN retrieved patents in a similar manner of pseudorelevance feedback. In both methods, the codes were used as constraint on retrieval results. As a result, we found the former is clearly effective and the latter’s effect is positive but small. Another point of our experiments is exploitation of synonyms, which were automatically collected from a machine-readable dictionary for each query term.
Statement on cardiopulmonary exercise testing in chronic heart failure due to left ventricular dysfunction: recommendations for performance and interpretation Part II: How to perform cardiopulmonary exercise testing in chronic heart failure

Basic and practical information related to equipment, methodology, exercise protocols, conduct of the test and quality control issues for cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) will be addressed in this II part of the statement. CPET users have the responsibility for assuring that measurements remain accurate. CPT, especially when it features breath-by-breath gas exchange analysis, requires meticulous attention to calibration procedures to assure accurate and reproducible measurements. Skills and knowledge of personnel for supervision and test interpretation, as well as patient preparation and information are key features for a correct CPET conduction: all these issues will be faced. Finally, after the test, the investigator needs to format the results in a manner that optimises the ability to discriminate essential response features; that is, to establish ‘interpretive clusters’ of the variables of interest. An example of a cardiopulmonary summary exercise test data report will be provided, defining the most important information that should be incorporated in a final report. Eur J Cardiovasc Prev Rehabil 13:300-311 © 2006 The European Society of Cardiology
Impaired Swallowing in Hospitalized Patients: An Observational Study in a Community Hospital in Japan (2012–2014)

BackgroundDysphagia is a serious health problem in aging populations. Older persons also experience high rates of chronic illness and hospitalization. Accurate identification of dysphagia at the time of hospital admission is important for providing supportive interventions for effective swallowing and preventing complications of dysphagia. ObjectivesThis study aimed to estimate the prevalence of potential impairment of swallowing function, the association between self-reported and observed swallowing difficulty, and factors associated with swallowing impairment in hospitalized patients. MethodsData from 11,963 patients who were admitted to a community hospital from July 2012 to June 2014 were used. Patients responded to a brief self-administered questionnaire (BSAQ) about swallowing difficulties and performed a modified water swallow test (MWST) using a standardized protocol. Sensitivity and specificity of the BSAQ were evaluated against swallowing impairment based on the MWST. Logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate associations between background characteristics and impaired swallowing as evaluated by the screening tests. ResultsMedian age of patients was 73 years (interquartile range, 63–81 years), and 5,780 (48.3%) were women. On the BSAQ, a total of 3,026 patients reported severe symptoms in any of 15 dysphagia-related questions (253 per 1,000 patients). The MWST showed that 593 patients were unable to successfully swallow 3 ml of cold water without choking or experiencing wet hoarseness two times within 30 seconds (50 per 1,000 patients). Each item score and the total score of the BSAQ were significantly associated with impaired swallowing as evaluated by the MWST. The sensitivity and specificity of the BSAQ for impaired swallowing as evaluated by the MWST were 72% and 66%, respectively. The prevalence of impaired swallowing as evaluated by both tests increased with age—especially in patients of ages ≥80 years. Age, male gender, and underlying diseases, including neurological and respiratory diseases, were associated with swallowing dysfunction detected by the MWST. DiscussionImpaired swallowing function may frequently be present in older hospitalized patients. The clinical significance of the validated screening tests in nursing practice should be further studied.
Hopf-type neurons increase input-sensitivity by forming forcing-coupled ensembles

Astounding properties of biological sensors can often be mapped onto a dynamical system in the vicinity a bifurcation. For mammalian hearing, a Hopf bifurcation description has been shown to work across a whole range of scales, from individual hair bundles to whole regions of the cochlea. We reveal here the origin of this scale-invariance, from a general level, applicable to all neuronal dynamics in the vicinity of a Hopf bifurcation (embracing, e.g., Hodgkin-Huxley equations). When coupled by natural 'force-coupling', ensembles of Hopf oscillators below bifurcation threshold exhibit a collective Hopf bifurcation. This collective Hopf bifurcation occurs substantially below where the average of the individual oscillators would bifurcate, with a frequency profile that is sharpened if compared to the individual oscillators.
SWATCH: common control SW for the uTCA-based upgraded CMS L1 Trigger

The CMS L1 Trigger electronics are composed of a large number of different cards based on the VMEBus standard. The majority of the system is being replaced to adapt the trigger to the higher collision rates the LHC will deliver after the LS1, the first phase on the CMS upgrade program. As a consequence, the software that controls, monitors and tests the hardware will need to be re-written. The upgraded trigger will consist of a set of general purpose boards of similar technology that follow the TCA specification, thus resulting in a more homogeneous system. A great effort has been made to identify the common firmware blocks and components shared across different cards, regardless of the role they play within the trigger data path. A similar line of work has been followed in order to identify all possible common functionalities in the control software, as well as in the database where the hardware initialisation and configuration data are stored. This will not only increase the homogeneity on the software and database sides, but it will also reduce the manpower needed to accommodate the online SW to the changes on hardware. Due to the fact that the upgrade will take place in different stages, it has been taken into consideration that these new components had to be integrated in the current SW framework. This paper presents the design of the control SW and configuration database for the upgraded L1 Trigger.
Presupernova evolution of accreting white dwarfs with rotation

We discuss the effects of rotation on the evolution of accreting carbon-oxygen white dwarfs, with the emphasis on possible consequences in Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) progenitors. Starting with a slowly rotating white dwarf, we consider the accretion of matter and angular momentum from a quasi-Keplerian accretion disk. Numerical simulations with initial white dwarf masses of 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0 Mand accretion of carbon-oxygen rich matter at rates of 3 . 10 × 10 −7 M� /yr are performed. The models are evolved either up to a ratio of rotational to potential energy of T/W = 0.18 - as angular momentum loss through gravitational wave radiation will become important for T/W < 0.18 - or to central carbon ignition. The role of the various rotationally induced hydrodynamic instabilities for the transport of angular momentum inside the white dwarf is investigated. We find that the dynamical shear instability is the most important one in the highly degenerate core, while Eddington-Sweet circulations, Goldreich-Schubert-Fricke instability and secular shear instability are most relevant in the non- degenerate envelope. Our results imply that accreting white dwarfs rotate differentially throughout, with a shear rate close to the threshold value for the onset of the dynamical shear instability. As the latter depends on the temperature of the white dwarf, the thermal evolution of the white dwarf core is found to be relevant for the angular momentum redistribution. As found previously, significant rotation is shown to lead to carbon ignition masses well above 1.4 M� . Our models suggest a wide range of white dwarf explosion masses, which could be responsible for some aspects of the diversity observed in SNe Ia. We analyze the potential role of the bar-mode and the r-mode instability in rapidly rotating white dwarfs, which may impose angular momentum loss by gravitational wave radiation. We discuss the consequences of the resulting spin-down for the fate of the white dwarf, and the possibility to detect the emitted gravitational waves at frequencies of 0.1 . 1.0 Hz in nearby galaxies with LISA. Possible implications of fast and differentially rotating white dwarf cores for the flame propagation in exploding white dwarfs are also briefly discussed.