Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of the 25-item Cardiff Visual Ability Questionnaire for Children (CVAQC)

Aims To develop and validate a short questionnaire to assess self-reported visual ability in children and young people with a visual impairment. Methods A list of 121 items was generated from 13 focus groups with children and young people with and without a visual impairment. A long 89-item questionnaire was piloted with 45 visually impaired children and young people using face-to-face interviews. Rasch analysis was used to analyse the response category function and to facilitate item removal ensuring a valid unidimensional scale. The validity and reliability of the short questionnaire were assessed on a group of 109 visually impaired children (58.7% boys; median age 13 years) using Rasch analysis and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results The final 25-item questionnaire has good validity and reliability as demonstrated by a person separation index of 2.28 and reliability coefficient of 0.84. The items are well targeted to the subjects with a mean difference of −0.40 logit between item and person means, and an ICC of 0.89 demonstrates good temporal stability. Conclusion The Cardiff Visual Ability Questionnaire for Children (CVAQC) is a short, psychometrically robust and a self-reported instrument that works to form a unidimensional scale for the assessment of the visual ability in children and young people with a visual impairment.
Smoothed Analysis of Algorithms

Spielman and Teng [STOC '01] introduced the smoothed analysis of al­ gorithms to provide a framework in which one could explain the success in practice of algorithms and heuristics that could not be understood through the traditional worst-case and average-case analyses. In this talk, we survey some of the smoothed analyses that have been performed.
Relationship between the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 and survivin in primary pterygium

Purpose To investigate the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) in a group of 93 Ecuadorian primary pterygia and to evaluate a possible association between COX-2 and survivin. Methods Primary pterygium samples were treated for the immunohistochemical evaluation of COX-2 and survivin. Mouse monoclonal antibody to COX-2 and rabbit polyclonal antibody to survivin were used. Statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS statistical software package, version 15.0. Results In our study, 63 (67.7%) primary pterygia samples were positive for COX-2 staining, and 70 (75.3%) specimens were positive for survivin expression. In the group of pterygia with survivin immunostaining, there were 55 (78.6%) samples with COX-2 expression. The staining of both COX-2 and survivin was localized in the lower and middle layers of the epithelium. When analyzed by Fisher's exact test, the expression of COX-2 showed a strong significant correlation with survivin (p=0.0002). Conclusions These data, showing a significant correlation between COX-2 and survivin in primary pterygium, suggest that pterygium may originate through an anti-apoptotic mechanism.
Study on electronic structure and optical properties of the filled skutterudite CeFe4P12

Full-Potential Linearized Augmented Plane Wave plus local orbital method (FPLAPW +lo) calculations were performed for CeFe4P12 in the filled skutterudite in order to investigate the optical properties and to show the origin of the different optical transitions. It is found that the CeFe4P12 compound has a indirect band gap: 413.41meV. Then the contributions of the different transition peaks are analyzed from the imaginary part of the dielectric function. In contrast to recent experimental expectations, our calculations are in good agreement with experimental reflectivity spectra. Furthermore, the different optical properties have been investigated. We have studied the absorption coefficient, the electron energy loss function, the refractive index, and the extinction coefficient.
Comparative analysis of DC-DC converter topologies for fuel cell based application

Power electronic converters play an important role in integrating renewable energy sources in to the electrical grid. A power conditioning unit (PCU) which comprises of different power electronic converters is essential to process the power of renewable energy sources and make it useable for stand-alone or grid-tied application. DC-DC converters are used in the primary stage of PCU to step up the voltage of renewable energy source to a desired level and also to improve the conversion efficiency. In this paper, a comprehensive analysis is carried out to provide details about different non-isolated, isolated and soft switched converters used in PCU. The performance of these converters are analyzed according to their conversion efficiency and number of components.
Changes in ideal cardiovascular health status and risk of new-onset type 2 diabetes

AbstractThe aim of the present study was to investigate the association between the altered ideal cardiovascular health status (&Dgr;CHS) and the risk of developing diabetes mellitus in the Kailuan population of China.We included 50,656 Chinese adults aged 18 years or older (11,704 men and 38,952 women) without baseline diabetes mellitus in this study. Information about 7 individual components of the cardiovascular health metrics during 2006 to 2008 was collected. A &Dgr;CHS score was defined as the changes of ideal cardiovascular health status (CHS) from the year 2006 to 2008. New-onset diabetes was identified based on the history of diabetes, currently treated with insulin or oral hypoglycemic agents, or having a fasting blood glucose concentration ≥7.0 mmol/L during the 2010 to 2011 and 2012 to 2013 surveys. After a mean follow-up period of 3.80 years, a total of 3071 (6.06%) participants developed diabetes mellitus. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to calculate the hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals for the CHS change and new-onset diabetes.A strong inverse association between the positive CHS changes and lower risks of developing diabetes mellitus was observed. After adjusting for age, sex, alcohol consumption, and other potential confounders, the hazard ratios for new-onset diabetes were 0.73, 0.59, 0.49, and 0.42 (95% confidence interval: 0.37–0.82; P trend <0.001) for those who met &Dgr;CHS = −1, 0, 1, and ≥2, respectively, compared with the participants with &Dgr;CHS ⩽−2.The study concluded that the improved CHS was associated with the reduced risk of developing diabetes mellitus in this investigated Chinese population.
“ A Stock-Purchasing Agent from Sentiment Analysis of Twitter "

In recent years, there has been a number of forays into stock market prediction via sentiment analysis of microblogs, most notably in Bollen et al.’s 2010 work “Twitter mood predicts the stock market. ” However, their work leaves open a number of important questions, most practically, whether it is possible to make money using signals generated from Twitter. An agent which trades based on signals from Twitter is particularly interesting, as there are a number of features of real-life stock trading which make it substantially different from simply predicting a directional signal for a stock. While obtaining a reliable directional signal is certainly a sina qua non for successful trading, calibrating a trading strategy to incorporate risk attitudes as well as real-world parameters such as spread and transaction costs requires additional complexity in the model. In this paper, we attempt to answer those questions by obtaining a solid directional signal of the movement of the Dow Diamonds ETF based on market price changes and Twitter data and subsequently building a stock-trading agent to make simulated trades from those signals.
Indexing without the Index : Scalable MultidimensionalAggregation for Data

Aggregation plays an important role in data warehousing and has received much attention to date. However, existing techniques do not suuciently address the issue of making the computation of multidimensional aggregates scale with increasing dimensionality. At the same time the beneet of taking full advantage of the hard disk geometry is often overlooked. This paper presents the Multiresolution File Scan (MFS) approach which is based on a selection of at les which are accessed with fast sequential I/O operations. Its simple structure and low storage overhead allow MFS to scale to high dimensionality while making the best use of the increasing transfer speed of modern hard disks. We show that MFS out-performs multidimensional index structures, even if these structures are bulk-loaded and hence optimized for query processing. Our approach can incorporate a priori knowledge about the query workload and is applicable to all distributive (e.g., COUNT, SUM, MAX, MIN) and algebraic (e.g., average) aggregate operators .
Strip approximation with Bézier patches in conical form for design and manufacturing of developable materials

This article proposes a novel geometric modelling method for strip approximation using developable Bézier patches in the conical form. Given two space curves, a greedy algorithm is applied to generate an aggregate of quadrilateral and triangular patches based on local optimisation of normal variation across the patch boundaries. These patches, only with positional continuity, are degree elevated to produce additional control points for further shape adjustment. G1 continuity is thus created by the extra degrees of freedom obtained from the degree elevation while the surface developability is preserved. An adaptive refinement algorithm is introduced to minimise the deviation between the boundaries of the approximation patches and the given curves. The experimental results of test examples demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method, which provides flexible modelling capability with quadrilateral and triangular patches, approximates with high-order patches and allows error control in the approximation. This work offers an effective approach for design and manufacturing of developable materials.
Temperature Control of a Rubber Shoot Shaping Machine by Recurrent Neural Fuzzy Controller

Application of a recurrent neural fuzzy controller to practical mold temperature control of a rubber shoot shaping is studied in this paper. The controller used is a recurrent fuzzy network called Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK)-type recurrent fuzzy network (TRFN), which is characterized by its recurrent structure. Due to the powerful learning ability of TRFN, a simple controller design scheme using direct inverse configuration is proposed. With recurrent structure in TRFN, no a priori knowledge of the molding machine order is required. The design of TRFN consists of off-line and on-line training. Practical experiments and comparisons with other types of controllers demonstrate the performance of the proposed TRFN controller.
Whole Genome Expression Array Profiling Highlights Differences in Mucosal Defense Genes in Barrett's Esophagus and Esophageal Adenocarcinoma

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) has become a major concern in Western countries due to rapid rises in incidence coupled with very poor survival rates. One of the key risk factors for the development of this cancer is the presence of Barrett's esophagus (BE), which is believed to form in response to repeated gastro-esophageal reflux. In this study we performed comparative, genome-wide expression profiling (using Illumina whole-genome Beadarrays) on total RNA extracted from esophageal biopsy tissues from individuals with EAC, BE (in the absence of EAC) and those with normal squamous epithelium. We combined these data with publically accessible raw data from three similar studies to investigate key gene and ontology differences between these three tissue states. The results support the deduction that BE is a tissue with enhanced glycoprotein synthesis machinery (DPP4, ATP2A3, AGR2) designed to provide strong mucosal defenses aimed at resisting gastro-esophageal reflux. EAC exhibits the enhanced extracellular matrix remodeling (collagens, IGFBP7, PLAU) effects expected in an aggressive form of cancer, as well as evidence of reduced expression of genes associated with mucosal (MUC6, CA2, TFF1) and xenobiotic (AKR1C2, AKR1B10) defenses. When our results are compared to previous whole-genome expression profiling studies keratin, mucin, annexin and trefoil factor gene groups are the most frequently represented differentially expressed gene families. Eleven genes identified here are also represented in at least 3 other profiling studies. We used these genes to discriminate between squamous epithelium, BE and EAC within the two largest cohorts using a support vector machine leave one out cross validation (LOOCV) analysis. While this method was satisfactory for discriminating squamous epithelium and BE, it demonstrates the need for more detailed investigations into profiling changes between BE and EAC.
Integrating Environmental Management to Improve Strategic Decision-Making Ingar Nilsson

Today, many companies have identified the strategic importance of the environmental area but few have taken the consequences of this recognition. Driving forces for this development are, among others, legislation, customer demands and image but also the heavy environmental expenses that need to be managed. A growing pressure from all stakeholders forces the companies to incorporate environmental responsibility in all activities, and there is the key to success: Only by understanding and managing environmental issues across the organization, as a normal everyday part of doing business, will companies ensure environmental excellence and long term profitability. Following a model adopted from a new accountability approach (Epstein et al, 2000), four elements, essential to create an environmental management system that is fully integrated with the overall management, are described and a generic model for implementing an environmental strategy is presented. Common pitfalls of the implementation process are pointed out and methods and concepts to facilitate the implementation are briefly described. The connection between economy and ecology is discussed and the importance of a balanced set of performance indicators is accentuated. The integration and implementation of the environmental strategy is a far-reaching process that needs full support from the top-management level and sufficient resources, both personnel and equipment, to succeed. Along with this project a redesign of the information system needs to be done, in order to convey the information needed for distributed decision-making considering environmental aspects.
Virus Propagation Modeling in Facebook

Online social network services have attracted more and more users in recent years. So the security in social networks becomes a critical problem. In this paper, we propose a virus model based on the application network of Facebook, which is the most popular among these social network service providers. We also model the virus propagation with an email virus model and compare the behaviors of virus spreading in Facebook and email network. We find that while Facebook provides a platform for application developers, it also provides the same chance for virus spreading. And virus will spread faster in Facebook network if users of Facebook spend more time on it for entertainment.
The effects of experimentally induced hyperthyroidism on the diving physiology of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina)

Many phocid seals are expert divers that remain submerged longer than expected based on estimates of oxygen storage and utilization. This discrepancy is most likely due to an overestimation of diving metabolic rate. During diving, a selective redistribution of blood flow occurs, which may result in reduced metabolism in the hypoperfused tissues and a possible decline in whole-body metabolism to below the resting level (hypometabolism). Thyroid hormones are crucial in regulation of energy metabolism in vertebrates and therefore their control might be an important part of achieving a hypometabolic state during diving. To investigate the effect of thyroid hormones on diving physiology of phocid seals, we measured oxygen consumption, heart rate, and post-dive lactate concentrations in five harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) conducting 5 min dives on command, in both euthyroid and experimentally induced hyperthyroid states. Oxygen consumption during diving was significantly reduced (by 25%) in both euthyroid and hyperthyroid states, confirming that metabolic rate during diving falls below resting levels. Hyperthyroidism increased oxygen consumption (by 7–8%) when resting in water and during diving, compared with the euthyroid state, illustrating the marked effect of thyroid hormones on metabolic rate. Consequently, post-dive lactate concentrations were significantly increased in the hyperthyroid state, suggesting that the greater oxygen consumption rates forced seals to make increased use of anaerobic metabolic pathways. During diving, hyperthyroid seals also exhibited a more profound decline in heart rate than seals in the euthyroid state, indicating that these seals were pushed toward their aerobic limit and required a more pronounced cardiovascular response. Our results demonstrate the powerful role of thyroid hormones in metabolic regulation and support the hypothesis that thyroid hormones play a role in modulating the at-sea metabolism of phocid seals.
Risk and Uncertainty Communication

This review briefly examines the vast range of techniques used to communicate risk assessments arising from statistical analysis. After discussing essential psychological and sociological issues, I focus on individual health risks and relevant research on communicating numbers, verbal expressions, graphics, and conveying deeper uncertainty. I then consider practice in a selection of diverse case studies, including gambling, the benefits and risks of pharmaceuticals, weather forecasting, natural hazards, climate change, environmental exposures, security and intelligence, industrial reliability, and catastrophic national and global risks. There are some tentative final conclusions, but the primary message is to acknowledge expert guidance, be clear about objectives, and work closely with intended audiences.
A hybrid strategy for community detection of complex networks

Many complex systems represent modular feature in their structure and evolution mechanisms. This paper reviews state-of-the-art in community detection algorithms and quality measures. On the basis of that, a hybrid strategy for community detection is proposed. First, the lead vertices of the network is folded and the central vertices are emerged through the application of k-core. Then the central vertices are divided into communities based on modularity optimization. The experimental results suggest that the hybrid strategy can produce detection results with larger value of modularity, and the partitioning is well performed in practices.
Time-Reversal Space-Time Equalization for Amplify-and-Forward Relaying

In this paper, we investigate time-domain equalization for distributed space-time codes in a relay-assisted transmission scenario over frequency-selective fading channels. Specifically, we consider the so-called time-reversal space-time block coding (TR-STBC) technique which has been of particular interest with its low computational complexity. We assume the special case of a single-relay where the source-to-relay (S ¿ R), relay-to-destination (R ¿ D), and source-to-destination (S ¿ D) links experience possibly different channel delay spreads. Under the assumption of perfect power control for the relay terminal and high signal-to-noise ratio for the underlying links, our performace analysis demonstrates that distributed TR-STBC is able to achieve a maximum diversity order of min (L1, L3) +L2 + 2 where L1, L2, and L3 are the channel memory lengths for S ¿ R, S ¿ D, and R ¿ D links, respectively. This illustrates that the smaller of the multipath diversity orders experienced in S ¿ R and R ¿ D links becomes the performance bottleneck for the relaying path. An extensive Monte Carlo simulation study is presented to corroborate the analytical results and to provide detailed performance comparisons with competing schemes.
Effect of different composite core materials on fracture resistance of endodontically treated teeth restored with FRC posts

Objective This study evaluated the fracture resistance of endodontically treated teeth restored with fiber reinforced composite posts, using three resin composite core build-up materials, (Clearfil Photo Core (CPC), MultiCore Flow (MCF), and LuxaCore Z-Dual (LCZ)), and a nanohybrid composite, (Tetric N-Ceram (TNC)). Material and Methods Forty endodontically treated lower first premolars were restored with quartz fiber posts (D.T. Light-Post) cemented with resin cement (Panavia F2.0). Samples were randomly divided into four groups (n=10). Each group was built-up with one of the four core materials following its manufacturers' instructions. The teeth were embedded in acrylic resin blocks. Nickel-Chromium crowns were fixed on the specimens with resin cement. The fracture resistance was determined using a universal testing machine with a crosshead speed of 1 mm/min at 1350 to the tooth axis until failure occurred. All core materials used in the study were subjected to test for the flexural modulus according to ISO 4049:2009. Results One-way ANOVA and Bonferroni multiple comparisons test indicated that the fracture resistance was higher in the groups with CPC and MCF, which presented no statistically significant difference (p>0.05), but was significantly higher than in those with LCZ and TNC (p<0.05). In terms of the flexural modulus, the ranking from the highest values of the materials was aligned with the same tendency of fracture loads. Conclusion Among the cores used in this study, the composite core with high filler content tended to enhance fracture thresholds of teeth restored with fiber posts more than others.
A quantitative study of tuning ROS gmapping parameters and their effect on performing indoor 2D SLAM

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) complexity reduction is a fast progressing research area. Its attraction is owed to the potential commercial benefits of developing low cost yet highly effective SLAM based robotic applications. ROS gmapping package offers a lightweight incorporation of FastSLAM 2.0. The package has been used with different ROS supported robotic platforms and showed remarkable success. However, the effect of the package mapping parameters seem not to be fully exploited, especially with low cost robotic platform with no full ROS support such as Hercules platform. This paper presents a full implementation and performance quantitative evaluation on the gmapping package running on both standard PC and Raspberry Pi processors. We study the effects of tuning the number of particles, the displacement update and the resampling threshold by separately varying each of these parameters to several incremental values and running the algorithm on a recorded dataset. For each run, a grid map was constructed and the performance was evaluated based on mapping accuracy, CPU load and memory consumption. We are then able to propose a tuning guidelines to enlighten the gmapping execution while maintaining high performance.
Linking numbers in rational homology 3-spheres, cyclic branched covers and infinite cyclic covers

We study the linking numbers in a rational homology 3-sphere and in the infinite cyclic cover of the complement of a knot. They take values in Q and in Q(Z[t,t -1 ]), respectively, where Q(Z[t,t -1 ]) denotes the quotient field of Z[t, t -1 ]. It is known that the modulo-Z linking number in the rational homology 3-sphere is determined by the linking matrix of the framed link and that the modulo-Z[t,t -1 ] linking number in the infinite cyclic cover of the complement of a knot is determined by the Seifert matrix of the knot. We eliminate 'modulo Z' and 'modulo Z[t,t -1 ]'. When the finite cyclic cover of the 3-sphere branched over a knot is a rational homology 3-sphere, the linking number of a pair in the preimage of a link in the 3-sphere is determined by the Goeritz/Seifert matrix of the knot.