Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metabolic syndrome as a predictor of type 2 diabetes, and its clinical interpretations and usefulness

Metabolic syndrome is defined as a cluster of glucose intolerance, hypertension, dyslipidemia and central obesity with insulin resistance as the source of pathogenesis. Although several different combinations of criteria have been used to define metabolic syndrome, a recently published consensus recommends the use of ethnic‐specific criteria, including waist circumference as an indicator of central obesity, triglyceride and high‐density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol as indicators of dyslipidemia, and blood pressure greater than 130/85 mmHg. The definition of dysglycemia, and whether central obesity and insulin resistance are essential components remain controversial. Regardless of the definition, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome is increasing in Western and Asian countries, particularly in developing areas undergoing rapid socioenvironmental changes. Numerous clinical trials have shown that metabolic syndrome is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes mellitus and all‐cause mortality. Therefore, metabolic syndrome might be useful as a practical tool to predict these two major metabolic disorders. Comprehensive management of risk factors is very important to the improvement of personal and public health. However, recent studies have focused on the role metabolic syndrome plays as a risk factor for CVD; its importance in the prediction of incident diabetes is frequently overlooked. In the present review, we summarize the known evidence supporting metabolic syndrome as a predictor for type 2 diabetes mellitus and CVD. Additionally, we suggest how metabolic syndrome might be useful in clinical practice, especially for the prediction of diabetes.
THE REDISTRIBUTIVE EFFICACY OFAFFIRMATIVE ACTION: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF RACE AND SOCIOECONOMIC STATUSIN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS

In this paper, we examine the redistributive efficacy of affirmative action exploring the role of race and socioeconomic status in admissions at the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in July 2004 reserving 20% of admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. To evaluate the extent to which the policy might promote racial and socioeconomic diversity in admissions, we compare individuals who were not admitted but would have been if the quota system had not existed with individuals who were admitted but would not have been if the quota system had not existed. We present evidence that displacing applicants are considerably more black than displaced applicants and are, by many measures, from families with significantly lower socioeconomic status. Using data on young men and women living in Distrito Federal and data on university admissions, we find that race and socioeconomic status are both significant determinants of college attendance. Furthermore, firstdifference regressions involving pairs of siblings suggest that skin tone may have an independent effect on performance on the university entrance exam. Lastly, we analyze two alternative hypothetical policies, quotas for students who attended public secondary school and quotas for students from low income households, with respect to their likely impact on racial and socioeconomic diversity.
An Efficient Super-Node-Based Regional Lookup Algorithm in Chord

Most current approaches have been explored to improve Chord lookup efficiency. However, the problem that confronts every node is to increase the routing table size to maintain too much state information of other nodes. In this paper, we propose a regional lookup algorithm based on super-node that routes data keys queries by region information and super-node. The lookup process can be easily implemented by keeping only O (log K) routing information with K regions in the Chord ring at each node. Results from theoretical analysis and simulations show that the improved lookup algorithm achieves higher lookup efficiency and scales well.
Powerlet: an active battery interface for smartphones

A smartphone battery interface should provide energy-related information efficiently with high accuracy because it is the basis for user actions on battery consumption. Previous studies have mainly focused on battery information per se, but the effectiveness of user interaction with the interface has barely been studied. In this paper, we first discuss the results of a survey on different types of energy-related information and features to investigate what users want in terms of battery consumption for smartphones. We then introduce Powerlet, which is a new battery interface that attempts to actively interact with users to provide battery usage information. We validated the efficiency of Powerlet with real users' experiences derived over a seven-week study period. We found that the users actively managed and changed their phone usage based on the energy-related information provided by Powerlet. With the Powerlet active battery interface, participants reduced daily energy consumption by 8.2% on average.
Horizontal and Vertical Multiple Implementations in a Model of Industrial Districts

In this paper we discuss strategies concerning the implementation of an agent-based simulation of complex phenomena. The model we consider accounts for population decomposition and interaction in industrial districts. The approach we follow is twofold: on one hand, we implement progressively more complex models using different approaches (vertical multiple implementations); on the other hand, we replicate the agent-based simulation with different implementations using jESOF, JAS and plain C++ (horizontal multiple implementations). By using both different implementation approaches and a multiple implementation strategy, we highlight the benefits that arise when the same model is implemented on radically different simulation environments, comparing the advantages of multiple modeling implementations. Our findings provide some important suggestions in terms of model validation, showing how models of complex systems tend to be extremely sensitive to implementation details. Finally we point out how statistical techniques may be necessary when comparing different platform implementations of a single model.
The role of risk modelling in the Great Britain transmission planning and operational standards

This paper presents three case studies of risk-based standards from Great Britain: the pre-liberalisation generation planning standard, the present method for setting operational reserve requirements, and the transmission network planning standard. These illustrate a number of key issues in developing planning and operational standards for wind, including: the benefits of risk-based standards in adapting to new circumstances; the importance of considering model assumptions carefully when interpreting risk calculations; the difficulty in calculating the cost of risk; and the need to account for uncertainty in system background. The transmission network planning standard is studied in particular detail, especially how the present combination of deterministic and probabilistic sections might evolve for use in a future power system with a very high renewable penetration.
CHERN CLASS FORMULAS FOR DEGENERACY LOCI

We study a new class of polynomials describing degeneracy loci for a sequence of vector bundles with maps between them and arbitrary rank conditions on the maps. These polynomials generalize all known types of Schubert polynomials. We give explicit formulas for the polynomials as linear combinations with integer coefficients of products of Schur determinants. We furthermore conjecture that all coefficients are positive and given by counting tableaux. We prove the conjecture in the case corresponding to four vector bundles. Résumé. Nous étudions une nouvelle classe de polynômes qui décrit l’ensemble des singularités d’une sequence de fibrés vectoriels reliés par des fonctions et des conditions arbitraires sur le rang des fonctions. Ces polynômes généralisent tous les types connus de polynômes de Schubert. Nous donnons des formules qui expriment ces polynômes par des combinaisons linéaires, à coefficients entiers, de déterminants de Schur. De plus, nous conjecturons que tous ces coefficients sont positifs et qu’ils comptent certains tableaux. Nous démontrons cette conjecture dans le cas correspondant à quatre fibrés vectoriels.
The analysis of stereopsis.

Our eyes capture different 2-D images of the objects around us and our brain uses these images to recover a description of the 3-D structure of the environ­ ment. Stereopsis is the process responsible for this reconstruction of the depth dimension in our visual world. Since Wheatstone invented the stereoscope in 1 838, the processes underlying primate stereo vision have been intensively studied, first with psychophysical techniques, and more recently in terms of the underlying physiological mechanisms in the visual cortex. During the last few years, the computational aspects of the problem of stereo vision have received increased attention. As with so many other visual tasks that humans perform easily and effortlessly, the development of automatic systems of stereoscopic vision, which would yield immediate and important applications, has proven surprisingly difficult. It is now clear that the problem of stereopsis is not only a problem in the area of psychophysics and physiology, but also a complex problem in information processing. Because of its knowledge-free, low-level character, the solution of the stereopsis problem may thus uncover some fundamental principles that apply equally well to artificial and natural vision systems. This somewhat new perspective is reflected in the organization of this paper. We first review the computational problems posed by stereopsis and describe briefly the main theories and models that have been proposed in the context of human and computer vision. The structure of these algorithms and their
Competitive energy-aware resource allocation in two-hop multiple-antenna interference networks

In this paper, the issue of energy-aware competitive resource allocation in an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay-assisted multiple-antenna interference network is considered. A non-cooperative game-theoretic approach is taken and the EE of each communication link is defined as the ratio of the achievable rate over the consumed power. The proposed resource allocation algorithm jointly allocates the relay AF, the users' transmit powers and receive filters. The resulting resource allocation algorithm is shown to converge to a unique fixed point and to have limited feedback and computational requirements. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the performance gain with respect to resource allocation policies that do not perform a joint allocation of the network resources.
Bar Galaxies and Their Environments

The prints of the Palomar Sky Survey, luminosity classifications, and radial velocities were used to assign all northern Shapley-Ames galaxies to either (1) field, (2) group, or (3) cluster environments. This information for 930 galaxies shows no evidence for a dependence of bar frequency on galaxy environment. This suggests that the formation of a bar in a disk galaxy is mainly determined by the properties of the parent galaxy, rather than by the characteristics of its environment.
Usability Evaluation Practices within Agile Development

Despite having different underlying concepts, agile methods and User-Centered Design aim ultimately at producing high quality software. Aiming at providing better understanding on how usability evaluation is addressed within agile environments, we carried out multiple-case studies in two large IT companies. On the one hand, our studies corroborate the literature with regards to the execution of usability inspection evaluations on lightweight prototypes, taking advantage of the iterative nature of Agile. On the other hand, we observed contrary to the literature that this iterative nature of Agile has not facilitated the execution of user testing sessions. Furthermore, we noticed that it is extremely difficult to perform traditional user testing sessions due to the tight schedules inherent to Agile. Finally, we describe a set of practices that can help improve specific artifacts in different stages of an agile process in order to successfully evaluate software product usability.
Entrepreneurship in Established Organizations: The Case of the Public Sector

The potential role of entrepreneurship in public sector organizations is explored. Entrepreneurship is conceptualized as a manageable process with underlying dimensions of innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness. Unique characteristics of the public sector environment are examined, and a number of core principles and concepts from entrepreneurship are applied. Arguments against the application of these concepts are addressed. Results are reported of a survey of 152 public sector managers in South Africa. The findings suggest that these managers find entrepreneurship to be a salient concept for their organizations, and that the key obstacles to its implementation are very similar to those reported by corporate managers. Implications are drawn for theory and practice, and a number of suggestions are made for further research.
A novel ultra-wide band antenna design using notches and stairs

This paper describes the parametric study of a novel rectangular planar ultra-wide band antenna (UWB). The proposed design exploits U and T-shaped notches with stairs at two corners on the radiating patch along with stepped microstrip feed. The stairs are also used at the corners of the partial ground plane with a rectangular notch and an electromagnetically coupled stepped rectangular strip. The proposed UWB antenna is designed and simulated using Computer Simulation Technology Microwave Studio (CST-MWS). This antenna operates in a frequency band ranging from 3.0985 to 10.666 GHz with the overall dimensions of 34 mm (L), 37.5 mm (W) and 1.7 mm (H). The VSWR is less than 2 for entire operating frequency range. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed design is nearly 7.5675 GHz. This antenna finds its applications in 5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN, 3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX, 4 GHz C band and lower frequencies of X band. The effect of the stepped ground plane and the dimensions of U, T and rectangular shaped notches on the optimization of the return loss is parameterized and discussed in detail.
Disambiguating the functions of conversational sounds with prosody: the case of 'yeah'

In this paper, we look at how prosody can be used to automatically distinguish between different dialogue act functions and how it determines degree of speaker incipiency. We focus on the different uses of 'yeah'. Firstly, we investigate ambiguous dialogue act functions of 'yeah': 'yeah' is most frequently used as a backchannel or an assessment. Secondly, we look at the degree of speakership incipiency of 'yeah': some 'yeah' items display a greater intent of the speaker to take the ﬂoor. Classiﬁcation experiments with decision trees were performed to assess the role of prosody: we found that prosody indeed plays a role in disambiguating dialogue act functions and in determining degree of speaker incipiency of 'yeah'.
Enhancing distribution networks to evolve toward smart grids: The voltage control problem

The evolution of existing distribution systems toward smart grids requires the exploitation of all the capabilities of the new Distributed Generation (DG). To this aim, the present paper addresses the problem of improving the voltage profile regulation in distribution networks with DG. According to a decentralized approach, the set-point of a reactive power regulation scheme of the DG is designed in an optimal sense by solving a constrained minimization problem. Since the proposed design uses only local measurements new investments on the existing networks are limited. The results of numerical simulations are provided for a MV multiple-feeder distribution system with multiple DGs with reference to two different optimization objectives.
The Biometric Menagerie

It is commonly accepted that users of a biometric system may have differing degrees of accuracy within the system. Some people may have trouble authenticating, while others may be particularly vulnerable to impersonation. Goats, wolves, and lambs are labels commonly applied to these problem users. These user types are defined in terms of verification performance when users are matched against themselves (goats) or when matched against others (lambs and wolves). The relationship between a user's genuine and impostor match results suggests four new user groups: worms, doves, chameleons, and phantoms. We establish formal definitions for these animals and a statistical test for their existence. A thorough investigation is conducted using a broad range of biometric modalities, including 2D and 3D faces, fingerprints, iris, speech, and keystroke dynamics. Patterns that emerge from the results expose novel, important, and encouraging insights into the nature of biometric match results. A new framework for the evaluation of biometric systems based on the biometric menagerie, as opposed to collective statistics, is proposed.
A multi-agent cognitive framework to model human decision making under bounded rationality

Classical Decision Theory has been widely used in multi-agent systems, but are not representative of decision-making in real conditions. So, we built an architecture based on several cognitive psychological theories (e.g. Simon’s de cision theory, Tversky’s model of elimination by aspect, etc.) to take human bounded rationality into account. We adopt an intermediate-level of cognitive modelisation, situated b etween logical level and physical level: the cognition is viewed as modular. In the CODAGE model, the decision maker is modeled by a multi-agent system, where each agent represents a particular sub-process of the whole decision. This framework permits the implementation of cognitive heuristics leading to biaised decision. We illustrate this approach wi th a simulation of a small experimental financial market, for which our model was able to repl icate some human decision behaviors.
Interpreting a Monetary Conditions Index in economic policy

The main purpose of this paper is to review and interpret the use of a Monetary Conditions Index (or MCI) by central banks in the conduct of monetary policy. Numerous central banks, governmental organizations, and businesses now calculate an MCI as an indicator of the stance of monetary policy. Two central banks, those for Canada and New Zealand, use their MCIs as operational targets. This paper describes and defines the concept of an MCI, summarizes how central banks implement MCIs in practice, reviews some of the operational and conceptual issues involved, and evaluates the sensitivity of MCIs to an inherent source of uncertainty in their calculation. Empirically, this uncertainty typically results in MCIs that are uninformative as indicators of monetary conditions, so some possible alternatives are briefly considered.
Experimental implementation of Hogg's algorithm on a three-quantum-bit NMR quantum computer

Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques with a three-qubit sample, we have experimentally implemented the highly structured algorithm for the satisfiability problem with one variable in each clause proposed by Hogg. A simplified temporal averaging procedure was employed to prepare the three-qubit pseudopure state. The algorithm was completed with only a single evaluation of the structure of the problem and the solutions were found theoretically with probability 100%, results that outperform both unstructured quantum and the best classical search algorithms. However, about 90% of the corresponding experimental fidelities can be attributed to the imperfections of manipulations.
Principal Accountability at Private Secondary Schools

Increasing interest in voucher programs and privatizing public schools reveals a commonly-held belief that private schools are better able to produce a quality education. While state and national standards do not directly affect these schools, their private control yields strong student performance. To contribute to the general discovery about private schools, I use SASS and Census data to investigate accountability and outcomes at private secondary schools, focusing on principals, student outcomes, and administrator effectiveness. I find that principals are not rewarded for facing accountability or for exercising autonomy. OLS and quantile regression results also suggest no direct benefit for strong students at high quality schools. However, accountability does improve student outcomes at the (conditionally) weakest schools.
Asymptotic MIMO artificial-noise secrecy rates with eigenmode partitioning

In a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel system, it has been shown that artificial noise can be transmitted in the null space of the main channel to guarantee the secrecy at the intended receiver. Previous formulas for MIMO asymptotic capacity assume that all channel eigenmodes will be utilized. However, optimizing over possible antenna configurations requires partitioning the available eigenmodes. With only some eigenmodes used for signal transmission, finding an exact closed-form asymptotic solution is, in general, intractable. We present a large-scale MIMO approximation with eigenmode partitioning, accurate for realistic numbers of antennas, and with greatly reduced computational complexity.
Estimation of fair rate of return on equity for Delhi International Airport

This paper deals with the special case of the economic regulation of Delhi Airport. Presented in the form of a case study, the paper discusses the background of the case, the objective of the regulatory body and the approach to regulation for Delhi Airport. The fair rate of return on equity (ROE) for Delhi Airport was calculated by using the capital asset pricing model by means of comparable entity analysis. It is worth mentioning that the case presented in this paper forms part of the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority sponsored research project on the estimation of a fair ROE of Delhi Airport. The results are presented with a brief discussion on the implications of the findings in the broader context of passengers, airlines, investors in Delhi Airport, the regulator and the Ministry of Civil Aviation of the Government of India.