Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Methods for haptic feedback in teleoperated robot-assisted surgery

Teleoperated minimally invasive surgical robots can significantly enhance a surgeon's accuracy, dexterity and visualization. However, current commercially available systems do not include significant haptic (force and tactile) feedback to the operator. This paper describes experiments to characterize this problem, as well as several methods to provide haptic feedback in order to improve surgeon's performance. There exist a variety of sensing and control methods that enable haptic feedback, although a number of practical considerations, e.g. cost, complexity and biocompatibility, present significant challenges. The ability of teleoperated robot-assisted surgical systems to measure and display haptic information leads to a number of additional exciting clinical and scientific opportunities, such as active operator assistance through "virtual fixtures" and the automatic acquisition of tissue properties.
Does Syntactic Knowledge help English-Hindi SMT?

In this paper we explore various parameter settings of the state-of-art Statistical Machine Translation system to improve the quality of the translation for a ’distant’ language pair like English-Hindi. We proposed new techniques for efficient reordering. A slight improvement over the baseline is reported using these techniques. We also show that a simple pre-processing step can improve the quality of the translation significantly.
High‐Performance Flexible Photodetectors based on High‐Quality Perovskite Thin Films by a Vapor–Solution Method

Organometal halide perovskites are new light‐harvesting materials for lightweight and flexible optoelectronic devices due to their excellent optoelectronic properties and low‐temperature process capability. However, the preparation of high‐quality perovskite films on flexible substrates has still been a great challenge to date. Here, a novel vapor–solution method is developed to achieve uniform and pinhole‐free organometal halide perovskite films on flexible indium tin oxide/poly(ethylene terephthalate) substrates. Based on the as‐prepared high‐quality perovskite thin films, high‐performance flexible photodetectors (PDs) are constructed, which display a nR value of 81 A W−1 at a low working voltage of 1 V, three orders higher than that of previously reported flexible perovskite thin‐film PDs. In addition, these flexible PDs exhibit excellent flexural stability and durability under various bending situations with their optoelectronic performance well retained. This breakthrough on the growth of high‐quality perovskite thin films opens up a new avenue to develop high‐performance flexible optoelectronic devices.
Clustering of Scatterers Over an Irregular Clutter Environment: An Extension of COST 273 MIMO Channel Model

In this paper a realistic model that is an extension of COST 273 channel model, introducing terrain and clutter information into cluster generation, is presented. Our model is based on a geometrical/stochastic approach, and allows a realistic treatment of both cluster positions and dynamics. This is done by means of visibility regions. Using terrain and clutter information, the cluster and visibility region generating PDFs are derived. Some simulation results over a GIS tool for the city of Lisbon, Portugal, are presented.
Education and risk of incident dementia during the premotor and motor phases of essential tremor (NEDICES)

Abstract Individuals with late-onset essential tremor (ET) (e.g., older adults) seem to have an increased prevalence of mild cognitive impairment and dementia, and a higher risk of incident dementia. It is well-known that education has a protective role against dementia in individuals without a pre-existing neurologic disorder, but evidence regarding the maintenance of this effect during the premotor and motor phases of ET is unknown. Our aim was to determine the influence of education on the risk of dementia in a population-based cohort of ET patients and controls. In a prospective study (Neurological Disorders in Central Spain), participants ≥65 years old were evaluated twice: at baseline (1994–1995) and at follow-up (1997–1998). There were 3 groups: premotor (i.e., participants first diagnosed with incident ET at follow-up), prevalent ET (i.e., participants diagnosed with ET at baseline and at follow-up), and controls. Participants were stratified into lower education (⩽primary studies) versus higher education (≥secondary studies) categories. Dementia risk was estimated using Cox proportional-hazards models (higher education control group = reference category). Among the participants, 3878 had a mean duration of follow-up of 3.2 years. Eight (16.7%) of 48 lower education premotor ET patients developed incident dementia versus 1 (3.3%) of 30 higher education premotor ET patients, 9 (7.1%) of 126 lower education prevalent ET patients, 7 (8.8%) of 80 higher education prevalent ET patients, and 92 (4.9%) of 1892 lower education controls (P < 0.001). In comparison to the higher education controls, the adjusted hazard ratios for incident dementia were 5.84 (lower education premotor ET, P < 0.001); 1.36 (higher education premotor ET, P = 0.76); 2.13 (lower education prevalent ET, P = 0.04); 2.79 (higher education prevalent ET, P = 0.01); and 1.66 (lower education controls, P = 0.01). Our results suggest that a higher educational attainment may ameliorate the risk of incident dementia during the premotor phase of ET, but not in the motor phase.
Measurement of the Depth Distance Based on the Binocular Stereo Vision

The measurement system of the depth distance based on binocular stereo vision is proposed. The model of camera imaging is established and the process of camera calibration is described. Interior and external parameters of two cameras are calculated by HALCON. Then the depth distance can be obtained by the parallax measurement of the image pairs. The simulation experiments have been done and the results demonstrated that the measuring method is feasible.
Phase II study of low-dose decitabine in patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia resistant to imatinib mesylate.

PURPOSE To determine the activity of decitabine, a DNA methylation inhibitor, in imatinib-refractory or intolerant chronic myelogenous leukemia. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-five patients were enrolled in this phase II study (12 in chronic phase, 17 in accelerated phase, and six in blastic phase). Decitabine was administered at 15 mg/m2 intravenously over 1 hour daily, 5 days a week for 2 weeks. DNA methylation was measured using a LINE1 bisulfite/pyrosequencing assay. RESULTS Complete hematologic responses were seen in 12 patients (34%) and partial hematologic responses in seven patients (20%), for an overall hematologic response rate of 54% (83% in chronic phase, 41% in accelerated phase, and 34% in blastic phase). Major cytogenetic responses were observed in six patients (17%), and minor cytogenetic responses were seen in 10 patients (29%) for an overall cytogenetic response rate of 46%. Median response duration was 3.5 months (range, 2 to 13+ months). Myelosuppression was the major adverse effect, with neutropenic fever in 28 (23%) of 124 courses of therapy. LINE1 methylation decreased from 71.3% +/- 1.4% (mean +/- standard error of the mean) to 60.7% +/- 1.4% after 1 week, 50.9% +/- 2.4% after 2 weeks, and returned to 66.5% +/- 2.7% at recovery of counts (median, 46 days). LINE1 methylation at the end of week 1 did not correlate with subsequent responses. However, at day 12, the absolute decrease in methylation was 14.5% +/- 3.0% versus 26.8% +/- 2.7% in responders versus nonresponders (P = .007). CONCLUSION Decitabine induces hypomethylation and has clinical activity in imatinib refractory chronic myelogenous leukemia. We hypothesize that the inverse correlation between hypomethylation 2 weeks after therapy and response is due to a cell death mechanism of response, whereby resistant cells can withstand more hypomethylation.
Apolipoprotein A-V: a potential modulator of plasma triglyceride levels in Turkss⃞

The apolipoprotein A-V gene (APOA5) plays an important role in determining plasma triglyceride levels. We studied the effects of APOA5 polymorphisms on plasma triglyceride levels in Turks, a population with low levels of HDL cholesterol and a high prevalence of coronary artery disease. We found 15 polymorphisms, three of which were novel. Seven haplotype-tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were chosen and genotyped in ∼3,000 subjects. The rare alleles of the −1464T>C, −1131T>C, S19W, and 1259T>C SNPs were significantly associated with increased triglyceride levels (19–86 mg/dl; P < 0.05) and had clear gene-dose effects. Haplotype analysis of the nine common APOA5 haplotypes revealed significant effects on triglyceride levels (P < 0.001). Detailed analysis of haplotypes clearly showed that the −1464T>C polymorphism had no effect by itself but was a marker for the −1131T>C, S19W, and 1259T>C polymorphisms. The −1131T>C and 1259T>C polymorphisms were in a strong but incomplete linkage disequilibrium and appeared to have independent effects. Thus, the APOA5 −1131T>C, S19W, and 1259T>C rare alleles were associated with significant increases in plasma triglyceride levels. At least one of these alleles was present in ∼40% of the Turks. Similar associations were observed for −1131T>C and S19W in white Americans living in San Francisco, California.
Impaired left ventricular diastolic function in children with chronic renal failure.

BACKGROUND Diastolic dysfunction is frequent in adults with renal failure. However, in children with mild-to-moderate chronic renal insufficiency (CRI), it has not been evaluated. We compared diastolic function and assessed risk factors associated with diastolic dysfunction in children with CRI with those on dialysis. METHODS Thirty-three children with CRI, 17 on chronic dialysis, and 33 control patients, had echocardiography performed. Early diastole was assessed using indices of left ventricular (LV) relaxation derived from transmitral and tissue Doppler, and reported as the peak E/A wave ratio, and septal mitral annular velocities (Em). Late diastole was determined using an index of LV compliance (E/Em ratio). Left atrial (LA) dimension was also determined. RESULTS Children with CRI had worse diastolic function (lower Em, and higher E/Em ratio than control patients, P < 0.001). Dialysis patients had worse diastolic function (lower E/A ratio and Em, and higher E/Em ratio, P < 0.001) than CRI children. LA dimension was higher in renal patients when compared with control patients (P < 0.001). In children on dialysis, LV relaxation (Em) was significantly related to left ventricular mass (LVM) index (r=-0.58, P= 0.04), and LV compliance (E/Em) was significantly associated with LA index (r= 0.67, P= 0.01), LVM index (r= 0.75, P < 0.01), hemoglobin level (r=-0.65, P= 0.02), serum phosphorus (r= 0.56, P= 0.05), and calcium-phosphorus ion product (r= 0.59, P= 0.04). CONCLUSION Our results indicate that diastolic dysfunction is already present in children with mild-to-moderate CRI. Worse diastolic function in dialysis patients might be related to LV hypertrophy. The results suggest that children with advanced renal failure and diastolic dysfunction may be at risk for ultimate worsening of cardiac function over time.
Basketball predictions in the NCAAB and NBA: Similarities and differences

Most work on predicting the outcome of basketball matches so far has focused on National College Athletics Association Basketball (NCAAB) games. Since NCAAB and professional (National Basketball Association, NBA) basketball have a number of differences, it is not clear to what degree these results can be transferred. We explore a number of different representations, training settings, and classifiers, and contrast their results on NCAAB and NBA data. We find that adjusted efficiencies work well for the NBA, the NCAAB regular season is not ideal for training to predict its post‐season, the two leagues require classifiers with different bias, and Naïve Bayes predicts the outcome of NBA playoff series well. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal, 2016
Baseline Detection on Arabic Handwritten Documents

Document processing comprises different steps depending on the nature of the documents. For text documents, specially for handwritten documents, transcription of their contents is one of the main tasks. Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) is the process of automatically obtaining the transcription of the content of a handwritten text document. In document processing, the basic unit for the acquisition process is the page image, whilst line image is the basic form for the HTR process. This is a bottle-neck which is holding back the massive industrial document processing. Baseline detection can be used not only to segment page images into line images but also for many other document processing steps. Baseline detection problem can be formulated as a clustering problem over a set of interest points. In this work, we study the use of an automatic baseline detection technique, based on interest point clustering, in Arabic handwritten documents. The experiments reveal that this technique provides promising results for this task.
Matrix formation is enhanced in co‐cultures of human meniscus cells with bone marrow stromal cells

The ultimate aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of using human bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) to supplement meniscus cells for meniscus tissue engineering and regeneration. Human menisci were harvested from three patients undergoing total knee replacements. Meniscus cells were released from the menisci after collagenase treatment. BMSCs were harvested from the iliac crest of three patients and were expanded in culture until passage 2. Primary meniscus cells and BMSCs were co‐cultured in vitro in three‐dimensional (3D) pellet culture at three different cell–cell ratios for 3 weeks under normal (21% O2) or low (3% O2) oxygen tension in the presence of serum‐free chondrogenic medium. Pure BMSCs and pure meniscus cell pellets served as control groups. The tissue generated was assessed biochemically, histochemically and by quantitative RT–PCR. Co‐cultures of primary meniscus cells and BMSCs resulted in tissue with increased (1.3–1.7‐fold) deposition of proteoglycan (GAG) extracellular matrix (ECM) relative to tissues derived from BMSCs or meniscus cells alone under 21% O2. GAG matrix formation was also enhanced (1.3–1.6‐fold) under 3% O2 culture conditions. Alcian blue staining of generated tissue confirmed increased deposition of GAG‐rich matrix. mRNA expression of type I collagen (COL1A2), type II collagen (COL2A1) and aggrecan were upregulated in co‐cultured pellets. However, SOX9 and HIF‐1α mRNA expression were not significantly modulated by co‐culture. Co‐culture of primary meniscus cells with BMSCs resulted in increased ECM formation. Co‐delivery of meniscus cells and BMSCs can, in principle, be used in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine strategies to repair meniscus defects. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Growth to Value: A Difficult Journey for IPOs and Concentrated Industries

We find evidence that the underperformance of some IPOs, and firms in concentrated industries, have common empirical roots. The most likely explanation for both is a confluence of two well known rational theories, which predict that: (1) entrepreneurs in concentrated industries optimally time their IPOs to coincide with a transition from growth to value (Maksimovic and Pichler (2001)); and (2) the increase in systematic risk associated with this transition generates lower returns (Pastor and Veronesi (2005)). We confirm this link using several tests based on specific portfolio returns, changes in systematic risk, unexpected real cashflows, and the characteristics of firms going public. In addition, we present new evidence of return predictability, and a new explanation for the role VC-backing plays in long-term IPO performance.
Protecting First-Level Responder Resources in an IP-based Emergency Services Architecture

Recently, there has been increased interest, shown by the research community and by industry fora, to enable emergency services for voice-over-IP based architectures. In order to provide emergency services functionality over the Internet, several aspects like location determination, dial string configuration, location conveyance, routing to the appropriate public safety answering point (PSAP) and security aspects have to be considered. This paper discusses security threats for the IP-based emergency architecture concentrating on denial-of-service attacks against public safety answering points (PSAPs) by using faked calls that aim to exhaust limited PSAP resources, such as the emergency personnel. We illustrate a number of different approaches that have been mentioned in the past to tackle these threats, including location signing, location-by-reference and authenticated emergency calls.
Heterogeneity-conscious parallel query execution: getting a better mileage while driving faster!

Physical and thermal restrictions hinder commensurate performance gains from the ever increasing transistor density. While multi-core scaling helped alleviate dimmed or dark silicon for some time, future processors will need to become more heterogeneous. To this end, single instruction set architecture (ISA) heterogeneous processors are a particularly interesting solution that combines multiple cores with the same ISA but asymmetric performance and power characteristics. These processors, however, are no free lunch for database systems. Mapping jobs to the core that fits best is notoriously hard for the operating system or a compiler. To achieve optimal performance and energy efficiency, heterogeneity needs to be exposed to the database system. In this paper, we provide a thorough study of parallelized core database operators and TPC-H query processing on a heterogeneous single-ISA multi-core architecture. Using these insights we design a heterogeneity-conscious job-to-core mapping approach for our high-performance main memory database system HyPer and show that it is indeed possible to get a better mileage while driving faster compared to static and operating-system-controlled mappings. Our approach improves the energy delay product of a TPC-H power run by 31% and up to over 60% for specific TPC-H queries.
CANADIAN POPULATION RISK OF RADON INDUCED LUNG CANCER—VARIATION RANGE ASSESSMENT BASED ON VARIOUS RADON RISK MODELS

To address public concerns regarding radon risk and variations in risk estimates based on various risk models available in the literature, lifetime lung cancer risks were calculated with five well-known risk models using more recent Canadian vital statistics (5-year averages from 2008 to 2012). Variations in population risk estimation among various models were assessed. The results showed that the Canadian population risk of radon induced lung cancer can vary from 5.0 to 17% for men and 5.1 to 18% for women based on different radon risk models. Averaged over the estimates from various risk models with better radon dosimetry, 13% of lung cancer deaths among Canadian males and 14% of lung cancer deaths among Canadian females were attributable to long-term indoor radon exposure.
Anthracosis of the Lungs: Etiology, Clinical Manifestations and Diagnosis: A Review

Anthracosis of the lungs is black discoloration of bronchial mucosa that can occlude bronchial lumen and is associated with bronchial anthracofibrosis (BAF). This disease usually presents with a chronic course of dyspnea and or cough in an elderly non-smoker woman or man. In addition, concomitant exposure to dust and wood smoke is the most postulated etiology for anthracosis. Pulmonary function tests usually show an obstructive pattern with no response to bronchodilators and normal DLCO, but some cases with restrictive pattern have also been seen. Computed tomography (CT) may show more specific findings such as lymph node or bronchial calcification and mass lesions. Final diagnosis can be made by bronchoscopy when obtaining samples for tuberculosis (TB), which is the most common disease associated with BAF. Endobronchial ultrasound shows a hypoechoic scattered nodular pattern in adjacent lymph nodes, which is unique to anthracosis. Treatment is very similar to that of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) with a chronic course and low mortality. This review discusses this disease as a separate entity; hence, anthracosis should be added to the list of obstructive lung diseases and benign mass lesions and differentiated from biomass induced COPD.
iStuff mobile: rapidly prototyping new mobile phone interfaces for ubiquitous computing

iStuff Mobile is the first rapid prototyping framework that helps explore new sensor-based interfaces with existing mobile phones. It focuses on sensor-enhanced physical interfaces for ubiquitous computing scenarios. The framework includes sensor network platforms, mobile phone software, and a proven rapid prototyping framework. Interaction designers can use iStuff Mobile to quickly create and test functional prototypes of novel interfaces without making internal hardware or software modifications to the handset. A visual programming paradigm provides a low threshold for prototyping activities: the system is not difficult to learn. At the same time, the range of examples built using the toolkit demonstrates a high ceiling for prototyping activities: the toolkit places few limits on prototype complexity. A user study shows that the visual programming metaphor enables prototypes to be built faster and encourages more iterations than a previous approach.
On P 2 P systems for enterprise content delivery ∗

In this paper we address the problem of optimizing p2p systems for enterprise bandwidth cost savings. Consider a scenario where an enterprise uses p2p swarming to deliver content to its clients. A content may be a file or a package (bundle) of files. For popular and large content, our work finds that enterprise servers can exclusively rely on the cooperation among the peers in the form of a swarm to disseminate the files. We introduce the idea of self sustaining swarms, i.e., swarms where the presence of the server is not necessary for the content to be efficiently transmitted. We characterize, under different scenarios, the concept of self sustainability. We then focus on swarms that are not always self sustaining, and propose a scheme for the server to decide how much bandwidth to allocate to a swarm as a function of the arrival and departure rate of the peers. To show the applicability of our controller, we deploy BitTorrent clients in PlanetLab and in a local cluster. Our emulations confirm that the controller leads to significant improvements in terms of cost savings without degrading the download time for the clients. Finally, we analyze the case of an enterprise providing content through multiple swarms, and present an optimization framework that can be used to determine how much bandwidth should be allocated for each of the swarms.
Video-based Human Action Classi.cation with Ambiguous Correspondences

This paper describes a combined tracking-classification framework for the unsupervised classification of human action. While most existing approaches assume that featurewise correspondences on people are either available or not at all, this method explicitly formalizes how the probability of correspondences can be used in computation when the correspondences are ambiguous. It is also able to exploit in a probabilistic manner any foreground-background preprocessed segmentation, even if the segmentation is of low confidence. A principled analysis of the problem leads to a novel probabilistic action representation called the correspondence-ambiguous feature histogram array (CAFHA) that is robust to variations across similar actions. Our results show that the new framework outperforms the recent Zelnik-Manor and Irani method [19] for unsupervised event classi? cation. Additionally, the framework is extended to quasi real-time action inference, achieving good recognition accuracy despite changes in person identity and variations in the actions.