Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Passivity analysis and control of nonlinear oscillations in systems with cubic nonlinearities

In this paper we investigate passivity properties of systems with cubic nonlinear coupling terms. We derive sufficient conditions for a 2-DOF system with general cubic non-linearities to be passive. This is done by showing that the system can be divided into three passive subsystems connected in feedback. In the cases where the passivity conditions are satisfied, the result can be applied e.g. in the design of vibration damping controllers. It is straightforward to extend these results to an arbitrary n-DOF system with cubic nonlinearities.
Carbonaceous meteorites contain a wide range of extraterrestrial nucleobases

All terrestrial organisms depend on nucleic acids (RNA and DNA), which use pyrimidine and purine nucleobases to encode genetic information. Carbon-rich meteorites may have been important sources of organic compounds required for the emergence of life on the early Earth; however, the origin and formation of nucleobases in meteorites has been debated for over 50 y. So far, the few nucleobases reported in meteorites are biologically common and lacked the structural diversity typical of other indigenous meteoritic organics. Here, we investigated the abundance and distribution of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs in formic acid extracts of 12 different meteorites by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. The Murchison and Lonewolf Nunataks 94102 meteorites contained a diverse suite of nucleobases, which included three unusual and terrestrially rare nucleobase analogs: purine, 2,6-diaminopurine, and 6,8-diaminopurine. In a parallel experiment, we found an identical suite of nucleobases and nucleobase analogs generated in reactions of ammonium cyanide. Additionally, these nucleobase analogs were not detected above our parts-per-billion detection limits in any of the procedural blanks, control samples, a terrestrial soil sample, and an Antarctic ice sample. Our results demonstrate that the purines detected in meteorites are consistent with products of ammonium cyanide chemistry, which provides a plausible mechanism for their synthesis in the asteroid parent bodies, and strongly supports an extraterrestrial origin. The discovery of new nucleobase analogs in meteorites also expands the prebiotic molecular inventory available for constructing the first genetic molecules.
Industrial Robot : An International Journal Robots at FOOMA Japan : a food machinery and technology exhibition

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review new robots and applications in the food-related industry through the exhibits at the Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition, Japan. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on interviews, exhibitions and press releases. Findings – The paper finds new commercial applications of robotics are emerging, notably in handling viscoelastic materials and the fast pick-andplace handling through parallel-link robots. Originality/value – This paper provides an overview of the latest robotic applications in the Japanese food industry.
Better Medical Office Safety Culture Is Not Associated With Better Scores on Quality Measures

Objective A strong safety culture is an essential element of safe medical practice. Few studies, however, have studied the link between safety culture and clinical quality outcomes. In this study, we examined the association between safety culture and quality measures in primary care offices. Setting A total of 24 primary care offices in Cleveland, Ohio. Methods The Medical Office Survey on Patient Safety was administered to clinicians and support staff to rate 12 dimensions of safety culture and a single overall patient safety rating. An average of the 12 safety culture dimension scores was calculated to produce an aggregated patient safety score. Using linear correlation, we calculated the association between the 2 summary safety measures (overall patient safety rating and aggregated patient safety score) and 2 composite quality measures, a chronic disease score, and a prevention score. Results The survey response rate was 79% (387/492). There was considerable variation in both safety culture scores and quality scores from office to office. There was no association between the chronic disease score and either summary measure of safety culture. There were small but statistically significant negative associations between the prevention score and the overall patient safety rating (&bgr; = −0.087, P = 0.002) as well as the aggregated patient safety score (&bgr; = −0.004, P = 0.007). Conclusions Although safety theory predicts a positive association between safety culture and quality, we found no meaningful associations between safety culture and currently accepted measures of primary care clinical quality. Larger studies across several health care organizations are needed to determine whether these findings are reproducible. If so, it may be necessary to reconsider the dimensions of safety culture in primary care as well as the relationship between safety culture and primary care clinical quality.
Legacy of Smart Device, Social Network and Ubiquitous E-class System

Everyday, technology is evolved in many different disciplines. Computer and smart devices revolution take part of the evolved technology that continuously promising new features. Moreover, social networks services recently become widely popular, which most people in the world become a social-network-fond. In addition to the revolution of the evolved technology and social networks services, ubiquitousness is taking significant part in our daily lives. Although, there are many e-learning systems already existed, which use Internet technology along with a Web technology to provide education in various ways, in despite of that, there is no such existing system exploits the usefulness of smart devices along with the legacy of the online social networks besides the power of the ubiquitous computing technology. Therefore, we propose a smart device application, which fills the gap that has been missing in the recent contemporary era. It is an application that runs on smart devices particularly Smartphone devices; we call our system "Smart Device based Social E-learning System (SDES)". We have preliminary implemented our system on Android OS. In this paper, we intentionally propose the system in order to ease the way people learn, to provide interactive accessibility in our system, and to utilize the advanced technology more wisely.
Metabolism, Genomics, and DNA Repair in the Mouse Aging Liver

The liver plays a pivotal role in the metabolism of nutrients, drugs, hormones, and metabolic waste products, thereby maintaining body homeostasis. The liver undergoes substantial changes in structure and function within old age. Such changes are associated with significant impairment of many hepatic metabolic and detoxification activities, with implications for systemic aging and age-related disease. It has become clear, using rodent models as biological tools, that genetic instability in the form of gross DNA rearrangements or point mutations accumulate in the liver with age. DNA lesions, such as oxidized bases or persistent breaks, increase with age and correlate well with the presence of senescent hepatocytes. The level of DNA damage and/or mutation can be affected by changes in carcinogen activation, decreased ability to repair DNA, or a combination of these factors. This paper covers some of the DNA repair pathways affecting liver homeostasis with age using rodents as model systems.
Incremental aggregation of RFID data

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology plays a key role in supply chains and a challenging problem is the effective and efficient management of the enormous volume of data generated by such systems. In this paper, we propose a new framework for storing and querying a large amount of RFID data. The approach is based on a compression technique that allows a significant saving of space according to a suitable notion of aggregates over RFID data and a logical representation of these aggregates. We also propose an indexing technique for aggregates of RFID data that guarantees the efficient execution of an important class of queries. We finally present the architecture of a tool implementing our approach and demonstrate, with a number of experimental results made with this tool, the feasibility and effectiveness of the underlying techniques.
Salt of the earth or a drop in the ocean? A pathophysiological approach to fluid resuscitation

The evolved endocrine response after injury leads to sodium, chloride, and water retention at a time when large volumes of sodium containing fluids are given to maintain the circulation and preserve tissue oxygenation. Sodium, chloride, and water are also retained because of increased systemic vascular permeability to plasma proteins, especially albumin, which sequesters fluid in the interstitial space and causes oedema. Excessive fluid and electrolyte retention and interstitial oedema are associated with the systemic inflammatory response syndrome and multiple organ dysfunction, and failure. This review attempts an overview of these processes and addresses the question, “Can manipulation of fluid resuscitation influence the inflammatory response to injury and organ function”. Results of randomised controlled prospective clinical studies suggest that limiting the sodium and chloride input and optimal use of synthetic colloids, which are well retained in the vascular space, can reduce the inflammatory response to injury and improve organ function.
[Clinical observation on acupoint catgut embedding therapy for treatment of ulcerative colitis].

OBJECTIVE To compare therapeutic effects of acupoint catgut embedding therapy and western medicine on ulcerative colitis. METHODS One hundred and sixteen cases of ulcerative colitis were randomly divided into a treatment group and a control group. The treatment group of 56 cases were treated with catgut embedding at Dachangshu (BL 25), Zusanli (ST 36), Shangjuxu (ST 37) and other points, and the control group with oral administration of salicylazosul-fapyridine, 4-6 g/day. The therapeutic effects and improvement of symptoms were evaluated by reexamination of endoscopy before and 4 weeks, 6-8 weeks after treatment in the two groups, and changes of stool property and abdominal pain were compared. RESULTS The short-term therapeutic effect and the long-term therapeutic effect of the treatment group were better than those of the control group. CONCLUSION Acupoint catgut embedding therapy has a better therapeutic effect on ulcerative colitis with less adverse reactions.
The Host-Pathogen Game: An Evolutionary Approach to Biological Competitions

We introduce a model called Host-Pathogen game for studying biological competitions. Notably, we focus on the invasive dynamics of external agents, like bacteria, within a host organism. The former are mapped to a population of defectors that aim to spread in the extracellular medium of the host. In turn, the latter is composed of cells, mapped to a population of cooperators, that aim to kill pathogens. The cooperative behavior of cells is fundamental for the emergence of the living functions of the whole organism, since each one contributes to a specific set of tasks. So, broadly speaking, their contribution can be viewed as a form of energy. When bacteria are spatially close to a cell, the latter can use a fraction of its energy to remove them. On the other hand, when bacteria survive an attack, they absorb the received energy, becoming stronger and more resistant to further attacks. In addition, since bacteria play as defectors, their unique target is to increase their wealth, without supporting their own kind. As in many living organisms, the host temperature plays a relevant role in the host-pathogen equilibrium. For instance, in animals like human beings, a neural mechanism triggers the increasing of the body temperature in order to activate the immune system. Here, cooperators succeed once bacteria are completely removed while, in the opposite scenario, the host undergoes a deep invasive process, like a blood poisoning. Results of numerical simulations show that the dynamics of the proposed model allow to reach a variety of states. At a very high level of abstraction, some of these states seem to be similar to those that can be observed in some living systems. Therefore, to conclude, we deem that our model might be exploited for studying further biological phenomena.
Treatment of Symptomatic Venous Thromboembolism: Improving Outcomes

Antithrombotic therapy with unfractionated heparin (UFH) and warfarin for the treatment of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) became widely accepted in the early 1960s. Subsequent clinical trials have focused on the importance of early intravenous UFH in the treatment of venous thromboembolic events, the method of heparin administration, the importance of rapid anticoagulation to prevent recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE), and the optimal duration of UFH administration. Low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) represents a significant advance over UFH therapy for VTE. Developed in the late 1980s, LMWH has become an excellent alternative to UFH because it offers superior efficacy and safety, improved pharmacokinetics, longer half-life, and once- or twice-daily subcutaneous administration without the need for laboratory monitoring. Fondaparinux is the first of a new class of antithrombotic agents that targets factor Xa. Based on studies of the heparin binding site of antithrombin, this novel pentasaccharide has superior pharmacokinetics and bioavailability when compared with LMWH and can be administered once daily. Studies in patients undergoing major orthopedic surgery and in those with proximal DVT indicate that the efficacy and safety of fondaparinux may represent an improvement over those of LMWH.
MouseIndelDB: a database integrating genomic indel polymorphisms that distinguish mouse strains

MouseIndelDB is an integrated database resource containing thousands of previously unreported mouse genomic indel (insertion and deletion) polymorphisms ranging from ∼100 nt to 10 Kb in size. The database currently includes polymorphisms identified from our alignment of 26 million whole-genome shotgun sequence traces from four laboratory mouse strains mapped against the reference C57BL/6J genome using GMAP. They can be queried on a local level by chromosomal coordinates, nearby gene names or other genomic feature identifiers, or in bulk format using categories including mouse strain(s), class of polymorphism(s) and chromosome number. The results of such queries are presented either as a custom track on the UCSC mouse genome browser or in tabular format. We anticipate that the MouseIndelDB database will be widely useful for research in mammalian genetics, genomics, and evolutionary biology. Access to the MouseIndelDB database is freely available at: http://variation.osu. edu/.
Comparative analysis of process and value perspectives for insight in business cooperation

In this paper we exercise a combination of two modelling techniques investigating how they assist in analysis of business processes. For this purpose, we compare e3value and UML Activity models in a case study against a set of business process analysis aspects. The paper concludes that none of the models is alone sufficient for the purpose. However, the e3value model better covers the required analysis aspects and serves as a good basis for further extensions.
Individual Privacy vs Population Privacy: Learning to Attack Anonymization

Over the last decade there have been great strides made in developing techniques to compute functions privately. In particular, Differential Privacy gives strong promises about conclusions that can be drawn about an individual. In contrast, various syntactic methods for providing privacy (criteria such as kanonymity and l-diversity) have been criticized for still allowing private information of an individual to be inferred. In this report, we consider the ability of an attacker to use data meeting privacy definitions to build an accurate classifier. We demonstrate that even under Differential Privacy, such classifiers can be used to accurately infer "private" attributes in realistic data. We compare this to similar approaches for inferencebased attacks on other forms of anonymized data. We place these attacks on the same scale, and observe that the accuracy of inference of private attributes for Differentially Private data and l-diverse data can be quite similar.
Comparing MFS in Kenya, Philippines and South Africa under 7 P Evaluation Framework

financial services has brought a revolution in developing nations. More and more people from the rural areas are now using financial services provided by mobile phones. Though still in its infancy its potential is tremendous. Mobile payment services have made it easy n cost effective to transfer money from one corner of the world to another improving the lives of many underprivileged worldwide. Different Payment systems by different providers are available in different developing nations. However the success of few mobile payment systems - like M-Pesa of Kenya, G- Cash and SmartMoney of Philippines and WIZZIT and MTN of South Africa are unprecedented. In spite of their cultural, social and economic differences, Mobile payment has been widely accepted and used in these countries. In this paper we have studied these successfully implemented paymentsystem around proposed a 7 P evaluation framework.
BAYESIAN INFERENCE BASED ONLY ON SIMULATED LIKELIHOOD: PARTICLE FILTER ANALYSIS OF DYNAMIC ECONOMIC MODELS

We note that likelihood inference can be based on an unbiased simulation-based estimator of the likelihood when it is used inside a Metropolis–Hastings algorithm. This result has recently been introduced in statistics literature by Andrieu, Doucet, and Holenstein (2010, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 72, 269–342) and is perhaps surprising given the results on maximum simulated likelihood estimation. Bayesian inference based on simulated likelihood can be widely applied in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and financial econometrics. One way of generating unbiased estimates of the likelihood is through a particle filter. We illustrate these methods on four problems, producing rather generic methods. Taken together, these methods imply that if we can simulate from an economic model, we can carry out likelihood–based inference using its simulations.
Organization and development of the brain stem auditory nuclei of the chicken: Primary afferent projections

The pattern of primary auditory projections to the brain stem of young chickens was investigated using terminal degeneration methods and orthograde transport of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) or tritiated amino acid. Of particular interest was the question of whether nucleus laminaris (NL) receives primary afferents. A study of silver‐stained degeneration patterns in nucleus magnocellularis (NM) and NL at three intervals following unilateral interruption of the cochlear nerve revealed that by 48 hours after the lesion, degenerating terminals were found only in the ipsilateral nucleus angularis (NA), NM and lagenar projection areas but not in NL. Five‐ and eight‐day survival times, however, also revealed degeneration bilaterally in NL. The appearance of terminal degeneration in NL at the longer survival times is attributed to the previously‐reported severe and rapid transneuronal degeneration of neurons in NM following deafferentation and not to the presence of cochlear nerve terminals in NL. Injection of HRP or tritiated proline into the basilar papilla produced patterns of labeling similar to that seen in the 2‐day degeneration material; HRP reaction product or autoradiographic label were seen only in the ipsilateral NA and NM and in the ipsilateral projection areas of the macula lagena but not in either NL. The patterns of primary auditory projections revealed by the three methods were quite similar to each other and to that previously reported for the pigeon and confirm the conclusion that the laminar nucleus of chickens does not receive primary afferents.
RF bandpass tunable filter using RF MEMS

A bandpass tunable RF filter is proposed by using Radio Frequency (RF) Microelectro Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The tenability is obtained by using capacitive MEMS switches. The performance of the filter depends on geometry and location and types of the MEMS switches. The paper described the optimization procedure to design a bandpass filter that can be tuned within the bandwidth of 3.6 GHz to 4.4 GHz by using high frequency electromagnetic simulator (HFSS).
Randomized trial of two induction chemotherapy regimens in metastatic colorectal cancer: an updated analysis.

BACKGROUND In a randomized trial with a median follow-up of 18.4 months, 6 months of induction chemotherapy with a three-drug regimen comprising 5-fluorouracil (by continuous infusion)-leucovorin, irinotecan, and oxaliplatin (FOLFOXIRI) demonstrated statistically significant improvements in response rate, radical surgical resection of metastases, progression-free survival, and overall survival compared with 6 months of induction chemotherapy with fluorouracil-leucovorin and irinotecan (FOLFIRI). METHODS From November 14, 2001, to April 22, 2005, we enrolled 244 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. To evaluate if the superiority of FOLFOXIRI is maintained in the long term, we updated the overall and progression-free survival data to include events that occurred up to February 12, 2009, with a median follow-up of 60.6 months. We performed a subgroup and a risk-stratified analysis to examine whether outcomes differed in specific patient subgroups, and we analyzed the results of treatment after progression. Survival curves were estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. Multivariable Cox regression models were fit to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS FOLFOXIRI demonstrated statistically significant improvements in median progression-free survival (9.8 vs 6.8 months, HR for progression = 0.59, 95% CI = 0.45 to 0.76, P < .001) and median overall survival (23.4 vs 16.7 months, HR for death = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.56 to 0.96, P = .026) with a 5-year survival rate of 15% (95% CI = 9% to 23%) vs 8% (95% CI = 4% to 14%). The improvements in progression-free survival and, to a lesser extent, in overall survival were evident even when the analysis excluded patients who received radical resection of metastases. With regard to the risk-stratified analysis, FOLFOXIRI results in longer progression-free survival and overall survival than FOLFIRI in all risk subgroups. CONCLUSIONS Six months of induction chemotherapy with FOLFOXIRI is associated with a clinically significant improvement in the long-term outcome compared with FOLFIRI with an absolute benefit in survival at 5 years of 7%.
Evaluation of Performance Measures for Classifiers Comparison

The selection of the best classification algorithm for a given dataset is a very widespread problem, occuring each time one has to choose a classifier to solve a real-world problem. It is also a complex task with many important methodological decisions to make. Among those, one of the most crucial is the choice of an appropriate measure in order to properly assess the classification performance and rank the algorithms. In this article, we focus on this specific task. We present the most popular measures and compare their behavior through discrimination plots. We then discuss their properties from a more theoretical perspective. It turns out several of them are equivalent for classifiers comparison purposes. Futhermore. they can also lead to interpretation problems. Among the numerous measures proposed over the years, it appears that the classical overall success rate and marginal rates are the more suitable for classifier comparison task.