Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Empirical Comparison of Multiple Imputation Approaches for Treating Missing Data in Observational Studies

Missing data are a common and significant problem that researchers and data analysts encounter in applied research. Because most statistical procedures require complete data, missing data can substantially affect the analysis and the interpretation of results if left untreated. Methods to treat missing data have been developed so that missing values are imputed and analyses can be conducted using standard statistical procedures. Among these missing data methods, Multiple Imputation has received considerable attention and its effectiveness has been explored, for example, in the context of survey and longitudinal research. This paper compares four Multiple Imputation approaches for treating missing continuous covariate data under MCAR, MAR, and MNAR assumptions in the context of propensity score analysis and observational studies. The comparison of four Multiple Imputation approaches in terms of bias and variability in parameter estimates, Type I error rates, and statistical power is presented. In addition, complete case analysis (listwise deletion) is presented as the default analysis that would be conducted if missing data are not treated. Issues are discussed, and conclusions and recommendations are provided.
Online Robust Model Estimation and Haptic Clues Detection during In Vivo Needle Insertions

Soft tissue modeling is of key importance in medical robotics and simulation. In the case of percutaneous operations, a fine model of layer transitions and target tissues is required. It allows, for example, to convey realistic haptic feelings to a remote practitioner or to take into account the interactions with a robotic system in a control scheme. However, the nature and the variety of the involved tissues is such that this problem is extremely complex. In this article, we propose a method to estimate the interaction between in vivo tissues and a surgical needle. The online robust estimation of a varying parameters model is achieved during an insertion in standard operating conditions. The principle of the automatic detection of significant haptic clues is then proposed
The applicability of hepatocellular carcinoma risk prediction scores in a North American patient population with chronic hepatitis B infection

Background Patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection are at an increased risk of developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Risk scores have been developed in Asian populations to predict HCC risk over time. Aim To assess the performance of HCC risk prediction models in a heterogeneous population of patients with CHB. Methods Scores were calculated at baseline using CU-HCC, REACH-B, NGM1-HCC, NGM2-HCC and GAG-HCC models and the incidence of HCC was determined. The predictive ability of each score was evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), Cox regression and plots of observed versus predicted HCC. The predictive value of the scores was compared between Asian and non-Asian patients and between cirrhotic versus non-cirrhotic with and without treatment. Results Of 2105 patients, 70 developed HCC. Increasing risk score was associated with HCC in all models. The CU-HCC model had the highest AUROC in Asian (0.85) and non-Asian (0.91) patients. Patients identified as low risk by any model had a very low incidence of HCC (0–0.15 per year), with the highest proportion of patients identified as low risk using CU-HCC (67%) or GAG-HCC (78%). The risk of HCC was similar to predicted for low-risk and medium-risk patients but was lower than predicted for high-risk patients. Treated patients had a lower than predicted risk of HCC, particularly in non-cirrhotic high-risk patients with longer follow-up. Conclusions Although all models predicted the risk of HCC, models that incorporated parameters of liver function or cirrhosis (CU-HCC/GAG-HCC) were most accurate. Low-risk patients likely require reduced HCC surveillance.
Bioinformatics Tools for Mass Spectroscopy-Based Metabolomic Data Processing and Analysis

Biological systems are increasingly being studied in a holistic manner, using omics approaches, to provide quantitative and qualitative descriptions of the diverse collection of cellular components. Among the omics approaches, metabolomics, which deals with the quantitative global profiling of small molecules or metabolites, is being used extensively to explore the dynamic response of living systems, such as organelles, cells, tissues, organs and whole organisms, under diverse physiological and pathological conditions. This technology is now used routinely in a number of applications, including basic and clinical research, agriculture, microbiology, food science, nutrition, pharmaceutical research, environmental science and the development of biofuels. Of the multiple analytical platforms available to perform such analyses, nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry have come to dominate, owing to the high resolution and large datasets that can be generated with these techniques. The large multidimensional datasets that result from such studies must be processed and analyzed to render this data meaningful. Thus, bioinformatics tools are essential for the efficient processing of huge datasets, the characterization of the detected signals, and to align multiple datasets and their features. This paper provides a state-of-the-art overview of the data processing tools available, and reviews a collection of recent reports on the topic. Data conversion, pre-processing, alignment, normalization and statistical analysis are introduced, with their advantages and disadvantages, and comparisons are made to guide the reader.
Role of Left Ventricular Stiffness in Heart Failure With Normal Ejection Fraction

Background— Increased left ventricular stiffness is a distinct finding in patients who have heart failure with normal ejection fraction (HFNEF). To elucidate how diastolic dysfunction contributes to heart failure symptomatology during exercise, we conducted a study using an invasive pressure-volume loop approach and measured cardiac function at rest and during atrial pacing and handgrip exercise. Methods and Results— Patients with HFNEF (n=70) and patients without heart failure symptoms (n=20) were enrolled. Pressure-volume loops were measured with a conductance catheter during basal conditions, handgrip exercise, and atrial pacing with 120 bpm to analyze diastolic and systolic left ventricular function. During transient preload reduction, the diastolic stiffness constant was measured directly. Diastolic function with increased stiffness was significantly impaired in patients with HFNEF during basal conditions. This was associated with increased end-diastolic pressures during handgrip exercise and with decreased stroke volume and a leftward shift of pressure-volume loops during atrial pacing. Conclusions— Increased left ventricular stiffness contributed to increased end-diastolic pressure during handgrip exercise and decreased stroke volume during atrial pacing in patients with HFNEF. These data suggest that left ventricular stiffness modulates cardiac function in HFNEF patients and suggests that diastolic dysfunction with increased stiffness is a target for treating HFNEF.
Mapping Novel Pathways in Cardiovascular Disease Using eQTL Data: The Past, Present, and Future of Gene Expression Analysis

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic variants associated with numerous cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Newly identified polymorphisms associated with myocardial infarction, dyslipidemia, hypertension, diabetes, and insulin resistance suggest novel mechanistic pathways that underlie these and other complex diseases. Working out the connections between the polymorphisms identified in GWAS and their biological mechanisms has been especially challenging given the number of non-coding variants identified thus far. In this review, we discuss the utility of expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) databases in the study of non-coding variants with respect to cardiovascular and metabolic phenotypes. Recent successes in using eQTL data to link variants with functional candidate genes will be reviewed, and the shortcomings of this approach will be outlined. Finally, we discuss the emerging next generation of eQTL studies that take advantage of the ability to generate induced pluripotent stem cell lines from population cohorts.
New fuzzy control system design for maximum power point tracking of wind turbine

This paper introduces a new fuzzy control system that is consisted of uncertainty to extract maximum possible power of wind. This system is based on fuzzy logic that can be tracked maximum power point of wind conversion system based on Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator. In this type of fuzzy system determination of membership function is not with exact and membership functions are determined by a bound of operating.
Étude phytoécologique de la flore adventice des agrosystèmes céréaliers de la région de Tessala (Algérie nord-occidentale)

La position géographique et la diversité climatique de l’Algérie lui confère une des flores les plus diversifiée et les plus originales du bassin méditerranéen. La connaissance de la composition floristique et la répartition des communautés d’adventices permet une bonne gestion de la parcelle. À travers cette étude, la flore adventice s’avère très diversifiée dans la région de Tessala. Selon un gradient altitudinal, 83 espèces adventices sont recensées au niveau des 17 parcelles retenues. Leur classification met en évidence une dominance des monocotylédones (86,75 %) et particulièrement la famille des Asteraceae (15,67 %). Du point de vu biologique et biogéographique, ce sont respectivement les thérophytes (75,90 %) et l’élément méditerranéen (40,97 %) qui s’imposent. La caractérisation phytoécologique montre que la plupart des espèces ont une amplitude écologique importante ce qui leur confère une large plasticité écologique vis-à-vis de l’altitude qui pourrait s'expliquer par des variations génétiques et des adaptations locales des diverses populations. Quatre groupes écologiques ressortent et révèlent une répartition des espèces adventices obéissant au facteur altitude.
Automated Price Comparison Shopping Search Engine PriceHunter

In this paper, we explore the possibility of creating a product search engine that is able to dynamically find commercial sites, independent of merchant feeds and other human involvement in the management of internal databases. We evaluate briefly the constraints of current shopping search engines and the benefits of offering a fully automated version. In addition, we consider the application of JTidy, Stemmers and Wrappers, in order to extract the relevant information from a commercial website.
Censorship-resistant and anonymous P2P filesharing

We present a P2P filesharing system that allows redundant storage of shared files in a way that no participating server ever stores data that could compromise its operator. Instead, only fragments that do not contain any information about the original file in the information theoretic sense are uploaded. Reconstruction of a file requires all fragments it has been decomposed into. By this, in conjunction with other cryptographic methods, we yield significant legal advantages for server operators, as well as censorship-resistance, anonymity, secure routing, authenticated file update and integrity checks.
Intracellular water and the cytomatrix: some methods of study and current views

The extent to which the properties of water in cells are like those of water in dilute aqueous solutions is a question of broad significance to cell biology. A detailed answer is not available at present, although evidence is accumulating that the properties of at least a large fraction of intracellular water are altered by interactions with cell ultrastructure, notably the cytomatrix. That and related evidence also suggests that the properties, composition, and activities of the "aqueous cytoplasm" of intact cells bear little resemblance to those of the "cytosol" obtained by cell fractionation. This paper will consider some of the evidence for these possibilities and some of their potential consequences with regard to cellular structure and function.
Order Preferencing and Market Quality on NASDAQ Before and after Decimalization

Despite the widely held belief that order preferencing affects market quality, no hard evidence exists on the extent and determinants of order preferencing and its impact on dealer competition and execution quality. This study shows that the bid-ask spread (dealer quote aggressiveness) is positively (negatively) related to the proportion of internalized volume during both the pre- and post-decimalization periods. Although decimal pricing led to lower order preferencing on NASDAQ, the proportion of preferenced volume after decimalization is much higher than what some prior studies had predicted. The price impact of preferenced trades is smaller than that of unpreferenced trades and preferenced trades receive greater (smaller) size (price) improvements than unpreferenced trades.
Direct Arterial Pressure and the Electrocardiogram in Unrestricted Patients with Angina Pectoris

Direct arterial pressure and electrocardiogram have been recorded over a 24 hr period in 8 males with angina pectoris who were completely unrestricted throughout the study. Twenty-five separate episodes of angina occurred, precipitated by exertion, eating, smoking, and anxiety, in addition to 2 spontaneous attacks and 2 episodes of nocturnal angina. All but 2 angina episodes were accompanied by a rise in both arterial pressure and heart rate. In the cases of spontaneous and nocturnal angina these pressure and rate changes began 10-15 min before the pain. In exertional angina these changes were related to the degree of activity involved, while in other instances there was a brief surge of pressure and rate occurring at the time of onset of pain. In each patient pain tended to occur at approximately the same level of pressure-rate product. ST-segment changes in the electrocardiogram showed no consistent pattern, occurring before or after the onset of pain, while in some episodes there was no significant change. A limited number of observations were made on the effect of glyceryl trinitrate and &bgr;-adrenergic receptor blocking drugs.
Effects of Ellipticity and Shear on Gravitational Lens Statistics

We study the effects of ellipticity in lens galaxies and external tidal shear from neighboring objects on the statistics of strong gravitational lenses. For isothermal lens galaxies normalized so that the Einstein radius is independent of ellipticity and shear, ellipticity reduces the lensing cross section slightly, and shear leaves it unchanged. Ellipticity and shear can significantly enhance the magnification bias, but only if the luminosity function of background sources is steep. Realistic distributions of ellipticity and shear lower the total optical depth by a few percent for most source luminosity functions, and increase the optical depth only for steep luminosity functions. The boost in the optical depth is noticeable (≳5%) only for surveys limited to the brightest quasars (L/L* ≳ 10). Ellipticity and shear broaden the distribution of lens image separations but do not affect the mean. Ellipticity and shear naturally increase the abundance of quadruple lenses relative to double lenses, especially for steep source luminosity functions, but the effect is not enough (by itself) to explain the observed quadruple-to-double ratio. With such small changes to the optical depth and image separation distribution, ellipticity and shear have a small effect on cosmological constraints from lens statistics: neglecting the two leads to biases of just ΔΩM = 0.00 ± 0.01 and ΔΩΛ = -0.02 ± 0.01 (where the error bars represent statistical uncertainties in our calculations).
Ultrasound sensors and its application in human heart rate monitoring

Noninvasive wearable human health monitoring devices are developed to improve the comfort, convenience, and security of humans in their life. Ultrasound technology has been used for imaging the human body for over half a century. In this study, the use of ultrasound as a wearable device for human health monitoring is introduced. This work investigates analysis of the heart motions for heart rate extraction. Experimental results showed promising performance of the proposed method in reference to an electrocardiogram device. A low power and low complexity hardware prototype is designed to measure the Time Of Flight (TOF) and amplitude of reflected ultrasound signals generated by piezo sensors at 1 MHz (nominally), under design considerations for safety issues of intensity exposure defined by FDA. This type of a wearable human-interactive device represents a promising platform not only for heart rate measurement but also for more feasible features such as respiration rate. A new technique is applied to minimize the signal processing time and ensure the device response correctness.
Magnetically Activated Stereoscopic Vision System for Laparoendoscopic Single-Site Surgery

In this paper, the authors present an innovative vision platform for laparoendoscopic single-site (LESS) surgery based on a wired and magnetically activated 5-degrees-of-freedom robot with stereovision. The stereoscopic vision module, developed using two off-the-shelf cameras and a light emitting diodes lighting system, is mounted on the robot tip. An autostereoscopic screen is adopted to display the surgical scenario as an alternative to 3-D helmets or polarizing glasses. A rough position of the stereocamera can be determined along the abdominal wall by dragging the robot with a set of external permanent magnets (EPMs). Once the camera is set in the desired position, the EPMs provide fixation, while the internal mechanism allows fine tilt adjustment. Considering the deformable round shape of the insufflated abdomen wall and in order to replicate the precise roll motion usually provided by the endoscopist's hands, this prototype embeds an actuated mechanism that adjusts the stereocamera horizon and thus prevents any visual discomfort. Finally, the platform was preliminarily tested in vivo in a LESS scenario, demonstrating its advantages for eliminating potential conflicts with the operative tools and enabling the introduction of an additional instrument through the same access port used for stereoscopic vision.
Evaluation and Management of Vocal Cord Dysfunction in the Athlete

Vocal cord dysfunction (VCD) is defined by paradoxical vocal fold closure during inhalation, and rarely upon exhalation. The precise etiology of VCD is unknown; however, a variety of potential causes may include laryngeal hyperresponsiveness, laryngeal irritants, psychogenic causes, and rarely neurologic diseases. VCD can occur in athletes, particularly females, and the sports medicine professional likely is to care for patients with acute respiratory difficulties caused by this condition. Given its complex nature, a multidisciplinary approach to VCD evaluation and management is necessary and results in optimal outcomes.
EPD in its twentieth year: towards complete promoter coverage of selected model organisms

The Eukaryotic Promoter Database (EPD) is an annotated non-redundant collection of eukaryotic POL II promoters, experimentally defined by a transcription start site (TSS). Access to promoter sequences is provided by pointers to positions in the corresponding genomes. Promoter evidence comes from conventional TSS mapping experiments for individual genes, or, starting from release 73, from mass genome annotation projects. Subsets of promoter sequences with customized 5′ and 3′ extensions can be downloaded from the EPD website. The focus of current development efforts is to reach complete promoter coverage for important model organisms as soon as possible. To speed up this process, a new class of preliminary promoter entries has been introduced as of release 83, which requires less stringent admission criteria. As part of a continuous integration process, new web-based interfaces have been developed, which allow joint analysis of promoter sequences with other bioinformatics resources developed by our group, in particular programs offered by the Signal Search Analysis Server, and gene expression data stored in the CleanEx database. EPD can be accessed at .
Localization Error-Resilient Geographic Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper concerns the demonstration of the resilience to localization errors of ALBA-R, a protocol for geographic routing in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In particular, we show that thanks to a simple yet effective nodal coloring mechanism for handling nodal connectivity holes, ALBA-R achieves the further desirable benefit of being totally resilient to localization errors, which are unavoidable in WSNs. Via ns2-based simulations we show that independently of fundamental network parameters such as network density, and also independently of errors in nodal coordinate estimations as high as the node transmission radius, ALBA-R is successful in delivering all generated packets while incurring reasonable degradation for metrics such as route-length and end-to-end latency and still remaining and energy efficient protocol.
THE ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF BIOENERGY PRODUCTION FROM MISCANTHUS FOR THE ONTARIO GREENHOUSE INDUSTRY

THE ECONOMIC FEASIBILITY OF BIOENERGY PRODUCTION FROM MISCANTHUS FOR THE ONTARIO GREENHOUSE INDUSTRY Tasneem Virani University of Guelph Advisors: Dr. Richard Vyn and Dr. Bill Deen This thesis investigates the cost of producing miscanthus in Ontario as an energy crop for the Ontario greenhouse industry. To determine the breakeven price of growing miscanthus an enterprise budget was developed and applied to three different life cycle scenarios to determine the effect of stand life on the breakeven price. The base case breakeven price of producing miscanthus ranged from $74.74/t to $80.22/t. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the effect of assumptions (stand yield, rhizome cost, harvest method and discount rate) on the breakeven price. Price of energy from miscanthus ranged from $2.87/GJ to $8.63/GJ with an average price of $5.51/GJ. The Ontario greenhouse industry`s willingness to pay for bioenergy from miscanthus is based on the prices of fuels currently in use. Ontario farmer‘s willingness to produce miscanthus is based on its profitability compared to other crops and the time it takes to pay off the initial investment.
Aquimarina aggregata sp. nov., isolated from seawater.

A novel Gram-stain-negative, agarolytic, rod-shaped, non-flagellated, strictly aerobic strain with gliding motility, designated RZW4-3-2T, was isolated from coastal seawater of the Yellow Sea in China (119.625° E 35.517° N). The organism grew optimally at 28 °C, at pH 7.0 and in the presence of 2.0-3.0 % (w/v) NaCl. The strain required seawater or artificial seawater for growth, and NaCl alone did not support growth. Strain RZW4-3-2T contained MK-6 as the major respiratory quinone and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH, iso-C15 : 0, iso-C15 : 1 G and iso-C15 : 0 3-OH as the dominant fatty acids. The polar lipids of strain RZW4-3-2T comprised phosphatidylethanolamine, five unknown phospholipids and one unknown lipid. The DNA G+C content of strain RZW4-3-2T was 32.3 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the novel strain was related most closely to Aquimarina pacifica SW150T, Aquimarina macrocephali JCM 15542T and Aquimarina muelleri LMG 22569T with 98.1, 97.4 and 97.1 % sequence similarities, respectively. The estimated DNA-DNA hybridization values were 20.00±2.31 %, 20.70±2.33 % and 20.70±2.32 % between strain RZW4-3-2T and A. pacifica SW150T, A. macrocephali JCM 15542T and A. muelleri LMG 22569T, respectively. On the basis of results of polyphasic analyses, strain RZW4-3-2T represents a novel species of the genus Aquimarina, for which the name Aquimarinaaggregata sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is RZW4-3-2T (=JCM 30824T=MCCC 1K00698T).