Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GPU-based Monte Carlo radiotherapy dose calculation using phase-space sources

A novel phase-space source implementation has been designed for graphics processing unit (GPU)-based Monte Carlo dose calculation engines. Short of full simulation of the linac head, using a phase-space source is the most accurate method to model a clinical radiation beam in dose calculations. However, in GPU-based Monte Carlo dose calculations where the computation efficiency is very high, the time required to read and process a large phase-space file becomes comparable to the particle transport time. Moreover, due to the parallelized nature of GPU hardware, it is essential to simultaneously transport particles of the same type and similar energies but separated spatially to yield a high efficiency. We present three methods for phase-space implementation that have been integrated into the most recent version of the GPU-based Monte Carlo radiotherapy dose calculation package gDPM v3.0. The first method is to sequentially read particles from a patient-dependent phase-space and sort them on-the-fly based on particle type and energy. The second method supplements this with a simple secondary collimator model and fluence map implementation so that patient-independent phase-space sources can be used. Finally, as the third method (called the phase-space-let, or PSL, method) we introduce a novel source implementation utilizing pre-processed patient-independent phase-spaces that are sorted by particle type, energy and position. Position bins located outside a rectangular region of interest enclosing the treatment field are ignored, substantially decreasing simulation time with little effect on the final dose distribution. The three methods were validated in absolute dose against BEAMnrc/DOSXYZnrc and compared using gamma-index tests (2%/2 mm above the 10% isodose). It was found that the PSL method has the optimal balance between accuracy and efficiency and thus is used as the default method in gDPM v3.0. Using the PSL method, open fields of 4 × 4, 10 × 10 and 30 × 30 cm2 in water resulted in gamma passing rates of 99.96%, 99.92% and 98.66%, respectively. Relative output factors agreed within 1%. An intensity modulated radiation therapy patient plan using the PSL method resulted in a passing rate of 97%, and was calculated in 50 s (per GPU) compared to 8.4 h (per CPU) for BEAMnrc/DOSXYZnrc.
Characterization of semiconducting structures by the PWP method

The non-destructive electrical characterization of semiconducting structures mainly relies on indirect techniques. Charge information are then obtained by using an electrical model and only well modelled semiconductor materials can be accurately studied. The PWP method has already been shown to deliver measurable signals in the case of semiconducting structures. In this paper an analytical model of the signal is proposed and tested with Schottky and Metal/Insulator/Semiconductor (MIS) structures under various bias voltages.
A privacy-aware cloud service selection method toward data life-cycle

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of cloud computing, which leverages its unique services to cloud customers in a pay-as-you-go, anytime, anywhere manner. However, a significant barrier to the adoption of cloud services is that users fear data leakage and loss of privacy if their sensitive data is processed in the cloud. Hence, the cloud customer must be able to select appropriate services according to his or her privacy and security needs. In this paper, we propose a novel cloud service selection method called PCSS, where a cloud service is estimated based on its capability of privacy protection (CoPP) covering the entire life-cycle of users' data. A scalable assessment index system with a 2-level hierarchy structure is constructed to analyze and quantify the CoPP of cloud service. The first-level index is composed of all stages of data life-cycle and the second-level index involves privacy-aware security mechanisms at each stage. We employ a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation technique to count the privacy-preserving value of security mechanism. An AHP- based approach is exploited to decide the impact weight of different security mechanisms to the CoPP of each stage. By calculating a comprehensive CoPP metric of all life-cycle stages, all cloud services can be sorted and recommended to users. An example analysis is given, and the reasonableness of the proposed method is proved. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method by the comparison with the baseline method at the service selection performance.
A V-Band Divide-by-Four Frequency Divider With Wide Locking Range and Quadrature Outputs

This letter presents a V-band wide-locking range divide-by-four frequency divider implemented in 90-nm digital CMOS technology. A sub-harmonic mixer (SHM) is adopted in the regenerative divider architecture to realize the division ratio of four. The splitting supply and parallel inductive peaking techniques are applied to the mixer design to boost the conversion gain, which is the bottleneck of the divider's locking range. Operated at 1.2 V, the frequency divider consumes 15.5 mW of power and generates four-phase output signals. The measured locking range is 5.4 GHz with the input signal power smaller than 0 dBm.
Mobile Phones and Economic Development in Africa

We examine the growth of mobile phone technology over the past decade and consider its potential impacts upon quality of life in low-income countries, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa. We first provide an overview of the patterns and determinants of mobile phone coverage in sub-Saharan Africa before describing the characteristics of primary and secondary mobile phone adopters on the continent. We then discuss the channels through which mobile phone technology can impact development outcomes, both as a positive externality of the communication sector and as part of mobile phone-based development projects, and analyze existing evidence. While current research suggests that mobile phone coverage and adoption have had positive impacts on agricultural and labor market efficiency and welfare in certain countries, empirical evidence is still somewhat limited. In addition, mobile phone technology cannot serve as the “silver bullet” for development in sub-Saharan Africa. Careful impact evaluations of mobile phone development projects are required to better understand their impacts upon economic and social outcomes, and mobile phone technology must work in partnership with other public good provision and investment.
Generalized approximate message passing for cosparse analysis compressive sensing

In cosparse analysis compressive sensing (CS), one seeks to estimate a non-sparse signal vector from noisy sub-Nyquist linear measurements by exploiting the knowledge that a given linear transform of the signal is cosparse, i.e., has sufficiently many zeros. We propose a novel approach to cosparse analysis CS based on the generalized approximate message passing (GAMP) algorithm. Unlike other AMP-based approaches to this problem, ours works with a wide range of analysis operators and regularizers. In addition, we propose a novel ℓ0-like soft-thresholder based on MMSE denoising for a spike-and-slab distribution with an infinite-variance slab. Numerical demonstrations on synthetic and practical datasets demonstrate advantages over existing AMP-based, greedy, and reweighted-ℓ1 approaches.
Simulate to Detect: A Multi-agent System for Community Detection

Community detection in social networks is a well-known problem encountered in many fields. Many traditional algorithms have been proposed to solve it, with recurrent problems: impossibility to deal with dynamic networks, sensitivity to noise, no detection of overlapping communities, exponential running time. This paper proposes a multi-agent system that replays the evolution of a network and, in the same time, reproduces the rise and fall of communities. After presenting the strengths and weaknesses of existing community detection algorithms, we describe the multi-agent system we propose. Then, we compare our solution with existing works, and show some advantages of our method, in particular the possibility to dynamically detect the communities.
Implications of Genotype and Enzyme Phenotype in Pyridoxine Response of Patients with Type I Primary Hyperoxaluria

Background: Marked hyperoxaluria due to liver-specific deficiency of alanine:glyoxylate aminotransferase activity (AGT) characterizes type I primary hyperoxaluria (PHI). Approximately half of PHI patients experience improvement in the degree of hyperoxaluria following pyridoxine (VB6) treatment. Recently, we showed an association between VB6 response and the commonest PHI mutation G170R, with patients possessing one or two copies showing 50% reduction or complete to near complete normalization of oxaluria, respectively. Two patients showed responses varying from this pattern. To further clarify the molecular basis of VB6 response in PHI, we performed additional genotyping. Methods: 23 PHI patients diagnosed via hepatic enzyme analysis, hyperoxaluria and hyperglycolic aciduria or homozygosity for a known mutation, availability of pre- and post-VB6 24-hour urine oxalate and GFR >40 ml/min/1.73 m2 were included. Data was retrieved retrospectively, oxalate measured by oxalate oxidase, and genotyping performed by PCR-based methods. Results: VB6 response was associated with the G170R and F152I mutations. Eight new sequence changes were detected. Conclusions: In PHI, two mutations resulting in AGT mistargeting are associated with VB6 response. Whether this favorable effect is specific to the peroxisomal-to-mitochondrial mistargeting caused by these changes or due to another mechanism remains to be determined.
Search Engine on Personal Computers

Domain specific search engines have pleased many Internet users and have been keeping some companies alive. Lately, universities and some non-IT companies have been adapting to this technology. These organizations very often allocate small amount of money and small number of computers to search engine projects. The YASE! (Yet Another Search Engine) project is a domain specific engine running on a single personal computer. This paper reports the challenges and possible solutions of building a search engine in an environment with extremely limited computation power.
Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Related Cardiac Troponin C L29Q Mutation Alters Length-Dependent Activation and Functional Effects of Phosphomimetic Troponin I*

The Ca2+ binding properties of the FHC-associated cardiac troponin C (cTnC) mutation L29Q were examined in isolated cTnC, troponin complexes, reconstituted thin filament preparations, and skinned cardiomyocytes. While higher Ca2+ binding affinity was apparent for the L29Q mutant in isolated cTnC, this phenomenon was not observed in the cTn complex. At the level of the thin filament in the presence of phosphomimetic TnI, L29Q cTnC further reduced the Ca2+ affinity by 27% in the steady-state measurement and increased the Ca2+ dissociation rate by 20% in the kinetic studies. Molecular dynamics simulations suggest that L29Q destabilizes the conformation of cNTnC in the presence of phosphomimetic cTnI and potentially modulates the Ca2+ sensitivity due to the changes of the opening/closing equilibrium of cNTnC. In the skinned cardiomyocyte preparation, L29Q cTnC increased Ca2+ sensitivity in a highly sarcomere length (SL)-dependent manner. The well-established reduction of Ca2+ sensitivity by phosphomimetic cTnI was diminished by 68% in the presence of the mutation and it also depressed the SL-dependent increase in myofilament Ca2+ sensitivity. This might result from its modified interaction with cTnI which altered the feedback effects of cross-bridges on the L29Q cTnC-cTnI-Tm complex. This study demonstrates that the L29Q mutation alters the contractility and the functional effects of the phosphomimetic cTnI in both thin filament and single skinned cardiomyocytes and importantly that this effect is highly sarcomere length dependent.
Patient classification based on pre-hospital heart rate variability

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a non-invasive measurement that has shown promise as an indicator of cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic dynamics. In this study, three different classification techniques, i.e. extreme learning machine (ELM), support vector machine (SVM) and back-propagation based neural network (BP), were investigated to classify HRV signals obtained from electrocardiograms (ECGs) of critically ill patients seen at the emergency department of a large hospital. HRV parameters were found to be better predictors of patient outcome than traditional vital signs. It was also found that the length of the ECG segment used affects the predictive ability of the classifiers and a windowing scheme was implemented to enhance performance.
Fuzzy based Energy Efficient Clustering Protocols for WSN Systems: A Survey

Wireless Sensor Networks are utilized for collecting physical information from a distant place by using sensing devices called sensors. In order to collect information more efficiently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are partitioned into clusters. This approach is an effective way to prolong the lifetime of WSNs. While using clustering approach the major concern is the choice of a suitable cluster head sensor node. Many clustering protocols already formed based on LEACH [15] (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) which is based on probabilistic modeling. In this paper, we present a survey of various clustering protocols for prolonging the lifetime of WSNs using fuzzy logic approach. The paper concludes with open research issues.
Semi-Automatic Practical Ontology Construction by Using a Thesaurus, Computational Dictionaries, and Large Corpora

This paper presents the semi-automatic construction method of a practical ontology by using various resources. In order to acquire a reasonably practical ontology in a limited time and with less manpower, we extend the Kadokawa thesaurus by inserting additional semantic relations into its hierarchy, which are classified as case relations and other semantic relations. The former can be obtained by converting valency information and case frames from previously-built computational dictionaries used in machine translation. The latter can be acquired from concept co-occurrence information, which is extracted automatically from large corpora. The ontology stores rich semantic constraints among 1,110 concepts, and enables a natural language processing system to resolve semantic ambiguities by making inferences with the concept network of the ontology. In our practical machine translation system, our ontology-based word sense disambiguation method achieved an 8.7% improvement over methods which do not use an ontology for Korean translation.
Assessments of reading comprehension: Different measures, different explanatory variables and achievement

Assessments of Reading Comprehension: Different Measures, Different Explanatory Variables and Achievement Abstract This study investigates the reading achievement of 69 Portuguese fourth graders on national (NA) and international (PIRLS) assessments and its relation to reading skills in the following areas: phonological awareness, word recognition, fluency, accuracy, and types of oral reading errors. Data analysis was conducted using regression and t-tests for dependent samples. Results indicate that in the NA reading accuracy and vocabulary knowledge predict reading comprehension. In PIRLS, vocabu-lary knowledge and non-meaning changing errors explain the variance in reading scores. Performance in the NA was significantly higher than in PIRLS and, in this test, students scored significantly lower on questions that require interpreting and evaluating text than on literal questions. Differences in test design and implications for monitoring educational outcomes are discussed. © 2013 International Association for the Improvement of Mother Tongue Education.
NS3 Helicase Domains Involved in Infectious Intracellular Hepatitis C Virus Particle Assembly

ABSTRACT A mutation within subdomain 1 of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3 helicase (NS3-Q221L) (M. Yi, Y. Ma, J. Yates, and S. M. Lemon, J. Virol. 81:629-638, 2007) rescues a defect in production of infectious virus by an intergenotypic chimeric RNA (HJ3). Although NS3-Gln-221 is highly conserved across HCV genotypes, the Leu-221 substitution had no effect on RNA replication or NS3-associated enzymatic activities. However, while transfection of unmodified HJ3 RNA failed to produce either extracellular or intracellular infectious virus, transfection of HJ3 RNA containing the Q221L substitution (HJ3/QL) resulted in rapid accumulation of intracellular infectious particles with release into extracellular fluids. In the absence of the Q221L mutation, both NS5A and NS3 were recruited to core protein on the surface of lipid droplets, but there was no assembly of core into high-density, rapidly sedimenting particles. Further analysis demonstrated that a Q221N mutation minimally rescued virus production and led to a second-site I399V mutation in subdomain 2 of the helicase. Similarly, I399V alone allowed only low-level virus production and led to selection of an I286V mutation in subdomain 1 of the helicase which fully restored virus production, confirming the involvement of both major helicase subdomains in the assembly process. Thus, multiple mutations in the helicase rescue a defect in an early-intermediate step in virus assembly that follows the recruitment of NS5A to lipid droplets and precedes the formation of dense intracellular viral particles. These data reveal a previously unsuspected role for the NS3 helicase in early virion morphogenesis and provide a new perspective on HCV assembly.
Divisibility properties for covering radius of certain cyclic codes

We present a new method to obtain the covering radius of codes and also a new method to prove quasi-perfection in codes. Divisibility results are combined with the techniques of Ax-Katz and Moreno-Moreno to prove that certain codes are quasi-perfect. This answers a problem posed by Cohen-Honkala-Litsyn-Lobstein in the book covering radius for BCH codes. Also we obtain the covering radius for many new classes of codes.
Statistical parametric speech synthesis with a novel codebook-based excitation model

Speech synthesis is an important modality in Cognitive Infocommunications, which is the intersection of informatics and cognitive sciences. Statistical parametric methods have gained importance in speech synthesis recently. The speech signal is decomposed to parameters and later restored from them. The decomposition is implemented by speech coders. We apply a novel codebook-based speech coding method to model the excitation of speech. In the analysis stage the speech signal is analyzed frameby-frame and a codebook of pitch synchronous excitations is built from the voiced parts. Timing, gain and harmonic-to-noise ratio parameters are extracted and fed into the machine learning stage of Hidden Markov-model based speech synthesis. During the synthesis stage the codebook is searched for a suitable element in each voiced frame and these are concatenated to create the excitation signal, from which the final synthesized speech is created. Our initial experiments show that the model fits well in the statistical parametric speech synthesis framework and in most cases it can synthesize speech in a better quality than the traditional pulse-noise excitation. (This paper is an extended version of [10].)
Making speech synthesis more accessible to older people

In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users’ ability to understand the content of spoken auditory reminders. Users heard meeting reminders and medication reminders spoken in both a natural and a synthetic voice. Our results show that older users can understand synthetic speech as well as younger users provided that the prompt texts are well-designed, using familiar words and contextual cues. As soon as unfamiliar and complex words are introduced, users’ hearing affects how well they can understand the synthetic voice, even if their hearing would pass common screening tests for speech synthesis experiments. Although hearing thresholds correlate best with users’ performance, central auditory processing may also influence performance, especially when complex errors are made.
Are active microbiological surveillance and subsequent isolation needed to prevent the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus?

BACKGROUND Infection-control strategies usually combine several interventions. The relative value of individual interventions, however, is rarely determined. We assessed the effect of daily microbiological surveillance alone (e.g., without report of culture results or isolating colonized patients) as an infection-control measure on the spread of methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) in a medical intensive care unit (MICU). METHODS Colonization of patients with MSSA and MRSA was assessed by cultures of nasal swabs obtained daily and, if a patient was intubated, by cultures of additional endotracheal aspirates. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was used to determine relatedness between MSSA or MRSA isolates in surveillance cultures (i.e., cultures of nasal swab specimens obtained daily) and those in clinical cultures (i.e., any other culture performed for clinical purposes). Adherence to infection-control measures by health care workers (HCWs) was determined by observations of HCW-patient interaction. RESULTS During a 10-week period, surveillance cultures were performed for 158 patients. Fifty-five patients (34.8%) were colonized with MSSA, and 9 (5.7%) were colonized with MRSA. Sixty-two patients were colonized before admission to the hospital (53 had MSSA, and 9 had MRSA). Two patients appeared to have acquired MSSA in the MICU, but, on the basis of genotyping analysis, we determined that this was not the result of cross-acquisition. CONCLUSION Surveillance cultures and genotyping of MRSA and MSSA isolates demonstrated the absence of cross-transmission among patients in the MICU, despite ongoing introduction of these pathogens. Reporting culture results and isolating colonized patients, as suggested by some guidelines, would have falsely suggested the success of such infection-control policies.
Utilizing Word Space with Pointed and Un-pointed Letters for Arabic Text Watermarking

The issue of protecting scientific and intellectual products and publications ownership constitutes an important deal within the domain of securing and protecting information. Digital watermarking is used to identify the ownership of the copyright and in authentication process. In this paper, an invisible blind watermarking method utilizing the word space in Arabic text is proposed. Since the pseudo-space is very small space used to separate two parts of the same word, it is inserted before normal space and after pointed letter to hold the binary bit 'one', and it is inserted before normal space and after un-pointed letter to hold binary bit 'zero'. The comparative results obtained by testing our proposed method with some of existing Arabic watermarking methods using four variable size text samples. The results show that our method has a higher capacity ratio and imperceptibility than other watermarking techniques.