Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The hRing: A wearable haptic device to avoid occlusions in hand tracking

The wearable electronics business has powered over $14 billion in 2014 and it is estimated to power over $70 billion by 2024. However, commercially-available wearable devices still provide very limited haptic feedback, mainly focusing on vibrotactile sensations. Towards a more realistic feeling of interacting with virtual and remote objects, we propose a novel wearable cutaneous device for the proximal finger phalanx, called "hRing". It consists of two servo motors that move a belt placed in contact with the user's finger skin. When the motors spin in opposite directions, the belt presses into the user's finger, while when the motors spin in the same direction, the belt applies a shear force to the skin. Its positioning on the proximal finger phalanx improves the capability of this device to be used together with unobtrusive hand tracking systems, such as the LeapMotion controller and the Kinect sensor. The viability of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a pick-and-place experiment involving seven human subjects. Providing cutaneous feedback through the proposed device improved the performance and perceived effectiveness of the considered task of 20% and 47% with respect to not providing any force feedback, respectively. All subjects found no difference in the quality of the tracking when carrying out the task wearing the device versus barehanded.
Energy-efficient variable-flow liquid cooling in 3D stacked architectures

Liquid cooling has emerged as a promising solution for addressing the elevated temperatures in 3D stacked architectures. In this work, we first propose a framework for detailed thermal modeling of the microchannels embedded between the tiers of the 3D system. In multicore systems, workload varies at runtime, and the system is generally not fully utilized. Thus, it is not energy-efficient to adjust the coolant flow rate based on the worst-case conditions, as this would cause an excess in pump power. For energy-efficient cooling, we propose a novel controller to adjust the liquid flow rate to meet the desired temperature and to minimize pump energy consumption. Our technique also includes a job scheduler, which balances the temperature across the system to maximize cooling efficiency and to improve reliability. Our method guarantees operating below the target temperature while reducing the cooling energy by up to 30%, and the overall energy by up to 12% in comparison to using the highest coolant flow rate.
Estimating the proportion of neutral mutants.

Kimura used the heterozygosity and the number of low-frequency alleles to estimate that about 14% of mutations are selectively neutral. The method is shown to be subject to biases and to disruption due to bottleneck effects. Let deleterious alleles have selective disadvantage, s , compared with neutral alleles and let N e denote the effective diploid population size. The estimator, , of the proportion of neutral alleles is positively biased if (roughly) 4 N e S N e s > 200. In the former case, one cannot adequately detect the different influences of deleterious and neutral alleles, whereas in the latter case, deleterious alleles will rarely appear in the sample. These difficulties cause the biases in , and are likely to cause similar biases for any estimation method based solely on allele frequencies. There is substantial sampling variability in in cases of practical interest, when data from 11 loci, or even as many as 31 loci, are pooled. If there has been a recent contraction in population size, will be positively biased, often yielding values greater than 1 or even being infinite. But after a recent expansion in population size, the heterozygosity will not have made as quick an increase and will be negatively biased. Population expansion alone can produce values close to those observed by Kimura, even if all alleles are neutral. In an appendix, a new method for simulating samples of neutral and deleterious genes is described.
Reply to: Comment on: “Incorporating Geriatric Assessment into a Nephrology Clinic: Preliminary Data from Two Models of Care”

ney disease and end-stage renal disease patients: a systematic literature review. BMC Nephrology 2011;12:35. 11. Salgado TM, Moles R, Benrimoj SI et al. Pharmacists’ interventions in the management of patients with chronic kidney disease: a systematic review. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2012;27:276–292. 12. Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Have pharmacists determine all doses for renal patients. Available at http://www.ihi. org/resources/Pages/Changes/ HavePharmacistsDetermineAllDosesforRenalPatients.aspx. Accessed July 11, 2016.
Partial discharge modeling with increasing applied voltages across different void sizes

Power transformer, bushing, insulator, cable and other related parts of electrical equipment are usually used in the power system network. Catastrophic event like explosion may occur in those network components due to some unexpected reasons. This kind of events triggers the power outage, which in turn results in a financial loss. One of the main causes for such terrible incidents is the imperfect condition of the insulation systems, which leads to deterioration and breakdown of high voltage equipment due to partial discharge. In this paper, the effect of an increase in applied voltage across the three-capacitance model, which represents the phenomena of partial discharge within the solid type insulation, is studied using the EMTP-RV software. Different void sizes and types of dielectric materials are also studied in this paper. The results obtained by the simulation software EMTP-RV and MATLAB are summarized.
A Fast Provably Secure Cryptographic Hash Function

We propose a family of fast and provably secure cryptographic hash functions. The security of these functions relies directly on the well-known syndrome decoding problem for linear codes. Attacks on this problem are well identified and their complexity is known. This enables us to study precisely the practical security of the hash functions and propose valid parameters for implementation. Furthermore, the design proposed here is fully scalable, with respect to security, hash size and output rate.
Fracture Evaluation of In-Situ Sensors for High Temperature Applications

The feasibility of fabricating an in-situ crack sensor for real-time detection of surface cracks propagating in engine components was evaluated using a computational fracture mechanics model. The in-situ sensor system would be required to: (1) Be capable of sustaining normal function in a severe environment; (2) Transmit a signal if a detected crack in the component was above a predetermined length, but below a critical length that would lead to failure; (3) Act neutrally upon the overall performance of the engine system and not interfere with the engine maintenance operations. In this work, fracture mechanics methodologies are used to identify the requirements for an in-situ sensor system that could withstand the engine operating environment, foreign object damage, and minimally degrade engine performance. A computational fracture mechanics model was developed to evaluate the feasibility of fabricating an in-situ crack sensor for real-time damage propagation detection in engine components.
Is the normal heart rate "chaotic" due to respiration?

The incidence of cardiovascular diseases increases with the growth of the human population and an aging society, leading to very high expenses in the public health system. Therefore, it is challenging to develop sophisticated methods in order to improve medical diagnostics. The question whether the normal heart rate is chaotic or not is an attempt to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of cardiovascular dynamics and therefore a highly controversial topical challenge. In this contribution we demonstrate that linear and nonlinear parameters allow us to separate completely the data sets of the three groups provided for this controversial topic in nonlinear dynamics. The question whether these time series are chaotic or not cannot be answered satisfactorily without investigating the underlying mechanisms leading to them. We give an example of the dominant influence of respiration on heart beat dynamics, which shows that observed fluctuations can be mostly explained by respiratory modulations of heart rate and blood pressure (coefficient of determination: 96%). Therefore, we recommend reformulating the following initial question: "Is the normal heart rate chaotic? " We rather ask the following: "Is the normal heart rate 'chaotic' due to respiration? "
Double Auction for Resource Allocation in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has become more and more popular as more companies choose to deploy their services and applications to the cloud. Particularly, trading unused cloud resources provides extra profits for companies with rapidly changing needs. Cloud market enables trading additional resource between buyers and sellers, where a buyer may have different valuations for different instances of the same resource due to factors such as geographical location, configuration, etc. In this paper, we study double auctions with non-identical items for cloud resource allocation, and develop a framework to decompose the design of truthful double auctions. We propose two auctions based on the framework that achieve: (i) truthfulness; (ii) individual rationality; and (iii) budget balance. We prove that the social welfare is constant-competitive to the (not necessarily truthful) optimal auction under certain distributions. We run simulations to investigate the social welfare achieved by our auctions. We use different probability distributions to capture various scenarios in the real world. Results show that our mechanisms generally achieve at least half of the optimal social welfare, while one auction achieves over a 0.9 fraction of the optimal in some circumstances.
5-methyltetrahydrofolate, the active form of folic acid, restores endothelial function in familial hypercholesterolemia.

BACKGROUND Impaired nitric oxide (NO) activity is an early event in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, resulting from either reduced NO formation or increased NO degradation. Administration of tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4), an essential cofactor for NO production, could restore NO activity in familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). Because folates have been suggested to stimulate endogenous BH4 regeneration, we hypothesized that administration of 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5-MTHF, the active circulating form of folate) might improve NO formation in FH. METHODS AND RESULTS We studied the effects of 5-MTHF on NO bioavailability in vivo in 10 patients with FH and 10 matched control subjects by venous occlusion plethysmography, using serotonin and nitroprusside as endothelium-dependent and -independent vasodilators. In vitro, we investigated the effect of 5-MTHF on NO production by recombinant endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) by use of [3H]arginine to [3H]citrulline conversion. We also studied the effects of 5-MTHF on superoxide generation by eNOS and xanthine oxidase (XO) by use of lucigenin chemiluminescence. The impaired endothelium-dependent vasodilation in FH (63% versus 90% in control subjects) could be reversed by coinfusion of 5-MTHF (117% vasodilation), whereas 5-MTHF had no significant effect on endothelium-dependent vasodilation in control subjects. 5-MTHF did not influence basal forearm vasomotion or endothelium-independent vasodilation. 5-MTHF had no direct effect on in vitro NO production by eNOS. However, we did observe a dose-dependent reduction in both eNOS- and XO-induced superoxide generation. CONCLUSIONS These results show that the active form of folic acid restores in vivo endothelial function in FH. It is suggested from our in vitro experiments that this effect is due to reduced catabolism of NO.
A compact X-band CPW branch-line coupler using glass integrated passive device (GIPD) technology

In this paper, a compact X-band CPW branchline coupler is proposed using the glass integrated passive device (GIPD) technology. To reduce the circuit size and retain a similar return-loss bandwidth to that of conventional coupler, the asymmetrical CPW branch-type T-structures are employed to implement the proposed coupler. Each T-structure is realized by two sections of high-impedance lines with unequal lengths and a set of branch-type shunt stubs. The developed coupler has a 31.5 % 10-dB return loss bandwidth and only occupies a 17.79 % circuit size of the conventional one. The measured results of the developed branch-line coupler are in a good agreement with simulated results.
A Scalable Architecture for Crowd Simulation: Implementing a Parallel Action Server

Crowd simulation can be considered as a special case of virtual environments where avatars are intelligent agents instead of user-driven entities. These applications require both rendering visually plausible images of the virtual world and managing the behavior of autonomous agents. Although several proposals have focused on the software architectures for these systems, the scalability of crowd simulation is still an open issue. In this paper, we propose a scalable architecture that can manage large crowds of autonomous agents at interactive rates. This proposal consists of enhancing a previously proposed architecture through the efficient parallelization of the action server and the distribution of the semantic database. In this way, the system bottleneck is removed, and new action servers (hosted each one on a new computer) can be added as necessary. The evaluation results show that the proposed architecture is able to fully exploit the underlying hardware platform, regardless of both the number and the kind of computers that form the system. Therefore, this system architecture provides the scalability required for large-scale crowd simulation.
Effect of Hydroxymethylglutaryl Coenzyme A Reductase Inhibitors on the Progression of Calcific Aortic Stenosis

Background—Recent studies have supported the hypothesis that calcific aortic stenosis is the product of an active inflammatory process, with similarities to atherosclerosis. We sought to determine whether therapy with hydroxymethylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibitors (statins) might slow the progression of aortic stenosis. Methods and Results—A retrospective study of 174 patients (mean age 68±12 years) with mild to moderate calcific aortic stenosis was conducted. Patients required normal left ventricular function, ≤2+ aortic regurgitation, and ≥2 echocardiograms performed at least 12 months apart. Fifty-seven patients (33%) received treatment with a statin; the remaining 117 (67%) did not. The statin group was older and had a higher prevalence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and coronary disease. During a mean follow-up of 21 months, patients treated with statin had a smaller increase in peak and mean gradient and a smaller decrease in aortic valve area. When annualized, the decrease in aortic valve area for the nonstatin group was 0.11±0.18 cm2 compared with 0.06±0.16 cm2 for those treated with a statin (P =0.03). In multivariate analysis, statin usage was a significant independent predictor of a smaller decrease in valve area (P =0.01) and a lesser increase in peak gradient (P =0.02). Conclusions—Statin-treated patients, despite a higher risk profile for progression, had reduced aortic stenosis progression compared with those not treated with a statin. These data provide justification for a prospective randomized trial to substantiate whether statin therapy slows the progression of aortic stenosis.
Patterns of neutrophil serine protease‐dependent cleavage of surfactant protein D in inflammatory lung disease

The manuscript presents definitive studies of surfactant protein D (SP‐D) in the context of inflammatory lung fluids. The extent of SP‐D depletion in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) of children affected with cystic fibrosis (CF) is demonstrated to correlate best with the presence of the active neutrophil serine protease (NSP) elastase. Novel C‐terminal SP‐D fragments of 27 kDa and 11 kDa were identified in patient lavage fluid in addition to the previously described N‐terminal, 35‐kDa fragment by the use of isoelectrofocusing, modified blotting conditions, and region‐specific antibodies. SP‐D cleavage sites were identified. In vitro treatment of recombinant human SP‐D dodecamers with NSPs replicated the fragmentation, but unexpectedly, the pattern of SP‐D fragments generated by NSPs was dependent on calcium concentration. Whereas the 35‐ and 11‐kDa fragments were generated when incubations were performed in low calcium (200 μM CaCl2), incubations in physiological calcium (2 mM) with higher amounts of elastase or proteinase‐3 generated C‐terminal 27, 21, and 14 kDa fragments, representing cleavage within the collagen and neck regions. Studies in which recombinant SP‐D cleavage by individual NSPs was quantitatively evaluated under low and high calcium conditions showed that the most potent NSP for cleaving SP‐D is elastase, followed by proteinase‐3, followed by cathepsin G. These relative potency findings were considered in the context of other studies that showed that active NSPs in CF BALF are in the order: elastase, followed by cathepsin G, followed by proteinase‐3. The findings support a pre‐eminent role for neutrophil elastase as the critical protease responsible for SP‐D depletion in inflammatory lung disease.
Smooth Structures and Normalized Ricci Flows on Non-Simply Connected Four-Manifolds

A solution to the normalized Ricci flow is called non-singular if it exists for all time with uniformly bounded sectional curvature. By using the techniques developed by the present authors [14, 26], we study the existence or non-existence of non-singular solutions of the normalized Ricci flow on 4 manifolds with non-trivial fundamental group and the relation with the smooth structures. For example, we prove that, for any finite cyclic group Zd, where d > 1, there exists a compact topological 4 manifold X with fundamental group Zd, which admits at least one smooth structure for which non-singular solutions of the normalized Ricci flow exist, but also admits infinitely many distinct smooth structures for which no non-singular solution of the normalized Ricci flow exists. Related non-existence results on non-singular solutions are also proved. Among others, we show that there are no non-singular Zd equivariant solutions to the normalized Ricci flow on appropriate connected sums of CP 2 s and CP 2 s (d > 1).
Solving (Weighted) Partial MaxSAT with ILP

Several combinatorial optimization problems can be translated into the Weighted Partial Maximum Satisfiability (WPMS) problem. This is an optimization variant of the Satisfiability (SAT) problem. There are two main families of WPMS solvers based on SAT technology: branch and bound and SAT-based. From the MaxSAT evaluations, we have learned that SAT-based solvers dominate on industrial instances while branch and bound dominate on random. For crafted instances it depends on the category. In this work, we study the performance of an Integer Linear Programming approach. In particular, we translate the WPMS problem into ILP and apply the Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) solver, IBMCPLEX. We present an extensive experimental evaluation showing that this approach clearly dominates on crafted instances.
Multi-view augmented reality for underground exploration

We propose a novel multi-view visualization technique, which allows effortless interaction with subterranean data and tries to maximize spatial perception whilst minimizing view clutter. The multi-view augmented reality technique introduces two correlating displays; i) a perspective egocentric view with focused edge overlay and focused geometry clipping and ii) an orthographic cut-away display that visualizes a thin slice of subterranean data intersecting a user controlled anchor.
Association of quality of life with major depressive disorder among people with HIV in South India

Abstract Depression in people with HIV has wide-spread implications related to faster progression to AIDS, poor drug compliance, and lower quality of life (QOL). Although there have been studies that have examined the role of sociodemographic variables in people with HIV, there have only been a few on the assessment of QOL and its association with depression among people with HIV in South India. The objectives of this study were to diagnose major depressive disorder (MDD) and examine the association of depression with health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among people with HIV in coastal South India. Structured questionnaires detailing sociodemographic and HIV related variables were filled out by 103 patients with HIV attending a tertiary care center. Interviews were carried out by a psychiatrist to diagnose ICD-10 MDD and a clinical psychologist to rate the severity of depression using the Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD). Subjective HRQOL was assessed using HIV/AIDS targeted quality of life questionnaire in these patients. Fifty patients were diagnosed with MDD. Among them, 23 (46%) were mildly depressed, 19 (38%) were moderately depressed, 7 (14%) were severely depressed, and 1 (2%) was very severely depressed. Mean QOL scores for all dimensions except sexual function were significantly and inversely correlated (p<0.05) with HAMD implying that patients with greater severity of depressive symptoms had poorer HRQOL. Individuals with ICD-10 diagnosis of MDD presented significantly lower scores of QOL compared to individuals without MDD. The implication is that early diagnosis and referral of depressed patients needs to be incorporated into intervention programs to improve patient outcomes and QOL. More research is needed to investigate the impact of antidepressant therapy on QOL using this study as a comparison group in a similar population.
A Protective Lipidomic Biosignature Associated with a Balanced Omega-6/Omega-3 Ratio in fat-1 Transgenic Mice

A balanced omega-6/omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) ratio has been linked to health benefits and the prevention of many chronic diseases. Current dietary intervention studies with different sources of omega-3 fatty acids (omega-3) lack appropriate control diets and carry many other confounding factors derived from genetic and environmental variability. In our study, we used the fat-1 transgenic mouse model as a proxy for long-term omega-3 supplementation to determine, in a well-controlled manner, the molecular phenotype associated with a balanced omega-6/omega-3 ratio. The fat-1 mouse can convert omega-6 to omega-3 PUFAs, which protect against a wide variety of diseases including chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer. Both wild-type (WT) and fat-1 mice were subjected to an identical diet containing 10% corn oil, which has a high omega-6 content similar to that of the Western diet, for a six-month duration. We used a multi-platform lipidomic approach to compare the plasma lipidome between fat-1 and WT mice. In fat-1 mice, an unbiased profiling showed a significant increase in the levels of unesterified eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), EPA-containing cholesteryl ester, and omega-3 lysophosphospholipids. The increase in omega-3 lipids is accompanied by a significant reduction in omega-6 unesterified docosapentaenoic acid (omega-6 DPA) and DPA-containing cholesteryl ester as well as omega-6 phospholipids and triacylglycerides. Targeted lipidomics profiling highlighted a remarkable increase in EPA-derived diols and epoxides formed via the cytochrome P450 (CYP450) pathway in the plasma of fat-1 mice compared with WT mice. Integration of the results of untargeted and targeted analyses has identified a lipidomic biosignature that may underlie the healthful phenotype associated with a balanced omega-6/omega-3 ratio, and can potentially be used as a circulating biomarker for monitoring the health status and the efficacy of omega-3 intervention in humans.