Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design synthesis knowledge and inductive machine learning

A crucial early stage in the engineering design process is the conceptual design phase, during which an initial solution design is generated. The quality of this initial design has a great bearing on the quality and success of the produced artefact. Typically, the knowledge required to perform this task is only acquired through many years of experience, and so is often at a premium. This has led to a number of attempts to automate this phase using intelligent computer systems. However, the knowledge of how to generate designs has proved difficult to acquire directly from human experts, and as a result, is often unsatisfactory in these systems. The application of inductive machine learning techniques to the acquisition of this sort of knowledge has been advocated as one approach to overcoming the difficulties surrounding its capture. Rather than acquiring the knowledge from human experts, the knowledge would be inferred automatically from a set of examples of the design process. This paper describes the authors' investigations into the general viability of this approach in the context of one particular conceptual design task, that of the design of fluid power circuits. The analysis of a series of experiments highlights a number of issues that would seem to arise regardless of the working domain or particular machine learning algorithm used. These issues, presented and discussed here, cast serious doubts upon the practicality of such an approach to knowledge acquisition, given the current state of the art.
Multi-Parametric Evaluation of Chronic Kidney Disease by MRI: A Preliminary Cross-Sectional Study

Background The current clinical classification of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is not perfect and may be overestimating both the prevalence and the risk for progressive disease. Novel markers are being sought to identify those at risk of progression. This preliminary study evaluates the feasibility of magnetic resonance imaging based markers to identify early changes in CKD. Methods Fifty-nine subjects (22 healthy, 7 anemics with no renal disease, 30 subjects with CKD) participated. Data using 3D volume imaging, blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) and Diffusion MRI was acquired. BOLD MRI acquisition was repeated after 20 mg of iv furosemide. Results Compared to healthy subjects, those with CKD have lower renal parenchymal volumes (329.6±66.4 vs. 257.1±87.0 ml, p<0.005), higher cortical R2* values (19.7±3.2 vs. 23.2±6.3 s−1, p = 0.013) (suggesting higher levels of hypoxia) and lower response to furosemide on medullary R2* (6.9±3.3 vs. 3.1±7.5 s−1, p = 0.02). All three parameters showed significant correlation with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). When the groups were matched for age and sex, cortical R2* and kidney volume still showed significant differences between CKD and healthy controls. The most interesting observation is that a small number of subjects (8 of 29) contributed to the increase in mean value observed in CKD. The difference in cortical R2* between these subjects compared to the rest were highly significant and had a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 3.5). While highly suggestive, future studies may be necessary to verify if such higher levels of hypoxia are indicative of progressive disease. Diffusion MRI showed no differences between CKD and healthy controls. Conclusions These data demonstrate that BOLD MRI can be used to identify enhanced hypoxia associated with CKD and the preliminary observations are consistent with the chronic hypoxia model for disease progression in CKD. Longitudinal studies are warranted to further verify these findings and assess their predictive value.
An Experimental Investigation of Why Individuals Conform

Social interdependence is believed to play an important role in individual choice behavior. I first outline a simple model constructed on the premise that people are motivated by their own payoff and by how their action compares to others in their reference group. I show that conformity in actions may arise from learning about the descriptive norm, or from image-related concerns. In order to empirically disentangle the two, I use the fact that image-related concerns can only be present if actions are publicly observable. The model predictions are then tested in a charitable contribution experiment in which the actions and identities of the subjects are unmasked in a controlled and systematic way. Both learning about the descriptive norm (i.e., what others are doing) and image-related concerns play an important role in the choices of the subjects. Individuals indulge in social comparison and change their contributions in the direction of the social norm even when their identities are hidden. Once identities and contribution distributions of group members are revealed, individuals conform to the choice of other group members. Moreover, I find that social ties (defined as subjects knowing each other from outside the lab) affect the role of social influence: Subjects only respond to the choices of group members they are friends with. In particular, a low contribution norm evolves that causes individuals to contribute less in the presence of friends. This suggests that social comparison and image-related concerns may not always lead to higher contributions.
Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words

This is a "biography of the imagination, " an inner narrative of Sylvia Plath's life and work. Combining psychoanalytical, feminist, and intertextual methods, Steven Gould Axelrod traces what Roland Barthes has called "the body's journey through language. " After an introductory look at the roles played by language and silence in Plath's verbal universe, Axelrod explores the ways in which the poet's father -- and father figures, including male literary precursors -- interfered with her imagination even as they helped shape it. He describes Plath's ambiguous relations with her mother and with the two literary forebears who took the mother's place -- Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson. And he examines Plath's doubling relationship to her husband, describing how she eventually transferred her doubling impulse to her texts. Axelrod concludes by suggesting a link between Plath's discontinuous narrative of the double and her personal fate. Sylvia Plath: The Wound and the Cure of Words offers illuminating and often revolutionary readings of all of Plath's major texts, including such poems as "Daddy" and "Three Women, " her novel, The Bell Jar, and her letters and journals. At once sympathetic and incisive, it offers a compelling account of Plath's creative drive and personal history.
Time-Based Prospective Memory in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract In this study, for the first time, prospective memory was investigated in 11 school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders and 11 matched neurotypical controls. A computerised time-based prospective memory task was embedded in a visuospatial working memory test and required participants to remember to respond to certain target times. Controls had significantly more correct prospective memory responses than the autism spectrum group. Moreover, controls checked the time more often and increased time-monitoring more steeply as the target times approached. These differences in time-checking may suggest that prospective memory in autism spectrum disorders is affected by reduced self-initiated processing as indicated by reduced task monitoring.
Bpipe: a tool for running and managing bioinformatics pipelines

SUMMARY Bpipe is a simple, dedicated programming language for defining and executing bioinformatics pipelines. It specializes in enabling users to turn existing pipelines based on shell scripts or command line tools into highly flexible, adaptable and maintainable workflows with a minimum of effort. Bpipe ensures that pipelines execute in a controlled and repeatable fashion and keeps audit trails and logs to ensure that experimental results are reproducible. Requiring only Java as a dependency, Bpipe is fully self-contained and cross-platform, making it very easy to adopt and deploy into existing environments. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Bpipe is freely available from http://bpipe.org under a BSD License.
Tweet-Recommender: Finding Relevant Tweets for News Articles

Twitter has become a prime source for disseminating news and opinions. However, the length of tweets prohibits detailed descriptions; instead, tweets sometimes contain URLs that link to detailed news articles. In this paper, we devise generic techniques for recommending tweets for any given news article. To evaluate and compare the different techniques, we collected tens of thousands of tweets and news articles and conducted a user study on the relevance of recommendations.
Impact of the number of antennas and distances among users on cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we study the impact of the number of antennas and distances among users on the performance of a spectrum sharing system. In particular, we assume that a secondary transmitter is equipped with a single antenna while both secondary receiver and primary receiver have multiple antennas. Also, it is assumed that the secondary users are subject to the peak interference power constraint. On this basis, the cumulative distribution function and probability density function for the signal-to-noise ratio are derived for Rayleigh fading channels. Moreover, using these results, we obtain closed-form expressions for the outage probability, ergodic capacity and an exact expression for symbol error probability. These formulas allow us to examine the impact of the number of antennas of the SU-Rx, the PU-Rx and distance among users on the system performance. Finally, Monte-Carlo simulations are provided to verify our analytical results.
Measuring Physical Fitness in Older Adults with Intellectual Disabilities: moving towards practice

markdownabstract__Abstract__ Physical fitness is “a set of attributes or characteristics individuals have or achieve that relates to their ability to perform physical activity”. This definition shows that physical fitness is a multidimensional concept. There are different opinions about the exact components of this concept, but usually the components are divided into health-related components and skill-related components (Table 1). The health-related components are strongly related to overall health, and a low score on these components is a risk factor for all-cause mortality and developing disabling medical conditions and chronic diseases, such as metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular diseases, and musculoskeletal conditions [1-4]. Skill-related components represent athletic ability and are related with enhanced performance in sports and motor skills. Being physically fit on both aspects is also a prerequisite to perform activities of daily living, for which both health-related and skill-related components are important , although not all are equally relevant. This thesis is about measuring the physical fitness of older adults with intellectual disabilities. Suitable physical fitness tests for this population are needed in clinical practice. Before outlining the contents of this chapter, we will start by providing some background information about why physical fitness should be a focus in the care for this population and why fitness tests are needed.
X-Ray Absorption toward the Einstein Ring Source PKS 1830–211

PKS 1830-211 is an unusually radio-loud gravitationally lensed quasar. In the radio spectrum, the system appears as two compact, dominant features surrounded by relatively extended radio emission that forms an Einstein ring. As the line of sight to it passes close to our Galactic center, PKS 1830-211 has not been detected in wave bands other than the radio and X-ray so far. Here we present X-ray data of PKS 1830-211 observed with ROSAT Position Sensitive Proportional Counter. The X-ray spectrum shows that absorption in excess of the Galactic contribution is highly likely, which at the redshift of the lensing galaxy (zl = 0.886) corresponds to NH=3.5−0.5+0.6×1022 atoms cm-2. The effective optical extinction is large, AV(observed) ≳ 5.8. When corrected for this additional extinction, the two-point optical to X-ray slope αox of PKS 1830-211 lies just within the observed range of quasars. It is argued here that both compact images must be covered by the X-ray absorber(s) that we infer to be the lensing galaxy (galaxies). The dust-to-gas ratio along the line of sight within the lensing galaxy is likely to be somewhat larger than for our Galaxy.
Dynamic local remeshing for elastoplastic simulation

We propose a finite element simulation method that addresses the full range of material behavior, from purely elastic to highly plastic, for physical domains that are substantially reshaped by plastic flow, fracture, or large elastic deformations. To mitigate artificial plasticity, we maintain a simulation mesh in both the current state and the rest shape, and store plastic offsets only to represent the non-embeddable portion of the plastic deformation. To maintain high element quality in a tetrahedral mesh undergoing gross changes, we use a dynamic meshing algorithm that attempts to replace as few tetrahedra as possible, and thereby limits the visual artifacts and artificial diffusion that would otherwise be introduced by repeatedly remeshing the domain from scratch. Our dynamic mesher also locally refines and coarsens a mesh, and even creates anisotropic tetrahedra, wherever a simulation requests it. We illustrate these features with animations of elastic and plastic behavior, extreme deformations, and fracture.
Significance-linked wavelet video coder

Perhaps, Sarnoff Corporation's zerotree entropy (ZTE) coder is the most successful wavelet video coder published so far which exploits the statistical properties of wavelet-transformed images by utilizing novel data representation and organization strategies. A high performance hybrid video coding algorithm termed video significance-linked connected component analysis (VSLCCA) is developed. It is quite encouraging that, at least empirically convinced, the wavelet transform with aids of those published innovative data representation and organization methods can be an invaluable asset in video coding if motion-compensated error frames are coherent. In VSLCCA, time domain motion estimation followed by exhaustive overlapped block motion compensation is utilized to ensure coherency, and then wavelet transform is applied to each error frame with significant wavelet coefficients being encoded by highly efficient SLCCA technique. Experimental results on standard MPEG-4 test sequences show that VSLCCA is superior to H.263 and ZTE by 0.48 dB and 0.77 dB on average, respectively.
Pneumonectomy: calculable or non-tolerable risk factor in trimodal therapy for Stage III non-small-cell lung cancer?

OBJECTIVES Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in cancer statistics throughout developed countries. While single surgical approach provides best results in early stages, multimodality approaches have been employed in advanced disease and demonstrated superior results in selected patients. With either full-dose chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, patients usually have a poor general condition when entering surgical therapy and therefore neoadjuvant therapy can lead to a higher morbidity and mortality. Especially in the case of pneumonectomy as the completing procedure, mortality rate can exceed over 40%. Therefore, chest physicians often shy away from recommending pneumonectomy as final step in trimodal protocols. We analysed our experience with pneumonectomy after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with a focus on feasibility, outcome and survival. METHODS Retrospective, single-centre study of 146 patients with trimodal neoadjuvant therapy for NSCLC Stage III over 17 years time span. Follow-up was taken from our own outpatient files and with survival check of central registry office in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. RESULTS A total of 118 men and 28 women received 62 lobectomies, 6 bi-lobectomies and 78 pneumonectomies after two different neoadjuvant protocols for Stage III NSCLC. Overall morbidity rate was 53 and 56% after pneumonectomy. Overall hospital mortality rate was 4.8 and 6.4% after pneumonectomy. Overall median survival rate was 31 months with a 5-year survival rate of 38% (Kaplan-Meier). Pneumonectomy, right-sited pneumonectomy and initial T- and N-stages were no risk factors for survival (log-rank test). Significant factors for survival were ypT-stage, ypN-stage, yUICC-stage in univariate testing (log-rank test) and ypUICC-stage in multivariate testing (Cox's regression). CONCLUSIONS Pneumonectomy in neoadjuvant trimodal approach for Stage III NSCLC can be done safe with acceptable mortality rate. Patients should not withhold from operation because of necessitating pneumonectomy. Not the procedure but the selection, response rate and R0-resection are crucial for survival after trimodal therapy in experienced centres.
Dynamics analysis and analog associative memory of networks with LT neurons

The additive recurrent network structure of linear threshold neurons represents a class of biologically-motivated models, where nonsaturating transfer functions are necessary for representing neuronal activities, such as that of cortical neurons. This paper extends the existing results of dynamics analysis of such linear threshold networks by establishing new and milder conditions for boundedness and asymptotical stability, while allowing for multistability. As a condition for asymptotical stability, it is found that boundedness does not require a deterministic matrix to be symmetric or possess positive off-diagonal entries. The conditions put forward an explicit way to design and analyze such networks. Based on the established theory, an alternate approach to study such networks is through permitted and forbidden sets. An application of the linear threshold (LT) network is analog associative memory, for which a simple design method describing the associative memory is suggested in this paper. The proposed design method is similar to a generalized Hebbian approach, but with distinctions of additional network parameters for normalization, excitation and inhibition, both on a global and local scale. The computational abilities of the network are dependent on its nonlinear dynamics, which in turn is reliant upon the sparsity of the memory vectors.
Antitumor Effect of the Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Nilotinib on Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor (GIST) and Imatinib-Resistant GIST Cells

Despite the benefits of imatinib for treating gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), the prognosis for high risk GIST and imatinib-resistant (IR) GIST remains poor. The mechanisms of imatinib resistance have not yet been fully clarified. The aim of the study was to establish imatinib-resistant cell lines and investigate nilotinib, a second generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), in preclinical models of GIST and imatinib-resistant GIST. For a model of imatinib-resistant GIST, we generated resistant cells from GK1C and GK3C cell lines by exposing them to imatinib for 6 months. The parent cell lines GK1C and GK3C showed imatinib sensitivity with IC50 of 4.59±0.97 µM and 11.15±1.48 µM, respectively. The imatinib-resistant cell lines GK1C-IR and GK3C-IR showed imatinib resistance with IC50 values of 11.74±0.17 µM (P<0.001) and 41.37±1.07 µM (P<0.001), respectively. The phosphorylation status of key cell signaling pathways, receptor tyrosine kinase KIT (CD117), platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA) and downstream signaling kinases: serine-threonine kinase Akt (AKT) and extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) or the non-receptor tyrosine kinase: proto-oncogene tyrosine-protein kinase Src (SRC), was analyzed in established cell lines and ERK1/2 phosphorylation was found to be increased compared to the parental cells. Nilotinib demonstrated significant antitumor efficacy against GIST xenograft lines and imatinib-resistant GIST cell lines. Thus, nilotinib may have clinical potential for patients with GIST or imatinib-resistant GIST.
Kognitiv-behaviorale Psychotherapie bei Jugendlichen mit Essstörungen

Anorexia nervosa (AN), Bulimia nervosa (BN) und Binge Eating Storungen (BED) werden unter dem Begriff Essstorungen zusammengefasst. Insbesondere die AN stellt im Jugendalter aufgrund des typischen Beginns in diesem Altersbereich eine haufige Erkrankung mit haufig ungunstigen Verlauf (Steinhausen 2002) dar. Die psychischen, sozialen und korperlichen Folgen sind gravierend. Die Therapieforschung zeigt, dass die kognitiv-behaviorale Behandlung (CBT) bei BN, BN und BED im Erwachsenenalter gute Effekte erzielt und anderen Verfahren uberlegen ist. Generell finden sich nur wenige Studien, welche sich ordinar mit Kindern und Jugendlichen beschaftigen. Aus diesem Grund kann die Effektivitat im Jugendalter nur unter Einbezug von Ergebnissen im Erwachsenenalter beurteilt werden. Fur das Jugendalter kann daher zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt nur von einem eingeschrankten Effektivitatsnachweis der CBT ausgegangen werden. Schlagworter: Kognitiv-behaviorale Psychotherapie - Jugend - Anorexia nervosa - Bulimia nervosa - Binge Eating Disorder Anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), and binge eating disorder (BED) are grouped together under the term eating disorders. Due to its typical onset in adolescence, AN in particular represents a frequent disorder with often an unfavourable course in this age range (Steinhausen 2002). The mental, social and physical consequences are serious. Research has shown that cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) has good effectiveness in adult patients with AN, BN and BED and that it is superior to other treatments. However, there have been few studies on children and adolescents. The effectiveness in adolescence can thus be judged only when the results in adulthood are taken into account. At present, there is limited evidence for the effectiveness of CBT in adolescence. Key words: cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy - adoloscence - anorexia nervosa - bulimia nervosa - binge eating disorder
Her body finds a voice: Authentic Movement in an imaginal world

Authentic Movement is a somatic and therapeutic practice often referred to as active imagination in movement. Some practitioners refer to the form as mystical, sacred or archetypal and so ascribe it a particular power and potential. This movement form, based on a dyadic relationship, is a unique environment to research such experiences. I will suggest that particular language skills and modes of articulation are needed to work in this territory. How do mover and witness work with these moving experiences and what means of speaking from and with these experiences can be useful? How can we speak from these experiences and images and not lose the primacy of both? I will suggest Focusing, tracking and poetic or symbolic articulation can help to provide a container for moving and witnessing experiences. The safe container allows for deeper exploration of more ineffable experiences. These are defined as subtle body, imaginal, mystical and processes of individuation.
Astrocyte on neuronal phase synchrony in CMOS

CMOS neuromorphic circuits are proposed to emulate the role of astrocytes in phase synchronization of neuronal activity. We emulate, to a first order, the ability of slow inwards currents (SICs) evoked by the astrocyte, acting on extrasynaptic N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR) of adjacent neurons, as a mechanism for phase synchronization. We do an experiment incorporating two small networks of neurons interacting with astrocytic microdomains. Upon enough synaptic activity, the microdomains interact with each other, generating SIC events on synapses of adjacent neurons. Since the amplitude of SICs is several orders larger compared to synaptic currents, a SIC event drastically enhances the excitatory postsynaptic potential on adjacent neurons simultaneuously. This causes neurons to fire synchronously in phase. Phase synchrony holds for a duration of time proportional to the time constant of SIC decay.