Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Iterative Method for Solving the Fornberg-Whitham Equation and Comparison with Homotopy Perturbation Transform Method

This paper presents an approximate analytical solution of the nonlinear Fornberg-Whitham equation using the new iterative method (NIM). A comparison is made between the NIM results, homotopy perturbation transform method (HPTM) and the Adomian's decomposition method (ADM). The solution procedure reveals that NIM is a reliable, simple and effective. The proposed technique solves nonlinear problems without using Adomian's polynomials and He's polynomials which is a clear advantage of it over the decomposition method. The results reveal that the proposed algorithm is very efficient, simple and can be applied to other nonlinear problems.
Aligning an Italian WordNet with a Lexicographic Dictionary: Coping with limited data

This work describes the evaluations of two approaches, Lexical Matching and Sense Similarity, for word sense alignment between MultiWordNet and a lexicographic dictionary, Senso Comune De Mauro, when having few sense descriptions (MultiWordNet) and no structure over senses (Senso Comune De Mauro). The results obtained from the merging of the two approaches are satisfying, with F1 values of 0.47 for verbs and 0.64 for nouns.
The endurance shuttle walk: a new field test for the assessment of endurance capacity in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to develop an externally controlled, constant paced field walking test to assess endurance capacity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). There were four objectives: (1) to develop a protocol; (2) to compare treadmill and shuttle walk tests of endurance capacity; (3) to examine the repeatability of the endurance shuttle walk test; and (4) to compare the sensitivity to pulmonary rehabilitation of endurance and incremental shuttle walk tests. METHODS The test was designed to complement the incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT) using the same 10 m shuttle course and an audio signal to control pace. The intensity of the field endurance test was related to a percentage of each patient's maximum field exercise performance assessed by the ISWT. A number of cassette tapes were pre-recorded with a range of audio signal frequencies to dictate walking speeds between 1.80 and 6.00 km/h. In the first limb of the study 10 patients with COPD (mean (SD) forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) 1.0 (0.36) 1, 35% predicted) performed three endurance shuttle walk tests (ESWTs) and three treadmill endurance tests. The walking speeds were calculated to elicit 75%, 85%, and 95% of each patient's maximum ISWT performance for the field tests and measured peak oxygen consumption for the treadmill tests. In a separate group of patients the repeatability of the ESWT at an intensity of 85% of the ISWT performance was evaluated. Finally, the ESWT (at the 85% intensity) and the ISWT were performed at the start of a five week control period and at the start and end of a seven week pulmonary rehabilitation programme in 21 patients with COPD (mean FEV1 0.80 (0.18) 1). RESULTS The mean (SE) times achieved during the ESWT were 13.1 (2.3), 10.2 (2.5), and 5.3 (1.7) min for the walks at 75%, 85%, and 95% intensities, respectively. Patients tended to walk for longer on the treadmill than during the field tests at all intensities, but there were no significant differences between the end of test heart rates or Borg ratings of breathlessness or perceived exertion. Following one practice ESWT at the 85% intensity, the mean difference and limits of agreement (2SD) between tests 2 and 3 was +15 (42) s (p > 0.05). There was no significant change in performance on either test following the five week control period prior to rehabilitation. Following rehabilitation the ESWT duration increased by 160 (24)% and the ISWT distance increased by 32 (11)% (effect sizes 2.90 and 0.41, respectively). CONCLUSIONS The ESWT was simple to perform, acceptable to all patients, and exhibited good repeatability after one practice walk. The test showed major improvement following rehabilitation and was more sensitive to change than the field test of maximal capacity.
Who Is Eligible? Should Affirmative Action be Group- or Class-Based?

We explore the consequences for eligibility of members of subaltern groups for affirmative action (AA), when AA policies are based on social class criteria rather than on group affiliation (race, ethnicity, or gender), by means of a general model with simplifying assumptions. The model is developed first for the case where everyone eligible for AA becomes a beneficiary, and then for the case where beneficiaries are only those eligibles who are able to meet minimum qualification requirements for the positions at issue—an ability that is (reasonably) assumed to be correlated with socioeconomic status. The model demonstrates that class-based affirmative action cannot provide as many subaltern‐group beneficiaries as group‐based affirmative action, especially when access to the desired positions hinges on performance qualifications. Data on AA‐targeted subaltern groups in rural India and in the United States are used to illustrate the conclusions of the model.
An Activity Recognition Method by Measuring Circumference of Body Parts

This paper investigates an activity recognition method where the user wears stretch sensors made of conductive fabric on each part of the body. The system recognizes actions by measuring the circumference of body parts. The electrical resistivity of our stretch sensors changes in accordance with their expansion/shrinkage. The strengths of this approach are that the appearance of the user is not interfered with and that the sensor is less expensive than other sensors such as the myoelectric sensor. The results of evaluation confirmed that our method can recognize eight contexts by measuring the circumference of four body parts (abdominal region, waist, wrist, ankle) with 99.92% accuracy.
Mechanistic Differences in Actin Bundling Activity of Two Mammalian Formins, FRL1 and mDia2*

Formin proteins are regulators of actin dynamics, mediating assembly of unbranched actin filaments. These multidomain proteins are defined by the presence of a Formin Homology 2 (FH2) domain. Previous work has shown that FH2 domains bind to filament barbed ends and move processively at the barbed end as the filament elongates. Here we report that two FH2 domains, from mammalian FRL1 and mDia2, also bundle filaments, whereas the FH2 domain from mDia1 cannot under similar conditions. The FH2 domain alone is sufficient for bundling. Bundled filaments made by either FRL1 or mDia2 are in both parallel and anti-parallel orientations. A novel property that might contribute to bundling is the ability of the dimeric FH2 domains from both FRL1 and mDia2 to dissociate and recombine. This property is not observed for mDia1. A difference between FRL1 and mDia2 is that FRL1-mediated bundling is competitive with barbed end binding, whereas mDia2-mediated bundling is not. Mutation of a highly conserved isoleucine residue in the FH2 domain does not inhibit bundling by either FRL1 or mDia2, but inhibits barbed end activities. However, the severity of this mutation varies between formins. For mDia1 and mDia2, the mutation strongly inhibits all effects of barbed end binding, but affects FRL1 much less strongly. Furthermore, our results suggest that the Ile mutation affects processivity. Taken together, our data suggest that the bundling activities of FRL1 and mDia2, while producing phenotypically similar bundles, differ in mechanistic detail.
Distributed receding horizon control of spatially invariant systems

We present a rigorous framework for the study of distributed spatially invariant systems with input and state constraints. The proposed approach is based on blending tools from operator theory and Fourier analysis of spatially invariant systems with receding horizon control and multi parametric quadratic programming (MPQP). Our contributions are twofold: on one hand, we extend the recent results of Bamieh et al. on infinite-horizon optimal control of spatially invariant systems to finite receding horizon control with input and state constraints. On the other hand, our results can be interpreted as an extension of the finite dimensional MPQP-based analysis of receding horizon control to distributed, spatially invariant systems. It is assumed that the dynamics of each subsystem is uncoupled to the others, but the coupling appears through the finite horizon cost function. Specifically, we prove that for spatially invariant systems with constraints, optimal receding horizon controllers are piecewise affine (represented as a convolution sum plus an offset). Moreover, the kernel of each convolution sum decays exponentially in the spatial domain mirroring the unconstrained infinite-horizon case. Simulation results are provided for a simple example with 5 identical systems coupled in a loop
Surveillance for recurrent bladder cancer using a point-of-care proteomic assay.

CONTEXT At least 50% of patients with a history of bladder cancer have recurrences, so rigorous surveillance is necessary. Cystoscopy is standard but can fail to detect some bladder cancers, so a urine test is frequently part of the evaluation. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether a point-of-care proteomic test that measures the nuclear matrix protein NMP22 in voided urine could improve detection of recurrence during monitoring of patients with a history of bladder cancer. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS From September 2001 to February 2002, 23 academic, private practice, and hospital facilities in 9 US states prospectively enrolled 668 consecutive patients with a history of bladder cancer in this cross-sectional study. Patients provided a voided urine sample for analysis of NMP22 protein and cytology prior to cystoscopy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Diagnosis of bladder cancer recurrence, based on cystoscopy with biopsy, was accepted as the reference standard. The performance of the NMP22 test was compared with voided urine cytology as an aid to detection. Testing for the NMP22 tumor marker was conducted in a blinded manner. RESULTS Bladder cancer was diagnosed in 103 patients. Cystoscopy alone identified 91.3% of the cancers (94/103; 95% confidence interval [CI], 84.1%-95.9%). The combination of cystoscopy with the NMP22 assay detected 99.0% of the malignancies (102/103; 95% CI, 94.7%-100%; P = .005). The NMP22 assay detected 8 of 9 cancers that were not visualized during initial cystoscopy, including 7 that were high-grade. The sensitivity and specificity of the NMP22 test alone were 49.5% (51/103; 95% CI, 39.5%-59.5%) and 87.3% (493/565; 95% CI, 84.2%-89.9%), respectively. Voided cytology detected only 3 of the malignancies missed during initial cystoscopy and did not significantly increase the sensitivity of cystoscopy (94.2%; 95% CI, 87.7%-97.8%; P = .08). CONCLUSION The noninvasive point-of-care assay for elevated urinary NMP22 protein can increase the ability to detect recurrent bladder cancer, with test results available during the patient visit.
The Snf1-related protein kinases SnRK2.4 and SnRK2.10 are involved in maintenance of root system architecture during salt stress

The sucrose non-fermenting-1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2) family represents a unique family of plant-specific protein kinases implicated in cellular signalling in response to osmotic stress. In our studies, we observed that two class 1 SnRK2 kinases, SnRK2.4 and SnRK2.10, are rapidly and transiently activated in Arabidopsis roots after exposure to salt. Under saline conditions, snrk2.4 knockout mutants had a reduced primary root length, while snrk2.10 mutants exhibited a reduction in the number of lateral roots. The reduced lateral root density was found to be a combinatory effect of a decrease in the number of lateral root primordia and an increase in the number of arrested lateral root primordia. The phenotypes were in agreement with the observed expression patterns of genomic yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) fusions of SnRK2.10 and -2.4, under control of their native promoter sequences. SnRK2.10 was found to be expressed in the vascular tissue at the base of a developing lateral root, whereas SnRK2.4 was expressed throughout the root, with higher expression in the vascular system. Salt stress triggered a rapid re-localization of SnRK2.4–YFP from the cytosol to punctate structures in root epidermal cells. Differential centrifugation experiments of isolated Arabidopsis root proteins confirmed recruitment of endogenous SnRK2.4/2.10 to membranes upon exposure to salt, supporting their observed binding affinity for the phospholipid phosphatidic acid. Together, our results reveal a role for SnRK2.4 and -2.10 in root growth and architecture in saline conditions.
Pharmacological therapy in progressive supranuclear palsy.

BACKGROUND To our knowledge, previous reports on drug treatment in progressive supranuclear palsy have not evaluated autopsy-confirmed cases. OBJECTIVE To evaluate pharmacological treatment responses from detailed clinical records in patients with autopsy-confirmed progressive supranuclear palsy. SUBJECTS AND METHODS We reviewed medical records for clinical presentation and pharmacological response in 12 patients with autopsy-confirmed progressive supranuclear palsy diagnosed using the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke pathologic criteria. For each drug class, exposure, global positive response, and specific positive response (parkinsonism, other movement disorders, or gaze dysfunction) were recorded. RESULTS Drug classes examined were dopaminergics (all patients), tricyclics (3 patients), methysergide maleate (3 patients), 5-hydroxytryptophan (2 patients), and anticholinergics and selective serotonin inhibitors (1 patient). Positive clinical response was detected in 7 of the patients receiving dopaminergic drugs and in 1 patient each receiving tricyclics, methysergide, and 5-hydroxytryptophan, respectively. None of the patients responded markedly however, and there was no persistent beneficial effect. Use of dopaminergic drugs most frequently improved parkinsonian features, but disabling adverse effects included orthostatic hypotension (6 patients), hallucinations and delusions (3 patients), gastrointestinal complaints (3 patients), and dizziness (1 patient). Only 1 patient developed dyskinesia. CONCLUSION Use of antiparkinsonian medications and other neurotransmitter replacement therapies was largely ineffective and caused frequent adverse effects in this series of patients with autopsy-confirmed with progressive supranuclear palsy.
Quantification of morphologic and hemodynamic severity of coarctation of the aorta by magnetic resonance imaging

Objective: As the morpholgic severity of coarctation of the aorta is difficult to assess, especially after previous repair, the value of the technique of multiplanar reconstruction of magnetic resonance imaging data to achieve a 3-dimensional reconstruction of the aortic arch was evaluated and compared to hemodynamic measurements. Methods and Results: We performed 30 examinations in 27 patients aged from 6 to 54 years, with a mean of 21 years, by magnetic resonance imaging using a 1.5 Tesla scanner with a standard body coil. Measurements of flow across the coarctation were performed using phase! shift velocity mapping, and peak velocity was calculated at the site of stenosis. Aortic cross-sectional area before, at, and beyond the stenosis was reconstructed 3-dimensionally to calculate a percentage degree of stenosis. Morphologic severity of stenosis was correlated to invasively assessed hemodynamic gradients and morphologic data from biplane angiography in 23 patients. Among the 30 examinations, 24 patients had been previously treated by either surgery, in 17 patients, or balloon dilation, while 6 had native coarctation. 3-dimensional reconstruction was possible in all and better delineated the anatomy concerning the hemodynamic relevance of stenoses even as compared with biplane angiography. The correlation between severity of narrowing assessed by diameter measurements in the biplane angiography and 2-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging was r = 0.94, and multiplanar reformation with 2-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging was r = 0.87 with a tendency of higher grading with the 3-dimensional technique (p = 0.0001). The correlation of 2-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging with invasively measured hemodynamic gradients was r = 0.67 versus r = 0.74 for the areas assessed by multiplanar reformation, indicating that the hemodynamic relevance of a morphological approach to evaluate the degree of a stenosis should better be assessed 3-dimensionally. Conclusions: The 3-dimensional reconstruction of the morphologic severity of coarctation offers additonal information over conventional imaging especially in patients with kinking, complex geometry, or collaterals,in whom hemodynamic measurements can become unreliable.
The Obsessive Discoverer's Complex and the "Discovery" of Growth in Sociological Theory

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Analysis of the Transient Response of High Performance 50-nm Partially Depleted SOI Transistors Using a Laser Probing Technique

A new experimental technique is used to analyze the transient response of partially depleted SOI devices to pulsed laser irradiation. This new technique allows calibration of the deposited charge in the sensitive volume (i.e., the body region of the measured SOI transistors) and then the quantitative analysis of the device transient response. In particular 50-nm gate length SOI transistors have been tested with the pulsed laser, and their response is compared to 0.25-mum partially depleted SOI transistors. The transient current and the collected charge are investigated as a function of the supply voltage for both types of SOI devices. The technology optimization for low leakage or high performance applications is shown to have large effects on the SOI device sensitivity
Forward-Backward Convolutional LSTM for Acoustic Modeling

An automatic speech recognition (ASR) performance has greatly improved with the introduction of convolutional neural network (CNN) or long-short term memory (LSTM) for acoustic modeling. Recently, a convolutional LSTM (CLSTM) has been proposed to directly use convolution operation within the LSTM blocks and combine the advantages of both CNN and LSTM structures into a single architecture. This paper presents the first attempt to use CLSTMs for acoustic modeling. In addition, we propose a new forwardbackward architecture to exploit long-term left/right context efficiently. The proposed scheme combines forward and backward LSTMs at different time points of an utterance with the aim of modeling long term frame invariant information such as speaker characteristics, channel etc. Furthermore, the proposed forward-backward architecture can be trained with truncated back-propagation-through-time unlike conventional bidirectional LSTM (BLSTM) architectures. Therefore, we are able to train deeply stacked CLSTM acoustic models, which is practically challenging with conventional BLSTMs. Experimental results show that both CLSTM and forward-backward LSTM improve word error rates significantly compared to standard CNN and LSTM architectures.
Transparency in Reporting on Charities’ Efficiency

In recent difficult economic times, the efficiency with which a charity spends the funds entrusted to it has become an increasingly important aspect of charitable performance. Transparency on efficiency, including the reporting of relevant measures and information to understand, contextualize, and evaluate such measures, is suggested as important to a range of stakeholders. However, using a novel framework for the analysis of efficiency reporting in the context of transparency and stakeholder theory, this research provides evidence that reporting on efficiency in U.K. charities lacks transparency, both in terms of the extent and manner of disclosure. It is argued that efficiency reporting in U.K. charities is more concerned with legitimizing these organizations rather than providing ethically driven accounts of their efficiency.
Video-on-Demand Equipment Allocation

Video-on-demand (VoD) service providers are intensely interested in transport, storage, streaming and caching in content delivery networks. Today's 5,000-hour library may grow toward the 750,000-hour "long tail" movie and TV-series catalog. We propose a method to calculate how much of a library should be cached. Much previous work focused on theoretical caching concepts, or the dynamics of cache filling and reclamation. Our method explicitly considers the impact of the available video server equipment; we present a VoD design tool comprising a novel cost function, hit ratio estimation and heuristic
Risk perception in musical settings—a qualitative study

This qualitative study was undertaken in order to investigate young people's perspectives on risk-taking and music experiences in musical settings. The study sample included nine women and seven men of whom eight were musicians and eight were not. Open-ended interviews were performed and analysed by the guidance of Grounded Theory. “Music as a mean in creating identity” was seen as the core category, essential for the understanding of risk-taking behaviour in musical settings. Three higher-order categories, meaningfully related to the core category, emerged in the interviews and they were labelled “self-image”, “risk consideration” and “norms and ideals”. The individual's self-identification as being vulnerable to negative consequences of a particular type of risk behaviour seems to be a central aspect in transforming health-risk behaviour into a health-preventive behaviour. The higher-order category “risk consideration” was built up by concepts as “risk awareness” and “meaning of risk-taking”. Finally, “norms and ideals” consisted of two categories: “acting in accordance with social norms”, and “acting in accordance with normative ideals”. If people believe that exposure to loud music without wearing hearing protection is an acceptable norm, regardless of the accuracy of this perception, they are more likely to become involved in risk-taking behaviour regarding their hearing. We believe that risk consideration, social norms and ideals are meaningful concepts for the understanding of risk-taking behaviour in young people.