Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Concurrency Control in CAD With KBMS Using Counter Propagation Neural Network

Concurrency control plays important role in advanced database management system (ADMS) especially in computer aided design (CAD) with knowledge database management system (KBMS). ADMS related databases involve longer transaction time and unsure when the transaction is committed. In such situations, how the data edited by more than one user is preserved. It is by using version control or using locking methods or both. Longer transactions can be better controlled by intelligent method. In this work, CPN has been implemented for transaction control of CAD database.
Motivationspåverkan av rörliga effekter och animationer som visuell belöning i en spelifierad applikation som studiehjälpmedel

Games and entertainment is an area that is growing and developing. Clearly, games are successful, and this has inadvertedly led to breaking down games into its core components. Game developers and researchers are examining parts and elements of games and applying the addictive elements on tasks that are not related to games. This is called gamification, and its purpose is to motivate users for the task at hand.From the modern game Candy Crush an element from this area has attracted attention, which is the visual motion effects and animations. The purpose of this study is to examine the motivational influence of visual motion effects and animations. This is accomplished by selecting as participants college students who are actively studying, and letting these students use a gamified application for the purpose of increasing their motivation. To examine this we have produced a program with a study-theme, whose users are exposed to motion effects and animations, and in which their self-estimated motivation are recorded. Beyond this type of data, more qualitative answers were recorded from surveys to reach a higher degree of validity of the results.The results reveal that there is an overall trend for motivational increase in using a gamified application within studies. The users become more motivated when they see the program as a tool, and can therefore streamline their learning techniques. The program that was used contained two distinct parts that are worth separating; gamification elements and motion effects and animations as a form of reward. From the results, it was concluded that the gamification elements affected the users motivation considerably more than the motion effects did.
Differences in Stroke Subtypes Between Black and White Patients With Stroke: The South London Ethnicity and Stroke Study

Background— Determining whether the distribution of stroke subtypes differs between ethnic groups is important in understanding the mechanisms of the increased stroke incidence in black patients. Methods and Results— In this study, 600 black and 600 white patients with stroke were prospectively and consecutively recruited to determine differences in stroke subtypes. The pathophysiological Trial of Org 10172 (TOAST) classification was used and compared with a clinical (Oxfordshire Community Stroke Project) subtype classification. Stroke subtypes were determined by one investigator by review of original imaging. Black patients with stroke were significantly younger and had higher prevalences of hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. They were less likely to be smokers and had lower prevalences of myocardial infarction and atrial fibrillation. In the black patients, 33% of stroke was due to cerebral small vessel disease compared with 14% in the white stroke cohort (odds ratio, 2.94; 95% confidence interval, 1.97 to 4.39; P<0.001, controlling for age, gender, cardiovascular risk factors, and social class). The black stroke cohort had less large vessel atherosclerosis (odds ratio, 0.49; 95% confidence interval, 0.29 to 0.82; P=0.007) and cardioembolic disease (odds ratio, 0.54; 95% confidence interval, 0.37 to 0.80; P=0.002). Using a classification based on clinical syndrome alone gave a higher estimate of the frequency of small vessel disease stroke, particularly in white patients. Conclusions— A relative excess of small vessel disease was observed in black patients with stroke compared with an excess of extracranial atherosclerosis and cardioembolic stroke in white patients with stroke that was independent of conventional risk factors and social class. Whether these excesses are due to differences in genetic susceptibility or as-yet undetermined differences in environmental risk remains to be determined.
Uplink interference analysis for two-tier cellular networks with diverse users under random spatial patterns

Multi-tier architecture improves the spatial reuse of radio spectrum in cellular networks, and user classification allows consideration for diverse user service requirements. But they introduce complicated heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of transmitters, which brings to new challenges in interference analysis. In this work, we present a stochastic geometric model to evaluate the uplink interference in a two-tier network considering multi-type tier-1 users, tier-2 cells and tier-2 users. Each type of tier-1 users and tier-2 base stations are modeled as independent homogeneous Poisson point process, and each type of tier-2 users are modeled as local non-homogeneous Poisson point process centered at tier-2 base stations. By applying a superpositionaggregation-superposition (SAS) approach, we numerically characterize the interference at of both tiers. Finally, simulation results validate our model and illustrate that our model offers substantial improvement in accuracy compared with the best known approximation model.
Embedding ECG and patient information in medical image

For the transmission, storage or telemedicine applications patient information is embedded inside the medical images. The purpose of data hiding in medical image is to embed the patient information in the host medical image without perceptually distorting it. This paper proposes a novel approach in embedding Patient information and Electrocardiogram (Patient Data) which is encrypted to ensure greater security in spatial domain. Statistical parameters such as Normalized Root Mean Square Error and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio are used to measure the quality of the medical image with patient data. Experimental results strongly indicate that the present technique is found to be robust and embedded patient data is recoverable without any distortion even in the case of attack like Gaussian noise.
Soluble Adhesion Molecules in Preclinical Type 1 Diabetes

We measured the concentrations of the soluble forms of the intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) and l-selectin in 95 autoantibody-positive siblings of children with type 1 diabetes and 95 sex- and age-matched siblings testing negative for diabetes-associated autoantibodies to assess the possible role of soluble adhesion molecules as markers of progressive β-cell destruction in preclinical diabetes and their ability to discriminate between those siblings who progress to clinical disease and those who remain nondiabetic. We observed an inverse correlation between age and the levels of both sICAM-1 (r = −0.31, p < 0.001) and sl-selectin (r = −0.27, p < 0.001) in the control siblings but no association with HLA-DR phenotypes. There was no difference in the circulating levels of soluble adhesion molecules between the antibody-positive and negative siblings. Among the antibody-positive siblings, those with at least three autoantibodies had higher sICAM-1 levels (p < 0.01) than those testing positive for only one, and siblings with three autoantibodies or more had higher concentrations of sl-selectin (p < 0.01) than those with two autoantibodies. Siblings with an islet cell antibody level of 20 Juvenile Diabetes Foundation units or more had higher sICAM-1 concentrations than those with a level below 20 (p < 0.001), and those testing positive for antibodies to the protein tyrosine phosphatase-related IA-2 antigen had increased levels of both sICAM-1 (p = 0.03) and sl-selectin (p = 0.02) compared with siblings who tested negative. The antibody-positive siblings who progressed to clinical type 1 diabetes were significantly younger than the nonprogressors (p < 0.001) and had higher levels of sICAM-1 initially (p < 0.001). The difference in sICAM-1 concentrations remained significant (p = 0.03) after age adjustment. Our results indicate that concentrations of soluble adhesion molecules are increased in the autoantibody-positive siblings who have the highest risk of developing clinical diabetes, suggesting that β-cell destruction is reflected in increased circulating levels of these molecules. This is supported by the observation of elevated sICAM-1 concentrations in the 29 siblings who actually progressed to clinical type 1 diabetes. Peripheral levels of soluble adhesion molecules are not able to discriminate between progressors and nonprogressors, however, due to substantial overlapping between these two groups.
Statistically rigorous automated protein annotation

MOTIVATION Assignment of putative protein functional annotation by comparative analysis using pre-defined experimental annotations is performed routinely by molecular biologists. The number and statistical significance of these assignments remains a challenge in this era of high-throughput proteomics. A combined statistical method that enables robust, automated protein annotation by reliably expanding existing annotation sets is described. An existing clustering scheme, based on relevant experimental information (e.g. sequence identity, keywords or gene expression data) is required. The method assigns new proteins to these clusters with a measure of reliability. It can also provide human reviewers with a reliability score for both new and previously classified proteins. RESULTS A dataset of 27 000 annotated Protein Data Bank (PDB) polypeptide chains (of 36 000 chains currently in the PDB) was generated from 23 000 chains classified a priori. AVAILABILITY PDB annotations and sample software implementation are freely accessible on the Web at http://pmr.sdsc. edu/go
Seismic Acoustic Ratio Estimates Using a Moving Vehicle Source

Abstract : Seismic and acoustic noise from moving tracked vehicles was used to determine the seismic to acoustic signal coupling ratio (SAR) in the ground. The seismic signal received on a geophone contains some energy that has propagated as seismic waves and some energy that couples from acoustic waves to seismic waves in the vicinity of the geophone. We use the frequency domain coherence between the microphone and geophone signals to determine when the seismic signal is predominantly due to acoustic to seismic wave coupling. In frequency bands where the microphone and geophone coherence is above 0.8 the ratio of the seismic ground particle velocity to sound pressure, SAR, can be determined with less than 2 dB of error. The method is applied to data from a summer experiment with grass ground cover and at two winter experiments with snow covered ground. At 100 Hz, the summer analysis yields a SAR of 1x10 -5 (M/S)/Pa. Also at 100 Hz, the two winter analyses yield SAR values of 0.1 and 1.0x10 -5 (M/S)/Pa. In the later result the SAR using blank pistol shots gives very close values. These results can be used to remove acoustic contamination from seismic signals. We also show a loose correlation between the SAR values and the shear strength of the ground.
Effects of the 11-year solar cycle on middle atmospheric stationary wave patterns in temperature, ozone and water vapor

[1] The influence of the 11 year cycle in solar irradiation on middle atmospheric stationary wave patterns in temperature, ozone, and water vapor, as indicated by the deviations from zonal mean T*, O3*, and H2O*, is investigated on the basis of time-slice simulations with the general circulation and chemistry model HAMMONIA for solar maximum and minimum conditions. For northern winter, the long-term means of the three parameters are characterized by a pronounced wave-one pattern in the middle atmosphere, but for each of the parameters with a different shift in phase with increasing height. We find a significant increase in amplitude and a horizontal shift in phase of these wave-one patterns when changing from solar minimum to maximum, i.e., regional changes of about ±2–3 K in T*, ±4%–5% in O3*, and ±2%–3% in H2O*. We demonstrate that the solar variability induces these changes by modulating the effect of zonally asymmetric radiative heating due to the stationary wave-one patterns in ozone and other absorbers and to subsequent modulations in planetary wave propagation and wave-driven transport. A comparison with ensemble means for solar maximum and minimum derived from European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis data (ERA-40) shows reasonable agreement but also some differences in the significance and location of the solar signals, which is discussed in relation to the different setups of the two data sets. Overall, the results indicate a remarkable effect of the solar cycle on local changes in temperature, wave dynamics, and transport at northern midlatitudes and polar latitudes.
Electronic Cigarettes and Vaping: A New Challenge in Clinical Medicine and Public Health. A Literature Review

Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) use, or vaping, in the United States and worldwide is increasing. Their use is highly controversial from scientific, political, financial, psychological, and sociological ideologies. Given the controversial nature of e-cigarettes and vaping, how should medical care providers advise their patients? To effectively face this new challenge, health care professionals need to become more familiar with the existing literature concerning e-cigarettes and vaping, especially the scientific literature. Thus, the aim of this article is to present a review of the scientific evidence-based primary literature concerning electronic cigarettes and vaping. A search of the most current literature using the pubmed database dating back to 2008, and using electronic cigarette(s) or e-cigarette(s) as key words, yielded a total of 66 highly relevant articles. These articles primarily deal with (1) consumer-based surveys regarding personal views on vaping, (2) chemical analysis of e-cigarette cartridges, solutions, and mist, (3) nicotine content, delivery, and pharmacokinetics, and (4) clinical and physiological studies investigating the effects of acute vaping. When compared to the effects of smoking, the scant available literature suggests that vaping could be a “harm reduction” alternative to smoking and a possible means for smoking cessation, at least to the same degree as other Food and Drug Administration-approved nicotine replacement therapies. However, it is unclear if vaping e-cigarettes will reduce or increase nicotine addiction. It is obvious that more rigorous investigations of the acute and long-term health effects of vaping are required to establish the safety and efficacy of these devices; especially parallel experiments comparing the cardiopulmonary effects of vaping to smoking. Only then will the medical community be able to adequately meet the new challenge e-cigarettes and vaping present to clinical medicine and public health.
Data-driven clustering for blind feature mapping in speaker verification

Handset and channel mismatch degrades the performance of automatic speaker recognition systems significantly. This paper enhances the feature mapping technique by proposing an iterative clustering approach to context model generation which offers an improvement in the performance of feature mapping trained on labelled data and offers the potential to train feature mapping in the absence of correctly labelled background data. The performance of the clustered feature mapping models is demonstrated on an expanded version of the NIST 2003 Extended Data Task (EDT) protocol.
Glutathione Transferase P1 Interacts Strongly with the Inner Leaflet of the Plasma Membrane

GSH transferases (GSTs) are a superfamily of proteins best known for detoxifying harmful electrophilic compounds by catalyzing their conjugation with GSH. GSTP1 is the most prevalent and widely distributed GST in human tissues, helping to detoxify a diverse array of carcinogens and drugs. In contrast with its protective role, overexpression of GSTP1 in a variety of malignancies is associated with a poor prognosis due to failure of chemotherapy. Although GSTP1 is classified as a cytosolic GST, we discovered previously that it is associated with the plasma membrane of the small cell lung cancer cell lines, H69 and H69AR. In the current study, endogenous and overexpressed GSTP1 in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 and MCF-7 cell lines, respectively, were found also to associate with the plasma membrane, indicating that this interaction is not unique to H69 and H69AR cells. GSTP1 immunostaining in HEK293 and MCF7-GSTP1 cells only occurred under permeabilized conditions, suggesting that GSTP1 is associated with the intracellular surface of the plasma membrane. Cell surface biotinylation studies confirmed this finding. Immunogold electron microscopy revealed the presence of GSTP1 in close proximity to the plasma membrane. GSTP1 was not dissociated from plasma membrane sheets by high salt [potassium iodide (KI; 1 M) or KI/EDTA (1 M/2 mM)] or alkaline Na2CO3 (100 mM, pH 11.4), conditions known to strip peripherally associated membrane proteins. Thus, we report for the first time that GSTP1 is associated with the inner leaflet of the plasma membrane through a remarkably strong interaction.
The Association between Parent Communication and College Freshmen's Alcohol Use

Using a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 265 first-year college students to determine if parent-student alcohol communication is associated with college drinking or drinking consequences and if this relationship is mediated by students' parental subjective norms, attitudes toward drinking, and perceived risk. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. Students whose parents talked with them more about the negative effects of alcohol reported more extensive college drinking (ß = 0.12, p < 0.05). Favorable alcohol attitudes were significantly related to both more extensive college drinking (ß = 0.49, p < 0.05) and more drinking consequences (ß = 0.39, p < 0.05). Lower reported perceived risk was significantly related to more drinking consequences (ß = −0.24, p < 0.05). Findings indicate that parental communication regarding the negative effects of alcohol may be ineffective at reducing college drinking or drinking consequences.
Repeated low dose allergen exposure: a new investigational model of asthma as a persistent disease?

Asthma is a persistent disease, characterized by episodic chest symptoms and variable airways obstruction [1]. Its pathogenesis is determined both by genetic factors [2, 3] and by environmental exposures among which allergens [4, 5] and respiratory virus infections [6, 7] seem to predominate. The pathology of asthma is characterized by features of acute and chronic airways inflammation, such as epithelial desquamation, leucocyte infiltration, mucosal and adventitial swelling, smooth muscle hyperplasia or hypertrophy, and subepithelial collagen deposition [8]. There is increasing evidence that the eosinophilic infiltrate [9] and the expression of the cytokines interleukin (IL)-4 and IL-5 [10] within bronchial biopsy specimens are associated with the clinical characteristics of asthma.
A unified approach to optimization of LDPC codes for various communication scenarios

A unified approach to construct and optimize codes determined by their sparse parity-check matrices is presented. Parity-check matrices of quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC block codes are obtained by replacing the nonzero elements of a base (seed) matrix by circulants. Replacing the nonzero elements either by companion matrices of elements from a finite field GF(2m) or by a formal variable D gives parity-check matrices of binary images of nonbinary LDPC block codes and LDPC convolutional codes, respectively. A set of performance measures applicable to different classes of LDPC codes are considered and a greedy algorithm for code performance optimization is presented. For a few classes of LDPC codes examples of codes combining good error-correcting performance with compact representation are obtained. Moreover, a specific channel model can easily be embedded into the optimization loop. Thereby, the code can be optimized for a specific channel. The efficiency of such an optimization is demonstrated via an example of Faster Than Nyquist (FTN) signaling using LDPC codes.
Price Competition for an Informed Buyer

We investigate the outcomes of simultaneous price competition in the presence of private information on the demand side. Each of two sellers offers a different variety of a good to a buyer endowed with a private binary signal on their relative quality. We analyze how the unique equilibrium of the game changes as a function of the (common) prior belief on the relative quality of the goods and the precision of the private information of the buyer. Competition is fierce, and the buyer enjoys high rents, when the prior belief is biased in favor of one good and private signals are not very informative: the ex ante superior seller cannot resist the temptation to clear the market, and triggers an aggressive response by the competitor. When instead the distribution of ex post valuations is highly spread, due to a vague prior belief and strong signals, the sellers become local monopolists and extract high rents from the buyer. We provide a full characterization of the mixed-strategy equilibrium which arises when the two goods are mildly differentiated ex post. Overall, the market-clearing temptation effect destroys the monotonicity and convexity of the equilibrium profit of a seller in the prior belief. As a consequence, a competing seller does not necessarily benefit from revelation of public information, sometimes even if biased in its favor. This paper analyzes the behavior of posterior distributions under the Jeffreys prior in a simultaneous equations model. The case under study is that of a general limited information setup with n + 1 endogenous variables. The Jeffreys prior is shown to give rise to a marginal posterior density which has Cauchy-like tails similar to that exhibited by the exact finite sample distribution of the corresponding LIML estimator. A stronger correspondence is established in the special case of a just-identified orthonormal canonical model, where the posterior density under the Jeffreys prior is shown to have the same functional form as the density of the finite sample distribution of the LIML estimator. The work here generalizes that of Chao and Phillips (1997), which gives analogous results for the special case of two endogenous variables.
Wetland selection, niche breadth and overlap in 10 duck species wintering in northern Campania (Italy)

Analysis of the selection index, the niche breadth and the niche overlap of 10 species of wintering ducks in 11 wetland areas of the Campania region between January 2003 and 2015 revealed that the distribution of the species in the examined sites was not casual. In fact, each species actively chose their wintering area. Using selection index, we were able to measure the species’ preferences and non-preferences for the 11 examined sites. By calculating Shannon-Wiener entropy and its normalized value (Evenness), we determined niche breadth; the Morisita index allowed us to check niche overlap.