Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ultrasound perfusion analysis combining bolus-tracking and burst-replenishment

A new signal model and processing method for quantitative ultrasound perfusion analysis is presented, called bolus-and-burst. The method has the potential to provide absolute values of blood flow, blood volume, and mean transit time. Furthermore, it provides an estimate of the local arterial input function which characterizes the arterial tree, allowing accurate estimation of the bolus arrival time. The method combines two approaches to ultrasound perfusion analysis: bolus-tracking and burst-replenishment. A pharmacokinetic model based on the concept of arterial input functions and tissue residue functions is used to model both the bolus and replenishment parts of the recording. The pharmacokinetic model is fitted to the data using blind deconvolution. A preliminary assessment of the new perfusion-analysis method is presented on clinical recordings.
Test of an Additive Model of Social Inference

Knowing a person's attitude toward Negroes and Jews, one could form an inference of the person's general attitude toward minorities. Gollob, Rossman, and Abelson (1973) theorized that social inferences of this sort obey an additive model in which the resultant inference of one's attitude toward a group is assumed to be the sum of the values of instances of the attitudes or behaviors toward subgroups. For example, if a man despises Jews and feels superior to Negroes, the additive model predicts that the inferred general
On the complexity of integer multiplication in branching programs with multiple tests and in read-once branching programs with limited nondeterminism

Branching programs (BPs) are a well-established computation and representation model for Boolean functions. Although exponential lower bounds for restricted BPs such as read-once branching programs (BP1s) have been known for a long time, the proof of lower bounds for important selected functions is sometimes difficult. Especially the complexity of fundamental functions such as integer multiplication in different BP models is interesting. In (Bolling and Woelfel, 2001), the first strongly exponential lower bound of /spl Omega/(2/sup n/4/) has been proven for the complexity of integer multiplication in the deterministic BP1 model. Here, we consider two well-studied BP models which generalize BP1s by allowing a limited amount of nondeterminism and multiple variable tests, respectively. More precisely, we prove a lower bound of /spl Omega/(2/sup n/(7k)/) for the complexity of integer multiplication in the (V, k)-BP model. As a corollary, we obtain that integer multiplication cannot be represented in polynomial size by nondeterministic BP1s, if the number of nondeterministic nodes is bounded by log n - log log n - /spl omega/ (1). Furthermore, we show that any (1, +k)-BP representing integer multiplication has a size of /spl Omega/(2[n/48(k+1)]). This is not polynomial for k = o(n/log n).
Euler's Totient based Group Formation Scheme in VANET

Vehicular ad-hoc network is an emerging technology that facilitates vehicles within the network range to communicate with one another or with the roadside infrastructure, sharing useful information. It is indispensable to ensure reliable and secure implementation of VANET. Authentication is one of the salient aspects of security, which ensures that the communicating entities are the ones that they claim to be. This paper proposes a scheme for cluster formation in VANET, to perform group authentication. A group based authentication provides anonymity and conditional privacy to the vehicles. The cluster heads are computed by determining the generators of the group using cyclic group concept under additive property. Group generators are the ones that can generate all the elements in the group. Once, the cluster heads are selected, vehicles forming part of the cluster will be determined based on Euler’s totient function. General Terms Cluster formation using cyclic group function with respect to additive property
Aging, Disability, and Informal Caregivers: A Cross-sectional Study in Portugal

Objectives Aging is pushing states to rethink long-term care policies in several dimensions. This study aims to characterize the reality of dependent older people regarding their demographic and health characteristics, to describe their informal carers and understand the availability of informal care. Methods A cross-sectional study was developed in Portugal in 2013. Descriptive statistical analyses and binary logistic analysis were conducted. Results Results show that the informal long-term care sector is primarily aimed at older people with severe limitations in their activities of daily living and at the chronically ill, particularly older women. Additionally, 39.5% of dependent older persons do not have informal care and only receive informal aid in cases of extreme need. Discussion Results show a critical situation for both social groups (older persons and caregivers) and the prospect of an alarming situation in the near future (aging and reduced availability of informal caregivers) unless a new approach for long-term care is developed.
Near-Optimal Design of Scalable Energy Harvester for Underwater Pipeline Monitoring Applications With Consideration of Impact to Pipeline Performance

Underwater pipelines are often necessary to transport valuable resources between patches of land, and are expected to have increased utilization across the globe with the steep population increase on one hand, and unbalanced depletion of resources on the other. It is desirable to automate monitoring of various performance parameters associated with the pipelines through wireless sensor networks to ensure longevity of use and reduced running costs. However, such pipelines are not easily accessible, and are subject to harsh environments such as salt water and underwater currents. Therefore, an ideal node in this sort of network is embedded into the pipeline, and does not require batteries with regular replacement provisions. Using an energy harvester as the power source becomes a viable option. A method for near-optimal piezoelectric bimorph energy harvester module design is presented in this paper to enable a self-powered wireless sensor node for in-pipe monitoring using kinetic energy of water flow. A crude analytical model provides a starting point for the design, which is tuned through finite element modeling and simulation. Recently constructed Turkey-Cyprus water pipeline project is considered as a realistic application for determining boundary conditions. With an average water velocity of 1.4 m/s, the designed energy harvester is scalable to produce power between $820~\mu \text{W}$ (single) to 12.3 mW (15 in parallel) with a negligible impact of 1.5 mm additional head loss. The method developed to deliver a finely modeled, scalable harvester design with minimum quantified impact to pipe performance is first of its kind to our knowledge.
Developmental Influences on Geometric Illusion Susceptibility among Hong Kong Chinese Children

Hong Kong Chinese developmental results are presented to test cross-cultural developmental theories relating to changes in illusion susceptibility with age. The Muller-Lyer (M-L) and Sander-Parallelogram (S-P) illusion data confirm the expected decrease with age from 3-12 (Walter, 1942), and the later increase to age 21 due to exposure to a more sophisticated environment (Wapner and Werner, 1957). The data also supported Piaget and Morf's (1956) developmental hypotheses regarding contiguous and noncontiguous versions of the Horizontal-Vertical (H-V) illustions. The United States, Hong Kong, and Arunta cross-cultural comparisons also support the "carpentered world hypothesis," while H-V illusion susceptibility was also related to ecologically valid desert/urban differences in habits of perceptual inference. However, intersample differences in retinal pigmentation and the cross-sectional nature of the study may have influenced the results.
Dictionary based estimation of distribution algorithms

This paper proposes a new algorithm in the field of estimation of distribution algorithms. The proposed algorithm combines a data compression algorithm to extract a model into the dictionary. This dictionary is used as a part of the generator to generate the better next generation of population. The proposed method is tested and compared with two well-known genetic algorithms, QHFC and BOA Both algorithms can solve difficult problems and are claimed to scale well. Our algorithm compared well with them. We also report the behaviour of using dictionary as the model for EDAs.
On the Delay-Storage Trade-Off in Content Download from Coded Distributed Storage Systems

We study how coding in distributed storage reduces expected download time, in addition to providing reliability against disk failures. The expected download time is reduced because when a content file is encoded with redundancy and distributed across multiple disks, reading only a subset of the disks is sufficient for content reconstruction. For the same total storage used, coding exploits the diversity in storage better than simple replication, and hence gives faster download. We use a novel fork-join queueing framework to model multiple users requesting the content simultaneously, and derive bounds on the expected download time. Our system model and results are a novel generalization of the fork-join system that is studied in queueing theory literature. Our results demonstrate the fundamental trade-off between the expected download time and the amount of storage space. This trade-off can be used for design of the amount of redundancy required to meet the delay constraints on content delivery.
Robust and discriminative distance for Multi-Instance Learning

Multi-Instance Learning (MIL) is an emerging topic in machine learning, which has broad applications in computer vision. For example, by considering video classification as a MIL problem where we only need labeled video clips (such as tagged online videos) but not labeled video frames, one can lower down the labeling cost, which is typically very expensive. We propose a novel class specific distance Metrics enhanced Class-to-Bag distance (M-C2B) method to learn a robust and discriminative distance for multi-instance data, which employs the not-squared ℓ2-norm distance to address the most difficult challenge in MIL, i.e., the outlier instances that abound in multi-instance data by nature. As a result, the formulated objective ends up to be a simultaneous ℓ2, 1-norm minimization and maximization (minmax) problem, which is very hard to solve in general due to the non-smoothness of the ℓ2, 1-norm. We thus present an efficient iterative algorithm to solve the general ℓ2, 1-norm minmax problem with rigorously proved convergence. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to solve a general ℓ2, 1-norm minmax problem in literature. We have conducted extensive experiments to evaluate various aspects of the proposed method, in which promising results validate our new method in cost-effective video classification.
[Expression of MCP-1 in renal tissues of patients with IgA nephropathy].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the differential expression of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) in renal biopsy tissues of patients with IgA nephropathy, and to analyse the association between these 2 markers and their effect on various pathologic types of IgA nephropathy. METHODS According to pathologic type, 88 renal biopsy tissues of patients with IgA nephropathy were divided into 4 groups:a minimal change group,a mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis group, a focal sclerosing glomerulonephritis group, and a diffused sclerosing glomerulonephritis group. Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the in situ expression of MCP-1 and CD68 on renal biopsy tissues. The expression levels were semi-quantified by image analysis and clinical data were collected from the patients. RESULTS The differences in glomerular MCP-1 expressions were not statistically significant among all groups, while the tubulointerstitial MCP-1 expressions were statistically different among the 4 groups, with the average scores of 1.43+/-0.60, 5.98+/-0.92, 10.60+/-0.76 and 11.65+/-0.39 for minimal change group, mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis group, focal sclerotic glomerulonephritis, and diffused sclerotic glomerulonephritis group, respectively. The tubular and interstitial CD68 scores were 0.75+/-0.71, 5.87+/-0.96, 10.42+/-0.61, and 11.40+/-0.49 for the 4 groups, with significant differences in both MCP-1 and CD68 among the 4 groups. Correlation analysis indicated a positive correlation between tubulointerstitial MCP-1 and CD68 (r=0.688, P<0.01). MCP-1 in tubulointerstitial was significantly correlated with 24 h urinary protein excretion(r=0.531, P<0.01). CONCLUSION MCP-1 plays a critical role in macrophage infiltration in the kidney. MCP-1 is associated with the severity of tubulointerstitial damage and clinical prognosis.
Eurographics/ Ieee-vgtc Symposium on Visualization (2007) Grouse: Feature-based, Steerable Graph Hierarchy Exploration

Grouse is a feature-based approach to steerable exploration of a graph and an associated hierarchy. Steerability allows exploration to begin immediately, rather than requiring a costly layout of the entire graph as an initial step. In a feature-based approach, the subgraph inside a metanode of the graph hierarchy is laid out with a well-chosen algorithm appropriate for its topological structure. Grouse preserves the input hierarchy, which provides meaningful information to the user when its metanodes correspond to features of interest. When a metanode in the hierarchy is opened, a limited number of metanodes are laid out again along the path between the opened node and the root. We demonstrate the effectiveness of Grouse on datasets from IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, where nodes are actors and cliques represent movies. The combination of feature-based layout and limited relayout computation does not fragment features in the hierarchy and improves the number of levels in the hierarchy that can be seen at once over previous approaches.
Studies related to the metabolism of anabolic steroids in the horse: the identification of some 16-oxygenated metabolites of testosterone and a study of the phase II metabolism.

1. Isomers of 3,17-dihydroxyandrostan-16-one, 3,16-dihydroxyandrostan-17-one and androstane-3,16,17-triol have been identified as urinary metabolites of testosterone in the horse. 2. Following XAD-2 extraction of urine samples, Sephadex LH-20 chromatography was used to separate the extract into conjugate groups. Metabolites obtained after hydrolysis of the conjugates have been investigated by g.l. c. -mass spectrometry. 3. Testosterone, 3,17-dihydroxyandrostan-16-one and 3,16-dihydroxyandrostan-17-one were found only in the sulphate fraction. 5 alpha-Androstane-3 beta,17 beta-diol, and two isomeric androstane triols were present mainly in this fraction and 5 alpha-androstane-3 beta,17 alpha-diol was a minor component. In the glucuronide fraction 5 alpha-androstane-3 beta,17 alpha-diol was the major metabolite present and 5 alpha-androstane-3 beta,17 beta-diol and the two isomeric triols were minor components.
Comparing the temporal stability of behavioural intention, behavioural expectation and implementation intention

This paper aims to compare the predictive performance and temporal stability of behavioral intention, implementation intention, and behavioral expectation. The discussion is developed around the role of behavioral expectation and implementation intention to overcome behavioral intention’s temporal instability and inconsistent predictive performance. Two propositions resulted from the discussion will be tested in a longitudinal study. The findings of this research will indicate the best immediate antecedent of behavior to be used in different stages of consumers’ purchase decision.
Functional evidence for an active role of B-type natriuretic peptide in cardiac remodelling and pro-arrhythmogenicity.

AIMS During heart failure (HF), the left ventricle (LV) releases B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), possibly contributing to adverse cardiovascular events including ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) and LV remodelling. We investigated the cardiac effects of chronic BNP elevation in healthy mice and compared the results with a model of HF after myocardial infarction (PMI mice). METHODS AND RESULTS Healthy mice were exposed to circulating BNP levels (BNP-Sham) similar to those measured in PMI mice. Telemetric surface electrocardiograms showed that in contrast with fibrotic PMI mice, electrical conduction was not affected in BNP-Sham mice. VAs were observed in both BNP-Sham and PMI but not in Sham mice. Analysis of heart rate variability indicated that chronic BNP infusion increased cardiac sympathetic tone. At the cellular level, BNP reduced Ca(2+) transients and impaired Ca(2+) reuptake in the sarcoplasmic reticulum, in line with blunted SR Ca(2+) ATPase 2a and S100A1 expression. BNP increased Ca(2+) spark frequency, reflecting Ca(2+) leak through ryanodine receptors, elevated diastolic Ca(2+), and promoted spontaneous Ca(2+) waves. Similar effects were observed in PMI mice. Most of these effects were reduced in BNP-Sham and PMI mice by the selective β1-adrenergic blocker metoprolol. CONCLUSION Elevated BNP levels, by inducing sympathetic overdrive and altering Ca(2+) handling, promote adverse cardiac remodelling and VAs, which could account in part for the progression of HF after MI. The early use of β-blockers to prevent the deleterious effects of chronic BNP exposure may be beneficial in HF.
The usability study on the multicultural children's book project of the National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in Korea

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify usability issues on a storytelling digital library with six languages provided by the National Library for Children and Young Adults (NLCY) in Korea, and to provide suggestions for future improvement to create a better interface. Design/methodology/approach – In this study, usability issues at the multicultural children’s book project Web site of the NLCY were identified, with comparison between the previous interface and the current one, based on the findings of established literature on children’s use of computer applications and web interface. Findings – Suggestions for improvements include brighter colors, bigger fonts and graphics, more lively animation and sound, easier navigation, consistent interface, summary availability, better organization of information and labeling and multilingual searching and browsing function. A user study is being planned for future development. Originality/value – There is a great value in making 400 children’s books av.
Habitat fragmentation causes bottlenecks and inbreeding in the European tree frog (Hyla arborea)

A genetic study of the European tree frog, Hyla arborea, in Denmark was undertaken to examine the population structure on mainland Jutland and the island of Lolland after a period of reduction in suitable habitat and population sizes. The two regions have experienced the same rate of habitat loss but fragmentation has been more severe on Lolland. Genetic variation based on 12 polymorphic DNA microsatellites was analysed in 494 tree frogs sampled from two ponds in Jutland and 10 ponds on Lolland. A significant overall deviation from Hardy–Weinberg expectations could be attributed to three ponds, all on Lolland. This was most probably caused by an inbreeding effect reducing fitness, which was supported by the observed significant negative correlation between larva survival and mean FIS value and mean individual inbreeding coefficient. A significant reduction in genetic variation (bottleneck) was detected in most of the ponds on Lolland. Population–structure analysis suggested the existence of at least 11 genetically different populations, corresponding to most of the sampled population units. The results indicated that the populations were unique genetic units and could be used to illustrate the migration pattern between newly established ponds arisen either by natural colonization of tree frogs or by artificial introduction. A high degree of pond fidelity in the tree frogs was suggested. A severe fragmentation process reducing population size and fitness within some of the populations probably caused the significant reduction in genetic variation of tree frog populations on Lolland.
Ovarian Shielding during Pelvis Radiography : Risk Versus Benefit

Radiography of the pelvis is one of the most common and more frequent radiographic examinations ordered, especially in children [1]. It is estimated that annually a million pelvic radiographs were documented in the UK [2] with frequency of 39 per 1000 of population [3]. Since the 1950s, much focus has been placed on pelvis x-ray examination due to it is associated with direct gonad irradiation [3,4]. The gonads in the pelvic region are particularly sensitive to the effects of radiation [2]. Irradiating the germ cells within the gonads can result genetic mutations and malignant changes which has the potential to expresses in future generations [5,6]. Although the radiation dose associated with a singular pelvic x-ray is relatively low [2], its stochastic risk to the population should not be underestimated due to its wide application. Therefore, it is essential that the dose is kept “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA).
On-demand memory sub-system for multi-core SoCs

For heterogeneous multi-core SoCs, the increasing demand of the memory capacity and bandwidth becomes a critical design challenge. In this paper, an on-demand memory sub-system is presented to efficiently control the memory access and memory resource allocation using adaptively allocated cache memory. The proposed adaptively allocated cache memory can dynamically assign a variable number of SRAM banks for process elements (PEs) to optimize the utilization of the centralized on-chip cache. In a wireless video entertainment system, a 7.13% execution time reduction and 10.53% energy reduction of memories can be achieved using the adaptively allocated cache memory.
What is DevOps?: A Systematic Mapping Study on Definitions and Practices

Context: DevOps, the combination of Development and Operations, is a new way of thinking in the software engineering domain that recently received much attention. Given that DevOps is a new term and novel concept recently introduced, no common understanding of what it entails has been achieved yet. Consequently, definitions of DevOps often only represent a part that is relevant to the concept. Objective:This study aims to characterize DevOps by exploring central components of DevOps definitions reported in the literature, specifying practices explicitly proposed for DevOps and investigating the similarities and differences between DevOps and other existing methods in software engineering. Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted that used six electronic databases: IEEE, ACM, Inspec, Scopus, Wiley Online Library and Web of Science. Result: 44 studies have been selected that report a definition of DevOps, 15 studies explicitly stating DevOps practices, and 15 studies stating how DevOps is related to other existing methods. Papers in some cases stated a combination of a definition, practices, and relations to other methods, the total number of primary studies was 49. Conclusion: We proposed a definition for DevOps which may overcome inconsistencies over the various existing definitions of individual research studies. In addition, the practices explicitly proposed for DevOps have been presented as well as the relation to other software development methods.