Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond Fifty Years of Millard's Rotation-Advancement Technique in Cleft Lip Closure: Are There Many “Millards”?

In 1955, Millard developed the concept of rotation-advancement flap to treat cleft lip. Almost 6 decades later, it remains the most popular technique worldwide. Since the technique evolved and Millard published many technical variations, we decided to ask 10 experienced cleft surgeons how they would mark Millard's 7 points in two unilateral cleft lip patient photos and compared the results. In both pictures, points 1 and 2 were marked identically among surgeons. Points 3 were located adjacent to each other, but not coincident, and the largest distances between points 3 were 4.95 mm and 4.03 mm on pictures 1 and 2, respectively. Similar patterns were obtained for points 4, eight of them were adjacent, and the greatest distance between the points was 4.39 mm. Points 5 had the most divergence between the points among evaluators, which were responsible for the different shapes of the C-flap. Points 6 also had dissimilar markings, and such difference accounts for varying resection areas among evaluators. The largest distances observed were 11.66 mm and 7 mm on pictures 1 and 2, respectively. In summary, much has changed since Millard's initial procedure, but his basic principles have survived the inexorable test of time, proving that his idea has found place among the greatest concepts of modern plastic surgery.
A probabilistic learning approach for document indexing

We describe a method for probabilistic document indexing using relevance feedback data that has been collected from a set of queries. Our approach is based on three new concepts: (1) Abstraction from specific terms and documents, which overcomes the restriction of limited relevance information for parameter estimation. (2) Flexibility of the representation, which allows the integration of new text analysis and knowledge-based methods in our approach as well as the consideration of document structures or different types of terms. (3) Probabilistic learning or classification methods for the estimation of the indexing weights making better use of the available relevance information, Our approach can be applied under restrictions that hold for real applications. We give experimental results for five test collections which show improvements over other methods.
Can DiffServ guarantee IP QoS under failures?

As ISPs and telcos converge toward all-IP network infrastructures, the problem of service reliability becomes more acute. In this article, we investigate to what extent DiffServ can provide service protection against optical failures in IP over optical (WDM) networks. For this, we propose two mechanisms: a DiffServ/WDM method and a WDM differentiated protection technique that we call DiffProtect. Results show that the priority traffic is equally well protected by both techniques. However, for medium-priority traffic, there is an improvement in delay and jitter under failure when DiffServ is used. Thus, the proposed DiffServ implementation can be used as an affordable and effective fault management technique to protect high-priority traffic with little delay
A Quadrant-XYZ Routing Algorithm for 3-D Asymmetric Torus Network-on-Chip

Three-Dimensional (3-D) ICs are able to obtain significant performance benefits over two-dimensional (2-D) ICs based on the electrical and mechanical properties resulting from the new geometrical arrangement. The arrangement of 3-D ICs also offers opportunities for new circuit architecture based on the geometric capacity. The emerging 3-D VLSI integration and process technologies allow the new design opportunities in 3-D Network-on-Chip (NoC). The 3-D NoC can reduce significant amount of wire length for local and global interconnects. In this paper, we have proposed an efficient 3-D Asymmetric Torus routing algorithm for NoC. The 3-D torus has constant node degree, recursive structure, simple communication algorithms, and good scalability. A Quadrant-XYZ dimension order routing algorithm is proposed to build 3-D Asymmetric Torus NoC router. The algorithm partitions the geometrical space into quadrants and selects the nearest wrap-around edge to connect the destination node. Thus, the presented algorithm guarantees minimal paths to each destination based on routing regulations. The complexity of the algorithm is O (n). The proposed routing algorithm has been compared with the traditional XYZ algorithm and the comparison results show that the Quadrant-XYZ router has shorter path length. This paper presents a Register Transfer Logic (RTL) simulation model of Quadrant-XYZ dimension order routing algorithm for 3-D asymmetric torus NoC written in Verilog. The model represents the functional behavior of the routing chip down to the flit (byte) level. The 3-D asymmetric torus NoC has achieved a maximum operating frequency 750 MHz on Xilinx Vertex-6 programmable device.
Extending the lifetime of WSNs with Maximum Energy Selection Algorithm (MESA)

The limited battery supply of a sensor node is one of the most important factors that limit the lifetime of the WSNs. As a consequence, increasing the lifetime of WSNs through energy efficient mechanisms has become a challenging research area. Previous studies have shown that instead of implementing direct transmission or multi-hop routing, clustering can significantly improve the total energy dissipation and lifetime of a WSN. The traditional LEACH and LEACH based algorithms have evolved from this idea. In this paper, we propose a fixed clustering routing algorithm for WSNs which selects the node with maximum residual energy for the following rounds according to a threshold level. The Maximum Energy Selection Algorithm (MESA) can improve the lifetime of the network and reduce the energy dissipation significantly. Our studies have shown that when compared with LEACH, and LEACH based algorithms such as ModLEACH and DEEC, MESA gains for the lifetime extension and energy dissipation is very important.
Impact of TASK-1 in Human Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle Cells

The excitability of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells (PASMC) is regulated by potassium (K+) conductances. Although studies suggest that background K+ currents carried by 2-pore domain K+ channels are important regulators of resting membrane potential in PASMC, their role in human PASMC is unknown. Our study tested the hypothesis that TASK-1 leak K+ channels contribute to the K+ current and resting membrane potential in human PASMC. We used the whole-cell patch-clamp technique and TASK-1 small interfering RNA (siRNA). Noninactivating K+ current performed by TASK-1 K+ channels were identified by current characteristics and inhibition by anandamide and acidosis (pH 6.3), each resulting in significant membrane depolarization. Moreover, we showed that TASK-1 is blocked by moderate hypoxia and activated by treprostinil at clinically relevant concentrations. This is mediated via protein kinase A (PKA)-dependent phosphorylation of TASK-1. To further confirm the role of TASK-1 channels in regulation of resting membrane potential, we knocked down TASK-1 expression using TASK-1 siRNA. The knockdown of TASK-1 was reflected by a significant depolarization of resting membrane potential. Treatment of human PASMC with TASK-1 siRNA resulted in loss of sensitivity to anandamide, acidosis, alkalosis, hypoxia, and treprostinil. These results suggest that (1) TASK-1 is expressed in human PASMC; (2) TASK-1 is hypoxia-sensitive and controls the resting membrane potential, thus implicating an important role for TASK-1 K+ channels in the regulation of pulmonary vascular tone; and (3) treprostinil activates TASK-1 at clinically relevant concentrations via PKA, which might represent an important mechanism underlying the vasorelaxing properties of prostanoids and their beneficial effect in vivo.
Formalizing ontological commitments

Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical language means offering a way to specify the intended meaning of its vocabulary by constraining the set of its models, giving explicit information about the intended nature of the modelling primitives and their a priori relationships. We present here a formal definition of ontological commitment which aims to capture the very basic ontological assumptions about the intended domain, related to issues such as identity and internal structure. To tackle such issues, a modal framework endowed with mereo-topological primitives has been adopted. The paper is mostly based on a re-visitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation.
The effects of trapping and blade angle of notched dentitions on fracture of biological tissues

SUMMARY The material properties of food can exert a significant influence on tooth morphology. Although the stiffness or toughness of a material is usually of prime concern, other aspects of material properties (such as extensibility) can be of equal importance. Previous experimental work on the effect blade shape has on fracturing biological materials indicated a notched blade greatly reduced the work required to cut tough tissue. As a notched blade both traps materials and cuts at an angle, it is not clear which of these features leads to increased cutting efficiency. This paper tests whether the ability to cut at an angle or trap the material has the greater effect on the work to fracture required to cut tough tissues with different levels of extensibility (asparagus and fish muscle). Results show that the work to fracture required to cut more extensible materials is reduced by up to 50% when a trapping mechanism alone is used in comparison with an angled blade alone. For less extensible materials, the trapping ability of a notch seems to have no effect, whereas the angled blade reduces work to fracture by up to 25% relative to a straight blade. The aspects of blade shape most important to the breaking down of foods depend upon the relative stiffness or toughness, as well as other material properties.
Diffusion-snakes: combining statistical shape knowledge and image information in a variational framework

We present a modification of the Mumford-Shah functional and its cartoon limit which allows the incorporation of statistical shape knowledge in a single energy functional. We show segmentation results on artificial and real-world images with and without prior shape information. In the case of occlusion and strongly cluttered background the shape prior significantly improves segmentation. Finally we compare our results to those obtained by a level-set implementation of geodesic active contours.
Predictors and long-term clinical outcomes of newly developed atrial fibrillation in patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices

Objective: To evaluate predictors and long-term prognosis of atrial fibrillation (AF) following cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) implantation in patients without history of AF. Methods: From May 1994 to April 2014, 1825 patients with CIED were enrolled in a retrospective, single-center registry. A total of 880 patients from the registry without prior documented AF history were included in the final analysis and were placed into either non-detected AF (NDAF) group or CIED-detected AF group according to development of AF over a follow-up period of 7 years. AF development was defined as any paroxysmal atrial tachyarrhythmia (atrial rate ≥ 180 beats/min) lasting at least 5 minutes according to CIED records. Results: Overall, 122 (13.8%) of the 880 patients experienced new development of AF during follow-up period. According to multivariate analysis, the independent predictors for development of AF were prior heart failure (hazard ratio [HR], 2.40; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.50–3.85; P < 0.001), prior sinus node dysfunction (HR, 2.33; 95% CI, 1.62–3.55; P < 0.001), and left atrium volume index of 38.5 mL/m2 or more (HR, 2.01; 95% CI, 1.23–3.30; P = 0.005). In CDAF group, the risk of heart failure readmission (adjusted HR, 3.79; 95% CI, 1.99–7.22; P < 0.001) and stroke readmission (adjusted HR, 5.33; 95% CI, 1.58–17.97; P = 0.007) was higher than in nondetected AF group. Conclusion: In patients with CIED, prior history of heart failure, sinus node dysfunction, and LA volume index ≥38.5 mL/m2 were independent predictors of new AF cases. Newly developed AF was significantly associated with increased risk of HF and stroke readmission, according to long-term follow up.
A dynamic model of barter exchange

We consider the problem of efficient operation of a barter exchange platform for indivisible goods. We introduce a dynamic model of barter exchange where in each period one agent arrives with a single item she wants to exchange for a different item. We study a homogeneous and stochastic environment: an agent is interested in the item possessed by another agent with probability p, independently for all pairs of agents. We consider two settings with respect to the types of allowed exchanges: a) Only two-way cycles, in which two agents swap their items, b) Two or three-way cycles. The goal of the platform is to minimize the average waiting time of an agent. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that in each of these settings, a policy that conducts exchanges in a greedy fashion is near optimal, among a large class of policies that includes batching policies. Further, we find that for small p, allowing three-cycles can greatly improve the waiting time over the two-cycles only setting. Specifically, we find that a greedy policy achieves an average waiting time of Θ(1/p2) in setting a), and Θ(1/p3/2) in setting b). Thus, a platform can achieve the smallest waiting times by using a greedy policy, and by facilitating three cycles, if possible. Our findings are consistent with empirical and computational observations which compare batching policies in the context of kidney exchange programs.
Neoteric Video Segmentation Scheme using NCD for Detecting Indistinct Scenes

In this paper, an implementation of a neoteric and efficient video segmentation scheme aimed to detect interlaced video scenes using the normalized compression distance (NCD) is proposed. NCD approximates the value of a theoretical distance between two adjacent video frames using the Kolmogorov complexity theory. This proposed scheme presents a robust and efficient automatic video segmentation based on pervious researches which lack the accuracy when dealing with cuts, fades, or morphing as in sports, commercials and news clips where fading can be greatly noticed. The experimental results gave back a stunning recall and a high precision values. This scheme indicates an overall improvement on video segmentation results achieved in reference to our previous approaches.
Multivariable controller tuning

The problem of tuning individual loops in a multivariable controller is investigated. It is shown how the performance of a specific loop relates to a row in the controller matrix. Several interpretations of this relation are given. An algorithm is also presented that estimates the model required for the tuning via a relay feedback experiment. The algorithm does not need any prior information about the system or the controller. The results are illustrated by an example.
Robust Tracking Integrated with Detection and Online Learning

This paper focuses on long-term target tracking which need defining bounding-box in the first frame, and then performing target tracking automatically. Observing that neither tracking nor detection can solve long-term tracking task independently, we combine tracking with detection module into a single framework to perform robust tracking. An online learning step is integrated into the framework to update the target model and the training samples to further increase system robustness. Our algorithm is evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively which can achieve saturated results.
CALIBRATING MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICY

Policy proposals on the new international standards for bank capital and liquidity are being debated without any methodical evaluation of their effects on both crisis probabilities and concurrent social costs. Using data for 14 OECD economies for the years 1980 Ð 2007, we conduct a systematic evaluation of crisis determinants and find that bank capital adequacy, liquidity, the current account deficit and changes in house prices are the principal factors associated with OECD banking crises. There is no evidence of procyclical risks being generated by credit or GDP growth. We explicitly quantify the regulatory changes to capital and liquidity that would be required in each OECD economy over time in order to ensure systemic stability. We show that an international consensus on regulatory changes will generate 'winners' and 'losers' in terms of capital and liquidity adjustments, and we suggest that raising capital and liquidity by 4 percentage points of total assets across the board will reduce the average probability of a financial crisis to around 1%. Our results have important implications for the next generation of international banking regulations.
Attack surface reduction for commodity OS kernels: trimmed garden plants may attract less bugs

Kernel vulnerabilities are a major current practical security problem, as attested by the weaknesses and flaws found in many commodity operating system kernels in recent years. Ever-growing code size in those projects, due to the addition of new features and the reluctance to remove legacy support, indicate that this problem will remain a severe system security threat in the foreseeable future. Reactive measures such as bug fixes via code reviews and testing, while effective, can only alleviate the issue. Furthermore, common practices in system hardening often focus on complex and sometimes hard to achieve goals that require extensive manual intervention such as security policies for sandboxing. In this paper, we explore an alternative, automated and effective way of reducing the attack surface in commodity operating system kernels, which we call trimming. Trimming is a two-fold process: an initial analysis of a given system for unused kernel code sections is followed by an enforcement phase, in which the unused sections are removed or prevented from being executed. We discuss the requirements that should be reflected in the design of a trimming infrastructure, and present a lightweight and flexible implementation example for the Linux kernel by using dynamic binary instrumentation as provided by kprobes. Our evaluations show we can, in the case of a web server, reduce the attack surface of the kernel (in terms of the number of kernel functions accessible from unprivileged users) by about 88%.
A preliminary study on similarity-preserving digital book identifiers

Due to proliferation of digital publishing, e-book catalogs are abundant but noisy and unstructured. Tools for the digital librarian rely on ISBN, metadata embedded into digital files (without accepted standard) and cryptographic hash functions for the identification of coderivative or nearduplicate content. However, unreliability of metadata and sensitivity of hashing to even smallest changes prevents efficient detection of coderivative or similar digital books. Focus of the study are books with many versions that differ in certain amount of OCR errors and have a number of sentence-length variations. Identification of similar books is performed using small-sized fingerprints that can be easily shared and compared. We created synthetic datasets to evaluate fingerprinting accuracy while providing standard precision and recall measurements.
SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON TRUST PROPENSITY 1 It’s Not You, It’s Them: Social Influences on Trust Propensity and Trust Dynamics

Scholars agree that trust primarily has two bases: trustworthiness—the extent to which a trustee is competent, honest, and has goodwill toward the trustor—and trust propensity—a stable trait reflecting the trustor’s generalized belief that others can be trusted. Due to this trait characterization, the literature has largely reached a consensus that trust propensity is only an important base of trust in the earliest stage of a relationship—before information on trustworthiness has been gathered. Additionally, the trait conceptualization of trust propensity inhibits it from being modeled as an explanatory mechanism. Drawing on accessibility theory, a theory of trait activation, we argue that trust propensity has state-like characteristics which are “activated” by the daily treatment an employee receives from coworkers. Our model highlights that the social context—predominantly ignored in prior trust research because of its lack of relevance to dyadic perceptions of trustworthiness—can have a substantial impact on dyadic trust. Across two multi-source experience sampling methodology studies, we provide evidence that state trust propensity transmits the effects of citizenship and deviance received to trust in a focal coworker, whether that focal coworker is a source of that treatment or not. We also address how general levels of workplace unfairness—a between-person construct—influence these dynamics. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these within-person dynamics for fostering trust within organizations.
Investigating language learning strategies of Thai EFL undergraduate Students

This study aimed to investigate language learning strategies of Thai EFL undergraduate students who are majoring in language, and to compare the language learning strategies of these students based on gender, years in the university, and major. A questionnaire, Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) was completed by 360 Thai EFL undergraduate students. This instrument comprised 50 items grouped into six categories: (a) memory strategies, (b) cognitive strategies, (c) compensation strategies, (d) metacognitive strategies, (e) affective strategies, and (f) social strategies. The results were calculated in terms of percentages, mean scores, and standard deviations. A statistical approach was employed to determine the differences between language learning strategies and the independent variables of gender, years in the university, and major. The results revealed that the language learning strategies of Thai EFL students majoring in language are significantly different among different years in the university and different language majors. However, there was no significant difference between the language learning strategies based on gender.
Patterns of multirelational data transformation in data mining process

Multirelational data mining requires complex preprocessing of data. Identification of transformation patterns and implementation of reusable components lead to more robust data-mining flow construction process. In this paper concept of implementation of selected transformation patterns is presented. Rapid Miner envi-ronment is used to build transformations, which can be later used in predicting cus-tomer behavior.