Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of Vaccination on 14 High-Risk HPV Type Infections: A Mathematical Modelling Approach

The development of high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) infection to cervical cancer is a complicated process. We considered solely hrHPV infections, thus avoiding the confounding effects of disease progression, screening, and treatments. To analyse hrHPV epidemiology and to estimate the overall impact of vaccination against infections with hrHPVs, we developed a dynamic compartmental transmission model for single and multiple infections with 14 hrHPV types. The infection-related parameters were estimated using population-based sexual behaviour and hrHPV prevalence data from Finland. The analysis disclosed the important role of persistent infections in hrHPV epidemiology, provided further evidence for a significant natural immunity, and demonstrated the dependence of transmission probability estimates on the model structure. The model predicted that vaccinating girls at 80% coverage will result in a 55% reduction in the overall hrHPV prevalence and a higher 65% reduction in the prevalence of persistent hrHPV infections in females. In males, the reduction will be 42% in the hrHPV prevalence solely by the herd effect from the 80% coverage in girls. If such high coverage among girls is not reached, it is still possible to reduce the female hrHPV prevalence indirectly by the herd effect if also boys are included in the vaccination program. On the other hand, any herd effects in older unvaccinated cohorts were minor. Limiting the epidemiological model to infection yielded improved understanding of the hrHPV epidemiology and of mechanisms with which vaccination impacts on hrHPV infections.
Design of high performance dual-gate nano-scale In0.55Ga0.45 as transistor with modified substrate geometry

Structures based on Indium Gallium Arsenide (InGaAs) have attracted a lot of attention in Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) technology, recently. In this paper, we investigate the performance of a nano scale dual-gate MOSFET using InGaAs, and propose the design of a high performance In<inf>0.55</inf>Ga<inf>0.45</inf>As transistor with modified substrate geometry. Impact of changing the mole-fraction ‘x’ in In<inf>1−x</inf>Ga<inf>x</inf>As on the device performance is observed. To achieve best performance, the device geometry, relative mole fraction of In & Ga, the doping concentration of source/drain region and channel stop implant are varied. Simulations are performed to obtain output and transfer characteristics considering a N<sup>+</sup> poly gate as well as a metallic (Al) gate for the proposed device. Simulations show excellent subthreshold slope (∼ 62mV/dec), DIBL (∼ 30 m V/V) and I<inf>ON</inf>/I<inf>OFF</inf> = 2.23 × 10<sup>6</sup> values. As an application, an inverter is designed using this device and its DC and Transient responses for resistive and saturated enhancement NMOS load are plotted.
Heart Failure and the Risk of Shocks in Patients With Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators: Results From the Triggers Of Ventricular Arrhythmias (TOVA) Study

Background—Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) predicts device discharges in patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs). The relationship between severity of congestive heart failure (CHF) and ICD discharges is less clear. Methods and Results—We prospectively analyzed the association between CHF and risk of appropriate ICD discharges in the Triggers Of Ventricular Arrhythmias (TOVA) study, a cohort study of ICD patients conducted at 31 centers in the United States. Reported shocks were confirmed for sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) or fibrillation (VF) by analysis of stored electrograms. Proportional hazards models included CHF categorized by New York Heart Association class. Baseline CHF was present among 502 (44%) of 1140 patients; 170 (34%) had class I, 230 (46%) had class II, 97 (19%) had class III, and only 5 (1%) had class IV symptoms. During median follow-up of 212 days, 92 patients experienced 1 or more appropriate ICD discharges. Class III CHF was associated in a statistically significantly manner with ICD discharge for VT/VF (hazard ratio 2.40, 95% CI 1.16 to 4.98), even with adjustment for LVEF. The combination of LVEF <0.20 and class III symptoms resulted in a particularly high risk of shocks for VT/VF (hazard ratio 3.90, 95% CI 1.28 to 11.92). Conclusions—Class III CHF, an easily accessible clinical measure, is an independent risk factor, along with LVEF, for ventricular arrhythmias that require shock therapy among ICD patients. Whether patients with class III CHF benefit to a greater degree from ICDs and whether aggressive treatment of CHF in ICD patients may prevent ventricular arrhythmias remains to be determined.
Impacts of Climate Change and Extreme Weather on U.S. Agricultural Productivity: Evidence and Projection

This paper employs a stochastic frontier approach to examine how climate change and extreme weather affect U.S. agricultural productivity using 1940-1970 historical weather data (mean and variation) as the norm. We have four major findings. First, using temperature humidity index (THI) load and Oury index for the period 1960-2010 we find each state has experienced different patterns of climate change in the past half century, with some states incurring drier and warmer conditions than others. Second, the higher the THI load (more heat waves) and the lower the Oury index (much drier) will tend to lower a state’s productivity. Third, the impacts of THI load shock and Oury index shock variables (deviations from historical norm fluctuations) on productivity are more robust than the level of THI and Oury index variables across specifications. Fourth, we project potential impacts of climate change and extreme weather on U.S. regional productivity based on the estimates. We find that the same degree changes in temperature or precipitation will have uneven impacts on regional productivities, with Delta, Northeast, and Southeast regions incurring much greater effects than other regions, using 2000-2010 as the reference period.
REFLECTIONS ON THE STERN REVIEW (1) A Robust Case for Strong Action to Reduce the Risks of Climate Change

Those who deny the importance of strong and urgent action on climate change essentially offer one of, or a combination of, the following arguments. First, there are those who deny the scientific link between human activities and global warming; most people, and the vast majority of scientists, would find that untenable given the weight of evidence. Second, there are those who, while accepting the science of anthropogenic climate change, argue that the human species is very adaptable and can make itself comfortable whatever the climatic consequences; given the scale of the outcomes that we now have to regard as possible or likely under business-as-usual (BAU), this must be regarded as reckless. Finally, there are those who accept the science of climate change and the likelihood that it will inflict heavy costs, but simply do not care much for what happens in the future beyond the next few decades; most would regard this as unethical. This paper deals primarily with the latter two arguments. An appendix addresses confusions and misconceptions about The Stern Review and responds to points made by critics in previous issues of this journal and elsewhere.
Towards a practical deployment of privacy-preserving crowd-sensing tasks

Recent generations of mobile phones, embedding a wide variety of sensors, have fostered the development of open sensing applications, such as network quality or weather forecast applications. In this paper, we present a novel privacy-preserving crowdsourcing platform relying on two components: APISENSE and PRIVAPI. APISENSE is a distributed middleware platform that leverages the dynamic deployment of crowdsourcing tasks across a population of mobile phones. PRIVAPI is a middleware handling privacy-preserving publication of mobility data.
Asynchronous Consensus Protocols: Preliminary Results, Simulations and Open Questions

Consensus is well accepted as being a fundamental paradigm for coordination of groups of autonomous agents. Recently, we casted previous work on multi-agent consensus protocols into an asynchronous framework, where each agent updates on its own pace, and uses the most recently received information from other agents. Asynchronous consensus protocols encompass those synchronous ones with various communication patterns. In this paper, we study via simulation a number of open new problems introduced by the asynchronous operation of multi-agent systems. More interestingly, the existing consensus results are classified by their communication assumptions and future research directions are proposed. To facilitate our study, we develop a multi-vehicle simulator in Java, built on top of JProwler; JProwler is a discrete event simulator for prototyping, verifying and analyzing communication protocols of ad-hoc wireless networks. Implementation issues with their implications are also discussed.
EPIMap: Using Epimorphism to map applications on CGRAs

Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architectures (CGRAs) are an attractive platform that promise simultaneous high-performance and high power-efficiency. One of the primary challenges in using CGRAs is to develop efficient compilers that can automatically and efficiently map applications to the CGRA. To this end, this paper makes several contributions: i) Using Re-computation for Resource Limitations: For the first time in CGRA compilers, we propose the use of re-computation as a solution for resource limitation problem. This extends the solutions space, and enables better mappings, ii) General Problem Formulation: A precise and general formulation of the application mapping problem on a CGRA is presented, and its computational complexity is established. iii) Extracting an Efficient Heuristic: Using the insights from the problem formulation, we design an effective global heuristic called EPIMap. EPIMap transforms the input specification (a directed graph) to an Epimorphic equivalent graph that satisfies the necessary conditions for mapping on to a CGRA, reducing the search space. Experimental results on 14 important kernels extracted from well known benchmark programs show that using EPIMap can improve the performance of the kernels on CGRA by more than 2.8X on average, as compared to one of the best existing mapping algorithm, EMS. EPIMap was able to achieve the theoretical best performance for 9 out of 14 benchmarks, while EMS could not achieve the theoretical best performance for any of the benchmarks. EPIMap achieves better mappings at acceptable increase in the compilation time.
[Emissions of biogenic sulfur gases from wheat fields].

Emission rates of carbonyl sulfide (COS), carbon disulfide (CS2) and dimethyl sulfide (DMS) to the atmosphere from wheat fields treated with different fertilizers were measured by using the closed chamber method. The results showed that the emission rate of COS, CS2 and DMS was affected by wheat growth and COS was absorbed by the plants. DMS and CS2 were the predominant sulfur gases emitted from these fields. The diurnal variations of emission rates of COS and CS2 were obvious. The sulfur flux in the plot treated with organic fertilizer was higher than that in the other plots. The sulfur fluxes from different plots were in the range of -1.40 to 0.79 mg.m-2.
ECIR 2017 Workshop on Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness (SMERP 2017)

The first international workshop on Exploitation of Social Media for Emergency Relief and Preparedness (SMERP) was held in conjunction with the 2017 European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. The aim of the workshop was to explore various technologies for extracting useful information from social media content in disaster situations. The workshop included a peer-reviewed research paper track, a data challenge, two keynote talks, and discussion sessions on the relevant open research challenges. This report presents an overview of the workshop, including the motivations behind organizing the workshop, and summaries of the research papers and keynote talks at the workshop. We also reflect on the future directions as inferred from discussion sessions during the workshop
Inequality and the Emergence of Non-farm Employment in Rwanda

Agricultural Surveys and Policy Analysis Project (ASPAP), funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Rwanda Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Forests, USAID contract No. 696-0126. The ideas and interpretations found in this paper are uniquely those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the funding agencies.
The development of language processing support for the ViSiCAST project

ViSiCAST is a major new project funded by the European Union, aiming to provide improved access to services and facilities for deaf citizens through sign language presented by a virtual human, or avatar. We give here an outline of the project, and describe early work in the area of linguistics and language processing. This work covers two distinct but related areas: first, the development of an XML-compliant notation for deaf sign language gestures, which can be used to drive the signing avatar; and, second, the development of a framework supporting the translation of natural language text into this gesture-orientated notation.
A 2.5-10-GHz clock multiplier unit with 0.22-ps RMS jitter in standard 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS

This paper demonstrates a low-jitter clock multiplier unit that generates a 10-GHz output clock from a 2.5-GHz reference clock. An integrated 10-GHz LC oscillator is locked to the input clock, using a simple and fast phase detector circuit that overcomes the speed limitation of a conventional tri-state phase frequency detector due to the lack of an internal feedback loop. A frequency detector guarantees PLL locking without degenerating jitter performance. The clock multiplier is implemented in a standard 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS process and achieves a jitter generation of 0.22 ps while consuming 100 mW power from a 1.8-V supply.
BOTRYTIS-INDUCED KINASE1 Modulates Arabidopsis Resistance to Green Peach Aphids via PHYTOALEXIN DEFICIENT41[W][OPEN]

Rapid HR-like cell death confers plant resistance to aphids. BOTRYTIS-INDUCED KINASE1 (BIK1) plays important roles in induced defense against fungal and bacterial pathogens in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Its tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) homolog is required for host plant resistance to a chewing insect herbivore. However, it remains unknown whether BIK1 functions in plant defense against aphids, a group of insects with a specialized phloem sap-feeding style. In this study, the potential role of BIK1 was investigated in Arabidopsis infested with the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae). In contrast to the previously reported positive role of intact BIK1 in defense response, loss of BIK1 function adversely impacted aphid settling, feeding, and reproduction. Relative to wild-type plants, bik1 displayed higher aphid-induced hydrogen peroxide accumulation and more severe lesions, resembling a hypersensitive response (HR) against pathogens. These symptoms were limited to the infested leaves. The bik1 mutant showed elevated basal as well as induced salicylic acid and ethylene accumulation. Intriguingly, elevated salicylic acid levels did not contribute to the HR-like symptoms or to the heightened aphid resistance associated with the bik1 mutant. Elevated ethylene levels in bik1 accounted for an initial, short-term repellence. Introducing a loss-of-function mutation in the aphid resistance and senescence-promoting gene PHYTOALEXIN DEFICIENT4 (PAD4) into the bik1 background blocked both aphid resistance and HR-like symptoms, indicating bik1-mediated resistance to aphids is PAD4 dependent. Taken together, Arabidopsis BIK1 confers susceptibility to aphid infestation through its suppression of PAD4 expression. Furthermore, the results underscore the role of reactive oxygen species and cell death in plant defense against phloem sap-feeding insects.
Elliptic curves and continued fractions

We detail the continued fraction expansion of the square root of the general monic quartic polynomial, noting that each line of the expansion corresponds to addition of the divisor at infinity. We analyse the data yielded by the general expansion. In that way we obtain `elliptic sequences' satisfying Somos relations. I mention several new results on such sequences. The paper includes a detailed `reminder exposition' on continued fractions of quadratic irrationals in function fields.
Pharmacological Targeting of Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor-1 Decreases Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Migration and Neointima Formation

Objective—Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1), a serine protease inhibitor that promotes and inhibits cell migration, plays a complex and important role in adverse vascular remodeling. Little is known about the effects of pharmacological PAI-1 inhibitors, an emerging drug class, on migration of vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and endothelial cells (ECs), crucial mediators of vascular remodeling. We investigated the effects of PAI-039 (tiplaxtinin), a specific PAI-1 inhibitor, on SMC and EC migration in vitro and vascular remodeling in vivo. Approach and Results—PAI-039 inhibited SMC migration through collagen gels, including those supplemented with vitronectin and other extracellular matrix proteins, but did not inhibit migration of PAI-1-deficient SMCs, suggesting that its antimigratory effects were PAI-1-specific and physiologically relevant. However, PAI-039 did not inhibit EC migration. PAI-039 inhibited phosphorylation and nuclear translocation of signal transducers and activators of transcription-1 in SMCs, but had no discernable effect on signal transducer and activator of transcription-1 signaling in ECs. Expression of low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1, a motogenic PAI-1 receptor that activates Janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription-1 signaling, was markedly lower in ECs than in SMCs. Notably, PAI-039 significantly inhibited intimal hyperplasia and inflammation in murine models of adverse vascular remodeling, but did not adversely affect re-endothelialization after endothelium-denuding mechanical vascular injury. Conclusions—PAI-039 inhibits SMC migration and intimal hyperplasia, while having no inhibitory effect on ECs, which seems to be because of differences in PAI-1-dependent low-density lipoprotein receptor–related protein 1/Janus kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription-1 signaling between SMCs and ECs. These findings suggest that PAI-1 may be an important therapeutic target in obstructive vascular diseases characterized by neointimal hyperplasia.
Disease Trajectory Maps

Medical researchers are coming to appreciate that many diseases are in fact complex, heterogeneous syndromes composed of subpopulations that express different variants of a related complication. Time series data extracted from individual electronic health records (EHR) offer an exciting new way to study subtle differences in the way these diseases progress over time. In this paper, we focus on answering two questions that can be asked using these databases of time series. First, we want to understand whether there are individuals with similar disease trajectories and whether there are a small number of degrees of freedom that account for differences in trajectories across the population. Second, we want to understand how important clinical outcomes are associated with disease trajectories. To answer these questions, we propose the Disease Trajectory Map (DTM), a novel probabilistic model that learns low-dimensional representations of sparse and irregularly sampled time series. We propose a stochastic variational inference algorithm for learning the DTM that allows the model to scale to large modern medical datasets. To demonstrate the DTM, we analyze data collected on patients with the complex autoimmune disease, scleroderma. We find that DTM learns meaningful representations of disease trajectories and that the representations are significantly associated with important clinical outcomes.
Autokinesis and Eye Movement Control-System Stabilization: Pilot Study on Effect of Brief Hand Viewing

Gregory and Zangwill (1963) argued that the CNS monitors efference to extraocular muscles, and AK occurs by development of instability (spontaneous fluctuation) in this system with consequent monitoring of false eye position correction signals. However, the effect of elimination of normal correlation between joint position and retinal feedbacks was not considered. Craske and Templeton (1968) showed that, following adaptation to laterally displacing prisms, the eye resting position oscillated when there was no fixation point, but instability ceased following a brief view of a limb extremity: the importance of cross-modal matching in eye-position stabilization was indicated. This experiment tested the hypothesis that viewing a familiar object in known relation to the head delays oculomotor control unstabilization. Following a Craske suggestion it was hypothesized that a brief view of the hand should increase subsequent AK latency. This should be independent of prolonged pre-fixation conditions, even those producing after-images ( AIs ) . Twenty-four naive Ss were tested, with head steadied by a bite bar. A 0.5-sec. view of the hand was given on alternate trials following various 60-sec. visual-fixation conditions. The latter involved focussing in front of either a stationary or rotating blackwhite background. The view of the hand was given immediately prior to observing a light spot in total darkness. The treatments did not necessitate changes in head or eye position. Mean AK latencies for each condition for each S were determined. Pre-fixation display appeared to be irrelevant with regard to the effect of hand viewing on subsequent AK latency, though induction of an A1 produced significant over-all latency reduction compared to all other pre-treatment conditions ( p < 0.05; two-tailed test). This latter suggests influence of intra-retinal comparison. Latencies for all pre-fixation conditions were averaged. The means were 9.5 sec. with no hand viewing and 10.3 sec. with hand viewing. Only 5 Ss of 24 showed decrease in latency following hand viewing. On the binomial test this is significant ( p < 0.005). It may be argued that a significant delay in development of eye-motor control system instability is effected by briefly focussing on a familiar object in known relationship to the head. A further test is now required to examine whether focussing on familiar threedimensional figures has a similar stabilizing effect as viewing a limb extremity. This should determine precisely whether Craske's 'cross-modal testing' is a necessary factor here. It should be noted that individual differences in AK latency are very large compared to the small changes effected by hand viewing. Recent work in this laboratory suggests the importance of an arousal factor (monitored by EMG and blood volume pulse).
Aggregation of fuzzy aalpha;-C-equivalences

The article deals with notions of fuzzy equivalences, where transitivity is defined by the use of a fuzzy conjunction. In particular fuzzyC-equivalences and fuzzy -C-equivalences are considered. Moreover, the problem of the preservation of their axioms by some aggregation functions is examined. This paper gives a contribution to the discussion of tolerance analysis in soft computing, decision making, approximate reasoning, information fusion problems, and fuzzy control.