Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dextrous exploration of a virtual world for improved prototyping

The capability of visualising and touching models of new products or new environments is a key factor in the design to production process. Usually this requires the construction of a physical model of the environment but production of the model can be costly and time consuming. Use of CAD packages can assist with the visualisation process, but proprioceptive and tactile sensations are required to augment this and provide the opportunity to feel the object. This work shows design, construction and testing in a virtual world of a generic 18 DOF proprioceptive input and feedback exoskeleton to monitor the motions of the human arm from sternum/spine to wrist and feedback tactile sensation generated during contact within a virtual world. The design is light, comfortable, and easy to wear for long periods providing an almost complete, unhampered range of input options. The proprioceptive inputs are augmented by tactile feedback of contact pressure (8 sensation points) to the upper and lower arm segments and pressure, texture, slip, edges/ridges/corners and thermal parameters to the hand. The paper shows how the input/feedback exoskeleton can be used to explore CAD designs generated in a commercial package (AutoCad) and imparted directly into a virtual world (WorldToolKit) permitting testing of products/processes before production and thereby improving the design-production process through the enhanced used of concurrent engineering techniques.
Examining the predictors of academic outcomes for indigenous Māori, Pacific and rural students admitted into medicine via two equity pathways: a retrospective observational study at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

Objective To determine associations between admission markers of socioeconomic status, transitioning, bridging programme attendance and prior academic preparation on academic outcomes for indigenous Māori, Pacific and rural students admitted into medicine under access pathways designed to widen participation. Findings were compared with students admitted via the general (usual) admission pathway. Design Retrospective observational study using secondary data. Setting 6-year medical programme (MBChB), University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Students are selected and admitted into Year 2 following a first year (undergraduate) or prior degree (graduate). Participants 1676 domestic students admitted into Year 2 between 2002 and 2012 via three pathways: GENERAL admission (1167), Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme—MAPAS (317) or Rural Origin Medical Preferential Entry—ROMPE (192). Of these, 1082 students completed the programme in the study period. Main outcome measures Graduated from medical programme (yes/no), academic scores in Years 2–3 (Grade Point Average (GPA), scored 0–9). Results 735/778 (95%) of GENERAL, 111/121 (92%) of ROMPE and 146/183 (80%) of MAPAS students graduated from intended programme. The graduation rate was significantly lower in the MAPAS students (p<0.0001). The average Year 2–3 GPA was 6.35 (SD 1.52) for GENERAL, which was higher than 5.82 (SD 1.65, p=0.0013) for ROMPE and 4.33 (SD 1.56, p<0.0001) for MAPAS. Multiple regression analyses identified three key predictors of better academic outcomes: bridging programme attendance, admission as an undergraduate and admission GPA/Grade Point Equivalent (GPE). Attending local urban schools and higher school deciles were also associated with a greater likelihood of graduation. All regression models have controlled for predefined baseline confounders (gender, age and year of admission). Conclusions There were varied associations between admission variables and academic outcomes across the three admission pathways. Equity-targeted admission programmes inclusive of variations in academic threshold for entry may support a widening participation agenda, however, additional academic and pastoral supports are recommended.
Expressing performance requirements using regular expressions to specify stochastic probes over process algebra models

This paper describes how soft performance bounds can be expressed for software systems using stochastic probes over stochastic process algebra models. These stochastic probes are specified using a regular expression syntax that describes the behaviour that must be observed in a model before a performance measurement can be started or stopped. We demonstrate the use of stochastic probes on a 661, 960 state parallel, redundant web server model to verify its passage-time performance characteristics.
Numerical parameter estimation for chemical models in multidimensional reactive flows

We present an algorithm for parameter identification in combustion problems modelled by partial differential equations. The method includes local mesh refinement controlled by a posteriori error estimation with respect to the error in the parameters. The algorithm is applied to two types of combustion problems. The first one deals with the identification of Arrhenius parameters, while in the second one diffusion coefficients for a hydrogen flame are calibrated. E-mail: boris.vexler@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de E-mail: malte.braack@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de
Relationship between rheumatoid arthritis and periodontitis.

BACKGROUND Because of several similar features in the pathobiology of periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis, in a previous study we proposed a possible relationship between the two diseases. Therefore, the aims of this study were to study a population of rheumatoid arthritis patients and determine the extent of their periodontal disease and correlate this with various indicators of rheumatoid arthritis. METHODS Sixty-five consecutive patients attending a rheumatology clinic were examined for their levels of periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis. A control group consisted of age- and gender-matched individuals without rheumatoid arthritis. Specific measures for periodontitis included probing depths, attachment loss, bleeding scores, plaque scores, and radiographic bone loss scores. Measures of rheumatoid arthritis included tender joint analysis, swollen joint analysis, pain index, physician's global assessment on a visual analogue scale, health assessment questionnaire, levels of C-reactive protein, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. The relationship between periodontal bone loss and rheumatological findings as well as the relationship between bone loss in the rheumatoid arthritis and control groups were analyzed. RESULTS No differences were noted for the plaque and bleeding indices between the control and rheumatoid arthritis groups. The rheumatoid arthritis group did, however, have more missing teeth than the control group and a higher percentage of these subjects had deeper pocketing. When the percentage of bone loss was compared with various indicators of rheumatoid arthritis disease activity, it was found that swollen joints, health assessment questionnaire scores, levels of C-reactive protein, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate were the principal parameters which could be associated with periodontal bone loss. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study provide further evidence of a significant association between periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis. This association may be a reflection of a common underlying disregulation of the inflammatory response in these individuals.
Quantifying Ca2+ Current and Permeability in ATP-gated P2X7 Receptors*

Background: Ca2+ triggers many of the actions of extracellular ATP. Results: We measured the Ca2+ component of the ATP-gated non-selective cation current of P2X7 receptors. Conclusion: Ca2+ flux varied with the species of origin, the splice variant, and the agonist concentration. Significance: Our results suggest that domains that lie outside of the pore regulate the Ca2+ flux of P2X7 receptors. ATP-gated P2X7 receptors are prominently expressed in inflammatory cells and play a key role in the immune response. A major consequence of receptor activation is the regulated influx of Ca2+ through the self-contained cation non-selective channel. Although the physiological importance of the resulting rise in intracellular Ca2+ is universally acknowledged, the biophysics of the Ca2+ flux responsible for the effects are poorly understood, largely because traditional methods of measuring Ca2+ permeability are difficult to apply to P2X7 receptors. Here we use an alternative approach, called dye-overload patch-clamp photometry, to quantify the agonist-gated Ca2+ flux of recombinant P2X7 receptors of dog, guinea pig, human, monkey, mouse, rat, and zebrafish. We find that the magnitude of the Ca2+ component of the ATP-gated current depends on the species of origin, the splice variant, and the concentration of the purinergic agonist. We also measured a significant contribution of Ca2+ to the agonist-gated current of the native P2X7Rs of mouse and human immune cells. Our results provide cross-species quantitative measures of the Ca2+ current of the P2X7 receptor for the first time, and suggest that the cytoplasmic N terminus plays a meaningful role in regulating the flow of Ca2+ through the channel.
Relationship of mode of porcine somatotropin administration and dietary fat to the growth performance and carcass characteristics of finishing pigs.

Ninety-six pigs were used to investigate the relationship of diet (control vs fat-supplemented with equal energy:protein ratios), porcine somatotropin (pST) administration (non-treated; 2 mg/d, daily injection; and 2 mg/d, 6-wk implant), and sex (barrows and gilts) to performance and carcass characteristics. Diet and pST treatments were initiated at 87 kg of BW and continued for 38 d. Both the fat-supplemented diet (P less than .001) and pST treatment (P less than .0001) improved feed efficiency. The effects of diet were accounted for by differences in energy density of the diets. Across diets, pST improved gain:feed ratio by 29 and 16% in pigs treated by daily injection and the implant, respectively; the two modes of delivery resulted in different responses (P less than .01). Circulating insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) levels, determined from blood samples drawn on d 35, were increased 2.5-fold above those of controls in pigs treated by either daily injection or the implant. However, the elevation of glucose and decrease in blood urea nitrogen concentrations in response to pST were of a greater magnitude in pigs treated by daily injection. Similarly, reductions in backfat thickness and the rate of backfat accretion determined by ultrasound were greater in response to the daily injection of pST than in response to the implant. Lean meat ratio, calculated from measurements with a Fat-O-Meater probe, was increased by 6 and 13% by the implant and daily injection, respectively. It is concluded that although the use of an implant that delivers pST on a continuous basis was as effective as the same dose administered as a bolus injection for increasing IGF-I levels, it was less effective in improving feed efficiency and carcass quality.
Executive Compensation and Business Policy Choices at U.S. Commercial Banks

Abstract We show that contractual risk-taking incentives for chief executive officers (CEOs) increased at large U.S. commercial banks around 2000, when industry deregulation expanded these banks’ growth opportunities. Our econometric models indicate that CEOs responded positively to these incentives, especially at the larger banks best able to take advantage of these opportunities. Our results also suggest that bank boards responded to higher-than-average levels of risk by moderating CEO risk-taking incentives; however, this feedback effect is absent at the very largest banks with strong growth opportunities and a history of highly aggressive risk-taking incentives.
Toward Determining the Structure of Psychiatric Visit Nonadherence

Visit nonadherence, that is, “no shows,” in psychiatry costs the US healthcare $100 billion every year. Nonadherent visits undermine healthcare quality improvement efforts and erode patients' health. Previous research has focused on patient demographics or on redundant scheduling, rather than on the actual structure of visit nonadherence. Drawing on a comprehensive literature review and a series of 3 studies, we identify 22 determinants that contribute to visit nonadherence. Significantly, 8 of these determinants seem to account for most of the variance in modeling visit nonadherence. This work lays the foundation to develop prognostic tools for reducing nonadherent visits in ambulatory care.
Chronic hyperoxia alters the early and late phases of the hypoxic ventilatory response in neonatal rats

Perinatal hyperoxia causes long‐lasting attenuation of the hypoxic ventilatory response (HVR) in rats, but the timing of these ventilatory changes has not been investigated during the hyperoxic exposure. Rats were raised in room air (control) or 60% O2 from birth until studied at 4, 6‐7, and 13‐14 days of age. Ventilation was measured by head‐body plethysmography in 21% O2 and in 12% O2. Normoxic ventilation was significantly reduced at P4 and P6‐7 in hyperoxia‐treated rats, which may be partially explained by lower metabolic rates. Control rats exhibited a biphasic HVR at P4 and P6‐7; the secondary decline diminished with advancing age and was no longer observed by P13‐14. Hyperoxia‐treated rats exhibited a sustained increase in ventilation at all ages, however, suggesting that hyperoxia hastens postnatal maturation of the central components of the HVR. The early (carotid body‐mediated) phase of the HVR tended to be greater in hyperoxia‐treated rats relative to controls at P4 (P=0.09 at minute 1) but decreased as the hyperoxic exposure progressed (i.e., significantly reduced at P6‐7 and P13‐14 vs. controls). Thus, it appears that short exposures to chronic hyperoxia initially enhance the HVR but that this is gradually overcome by impaired carotid body function. Supported by NIH grant R15 HL‐083972.
Benzodiazepines in a health-catalog product.

To the Editor. — A manufacturing company in the Northwest administered a routine preemployment drug test to a 56-year-old engineer. Its results were reported to the medical review officer by the testing laboratory as "positive for benzodiazepines" with the finding of oxazepam, 310 ng/mL, and nordiazepam, 150 ng/mL, on gas chromatography—mass spectrometry confirmation. The prospective employee convincingly denied any use of a prescription medicine, including a benzodiazepine. A repeated test was requested on the retained positive urine sample. It too was reported positive for a benzodiazepine. The prospective employee reported that he had regularly used a nonprescription health product obtained by catalog from a California address. It was a dark-brown, round pill labeled "NAN-LIEN CHUIFONG TOUKUWAN" that had been recommended to him by a colleague at work to treat his chronic neck pains. A sample submitted to the laboratory was analyzed by fullscan gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Hewlett-Packard 5970). It was
Distributed structural and value XML filtering

Many XML filtering systems have emerged in recent years identifying XML data that structurally match XPath queries in an efficient way. However, apart from structural matching, it is considered equally important to deal with value-based predicates. In this paper, we propose methods to combine both structural and value XML filtering in a distributed environment based on distributed hash tables. Structural matching is performed using automata, while we study different methods for evaluating value-based predicates. As a result, our algorithms scale in both the size of the query set and the number of the predicates per query. We perform an experimental evaluation and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed methods in both a controlled environment of a cluster and on a real testbed provided by the PlanetLab network.
Social networks predict patch discovery in a wild population of songbirds

Animals use social information in a wide variety of contexts. Its extensive use by individuals to locate food patches has been documented in a number of species, and various mechanisms of discovery have been identified. However, less is known about whether individuals differ in their access to, and use of, social information to find food. We measured the social network of a wild population of three sympatric tit species (family Paridae) and then recorded individual discovery of novel food patches. By using recently developed methods for network-based diffusion analysis, we show that order of arrival at new food patches was predicted by social associations. Models based only on group searching did not explain this relationship. Furthermore, network position was correlated with likelihood of patch discovery, with central individuals more likely to locate and use novel foraging patches than those with limited social connections. These results demonstrate the utility of social network analysis as a method to investigate social information use, and suggest that the greater probability of receiving social information about new foraging patches confers a benefit on more socially connected individuals.
Carriage of Streptococcus agalactiae in women and neonates and distribution of serological types: a study in Brazil

The prevalence of group B streptococcal carriage was evaluated in nonpregnant women and in mothers and their offsprings. The overall carriage rate of group B streptococci at one site was 18.2%. Streptococci were recovered from one or more of the sites sampled in 25.6% of mothers and 15.4% of newborn infants. The maternal genital carriage rate was 18.6%, and acquisition of the organism from the mother was assessed by serological typing of group B streptococcal isolates in the mother-infant pairs. A cervical carriage rate of 16.3% was seen in nonpregnant women.
Prevalence of Dental Anomalies in a Population of Cleft Lip and Palate Patients

Objective The aim of our study was to investigate radiographically the prevalence of dental anomalies in a group of Jordanian cleft lip and/or palate subjects. Design This is a retrospective review of panoramic radiographs of 78 subjects with cleft lip and/or palate that were evaluated from their file records and investigated for possible dental anomalies. Results Dental anomalies were found frequently in cleft lip and/or palate subjects. Missing teeth were found in 66.7% of the patients; the tooth most commonly missing was the maxillary lateral incisor. Supernumerary teeth were found in 16.7% of patients; 37% had microdontia; 70.5% had taurodontism; 30.8% had transposition and/or ectopic teeth; 19.2% had dilacerations; and 30.8% had hypoplastic teeth. There was no statistically significant difference in the above anomalies’ prevalence between males and females. However, it was found that subjects with bilateral cleft lip and/or palate had significantly more microdontia (p = .005), dilaceration (p = .002), and hypoplastic teeth (p = .0001) than subjects with unilateral cleft lip and/or palate. Conclusions The prevalence of dental anomalies in cleft lip and/or palate patients was higher than what had been reported in the normal Jordanian population. This emphasizes the relation of cleft lip and/or palate to all dental anomalies studied. Although our study represents a thorough and complete description of dental anomalies present in a sample of cleft lip and/or palate subjects, larger samples are required to effectively determine the relationship of each dental anomaly with cleft type.
Comments on Brain Damage and Memory Loss from Electroconvulsive Shock.

Peter Sterling, Ph.D. Professor of Neuroscience Department of Neuroscience University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6058 (215) 898-9228 As a neuroscientist I have studied the structure and function of the mammalian brain for more than 30 years. I also teach this subject to medical students and graduate students in Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. My concern regarding effects of electroconvulsive shock (ECS) on the brain began more than 25 years ago when I read in the
Developing deontology : new essays in ethical theory

Notes on Contributors vi 1 Deontological Moral Obligations and Non-Welfarist Agent-Relative Values 1 Michael Smith 2 Recalcitrant Pluralism 15 Philip Stratton-Lake 3 Defending Double Effect 35 Ralph Wedgwood 4 The Possibility of Consent 53 David Owens 5 Enforcement Rights against Non-Culpable Non-Just Intrusion 73 Peter Vallentyne 6 Does Moral Ignorance Exculpate? 95 Elizabeth Harman Index 121
ARDV : A New Density Based Outlier Mining Approach

Local Outlier Factor (LOF) is an important and well known density based outliers handling algorithm, which quantifies, how much an object is outlying, in a given database. In this paper first we discuss LOF then we introduce the concept of ARDV. In LOF there is a concept of lrd (local reachability density). If in place of lrd we calculate ard (average reachability distance) and in place of LOF we calculate variance in ard (ARDV) then experimental results show that percentage of detecting correct outliers increases without increasing time complexity.
Identiﬁcation and functional characterization of NODAL rare variants in heterotaxy and isolated cardiovascular malformations

NODAL and its signaling pathway are known to play a key role in speciﬁcation and patterning of vertebrate embryos. Mutations in several genes encoding components of the NODAL signaling pathway have previously been implicated in the pathogenesis of human left–right (LR) patterning defects. Therefore, NODAL , a member of TGF- b superfamily of developmental regulators, is a strong candidate to be functionally involved in congenital LR axis patterning defects or heterotaxy. Here we have investigated whether variants in NODAL are present in patients with heterotaxy and/or isolated cardiovascular malformations (CVM) thought to be caused by abnormal heart tube looping. Analysis of a large cohort of cases ( n 5 269) affected with either classic heterotaxy or looping CVM revealed four different missense variants, one in-frame insertion/deletion and two conserved splice site variants in 14 unrelated subjects (14/269, 5.2%). Although similar with regard to other associated defects, individuals with the NODAL mutations had a signiﬁcantly higher occurrence of pulmonary valve atresia ( P 5 0.001) compared with cases without a detectable NODAL mutation. Functional analyses demonstrate that the missense variant forms of NODAL exhibit signiﬁcant impairment of signaling as measured by decreased Cripto (TDGF-1) co-receptor-mediated activation of artiﬁcial reporters. Expression of these NODAL proteins also led to reduced induction of Smad2 phosphorylation and impaired Smad2 nuclear import. Taken together, these results support a role for mutations and rare deleterious variants in NODAL as a cause for sporadic human LR patterning defects.