Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Noise and Quality of Life

Noise is defined as an unwanted sound or a combination of sounds that has adverse effects on health. These effects can manifest in the form of physiologic damage or psychological harm through a variety of mechanisms. Chronic noise exposure can cause permanent threshold shifts and loss of hearing in specific frequency ranges. Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is thought to be one of the major causes of preventable hearing loss. Approximately 10 million adults and 5.2 million children in the US are already suffering from irreversible noise induced hearing impairment and thirty million more are exposed to dangerous levels of noise each day. The mechanisms of NIHL have yet to be fully identified, but many studies have enhanced our understanding of this process. The role of oxidative stress in NIHL has been extensively studied. There is compelling data to suggest that this damage may be mitigated through the implementation of several strategies including anti-oxidant, anti-ICAM 1 Ab, and anti JNK intervention. The psychological effects of noise are usually not well characterized and often ignored. However, their effect can be equally devastating and may include hypertension, tachycardia, increased cortisol release and increased physiologic stress. Collectively, these effects can have severe adverse consequences on daily living and globally on economic production. This article will review the physiologic and psychologic consequences of noise and its effect on quality of life.
An 83.4% Peak Efficiency Single-Inductor Multiple-Output Based Adaptive Gate Biasing DC-DC Converter for Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting

This paper presents a 100 mV input, 500 mV output single-inductor multiple-output (SIMO) based step-up dc-dc converter with adaptive gate biasing (AGB) technique implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology for thermoelectric energy harvesting. The proposed AGB technique and near-threshold voltage (near- VTH) energy redistribution control (ERC) ensure high conversion efficiency over a wide range of load currents. The proposed method automatically reduces conduction and switching losses of power MOSFETs without the need for auxiliary power converters or additional off-chip inductors. The AGB technique reduces conduction and switching losses under heavy-load and light-load conditions, respectively. The experimental results show that the efficiency of the proposed converter is enhanced by 25.5% and 18% at output load currents of 1500 μA and 50 μA, respectively. The proposed step-up dc-dc converter achieves the lowest output voltage and provides the highest conversion efficiency of 83.4% to date in standard CMOS process for thermoelectric energy harvesting.
Classification And Optimization of Nested Queries in Object Bases

Many declarative query languages for object-oriented (oo) databases allow nested subqueries. This paper contains a complete classiication of oo nested queries and appropriate unnesting optimization strategies based on algebraic rewriting. We adapt some known relational techniques and introduce new ones that use and are concerned with features speciic to object-oriented queries. In particular, we introduce two new and powerful grouping operators which will form the basis for our unnesting techniques.
Self-Learning Variable Structure Control for a Class of Sensor-Actuator Systems

Variable structure strategy is widely used for the control of sensor-actuator systems modeled by Euler-Lagrange equations. However, accurate knowledge on the model structure and model parameters are often required for the control design. In this paper, we consider model-free variable structure control of a class of sensor-actuator systems, where only the online input and output of the system are available while the mathematic model of the system is unknown. The problem is formulated from an optimal control perspective and the implicit form of the control law are analytically obtained by using the principle of optimality. The control law and the optimal cost function are explicitly solved iteratively. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed method.
Infectious complications, steroid use and timing for emergency liver transplantation in acute liver failure: analysis in a Japanese center

Corticosteroid (CS) has been introduced in most acute liver failure (ALF) patients for the purpose of suppressing pro‐inflammatory cytokines in Japan where a shortage of donor livers exists, whereas CS use is evaluated to be no benefit in Western countries. In the present study, we aimed to clarify the association between infectious complications and CS use in ALF, and determine when to evaluate treatment response and consider the timing for switching to liver transplantation (LT).
CoRE: Cooperative End-to-End Traffic Redundancy Elimination for Reducing Cloud Bandwidth Cost

The pay-as-you-go service model impels cloud customers to reduce the usage cost of bandwidth. Traffic Redundancy Elimination (TRE) has been shown to be an effective solution for reducing bandwidth costs, and thus has recently captured significant attention in the cloud environment. By studying the TRE techniques in a trace driven approach, we found that both short-term (time span of seconds) and long-term (time span of hours or days) data redundancy can concurrently appear in the traffic, and solely using either sender-based TRE or receiver-based TRE cannot simultaneously capture both types of traffic redundancy. Also, the efficiency of existing receiver-based TRE solution is susceptible to the data changes compared to the historical data in the cache. In this paper, we propose a Cooperative end-to-end TRE solution (CoRE) that can detect and remove both short-term and long-term redundancy through a two-layer TRE design with cooperative operations between layers. An adaptive prediction algorithm is further proposed to improve TRE efficiency through dynamically adjusting the prediction window size based on the hit ratio of historical predictions. Besides, we enhance CoRE to adapt to different traffic redundancy characteristics of cloud applications to improve its operation cost. Extensive evaluation with several real traces show that CoRE is capable of effectively identifying both short-term and long-term redundancy with low additional cost while ensuring TRE efficiency from data changes.
Absolute plate velocities from seismic anisotropy: Importance of correlated errors

The errors in plate motion azimuths inferred from shear wave splitting beneath any one tectonic plate are shown to be correlated with the errors of other azimuths from the same plate. To account for these correlations, we adopt a two‐tier analysis: First, find the pole of rotation and confidence limits for each plate individually. Second, solve for the best fit to these poles while constraining relative plate angular velocities to consistency with the MORVEL relative plate angular velocities. Our preferred set of angular velocities, SKS‐MORVEL, is determined from the poles from eight plates weighted proportionally to the root‐mean‐square velocity of each plate. SKS‐MORVEL indicates that eight plates (Amur, Antarctica, Caribbean, Eurasia, Lwandle, Somalia, Sundaland, and Yangtze) have angular velocities that differ insignificantly from zero. The net rotation of the lithosphere is 0.25 ± 0.11° Ma−1 (95% confidence limits) right handed about 57.1°S, 68.6°E. The within‐plate dispersion of seismic anisotropy for oceanic lithosphere (σ = 19.2°) differs insignificantly from that for continental lithosphere (σ = 21.6°). The between‐plate dispersion, however, is significantly smaller for oceanic lithosphere (σ = 7.4°) than for continental lithosphere (σ = 14.7°). Two of the slowest‐moving plates, Antarctica (vRMS = 4 mm a−1, σ = 29°) and Eurasia (vRMS = 3 mm a−1, σ = 33°), have two of the largest within‐plate dispersions, which may indicate that a plate must move faster than ≈ 5 mm a−1 to result in seismic anisotropy useful for estimating plate motion. The tendency of observed azimuths on the Arabia plate to be counterclockwise of plate motion may provide information about the direction and amplitude of superposed asthenospheric flow or about anisotropy in the lithospheric mantle.
Trends in Employment and Earnings of Allowed and Rejected Applicants to the Social Security Disability Insurance Program.

Longitudinal administrative data show that rejected male applicants to the Disability Insurance (DI) program who are younger or have low-mortality impairments such as back pain and mental health problems exhibit substantial labor force attachment. While we confirm that employment rates of older rejected applicants are low, continued high numbers of younger and low-mortality beneficiaries have raised the potential employment of DI beneficiaries. Three findings support economic inducement to apply. Mean preapplication earnings have fallen, rejected applicants experience preapplication declines in earnings, and beneficiaries whose first applications were rejected at the DDS level but who ultimately received benefits exhibit substantial employment. (JEL: H55, J14, J28, J31)
Low Power Design

The biggest low-power design bottleneck, many design managers say, is at the architectural or electronic system level (ESL), where the potential power savings are the greatest and where the methodology and tool support is weakest. Design teams are struggling with spreadsheets and back-of-envelope calculations to make powercritical decisions about hardware/software partitioning, processors, memories, clocking, and use of multiple power domains. Power modeling, especially at the system level, lacks a standardized approach and may provide insufficient information.
Extending DRT With a Focusing Mechanism for Pronominal Anaphora and Ellipsis Resolution

Cormack (1992) proposed a framework for pronominal anaphora resolution. Her proposal integrates focusing theory (Sidner et al.) and DRT (Kamp and Reyle). We analyzed this methodology and adjusted it to the processing of Portuguese texts. The scope of the framework was widened to cover sentences containing restrictive relative clauses and subject ellipsis. Tests were conceived and applied to probe the adequacy of proposed modifications when dealing with processing of current texts.
A novel rough set attribute reduction based on ant colony optimisation

Rough Sets RS, the most promising and proven approach for data reduction, has the ability to retain the essence of the data and it does not expect any domain inputs from an expert. RS based reduction however can attain only local minima, so to elaborate the search space it is wise to employ well known and proven artificial intelligence techniques like the ant colony optimisation ACO. In this work a novel rough set attribute reduction based on ACO, called as NRSACO is proposed, which can identify global optimal attribute set with the help of rough set based mutual information as a heuristic aid for the ants. Few improvements were suggested through which minimum reducts were attained faster and with fewer ants and iterations. Experiments were conducted on 22 UCI datasets, and the results shows that our approach has outperformed in convergence time with comparable or improved classification accuracies.
Folic acid conjugated glycol chitosan micelles for targeted delivery of doxorubicin: preparation and preliminary evaluation in vitro

For folate receptor (FR) targeted anticancer therapy, novel folic acid (FA) conjugated cholesterol-modified glycol chitosan (FCHGC) micelles were synthesized and characterized by 1H NMR, dynamic light scattering, transmission electron microscopy, and fluorescence spectroscopy. The degree of substitution was 1.4 FA groups and 7.7 cholesterol groups per 100 sugar residues of glycol chitosan. The critical aggregation concentration of FCHGC micelles in aqueous solution was 0.0169 mg/ml. The doxorubicin (DOX)-loaded FCHGC (DFCHGC) micelles were prepared by an emulsion/solvent evaporation method. The DFCHGC micelles were almost spherical in shape and their size increased from 282 to 320 nm with the DOX-loading content increasing from 4.53 to 11.4%. DOX released from DOX-loaded micelles displayed sustained release behavior. The targeted micelles encapsulated DOX showed significantly greater cytotoxicity against FR-positive HeLa cells than the nontargeted DOX-loaded micelles and free DOX. These results suggested that FCHGC micelles could be a potential carrier for targeted drug delivery.
Leakage-Resilient Cryptography with Key Derived from Sensitive Data

In this paper we address the problem of large space consumption for protocols in the Bounded Retrieval Model (BRM), which require users to store large secret keys subject to adversarial leakage. We propose a method to derive keys for such protocols on-the-fly from weakly random private data (like text documents or photos, users keep on their disks anyway for non-cryptographic purposes) in such a way that no extra storage is needed. We prove that any leakage-resilient protocol (belonging to a certain, arguably quite broad class) when run with a key obtained this way retains a similar level of security as the original protocol had. Additionally, we guarantee privacy of the data the actual keys are derived from. That is, an adversary can hardly gain any knowledge about the private data except that he could otherwise obtain via leakage. Our reduction works in the Random Oracle model.
Metabolic Syndrome Is Associated with Learning and Recall Impairment in Middle Age

Aims: To determine whether middle-aged individuals with metabolic syndrome, both with and without type 2 diabetes, exhibit cognitive impairments, and to determine the role of each metabolic syndrome component in those associations. Methods: 143 participants were drawn from ongoing studies of normal aging. Metabolic syndrome was diagnosed in 73 participants (age: 60.4 ± 8.4 years), who were contrasted with 70 age- and education-matched controls. Results: Metabolic syndrome was associated with reductions in recall (p = 0.006), lower overall intellectual functioning (p = 0.013), and nearly significant reductions in learning (p = 0.066) and executive functioning (p = 0.050). These effects were only marginally attenuated when controlling for type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Of the 5 components of the metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance was the only significant predictor of variance in learning and recall. In addition, the number of metabolic syndrome criteria met was inversely associated with cognitive performance. Conclusions: These results indicate that impairments in cognitive functioning associated with metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes may begin as early as middle age and are primarily due to insulin resistance. These results demonstrate the importance of screening at-risk adults for insulin resistance in order to initiate lifestyle modifications to reverse or prevent these cognitive changes.
Host Immune System Gene Targeting by a Viral miRNA

Virally encoded microRNAs (miRNAs) have recently been discovered in herpesviruses. However, their biological roles are mostly unknown. We developed an algorithm for the prediction of miRNA targets and applied it to human cytomegalovirus miRNAs, resulting in the identification of the major histocompatibility complex class I–related chain B (MICB) gene as a top candidate target of hcmv-miR-UL112. MICB is a stress-induced ligand of the natural killer (NK) cell activating receptor NKG2D and is critical for the NK cell killing of virus-infected cells and tumor cells. We show that hcmv-miR-UL112 specifically down-regulates MICB expression during viral infection, leading to decreased binding of NKG2D and reduced killing by NK cells. Our results reveal a miRNA-based immunoevasion mechanism that appears to be exploited by human cytomegalovirus.
Chapter 1:Carbon-based Nanomaterials in Analytical Chemistry

Carbon-based nanomaterials are amazing technological tools with unique properties (high mechanical strength, high conductivity, attractive optical properties, chemical versatility, etc.). Among them, graphene and carbon nanotubes are probably the most commonly used materials in chemical analysis. These carbon nanomaterials can be synthesized by several methods, which can be roughly classified in top-down and bottom-up methods. Their physicochemical characterization is essential to assure the product quality (purity, defects, chemical species on the surface, etc.) and to elucidate their structure. In this sense, Raman spectroscopy, electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy are the most important techniques. Moreover, the synthetic and purification route determines some properties of these materials so they must be carefully selected prior to their application. Without any doubt, graphene and carbon nanotubes have played an important role in chemical analysis (sample preparation, separation and detection) and the graphene derivatives “graphene nanoribbon” and “graphene quantum dots” will do the same. Therefore, it is expected that their routine use will be consolidated in the next few years.
Optimizing Green Energy, Cost, and Availability in Distributed Data Centers

Integrating renewable energy and ensuring high availability are two major requirements for geo-distributed data centers. Availability is ensured by provisioning spare capacity across the data centers to mask data center failures (either partial or complete). We propose a mixed integer linear programming formulation for capacity planning while minimizing the total cost of ownership (TCO) for highly available, green, distributed data centers. We minimize the cost due to power consumption and server deployment while targeting a minimum usage of green energy. Solving our model shows that capacity provisioning considering green energy integration not only lowers carbon footprint but also reduces the TCO. Results show that up to 40% green energy usage is feasible with a marginal increase in the TCO compared with the other cost-aware models.
On The Design Of Nonlinear Path Control In Automated Vehicle Guidance

A new and efficient method to stabilize an autonomously guided vehicle on desired trajectories under varying conditions is presented. Besides the task to improve safety in traffic, aspects of road behaviour and traveling comfort are especially considered. Since dynamical behaviour of a vehicle is highly nonlinear and contains mutual couplings in the state variables, design of the path control system is based on the universally valid principle of nonlinear decoupling and control. As this method works independent from operating points a high degree of accuracy and free pole assignment for the controlled vehicle is provided. Further a configuration is described, which causes damping of the yaw behaviour during high velocity cornering.
Effect of dietary fats with odd or even numbers of carbon atoms on metabolic response and muscle damage with exercise in Quarter Horse-type horses with type 1 polysaccharide storage myopathy.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate effects of fats with odd and even numbers of carbon atoms on muscle metabolism in exercising horses with polysaccharide storage myopathy (PSSM). ANIMALS 8 horses with PSSM (6 females and 2 males; mean +/- SD age, 6.3 +/- 3.9 years). PROCEDURES Isocaloric diets (grain, triheptanoin, corn oil, and high-fat, low-starch [HFLS] feed) were fed for 3 weeks each; horses performed daily treadmill exercise. Grain was fed to establish an exercise target, and HFLS feed was fed as a negative control diet. Daily plasma samples were obtained. For each diet, a 15-minute exercise test was performed, and gluteus medius muscle specimens and blood samples were obtained before and after exercise. RESULTS Feeding triheptanoin, compared with the corn oil diet, resulted in exercise intolerance; higher plasma creatine kinase (CK) activity and concentrations of C3:0- and C7:0-acylcarnitine and insulin; and lower concentrations of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) and C16:0-, C18:1-, and C18:2-acylcarnitine, without changes in concentrations of plasma glucose or resting muscle substrates and metabolites. Feeding grain induced higher CK activity and insulin concentrations and lower NEFA concentrations than did corn oil or HFLS feed. Feeding grain induced higher glucose concentrations than did triheptanoin and corn oil. In muscle, feeding grain resulted in lower glucose-6-phosphate, higher citrate, and higher postexercise lactate concentrations than did the other diets. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Triheptanoin had detrimental effects, reflecting decreased availability of NEFA, increased insulin stimulation of glycogen synthesis, and potential inhibition of lipid oxidation. Long-chain fats are the best dietetic for PSSM.
Test point insertion that facilitates ATPG in reducing test time and data volume

Efficient production testing is frequently hampered because current digital circuits require test sets which are too large. These test sets can be reduced significantly by means of test point insertion (TPI). The state-of-the-art TPI methods only focus on solving one or two possible testability problems, and sometimes even fail to result in test set size reduction because they focus on the wrong testability problem. In this paper, we propose two TPI pre-process methods that analyze the circuit and select the TPI method that will focus on the testability problems that really exist. Experimental results indicate that with these pre-processes, better test set size reductions can be achieved. Gate-delay fault ATPG test sets tend to be even larger than stuck-at fault ATPG test sets. In this paper we have evaluated the impact of TPI on gate-delay fault test sets. Experimental results indicate that TPI also results in a significant test set size reduction for gate-delay fault ATPG.
Circulating Tissue Kallikrein Levels Correlate With Severity of Carotid Atherosclerosis

Background—Vascular growth factors are upregulated in stroke patients, but it remains unknown if they correlate with carotid atherosclerosis. Methods and Results—A case-control study was conducted to determine: (1) possible association between biomarkers of angiogenesis or inflammation and carotid stenosis; and (2) the impact of revascularization on the same biomarkers. Circulating vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), basic fibroblast GF (bFGF), tissue kallikrein (tK), and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) were measured in 89 patients with carotid obstruction and 45 age-matched controls. Patients were stratified as <50% carotid stenosis (CAS; n=16); 50% to 69% CAS (n=12); 70% to 99% CAS (n=43); and carotid occlusion (CAO; n=18). No association was found between VEGF, bFGF, or hs-CRP and obstruction grading. TK augmented from 360±30 in <50% CAS (P= NS versus controls) to 509±72 in moderate CAS (P< 0.05), 1159±178 in high-grade CAS (P< 0.02), and 1616±403 pg/mL in CAO (P< 0.01). A threshold of 508 pg/mL provided the maximized predictive value of high-grade obstruction. After revascularization, tK decreased from 1410±352 to 782±86 pg/mL (P< 0.01), whereas no change was detected in nonoperated cases. Hs-CRP was unaffected by revascularization. Conclusions—Angiogenic factors are heterogeneously expressed in patients with carotid atherosclerosis. The tK measurement may be useful for the diagnosis and monitoring of atherosclerotic disease.
On the perturbation of rank‐one symmetric tensors

The problem of symmetric rank‐one approximation of symmetric tensors is important in independent components analysis, also known as blind source separation, as well as polynomial optimization. We derive several perturbative results that are relevant to the well‐posedness of recovering rank‐one structure from approximately‐rank‐one symmetric tensors. We also specialize the analysis of the shifted symmetric higher‐order power method, an algorithm for computing symmetric tensor eigenvectors, to approximately‐rank‐one symmetric tensors. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.