Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measurement based WCET Analysis for Multi-core Architectures

The interference on shared resources caused by concurrently executing applications unpredictably prolongs their execution. Hence, determination of the Worst Case Execution Time (Wcet) of applications executing on shared memory multi-core processors is hard to estimate. This hinders the adoption of Commercial Off The Shelf (Cots) multi-core processors in hard real-time systems. The existing techniques opt for tailored multi-core architectures to provide high computation power at predictable execution time. However, this approach yields poor resource utilization and high costs. In this paper, we present a technique to measure the Wcet of applications on multi-core architectures using existing measurement based timing analysis tools. Our technique has a minor area impact (≈ 5%). However, this impact is limited to the emulation devices only and production chips remain unchanged. Thus, our technique does not impact performance of the Cots chips by any ways. The technique is demonstrated by measuring Wcet of benchmark applications using the RapiTime timing analysis tool. The tests are conducted on a quad-core NIOS II processor on an Altera Fpga.
Classifier Ensemble Selection for Language Verification System

Spoken-language verification system uses classifier combination method to improve its performance. The number of classifiers combined determines the system's costs in time and calculation. Hence, we aim to get the optimal classifier ensemble with less cost and good performance. We hope to find some characteristics of classifier ensemble closely linked to its equal error rate (EER) and then choose the optimal classifier ensemble based on them. Two new diversity measures were proposed. Through rank correlation coefficients between them and EER, we found new diversity measures had closer correlation with the performance of system. Final results showed combining two new measures is the most effective to choose the optimal classifier ensemble, which makes system 14.71% best relative decrease in EER and about 60% best relative decrease in costs. We also explored preliminarily the robustness of this method over open-set corpus
Alprazolam-Related Deaths in Palm Beach County

Alprazolam is a commonly prescribed benzodiazepine. The abuse of benzodiazepines is most frequently seen in conjunction with the abuse of other drugs. Only rare fatalities have been attributed to alprazolam alone. We undertook a retrospective review of cases investigated by the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office in which postmortem toxicologic studies indicated the presence of alprazolam, to further study the pattern of alprazolam abuse. Our review consisted of 178 cases, including 87 in which death was attributed to combined drug toxicity, 2 to alprazolam toxicity alone, 44 to trauma, 12 to natural causes, and 33 to another drug or drugs. Cocaine and methadone were the most common cointoxicants in the cases of combined drug toxicity, while heroin was less frequently detected. There was considerable overlap in the postmortem blood alprazolam concentrations among the groups. The overlapping ranges of concentrations of alprazolam detected indicate that it may be difficult to define a lethal alprazolam range, and that it may not be possible to determine the actual role of alprazolam as a causal factor in cases of combined drug toxicity. This study confirms that alprazolam alone is rarely a cause of death, and that alprazolam abuse usually occurs within a polydrug use pattern. The high incidence of cocaine as a cointoxicant has not been previously reported.
Pathophysiology of Insulin Secretion in Non-insulin-dependent Diabetes Mellitus

The pathogenesis of the abnormal metabolic state in patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes (NIDDM) is controversial. Even the term NIDDM stirs controversy because of the easily drawn inference that individuals with this form of diabetes do not need insulin treatment. Yet many patients with NIDDM are treated with insulin; some even develop hyperosmolar coma if not given insulin. Ketoacidosis, however, is very infrequent in this syndrome, implying that these patients are not dependent on insulin treatment to prevent mass mobilization of fatty acids and ketone bodies. The phrase noninsulin-dependent is therefore appropriate when used in this restricted fashion but inappropriate when used to imply adequacy of insulin secretion. The evaluation of the adequacy of islet function in this syndrome has been complex, since there is no standard of insulin output that can be defined for normal islets without specifying the physiologic setting under which the assessment has been made. For example, individuals with normal glucose levels but variable degrees of obesity have widely varying insulin secretion rates. Thus, the choice of controls is critical when comparing islet function in NIDDM to normal. In addition, the efficiency of the B-cell response to a challenge (e.g., oral glucose tolerance test) can markedly influence the magnitude of the stimulatory glucose level during the period of testing. For example, a subject with some impairment of insulin output will tend to become more hyperglycemic during the test. The hyperglycemia may then stimulate more insulin secretion so that the overall insulin output may appear equal to or even greater than that of a normal individual. In such a closed-loop system, strict control of input variables is necessary to evaluate whether or not insulin secretion is normal. As will be discussed, control of glucose level and other variables is seldom accomplished in dynamic glucose tolerance tests. As will be presented in this review, the development of appropriately controlled studies of islet function has provided convincing evidence that islet B-cell function is abnormal in patients with NIDDM. Since these studies are based on an understanding of normal islet function, normal islet B-cell physiology is discussed before pathophysiology. Finally, the implications of this analysis for the treatment of NIDDM with diet, hypoglycemic sulfonylureas, and insulin will be discussed.
Verb Class Disambiguation Using Informative Priors

Levin's (1993) study of verb classes is a widely used resource for lexical semantics. In her framework, some verbs, such as give, exhibit no class ambiguity. But other verbs, such as write, have several alternative classes. We extend Levin's inventory to a simple statistical model of verb class ambiguity. Using this model we are able to generate preferences for ambiguous verbs without the use of a disambiguated corpus. We additionally show that these preferences are useful as priors for a verb sense disambiguator.
Robotic mapping of friction and roughness for reality-based modeling

This paper discusses the robotic acquisition and characterization of surface friction and roughness for real-world objects. Our motivation is the construction of detailed "reality-based" models for existing objects that can be used in haptic displays and other applications involving simulation. A key challenge addressed in this paper is the acquisition of these surface properties on real objects with nontrivial shape, and registration of these properties with respect to geometric models of the shape. We show how Coulomb friction may be effectively estimated in the presence of variations in surface normal. We also show how to estimate a stochastic process model of surface roughness. Finally, we demonstrate the robotic mapping of surface friction over an entire object, using the UBC Active Measurement Facility (ACME).
Cigarette smoking and the risk of colorectal cancer among men: a prospective study in Japan

The association between cigarette smoking and the risk of colorectal cancer remains controversial. We examined this association using a population-based prospective cohort study in Miyagi, Japan. In 1990, we delivered a self-administered questionnaire on cigarette smoking and other health habits to 25 279 men who were 40–64 years of age and lived in 14 municipalities of Miyagi Prefecture. A total of 22 836 men responded (90.3% response rate). During 7 years of follow-up (158 376 person-years), we identified 188 patients of colorectal cancer. Relative risks and 95% confidence intervals were estimated by the Cox proportional-hazards regression analysis with adjustment for potential confounders. The multivariate-adjusted relative risks (95% confidence interval) of colorectal cancer for past smokers and current smokers compared with those who had never smoked were 1.73 (1.04–2.87) and 1.47 (0.93–2.34), respectively. Among current smokers, both a higher number of cigarettes smoked per day and an earlier age at which smoking had started were associated with a significant linear increase in risk (P for trend <0.05). Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that cigarette smoking is associated with a higher risk of colorectal cancer in men.
Experimental Study of the Effects of DC-bias Current on the Power Transformer

Base on the developed DC controlled current source to simulate the DC component in the earth, experimental researches are made to study the effects of DC-bias to the power transformer. Experiment results show that the magnetizing currents of the power transformer are distorted badly with the increase of the injected direct current which is controlled by the software system under the Lab VIEW environment, accompanied with the increased noises and excessive vibration and overheating of transformer. With the relative high security and friendly interface, the developed DC controlled current source can be applied by the manufacturers and designers to study the ability of power transformer to endure the DC-bias.
Interoception, contemplative practice, and health

Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. This paper reviews interdisciplinary perspectives on interoception, with the goal of presenting a unified perspective from diverse fields such as neuroscience, clinical practice, and contemplative studies. It is hoped that this integrative effort will advance our understanding of how interoception determines well-being, and identify the central challenges to such understanding. To this end, we introduce an expanded taxonomy of interoceptive processes, arguing that many of these processes can be understood through an emerging predictive coding model for mind–body integration. The model, which describes the tension between expected and felt body sensation, parallels contemplative theories, and implicates interoception in a variety of affective and psychosomatic disorders. We conclude that maladaptive construal of bodily sensations may lie at the heart of many contemporary maladies, and that contemplative practices may attenuate these interpretative biases, restoring a person’s sense of presence and agency in the world.
Mixed Treatment Comparison of the Treatment Discontinuations of Biologic Disease-Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs in Adults with Rheumatoid Arthritis

BACKGROUND: Introduction of biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) has considerably changed treatment options for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) over the past decade. Very little information is available on comparative discontinuation rates of the biologics. OBJECTIVE: To compare treatment discontinuations for 9 biologic DMARDs in adults with RA. METHODS: We searched electronic databases through May 2012 to retrieve randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of patients with RA that compared biologic DMARDs with placebo or another biologic DMARD. The primary outcome was treatment discontinuation during the blinded phase of the trials, measured as overall withdrawals, withdrawals resulting from lack of efficacy, and withdrawals resulting from adverse events. Random-effects meta-analysis estimated the effect size for individual agents, and adjusted indirect comparisons were made between biologics using mixed treatment comparisons (MTC) meta-analysis. RESULTS: Forty-four trials were included in the analysis. In comparison with placebo, biologics were less likely to be withdrawn because of lack of efficacy (OR 0.22, 95% CI 0.17 to 0.27) and more likely to be withdrawn because of an adverse event (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.16 to 1.70). Based on the MTC, certolizumab had the most favorable overall withdrawal profile, followed by etanercept and rituximab. Certolizumab had lower relative withdrawal rates resulting from lack of efficacy than adalimumab, anakinra, and infliximab. Anakinra had higher relative withdrawal rates resulting from lack of efficacy than most other biologics. Certolizumab and infliximab had more, while etanercept had fewer, withdrawals because of adverse events than most other drugs. CONCLUSIONS: Based on MTC using data from RCTs, differences in discontinuation rates were observed, generally favoring certolizumab, etanercept, and rituximab over other biologic DMARDs. These potential differences need to be further explored in head-to-head trials or well-conducted observational studies.
SPATIAL MAPPING OF SOIL MOISTURE USING RADARSAT-1 DATA

In this research, a back-propagation neural network was used to retrieve and map the surface soil moisture in Oklahoma (97d35'W, 36d15'N) from Synthetic Aperture Radar data acquired by RADARSAT-1 satellite. In addition to SAR backscattering, different vegetation-related information (vegetation optical depth and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) have been added as additional inputs to the neural network algorithm. The soil moisture data measured by Electronically Scanned Thinned Array Radiometer during the SGP97 campaign were used as truth data in the training and the validation processes. All the training and validation pixels have been labeled as either homogeneous or heterogeneous based on land cover type and number of sub-pixels of 25m resolution. The results showed that homogeneous pixels are more likely to have better accuracy than heterogeneous pixels in soil moisture classification. A better correlation between soil moisture and SAR backscattering was found in areas with high soil moisture content. The modeling results have shown that the retrieval of soil moisture in highly vegetated areas was less accurate than bare soil areas. Further, the same results have shown that the additions of vegetation optical depth and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index as additional input to the SAR data had a significant effect on the overall classification accuracy.
Beta emitters rhenium‐188 and lutetium‐177 are equally effective in radioimmunotherapy of HPV‐positive experimental cervical cancer

Cervical cancer caused by the infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) remains the fourth leading killer of women worldwide. Therefore, more efficacious treatments are needed. We are developing radioimmunotherapy (RIT) of HPV‐positive cervical cancers by targeting E6 and E7 viral oncoproteins expressed by the cancer cells with the radiolabeled monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). To investigate the influence of different radionuclides on the RIT efficacy—we performed RIT of experimental cervical cancer with Rhenium‐188 (188Re) and Lutetium‐177 (177Lu)‐labeled mAb C1P5 to E6. The biodistribution of 188Re‐ and 177Lu‐labeled C1P5 was performed in nude female mice bearing CasKi cervical cancer xenografts and the radiation dosimetry calculations for the tumors and organs were carried out. For RIT the mice were treated with 7.4 MBq of either 188Re‐C1P5 or 177Lu‐C1P5 or left untreated, and observed for their tumor size for 28 days. The levels of 188Re‐ and 177Lu‐C1P5 mAbs‐induced double‐strand breaks in CasKi tumors were compared on days 5 and 10 post treatment by staining with anti‐gamma H2AX antibody. The radiation doses to the heart and lungs were similar for both 177Lu‐C1P5 and 188Re‐C1P5. The dose to the liver was five times higher for 177Lu‐C1P5. The doses to the tumor were 259 and 181 cGy for 177Lu‐C1P5 and 188Re‐C1P5, respectively. RIT with either 177Lu‐C1P5 or 188Re‐C1P5 was equally effective in inhibiting tumor growth when each was compared to the untreated controls (P = 0.001). On day 5 there was a pronounced staining for gamma H2AX foci in 177Lu‐C1P5 group only and on day 10 it was observed in both 177Lu‐C1P5 and 188Re‐C1P5 groups. 188Re‐ and 177Lu‐labeled mAbs were equally effective in arresting the growth of CasKi cervical tumors. Thus, both of these radionuclides are candidates for the clinical trials of this approach in patients with advanced, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer.
Constrained Optimal Control of Hybrid Systems With a Linear Performance Index

We consider the constrained finite and infinite time optimal control problem for the class of discrete-time linear hybrid systems. When a linear performance index is used the finite and infinite time optimal solution is a piecewise affine state feedback control law. In this paper, we present algorithms that compute the optimal solution to both problems in a computationally efficient manner and with guaranteed convergence and error bounds. Both algorithms combine a dynamic programming exploration strategy with multiparametric linear programming and basic polyhedral manipulation
Lung lobe torsion in association with a chronic diaphragmatic hernia and haemorrhagic pleural effusion in a cat

Clinical summary This report describes torsion of the right cranial lung lobe in a cat with haemorrhagic pleural effusion and a chronic diaphragmatic hernia. Surgical treatment comprising lung lobectomy without de-rotation, and repair of the diaphragmatic defect, led to an uneventful recovery. Practical relevance Lung lobe torsion is a rare condition in cats. While spontaneous lung lobe torsions may occur, a frequent association with underlying thoracic disease has been recognised in cats. However, neither haemorrhagic pleural effusion nor diaphragmatic hernia have been previously described in cats with lung lobe torsions, although they have been documented in dogs and humans. In a cat with suspected lung lobe torsion, a thorough search for an underlying disease should be undertaken.
Lateralization in Alpha-Band Oscillations Predicts the Locus and Spatial Distribution of Attention

Attending to a task-relevant location changes how neural activity oscillates in the alpha band (8–13Hz) in posterior visual cortical areas. However, a clear understanding of the relationships between top-down attention, changes in alpha oscillations in visual cortex, and attention performance are still poorly understood. Here, we tested the degree to which the posterior alpha power tracked the locus of attention, the distribution of attention, and how well the topography of alpha could predict the locus of attention. We recorded magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data while subjects performed an attention demanding visual discrimination task that dissociated the direction of attention from the direction of a saccade to indicate choice. On some trials, an endogenous cue predicted the target’s location, while on others it contained no spatial information. When the target’s location was cued, alpha power decreased in sensors over occipital cortex contralateral to the attended visual field. When the cue did not predict the target’s location, alpha power again decreased in sensors over occipital cortex, but bilaterally, and increased in sensors over frontal cortex. Thus, the distribution and the topography of alpha reliably indicated the locus of covert attention. Together, these results suggest that alpha synchronization reflects changes in the excitability of populations of neurons whose receptive fields match the locus of attention. This is consistent with the hypothesis that alpha oscillations reflect the neural mechanisms by which top-down control of attention biases information processing and modulate the activity of neurons in visual cortex.
A European in Asia

How culture-proof are the social sciences? Travelling in another continent, one meets culture's influences not only in the objects of social science research, but at least as much in the minds of the researchers. Researchers' problem definitions and choices of issues to be addressed and questions to be asked limit what they will find; they are a potential source of ethnocentric bias. A case example of the discovery of such a bias was the emergence of a fifth dimension of national cultures supplementing Hofstede's four, through Bond's Chinese Value Survey. In the area of personality research, a number of newer and older findings by Asian and European researchers suggest the need for expanding the ‘Big Five’ model of personality traits with a sixth factor, Dependence on Others, in order to make the model culturally universal. In general, researchers recognize primarily those aspects of culture for which their own culture differs most from others. For escaping from the cultural constraints in our own research we therefore need to trade ideas with colleagues from other parts of the world. In this respect, Asian researchers have an important role to play.
Multiscale model-based feature extraction in structural texture images

We deal with the problem of time-efficient extraction of structural features in a large class of structural texture images. The proposed approach of multiscale morphological texture modeling describes explicitly and concisely both shape and intensity parameters in the structural texture model. The modeling is based on a morphological skeletal representation of structural texture cells as objects of interest and the genomic growth of a texture region starting from a seed cell. This representation offers the advantage of concise description of texture cells as compared to the existing edge-based or contour-based approaches. A computationally efficient estimation of the structural texture parameters for texture segmentation tasks is proposed. The model parameter estimation and subsequent feature extraction rely on cell localization and scale-based locally adaptive binarization of the localized cells using isotropic matched filtering. The multiscale isotropic matched filter (MIMF) provides a scale- and orientation-invariant detection of structural cells regarded as multiple objects of interest in texture regions. Results of experiments pertaining to the parameter estimation from synthetic and real texture images as well as the segmentation of texture regions based on structural features are also provided.
RFID Antenna Near the Surface of Metal

Nowadays, RFID (radiofrequency identification) technology is becoming more and more popular. One critical problem is that most passive RFID tag can not be placed on metal objects because metallic surface changes its radiation pattern, input impedance, radiation efficiency and resonant frequency. Through detailed theoretical analysis, relationship between the distance to the metallic surface and the tag' s communication efficiency is deduced. Finite element method (FEM) is used to simulate the dependency of antenna efficiency on the distance of the plate. Experiments have also been carried out to verify the analysis and the simulation results. Finally, a recommended distance of RFID tag placed on metallic surface has been given.