Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deconstructing paxos

The celebrated Paxos algorithm of Lamport implements a fault-tolerant deterministic service by replicating it over a distributed message-passing system. This paper presents a deconstruction of the algorithm by factoring out its fundamental algorithmic principles within two abstractions: an eventual leader election and an eventual register abstractions. In short, the leader election abstraction encapsulates the liveness property of Paxos whereas the register abstraction encapsulates its safety property. Our deconstruction is faithful in that it preserves the resilience and efficiency of the original Paxos algorithm in terms of stable storage logs, message complexity, and communication steps. In a companion paper, we show how to use our abstractions to reconstruct powerful variants of Paxos.
Singular Points Detection Based on Zero-Pole Model in Fingerprint Images

An algorithm is proposed, which combines Zero-pole Model and Hough Transform (HT) to detect singular points. Orientation of singular points is defined on the basis of the Zero-pole Model, which can further explain the practicability of Zero-pole Model. Contrary to orientation field generation, detection of singular points is simplified to determine the parameters of the Zero-pole Model. HT uses rather global information of fingerprint images to detect singular points. This makes our algorithm more robust to noise than methods that only use local information. As the Zero-pole Model may have a little warp from actual fingerprint orientation field, Poincare index is used to make position adjustment in neighborhood of the detected candidate singular points. Experimental results show that our algorithm performs well and fast enough for real-time application in database NIST-4.
Managing Critical Thinking Skills to Resilience Profile of Pancasila Students in Indonesia Using Controversial Public Issues Model

Purpose: How to manage critical thinking skills in order to resilience Profil Pelajar Pancasila using controversial public issues model is what is the purpose of the research. Theoretical framework: Managing critical thinking skillsis the ability to analyze, evaluate, explain, inference, and interpretation of information obtained in a qualitative or quantitative in writing and verbal using controversial public issues models. Method/design/approach: The research conducted using the quasi-experimental method. This study uses data collection techniques in the form of tests consisting of paper-based pretests and postests supported by documentation needed during the study. Results and conclusion: The result was that managing critical thinking skills using the controversial public issues method was effective in resilience of the Profil Pelajar Pancasila. Research implications: Controversial Public Issues models can increase the dimension of critical thinking skills, so that they can reach the dimensions contained in the Profil Pelajar Pancasila as a transition to implementing the Merdeka Curriculum. Originality/value: This research contributes to the growing literature on critical thinking management as a form of thinking that learners are required to have in the new Profil Pelajar Pancasila policy contained in the Merdeka curriculum. This research provides original insights related to the effectiveness of the implementation of the CPI model in improving critical thinking skills in the Profil Pelajar Pancasila, so that it has an impact on fulfilling the obligations of teachers to make students become students with Pancasila character.
The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality

We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.
Indigenous Conceptions of Well-Being: Rejecting Poverty, Pursuing Mino-Bimaadiziwin

According to conventional metrics, such as the low-income cut-off and social assistance rates, Indigenous peoples in Canada have disproportionately high levels of poverty. But what does poverty mean from an Indigenous perspective? Drawing on data from the Poverty Action Research Project (PARP) - a five-year partnership between academic researchers, the Assembly of First Nations, and five First Nations communities in different regions of Canada seeking to reduce poverty and improve community health - this paper examines the relational and subjective aspects of poverty and well-being. Our analysis of PARP communities' discussions of poverty and actions to address it suggests that poverty is seen through the lens of what the Anishinaabek call Mino-Bimaadiziwin, which describes "living well" in a holistic, multidimensional, and community-centered sense. Interventions to address poverty therefore would be better framed as initiatives to enable the pursuit of a good life, as Indigenous people understand it, and must consider not only the economic impacts, but also the interrelated environmental, political, intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions.
Reviving Dormant Ties in an Online Social Network Experiment

Social network users connect and interact with one another to fulfil different kinds of social and information needs.When interaction ceases between two users, we say that their tie becomes dormant. While there are different underlying reasons of dormant ties, it is important to find means to revive such ties so as to maintain vibrancy in the relationships. In this work, we thus focus on designing an online experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of personalized social messages to revive dormant ties. The experiment carefully selects users with dormant ties so that no user gets mixed treatments and be affected by the responses of other users undergoing treatment. Our results show that personalized message content plays an important part in reviving dormant ties. Specifically, we find the message containing friend's recent activity information is more effective than that containing inter-friend activity information. We observe that the quality of engagement of at least 50% of the revived ties can effectively be restored to the level before the ties become dormant. We also observe that it is easier to revive dormant ties that involve users from the same country than those involving users from different countries.
Postnatal serum insulin-like growth factor I deficiency is associated with retinopathy of prematurity and other complications of premature birth.

OBJECTIVE Insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) is necessary for normal development of retinal blood vessels in mice and humans. Because retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is initiated by abnormal postnatal retinal development, we hypothesized that prolonged low IGF-I in premature infants might be a risk factor for ROP. DESIGN We conducted a prospective, longitudinal study measuring serum IGF-I concentrations weekly in 84 premature infants from birth (postmenstrual ages: 24-32 weeks) until discharge from the hospital. Infants were evaluated for ROP and other morbidity of prematurity: bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), and necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). RESULTS Low serum IGF-I values correlated with later development of ROP. The mean IGF-I +/- SEM level during postmenstrual ages 30-33 weeks was lowest with severe ROP (25 +/- 2.41 micro g/L), 29 +/- 1.76 micro g/L with moderate ROP, and 33 +/- 1.72 micro g/L with no ROP. The duration of low IGF-I also correlated strongly with the severity of ROP. The interval from birth until serum IGF-I levels reached >33 micro g/L was 23 +/- 2.6 days for no ROP, 44 +/- 4.8 days for moderate ROP, and 52 +/- 7.5 days for severe ROP. Each adjusted stepwise increase of 5 micro g/L in mean IGF-I during postmenstrual ages 30 to 33 weeks decreased the risk of proliferative ROP by 45%. Other complications (NEC, BPD, IVH) were correlated with ROP and with low IGF-I levels. The relative risk for any morbidity (ROP, BPD, IVH, or NEC) was increased 2.2-fold (95% confidence interval: 1.41-3.43) if IGF-I was <or=33 micro g/L at 33 weeks' postmenstrual age. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that persistent low serum concentrations of IGF-I after premature birth are associated with later development of ROP and other complications of prematurity. IGF-I is at least as strong a determinant of risk for ROP as postmenstrual age at birth and birth weight.
Helplessness, self blame and faith may impact on self management in COPD: a qualitative study.

AIMS To explore how patients with COPD experience helplessness. METHODS In-depth interviews with 29 patients with moderate to very severe COPD. Data were analysed using a general inductive approach. RESULTS All patients focused on acute symptoms and expressed feelings of helplessness in the management of their condition; little attention was paid to longer-term strategies. For one group of patients, mostly European, self blame appeared to intensify feelings of helplessness. For a second group, mostly Pacific, a focus on faith in God, Church and family provided a more positive affect and existed alongside helplessness. CONCLUSIONS Clinicians seeking to support patients to include longer term strategies in their self management will need to coach patients to experiences of short-term success, and be aware of the ways that patients experience and interpret their helplessness. Clinicians need to address self blame, and recognise patients' priorities of faith and family.
Erratum to: Progress Note 2024: Curing HIV; Not in My Lifetime or Just Around the Corner?

Once a death sentence, HIV is now considered a manageable chronic disease due to the development of antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens with minimal toxicity and a high barrier for genetic resistance. While highly effective in arresting AIDS progression and rendering the virus untransmissible in people living with HIV (PLWH) with undetectable viremia (U=U) [1, 2], ART alone is incapable of eradicating the “reservoir” of resting, latently infected CD4+ T cells from which virus recrudesces upon treatment cessation. As of 2022 estimates, there are 39 million PLWH, of whom 86% are aware of their status and 76% are receiving ART [3]. As of 2017, ART-treated PLWH exhibit near normalized life expectancies without adjustment for socioeconomic differences [4]. Furthermore, there is a global deceleration in the rate of new infections [3] driven by expanded access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), HIV testing in vulnerable populations, and by ART treatment [5]. Therefore, despite outstanding issues pertaining to cost and access in developing countries, there is strong enthusiasm that aggressive testing, treatment, and effective viral suppression may be able to halt the ongoing HIV epidemic (ie, UNAIDS' 95-95-95 targets) [6–8]; especially as evidenced by recent encouraging observations in Sydney [9]. Despite these promising efforts to limit further viral transmission, for PLWH, a “cure” remains elusive; whether it be to completely eradicate the viral reservoir (ie, cure) or to induce long-term viral remission in the absence of ART (ie, control; Figure 1). In a previous salon hosted by Pathogens and Immunity in 2016 [10], some researchers were optimistic that a cure was a feasible, scalable goal, albeit with no clear consensus on the best route. So, how are these cure strategies panning out? In this commentary, 8 years later, we will provide a brief overview on recent advances and failures towards identifying determinants of viral persistence and developing a scalable cure for HIV. Based on these observations, and as in the earlier salon, we have asked several prominent HIV cure researchers for their perspectives.
Developing and Implementing a Multispecialty Graduate Medical Education Curriculum on Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)

The authors sought to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of initiating a Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for alcohol and other drug use curriculum across multiple residency programs. SBIRT project faculty in the internal medicine (traditional, primary care internal medicine, medicine/pediatrics), psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, emergency medicine, and pediatrics programs were trained in performing and teaching SBIRT. The SBIRT project faculty trained the residents in their respective disciplines, accommodating discipline-specific implementation issues and developed a SBIRT training Web site. Post-training, residents were observed performing SBIRT with a standardized patient. Measurements included number of residents trained, performance of SBIRT in clinical practice, and training satisfaction. One hundred and ninety-nine residents were trained in SBIRT: 98 internal medicine, 35 psychiatry, 18 obstetrics and gynecology, 21 emergency medicine, and 27 pediatrics residents. To date, 338 self-reported SBIRT clinical encounters have occurred. Of the 196 satisfaction surveys completed, the mean satisfaction score for the training was 1.60 (1 = very satisfied to 5 = very dissatisfied). Standardized patient sessions with SBIRT project faculty supervision were the most positive aspect of the training and length of training was a noted weakness. Implementation of a graduate medical education SBIRT curriculum in a multispecialty format is feasible and acceptable. Future efforts focusing on evaluation of resident SBIRT performance and sustainability of SBIRT are needed.
Diabetic Foot Complications and Their Risk Factors from a Large Retrospective Cohort Study

Background Foot complications are considered to be a serious consequence of diabetes mellitus, posing a major medical and economical threat. Identifying the extent of this problem and its risk factors will enable health providers to set up better prevention programs. Saudi National Diabetes Registry (SNDR), being a large database source, would be the best tool to evaluate this problem. Methods This is a cross-sectional study of a cohort of 62,681 patients aged ≥25 years from SNDR database, selected for studying foot complications associated with diabetes and related risk factors. Results The overall prevalence of diabetic foot complications was 3.3% with 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of (3.16%–3.44%), whilst the prevalences of foot ulcer, gangrene, and amputations were 2.05% (1.94%–2.16%), 0.19% (0.16%–0.22%), and 1.06% (0.98%–1.14%), respectively. The prevalence of foot complications increased with age and diabetes duration predominantly amongst the male patients. Diabetic foot is more commonly seen among type 2 patients, although it is more prevalent among type 1 diabetic patients. The Univariate analysis showed Charcot joints, peripheral vascular disease (PVD), neuropathy, diabetes duration ≥10 years, insulin use, retinopathy, nephropathy, age ≥45 years, cerebral vascular disease (CVD), poor glycemic control, coronary artery disease (CAD), male gender, smoking, and hypertension to be significant risk factors with odds ratio and 95% CI at 42.53 (18.16–99.62), 14.47 (8.99–23.31), 12.06 (10.54–13.80), 7.22 (6.10–8.55), 4.69 (4.28–5.14), 4.45 (4.05–4.89), 2.88 (2.43–3.40), 2.81 (2.31–3.43), 2.24 (1.98–2.45), 2.02 (1.84–2.22), 1.54 (1.29–1.83), and 1.51 (1.38–1.65), respectively. Conclusions Risk factors for diabetic foot complications are highly prevalent; they have put these complications at a higher rate and warrant primary and secondary prevention programs to minimize morbidity and mortality in addition to economic impact of the complications. Other measurements, such as decompression of lower extremity nerves, should be considered among diabetic patients.
Phrase alignment confidence for statistical machine translation

The performance of phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT) systems is crucially dependent on the quality of the extracted phrase pairs, which is in turn a function of word alignment quality. Data sparsity, an inherent problem in SMT even with large training corpora, often has an adverse impact on the reliability of the extracted phrase translation pairs. In this paper, we present a novel feature based on bootstrap resampling of the training corpus, termed phrase alignment conﬁdence , that measures the goodness of a phrase translation pair. We integrate this feature within a phrase-based SMT sys-tem and show an improvement of 1.7% BLEU and 4.4% METEOR over a baseline English-to-Pashto (E2P) SMT system that does not use any measure of phrase pair quality. We then show that the proposed measure compares well to an existing indicator of phrase pair reliability, the lexical smoothing probability . We also demonstrate that combining the two measures leads to a further improvement of 0.4% BLEU and 0.3% METEOR on the E2P system. Commensurate translation improvements are obtained on automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts of the source speech utterances.
Congenital Dislocation of the Hip

For the great majority of children younger than 18 months of age with congenital dislocation of the hip (CDH), closed reduction has been the simplest and safest method of treatment. For the few children who have required open reduction after failure of closed methods, the choice operative approach has been the classic anterior iliofemoral approach or the recently revived medial approach first described by Ludloff. ’ Each technique offers its own advantages. Advocates of the medial approach described it as a simpler method requiring less dissection and tissue destruction; it attacks the structures at the inferior aspect of the acetabulum which prevent red~ct ion. ~*”*’~ Advocates of the anterior iliofemoral approach acknowledge that more dissection is required, but they point out that the approach allows for a more thorough exploration of the joint, and routine capsulorrhaphy. In addition, the anterior approach permits acetabular reconstructive procedures to be performed when necessary. Results of a preliminary series of medial approach open reductions were assessed to determine whether there are additional advantages to the medial approach that warrant its continued use in preference to the anterior iliofemoral approach. Maintenance
Meme Hunting with the Humdrum Toolkit: Principles, Problems, and Prospects

[A meme is] a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process . [that], in the broad sense, can be called imitation. (Dawkins 1989, 2nd ed., p. 192)
Loss of SR-BI Expression Leads to the Early Onset of Occlusive Atherosclerotic Coronary Artery Disease, Spontaneous Myocardial Infarctions, Severe Cardiac Dysfunction, and Premature Death in Apolipoprotein E-Deficient Mice

Murine models of atherosclerosis, such as the apolipoprotein E (apoE) or the LDL receptor knockout mice, usually do not exhibit many of the cardinal features of human coronary heart disease (CHD), eg, spontaneous myocardial infarction, severe cardiac dysfunction, and premature death. Here we show that mice with homozygous null mutations in the genes for both the high density lipoprotein receptor SR-BI and apoE (SR-BI/apoE double knockout [dKO] mice) exhibit morphological and functional defects with similarities to those seen in human CHD. When fed a standard chow diet, these hypercholesterolemic animals developed significant atherosclerotic lesions in the aortic sinus as early as 4 to 5 weeks after birth. We now show that they also exhibited extensive lipid-rich coronary artery occlusions and spontaneously developed multiple myocardial infarctions and cardiac dysfunction (eg, enlarged hearts, reduced ejection fraction and contractility, and ECG abnormalities). Their coronary arterial lesions, which were strikingly similar to human atherosclerotic plaques, exhibited evidence of cholesterol clefts and extensive fibrin deposition, indicating hemorrhage and clotting. All of the dKO mice died by 8 weeks of age (50% mortality at 6 weeks). Thus, SR-BI/apoE dKO mice provide a new murine model for CHD and may help better define the role of lipoprotein metabolism and atherosclerosis in the pathogenesis of myocardial infarction and cardiac dysfunction. Furthermore, these animals may be useful for preclinical testing of potential genetic and/or pharmacological therapies for CHD.
Radar Quantitative Precipitation Estimation improvement in Champagne vineyard.

Rainfall has a crucial importance in viticulture, especially in Champagne vineyards, where irrigation is prohibited. Rainfall directly influences the phytosanitary pressure, nitrogen mineralization, flowering conditions, parcel practicability, soil erosion etc… In these conditions, implementing a weather stations network is the solution that the Comite Champagne chose to monitor rainfall all over the Champagne appellation since the 1990's. This networks is actually composed of 42 weather stations implemented in order to have the best spatial coverage as possible. The Comite Champagne also obtain some weather stations data from Meteo France, the French national weather service. Even with that network, capturing all rainfall events accurately is difficult, especially in convective cases. Therefore, the interest in radar data has increased, to capture rainfall everywhere. Some tests have been previously made with PANTHERE radar data from Meteo France with a resolution of 1 km 2 , results were promising, but presented inaccuracies particularly in convective events. In this article, we use a radar merging technique similar to the ANTILOPE method from Meteo France, with a higher resolution network. The tool employed is the Estimages toolbox merger, based on krigine with external drift (KED) which has been demonstrated to give good results in quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE) improvement.