Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Iranian Nephrology and Urology Research Output in the Past Two Decades: A Bibliographic Analysis of Medline Database

Context: We performed a bibliometric search to evaluate the number of papers published in the field of nephrology and urology by Iranian researchers in the past two decades. Evidence Acquisition: We did an online search in abstract/title part of articles with 129 keywords such as kidney, renal, hemodialysis, transplant, nephrology, glomerulonephritis, ureteral, nephrolithiasis, and etc. Endnote software version 7 was used to search articles published in PubMed database from November 1993 to November 2013. Those articles in which Iran was the affiliation of at least one of the authors were selected. These articles in the field of nephrology and urology were analyzed regarding the name of originated institution, field of study, total number of publications, type of study, collaboration rate of Iranian nephrologist and urologists for every year, annual sharing of Iranian articles in five journals with highest impact factor (IF) and journal IF. Results: The total number of publications in the field of nephrology and urology was 3,771 (average of 189 papers per year). Most of the Iranian nephrology and urology papers were from the capital city, Tehran (50.03%). There was an increasing trend in the number of publications over the years. Most papers were about transplantation (44.6%), nephrology (20.9%) and hemodialysis (16.4%). Of all, 53.7% were retrospective articles, whereas the proportion of clinical trials was relatively small (10.8%). Conclusions: Although Iranian publications in the field of nephrology and urology have had a considerable and significant increase in the recent years amongst the Middle Eastern countries, there is a wide distance to be a science exporter country.
Fast scans and joins using flash drives

As access times to main memory and disks continue to diverge, faster non-volatile storage technologies become more attractive for speeding up data analysis applications. NAND flash is one such promising substitute for disks. Flash offers faster random reads than disk, consumes less power than disk, and is cheaper than DRAM. In this paper, we investigate alternative data layouts and join algorithms suited for systems that use flash drives as the non-volatile store. All of our techniques take advantage of the fast random reads of flash. We convert traditional sequential I/O algorithms to ones that use a mixture of sequential and random I/O to process less data in less time. Our measurements on commodity flash drives show that a column-major layout of data pages is faster than a traditional row-based layout for simple scans. We present a new join algorithm, RARE-join, designed for a column-based page layout on flash and compare it to a traditional hash join algorithm. Our analysis shows that RARE-join is superior in many practical cases: when join selectivities are small and only a few columns are projected in the join result.
Designing LU-QR Hybrid Solvers for Performance and Stability

This paper introduces hybrid LU-QR algorithms for solving dense linear systems of the form Ax = b. Throughout a matrix factorization, these algorithms dynamically alternate LU with local pivoting and QR elimination steps, based upon some robustness criterion. LU elimination steps can be very efficiently parallelized, and are twice as cheap in terms of operations, as QR steps. However, LU steps are not necessarily stable, while QR steps are always stable. The hybrid algorithms execute a QR step when a robustness criterion detects some risk for instability, and they execute an LU step otherwise. Ideally, the choice between LU and QR steps must have a small computational overhead and must provide a satisfactory level of stability with as few QR steps as possible. In this paper, we introduce several robustness criteria and we establish upper bounds on the growth factor of the norm of the updated matrix incurred by each of these criteria. In addition, we describe the implementation of the hybrid algorithms through an extension of the Parsec software to allow for dynamic choices during execution. Finally, we analyze both stability and performance results compared to state-of-the-art linear solvers on parallel distributed multicore platforms.
An Adaptation for Altruism

People feel grateful when they have benefited from someone's costly, intentional, voluntary effort on their behalf. Experiencing gratitude motivates beneficiaries to repay their benefactors and to extend generosity to third parties. Expressions of gratitude also reinforce benefactors for their generosity. These social features distinguish gratitude from related emotions such as happiness and feelings of indebtedness. Evolutionary theories propose that gratitude is an adaptation for reciprocal altruism (the sequential exchange of costly benefits between nonrelatives) and, perhaps, upstream reciprocity (a pay-it-forward style distribution of an unearned benefit to a third party after one has received a benefit from another benefactor). Gratitude therefore may have played a unique role in human social evolution.
Robust semantic confidence scoring

This paper describes an approach for deﬁning robust, application-independent conﬁdence measures for dialogue systems. A concept-level conﬁdence score is computed us-ing a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classiﬁer trained to discriminate between correct and incorrect concepts. Three types of concept-level conﬁdence features are considered: features based on the conﬁdence score of the underlying words, parsing speciﬁc features, and novel semantic features (weighted semantic purity and time consistency) that are indicators of the coherence among various semantic recognition hypotheses. Conﬁdence scores at the semantic hypothesis and utterance levels are derived from the conﬁdence scores of the corresponding concepts. We report our results on a database of 40 , 000 utterances from various application contexts. By using features based only on word scores for concept classication we obtained a 46% correct rejection (CR) rate at a 95% correct acceptance (CA) rate. Adding semantic measures to the classiﬁer boosted the CR rate to 71% , which corresponds to a 46 . 3% relative improvement.
The open string pair-production rate enhancement by a magnetic flux

We extend the amplitude calculations of [1] to exhaust the remaining cases for which one set of Dp branes carrying a flux (electric or magnetic) is placed parallel at separation to the other set carrying also a flux but with the two fluxes sharing at most one common field-strength index. We then find that the basic structure of amplitudes remains the same when the two fluxes share at least one common index but it is more general when the two fluxes share no common index. We discuss various properties of the amplitudes such as the large separation limit, the onset of various instabilities and the open string pair production. In particular, when one flux is electric and weak and the other is magnetic and fixed, we find that the open string pair production rate is greatly enhanced by the presence of this magnetic flux when the two fluxes share no common field-strength index and this rate becomes significant when the separation is on the order of string scale.
Estimating the Effective Population Size from Temporal Allele Frequency Changes in Experimental Evolution

The effective population size (Ne) is a major factor determining allele frequency changes in natural and experimental populations. Temporal methods provide a powerful and simple approach to estimate short-term Ne. They use allele frequency shifts between temporal samples to calculate the standardized variance, which is directly related to Ne. Here we focus on experimental evolution studies that often rely on repeated sequencing of samples in pools (Pool-seq). Pool-seq is cost-effective and often outperforms individual-based sequencing in estimating allele frequencies, but it is associated with atypical sampling properties: Additional to sampling individuals, sequencing DNA in pools leads to a second round of sampling, which increases the variance of allele frequency estimates. We propose a new estimator of Ne, which relies on allele frequency changes in temporal data and corrects for the variance in both sampling steps. In simulations, we obtain accurate Ne estimates, as long as the drift variance is not too small compared to the sampling and sequencing variance. In addition to genome-wide Ne estimates, we extend our method using a recursive partitioning approach to estimate Ne locally along the chromosome. Since the type I error is controlled, our method permits the identification of genomic regions that differ significantly in their Ne estimates. We present an application to Pool-seq data from experimental evolution with Drosophila and provide recommendations for whole-genome data. The estimator is computationally efficient and available as an R package at https://github.com/ThomasTaus/Nest.
Thin-film transistors based on ZnO fabricated by using radio-frequency magnetron sputtering

We report on enhancement-mode thin-film transistors (TFTs) using ZnO as an active channel layer deposited by radio-frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering at 350 ◦C. The TFT structure consisted of ZnO as a channel, SiNx as a gate insulator, and indium tin oxide (ITO) as a gate, which were deposited onto a Corning glass substrate. Atomic force microscopic images showed an atomically flat morphology of ZnO channel layer with a root-mean-square roughness of 0.7 nm. The X-ray diffraction pattern revealed a dense columnar structure of closely packed ZnO nano grains along the c-axis. The transfer characteristics of a typical ZnO TFT exhibited a field effect mobility of 1.698 cm/V·s, a drain current on/off ratio of 10, a low off-current value on the order of 10−10 A, and a threshold voltage of 2.5 V.
Dual output interleaved PFC for alleviating mutual interference between loads during transients

In this paper, a solution to alleviate mutual interference between the loads during load transients is presented for dual-output power server system. The output DC bus of conventional PFC (Power Factor Correction) system is modified to have independent DC bus for such tenacity. The Boost PFC converter is replaced by Interleaved Boost (IB) PFC converter and furthermore modified at the output end without betraying the operating principle of conventional PFC system. The load sharing capability of dual-output AC-DC system is being improved and the input current ripple is reduced by the modified converter system. The modified IB (MIB) PFC system can handle doubled output power compared to that of the conventional IB PFC system with same design specification. Hence, high cost and size of the converter in this regard can be limited. In this paper, the MIB PFC system is compared with that of the conventional IB PFC converter to understand its superiority based on the dual-output power supply under load transient. The modified system inherently maintains regulated output voltage at load side and simultaneously works with unity power factor (UPF). Additionally, the source current %THD is found to be less compared to that of conventional IB PFC system. Here, a prototype is designed which can operate in both 1.2kW, 500VDC interleaved boost PFC or 2 × 1.25kW, 500VDC MIB PFC mode individually with same design parameters. For both the topological arrangement, same design parameters are considered for better understanding.
A new model for thermal channel noise of deep submicron MOSFETs and its application in RF-CMOS design

In this paper we present a simple analytical model for the thermal channel noise of deep submicron MOS transistors including hot carrier effects. The model is verified by measurements and implemented in the standard BSIM3v3 SPICE model. We show that the consideration of this additional noise caused by hot carrier effects is essential for the correct simulation of the noise performance of a LNA in the GHz range.
Mining Reviews for Product Comparison and Recommendation

+ Abstract—Recently, as the amount of customer reviews grows rapidly on product service websites, it costs customers much time to select and compare their favorite products. Researchers have been aware of this problem and many studies are investigated to mine the opinions from the online reviews. Unfortunately, few previous works give comparisons or recommendations among the products. In this paper, we propose an automated system to address this problem. We first build a product feature sentiment database from the reviews. Then we perform the comparison among various products from both subjective and objective perspectives on the feature level. Finally, product recommendations can be suggested according to the previous comparisons and an evolution tree constructed from the reviews. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in mining the digital camera reviews. And now a demo system is put in to practical use.
Monetary Regimes and Inflation in the UK, 1976-2007

I offer a reappraisal of the British monetary policy reaction function based on evidence of structural change indicated by a break-point algorithm. Discussion is supplemented by an inflation pressure analysis within a New Keynesian general equilibrium model to determine the effectiveness of policy in the post-Bretton Woods era. I find that the timing of structural breaks is similar to but does not match precisely the breaks indicated by traditional narrative approaches and that policy has become more aggressive in combating inflation as implied by the Taylor Rule. The inflation pressure analysis complements this by showing that the underlying inflationary environment moderated significantly during the Bank of England’s period of inflation targeting.
Extending database task schedulers for multi-threaded application code

Modern databases can run application logic defined in stored procedures inside the database server to improve application speed. The SQL standard specifies how to call external stored routines implemented in programming languages, such as C, C++, or JAVA, to complement declarative SQL-based application logic. This is beneficial for scientific and analytical algorithms because they are usually too complex to be implemented entirely in SQL. At the same time, database applications like matrix calculations or data mining algorithms benefit from multi-threading to parallelize compute-intensive operations. Multi-threaded application code, however, introduces a resource competition between the threads of applications and the threads of the database task scheduler. In this paper, we show that multi-threaded application code can render the database's workload scheduling ineffective and decrease the core throughput of the database by up to 50%. We present a general approach to address this issue by integrating shared memory programming solutions into the task schedulers of databases. In particular, we describe the integration of OpenMP into databases. We implement and evaluate our approach using SAP HANA. Our experiments show that our integration does not introduce overhead, and can improve the throughput of core database operations by up to 15%.
Quantitative noise sensitivity and exceptional times for percolation

One goal of this paper is to prove that dynamical critical site percolation on the planar triangular lattice has exceptional times at which percolation occurs. In doing so, new quantitative noise sensitivity results for percolation are obtained. The latter is based on a novel method for controlling the "level k" Fourier coefficients via the construction of a randomized algorithm which looks at random bits, outputs the value of a particular function but looks at any fixed input bit with low probability. We also obtain upper and lower bounds on the Hausdorff dimension of the set of percolating times. We then study the problem of exceptional times for certain "k-arm" events on wedges and cones. As a corollary of this analysis, we prove, among other things, that there are no times at which there are two infinite "white" clusters, obtain an upper bound on the Hausdorff dimension of the set of times at which there are both an infinite white cluster and an infinite black cluster and prove that for dynamical critical bond percolation on the square grid there are no exceptional times at which three disjoint infinite clusters are present.
Overview and Comparative Analysis of Edge Detection Techniques in Digital Image Processing

Edge detection is one of the most frequently used operations in image analysis. If the edges of images could be recognized accurately, all of the objects can be located efficiently and performance can be measured easily. It reduces the complexity of image processing algorithms by reducing the amount of data to be processed . The quality of image is affected when there is an jump in intensity from one pixels to the another. Thus important objective is to detect an edge while preserving the important structural properties of an image. In order to analyze various edge detection techniques , comparative analysis of these techniques based on certain parameters like type of edge, edge localization, nature, cost, role etc are discussed in this paper.
Preferential model and argumentation semantics

Although the preferential model semantics is the standard semantics for non-monotonic reasoning systems, it is not used for argumentation frameworks. For argumentation frameworks, instead, argumentation semantics are used. This paper studies the relation between the two types of semantics. Several argumentation semantics are related to additional constraints on the preference relation over states in the preferential model semantics. Moreover, based on the preferential model semantics a new argumentation semantics is proposed.
Decentralized neural identification and control for robotics manipulators

This paper presents a decentralized control scheme, based on a recurrent neural identifier with a block control structure, and its application to robotics manipulators. A local joint controller is proposed for each joint, using only local angular position and velocity measurements. These very simple local joint controllers allow trajectory tracking, with reduced computations. The applicability of the proposed scheme is illustrated, via simulations, first by the applications to a two degree of freedom robotic manipulator and then to a seven degree of freedom one.
Validation of Oceanic Mass Changes derived from GRACE Gravimetry: A comparison with independent data from Bottom Pressure Recorders in the Southern Ocean

The satellite mission GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) provides monthly solutions of the global gravity field of the Earth. Temporal variations in gravity reflect mass redistributions over the Earth. Those mass movements are caused by physical phenomena such as ice sheet dynamics, accumulation of hydrological masses over land, the dynamics in the solid Earth and the dynamics in the atmosphere and ocean. This thesis work focuses on the validation of the oceanic mass variations derived from GRACE. The goal of the project is to compare the oceanic estimates from the space-borne instrument with independent data from pressure recorders (BPRs), deployed on the bottom of the deep ocean in the southern ocean. Although those datasets seem to be of a completely different nature they measure the same quantity. Namely, the variations of mass in the atmosphere and ocean, which in their turn influence the dynamics of the ocean. In this study the GRACE data is compared to the following two quantities: - Local bottom pressure at the BPR stations - Pairwise differences of local bottom pressure (a measure of the oceanic transport) The processing methodology applied to the BPR records is as follows: The raw BPR data is de-tided using a harmonic analysis method. The data is then averaged (over a month) to make them equivalent to the GRACE solutions. GRACE data from three different computing centers1 are compared. The spherical harmonic coefficients are converted to equivalent water height and geostrophic flow, indicators of the variations in the ocean and atmosphere. The solution is filtered to remove correlated errors, after which the de-aliasing models are added back to the solutions. The final solution is obtained by applying a spatial averaging filter. The bottom pressure comparison showed good agreements at locations in the southern Indian ocean, the south Atlantic and the Argentine basin. The best correlations obtained values over 0.8 and typical errors of below 1.5 cm. The analysis showed an apparent connection between phenomena in the Argentine basin and near Crozet. A two monthly mode appeared to be present in both areas. The capabilities of GRACE to detect this mode is marginal and further investigation is required. The comparison for the geostrophic flow (pressure differences) showed a significant agreement in the south Indian ocean, with correlations over 0.7 and errors as low as 7 mm/s. Correlations in other areas were weak or even non existent. We conclude that, for dedicated areas, GRACE shows the ability to measure realistic large scale variations in bottom pressure and geostrophic flow on spatial scales yet barely explored.
Dopamine: a parallel pathway for the modulation of spinal locomotor networks

The spinal cord contains networks of neurons that can produce locomotor patterns. To readily respond to environmental conditions, these networks must be flexible yet at the same time robust. Neuromodulators play a key role in contributing to network flexibility in a variety of invertebrate and vertebrate networks. For example, neuromodulators contribute to altering intrinsic properties and synaptic weights that, in extreme cases, can lead to neurons switching between networks. Here we focus on the role of dopamine in the control of stepping networks in the spinal cord. We first review the role of dopamine in modulating rhythmic activity in the stomatogastric ganglion (STG) and the leech, since work from these preparations provides a foundation to understand its role in vertebrate systems. We then move to a discussion of dopamine’s role in modulation of swimming in aquatic species such as the larval xenopus, lamprey and zebrafish. The control of terrestrial walking in vertebrates by dopamine is less studied and we review current evidence in mammals with a focus on rodent species. We discuss data suggesting that the source of dopamine within the spinal cord is mainly from the A11 area of the diencephalon, and then turn to a discussion of dopamine’s role in modulating walking patterns from both in vivo and in vitro preparations. Similar to the descending serotonergic system, the dopaminergic system may serve as a potential target to promote recovery of locomotor function following spinal cord injury (SCI); evidence suggests that dopaminergic agonists can promote recovery of function following SCI. We discuss pharmacogenetic and optogenetic approaches that could be deployed in SCI and their potential tractability. Throughout the review we draw parallels with both noradrenergic and serotonergic modulatory effects on spinal cord networks. In all likelihood, a complementary monoaminergic enhancement strategy should be deployed following SCI.
A Dual Role for Sex

The two classic theories for the existence of sexual replication are that sex purges deleterious mutations from a population, and that sex allows a population to adapt more rapidly to changing environments. These two theories have often been presented as opposing explanations for the existence of sex. Here, we develop and analyze evolutionary models based on the asexual and sexual replication pathways in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker's yeast), and show that sexual replication can both purge deleterious mutations in a static environment, as well as lead to faster adaptation in a dynamic environment. This implies that sex can serve a dual role, which is in sharp contrast to previous theories.