Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heat Transfer In A Two-Layered Blood Flow Model In A Narrow Tube In Presence Of Magnetic Field

Blood flow in a narrow tube is described using the two-layered model in presence of an external uniform magnetic field. The model consists of a core region, enriched with various types of blood cells and a cell-free peripheral plasma layer. Also the constant heat flux convective heat transfer to fully developed blood flow is studied. The velocity and temperature profiles are determined. The expressions for friction-factor-Reynolds number product and Nusselt number are found and their natures are shown graphically.
Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy reduces the predicted coronary heart disease risk and the vascular age in obese subjects.

BACKGROUND Obesity is associated with high prevalence of coronary heart disease (CHD) and long term increased cardiovascular morbi-mortality. There are no data regarding the effect of laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) on long-term CHD - risk. It is known that "a man is as old as his arteries" and this concept is illustrated by Framingham coronary risk score, which can predict vascular age. PURPOSE To assess the 10-year CHD risk in patients with obesity, preoperatively, and 6 and 12 months after LSG. METHODS 47 consecutive obese subjects (44.7% males, mean age 39.8 years) scheduled for LSG were prospectively studied before and 6 and 12 months after surgery. The 10 years CHD risk and corresponding vascular age were calculated using Framingham risk score. RESULTS The body mass index (BMI) decreased from 44.6 ± 10.6 kg m2 preoperatively to 32.2 ± 6.9 kg m2 and to 29.4 ± 5.4 kg m2 at 6 and 12 months follow-up (both p 0.05). Mean excessive weight loss (EWL) was 67.3 ± 23.7% and 78.3 ± 23.4% at 6 and 12 months postoperatively. At 6 and 12 months after LSG, there was a marked improvment of lipid profile(decrease of total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides and increase of HDL-cholesterol) and a significant decrease in prevalence of diabetes mellitus, systemic hypertension and smoking. The 10-year CHD risk reduced from 10.1% preoperatively to 3.5% and to 2.2% at 6 and 12 months after surgery (both p 0.05). Patients' mean vascular age was 65.6 years preoperatively and decreased to 45.8 years 6 month spostoperatively (p 0.05) and to 40.7 years one year after LSG (p 0.05 vs. 6 months postoperatively, p=NS vs.chronological age). CONCLUSIONS In obese subjects, CHD risk is significantly reduced early, beginning with 6 months after LSG and is diminished with 80% one year postoperatively. Despite the fact that not all patients had achieved the ideal weight yet,mean vascular age is similar to their chronological age one year after surgery.
An Effective Feature Selection Method via Mutual Information Estimation

This paper proposes a new feature selection method using a mutual information-based criterion that measures the importance of a feature in a backward selection framework. It considers the dependency among many features and uses either one of two well-known probability density function estimation methods when computing the criterion. The proposed approach is compared with existing mutual information-based methods and another sophisticated filter method on many artificial and real-world problems. The numerical results show that the proposed method can effectively identify the important features in data sets having dependency among many features and is superior, in almost all cases, to the benchmark methods.
Learning with Product Units

Product units provide a method of automatically learning the higher-order input combinations required for efficient learning in neural networks. However, we show that problems are encountered when using backpropagation to train networks containing these units. This paper examines these problems, and proposes some atypical heuristics to improve learning. Using these heuristics a constructive method is introduced which solves well-researched problems with significantly less neurons than previously reported. Secondly, product units are implemented as candidate units in the Cascade Correlation (Fahlman & Lebiere, 1990) system. This resulted in smaller networks which trained faster than when using sigmoidal or Gaussian units.
Opportunistic content distribution in an urban setting

This paper investigates the feasibility of a city-wide content distribution architecture composed of short range wireless access points. We look at how a target group of intermittently and partially connected mobile nodes can improve the diffusion of information within the group by leveraging fixed and mobile nodes that are exterior to the group. The fixed nodes are data sources, and the external mobile nodes are data relays, and we examine the trade off between the use of each in order to obtain high satisfaction within the target group, which consists of data sinks. We conducted an experiment in Cambridge, UK, to gather mobility traces that we used for the study of this content distribution architecture. In this scenario, the simple fact that members of the target group collaborate leads to a delivery ratio of 90%. In addition, the use of external mobile nodes to relay the information slightly increases the delivery ratio while significantly decreasing the delay.
Selection of lymphocyte gating protocol has an impact on the level of reliability of T-cell subsets in aging specimens.

BACKGROUND In the past decade, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) lymphocyte immunophenotyping has evolved significantly. New fluorochromes, new multicolor reagents, enhanced instruments, and the capacity to provide absolute cell counts using the single-platform technique have all contributed to the reliability of T-cell subset measurements. In this study, four gating protocols were evaluated to select the most robust method for T-cell subset enumeration. METHODS Peripheral blood specimens from 21 HIV(+) and 20 HIV(-) individuals were monitored up to 96 h. Aliquots of specimens were stored at room temperature and analyzed at 6 (baseline), 48, 72, and 96 h. Aliquots were stained with CD45-fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)/CD3PC5/CD4RD1/CD8ECD. Data analysis was performed with all four gating protocols. RESULTS Only with fresh blood did all protocols provide similar results. From samples that were 48 h old, the choice of gating strategy had a dramatic impact on immunophenotyping results. The largest deviations from baseline values occurred at 96 h and gating protocols that included dual light scatter gates provided the greatest shift of T-cell subset values over time. The gating protocols that were based exclusively on cell lineage-specific gates gave the most robust T-cell values up to 96 h. CONCLUSION By selecting the appropriate gating protocol, the temporal integrity of specimens can be extended up to 4 days.
A Packet Loss Recovery of G.729 Speech Using Discriminative Model and N-Gram

In a VoIP application, packet losses degrade speech quality. Especially, IP network under a large-scale disaster should cause severe packet losses. We have investigated the relationship between parameter loss and speech quality for G.729 codec. In this paper, we propose packet loss recovery method under severe packet loss condition, where the relationship was modeled by Support Vector Machine (SVM). Compared with the "repetition" method, the proposed method could improve speech quality. When we used both SVM and N-gram for concealing packet losses, we could obtain further improvement of speech quality.
Antineutrophilic cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis with hypocomplementemia has a higher incidence of serious organ damage and a poor prognosis

Abstract A relationship between antineutrophilic cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) and complement has been shown, and complement has an important role in the pathogenesis of AAV. The clinical characteristics of AAV with hypocomplementemia still remain unclear. We conducted an observational study of 81 patients with AAV (median onset age 71 years; 58% female). Using medical records, we analyzed the patients’ baseline variables, laboratory data, clinical symptoms, and therapeutic outcomes after treatments including episodes of relapses, initiation of dialysis, and death. We defined hypocomplementemia as the state in which at least one of the following was lower than the lower limit of the normal range: complement 3 (C3), complement 4 (C4), and total complement activity (CH50). Sixteen patients (20%) had hypocomplementemia at their diagnosis of AAV. Compared to the AAV patients without hypocomplementemia (n = 65), those with hypocomplementemia had significantly higher rates of the occurrence of skin lesions (8 [50%] vs. 8 [12%], P = 0.002), diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH) (6 [38%] vs. 5 [8%], P = 0.006), and thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA) (3 [19%] vs. 0 [0%], P = 0.007). The AAV patients with hypocomplementemia had significantly lower platelet levels (16.5 × 104 vs. 24.9 × 104 cells/&mgr;L, P = 0.023) compared to those without hypocomplementemia. More positive immune complex deposits in renal biopsy specimens were seen in the AAV patients with hypocomplementemia than in those without hypocomplementemia (4 [80%] vs. 2 [18%], P = 0.036). Assessed by a log-rank test, hypocomplementemia at disease onset was significantly associated with death (P = 0.033). Hypocomplementemia in AAV at the disease onset was a risk factor for the serious organ damage, and a life prognostic factor. It is thus very important to pay attention to the levels of complement at the diagnosis of AAV.
Implicit Entity Recognition in Clinical Documents

With the increasing automation of health care information processing, it has become crucial to extract meaningful information from textual notes in electronic medical records. One of the key challenges is to extract and normalize entity mentions. State-of-the-art approaches have focused on the recognition of entities that are explicitly mentioned in a sentence. However, clinical documents often contain phrases that indicate the entities but do not contain their names. We term those implicit entity mentions and introduce the problem of implicit entity recognition (IER) in clinical documents. We propose a solution to IER that leverages entity definitions from a knowledge base to create entity models, projects sentences to the entity models and identifies implicit entity mentions by evaluating semantic similarity between sentences and entity models. The evaluation with 857 sentences selected for 8 different entities shows that our algorithm outperforms the most closely related unsupervised solution. The similarity value calculated by our algorithm proved to be an effective feature in a supervised learning setting, helping it to improve over the baselines, and achieving F1 scores of . 81 and . 73 for different classes of implicit mentions. Our gold standard annotations are made available to encourage further research in the area of IER.
Mutagenesis Study Reveals the Rim of Catalytic Entry Site of HDAC4 and -5 as the Major Binding Surface of SMRT Corepressor

Histone deacetylases (HDACs) play a pivotal role in eukaryotic gene expression by modulating the levels of acetylation of chromatin and related transcription factors. In contrast to class I HDACs (HDAC1, -2, -3 and -8), the class IIa HDACs (HDAC4, -5, -7 and -9) harbor cryptic deacetylases activity and recruit the SMRT-HDAC3 complex to repress target genes in vivo. In this regard, the specific interaction between the HDAC domain of class IIa HDACs and the C-terminal region of SMRT repression domain 3 (SRD3c) is known to be critical, but the molecular basis of this interaction has not yet been addressed. Here, we used an extensive mutant screening system, named the “partitioned one- plus two-hybrid system”, to isolate SRD3c interaction-defective (SRID) mutants over the entire catalytic domains of HDAC4 (HDAC4c) and -5. The surface presentation of the SRID mutations on the HDAC4c structure revealed that most of the mutations were mapped to the rim surface of the catalytic entry site, strongly suggesting this mutational hot-spot region as the major binding surface of SRD3c. Notably, among the HDAC4c surface residues required for SRD3c binding, some residues (C667, C669, C751, D759, T760 and F871) are present only in class IIa HDACs, providing the molecular basis for the specific interactions between SRD3c and class IIa enzymes. To investigate the functional consequence of SRID mutation, the in vitro HDAC activities of HDAC4 mutants immuno-purified from HEK293 cells were measured. The levels of HDAC activity of the HDAC4c mutants were substantially decreased compared to wild-type. Consistent with this, SRID mutations of HDAC4c prevented the association of HDAC4c with the SMRT-HDAC3 complex in vivo. Our findings may provide structural insight into the binding interface of HDAC4 and -5 with SRD3c, as a novel target to design modulators specific to these enzymes.
Improved-Variable-Forgetting-Factor Recursive Algorithm Based on the Logarithmic Cost for Volterra System Identification

Compared with the least-mean-square algorithm, the least mean pth power algorithm shows a better robustness performance against impulsive noises such as the α-stable noises. However, it still exhibits slow convergence rate and high kernel misadjustment. To overcome this drawback, a novel recursive logarithmic least mean pth (RLLMP) algorithm is proposed for the Volterra system identification under α-stable noise environments. Instead of minimizing the pth power, the new algorithm aims to minimize the pth logarithmic cost, which makes it more robust against impulsive interferences. Furthermore, to enhance tracking performance, an improved variable forgetting factor (IVFF) algorithm (IVFF-RLLMP) is proposed, which is based on the robust estimation of outliers. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the improved performance of the RLLMP and IVFF-RLLMP.
Um Modelo de Mensuração e Avaliação do Desempenho Empresarial para prever Valor de Mercado: uma Análise do Setor de Comércio em Empresas Norte e Latino Americanas.

Este trabalho visa verificar a eficiencia de se utilizar indicadores - fundamentalistas, de estrutura de capital, de liquidez, de atividade, de rentabilidade e de mercado – para medirem o desempenho trienal de sociedades anonimas do Setor de Comercio norte e latino-americanas com o intuito de prever o valor de mercado medio para o proximo bienio. Trabalhos sobre a utilizacao de indicadores para prever situacoes futuras sobre as empresas foram consultados: uma vertente de estudos que utilizam de indicadores como inputs de previsao de falencia e outra que utiliza da mesma metodologia para prever valor de mercado futuro. Para tanto foi utilizada, quanto a forma de abordagem, de uma pesquisa quantitativa. Quanto aos objetivos, trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva. Quanto aos procedimentos tecnicos adotados, esta pesquisa pode ser classificada em duas categorias: pesquisa documental e expost-facto. Os resultados obtidos de modo geral apontam que alguns indicadores de desempenho, conjuntamente, dos tres ultimos anos conseguem prever satisfatoriamente o valor de mercado dos proximos dois anos das sociedades anonimas do Setor de Comercio, com um grau de significância medido pelo R quadrado corrigido de 0,68. Os indicadores de desempenho de maior relevância foram a Media trienal do Exigivel Total / Patrimonio Liquido, Media trienal do Lucro Operacional / Divida Liquida, Variacao trienal dos Investimentos / Patrimonio Liquido, Media trienal do EBITDA por Acao, Media trienal do Capital de Giro, Media trienal do Capital Employed, Media trienal do Enterprise Value.
Effets des dispositifs de formation hybrides sur le développement professionnel : élaboration d’un cadre conceptuel et méthodologique dans la recherche Hy-Sup

Le projet de recherche europeen Hy-Sup s’interesse aux processus d’enseignement/apprentissage dans des dispositifs de formation hybrides de l’enseignement superieur. Dans une perspective de comprehension du contexte et des conditions de realisation de ces processus, la communication porte un regard tout particulier sur le developpement professionnel des enseignants au sein de ces dispositifs. Elle presente le cadre conceptuel elabore par l’equipe de recherche ainsi que ses choix methodologiques pour le recueil de donnees. Cette recherche etant en cours, la presentation qui en sera faite au colloque de juin 2011, permettra d’en evoquer quelques premiers resultats.
Regional foremost matching for internet scene images

We analyze the dense matching problem for Internet scene images based on the fact that commonly only part of images can be matched due to the variation of view angle, motion, objects, etc. We thus propose regional foremost matching to reject outlier matching points while still producing dense high-quality correspondence in the remaining foremost regions. Our system initializes sparse correspondence, propagates matching with model fitting and optimization, and detects foremost regions robustly. We apply our method to several applications, including time-lapse sequence generation, Internet photo composition, automatic image morphing, and automatic rephotography.
HACIA UNA CARACTERIZACIÓN DEL COMPONENTE EXPERIENCIAL EN EL DISCURSO NARRATIVO DIRIGIDO A NIÑOS

The present study attempts a characterization of the short story written for children with special attention on discourse itself and its linguistic construction. It is supported on statements of Labov and Waletzky (1967) and Labov (1972), as well as the fundamentals of Systemic-functional Grammar as developed by Martin et al (1997). An exploratory study was designed of a sample of 10 short stories collected from school textbooks for basic education. Results indicate that the stories analyzed have a macro-structure which is similar to that of oral narratives of personal experience. The elements orientation, complication, evaluation and resolution became evident in all the stories of the sample. Also, we found predominance of material and verbalization processes, which suggests that speech is as relevant as action. Finally, an important consistency was found between the types of clausal processes and their grouping in functional sections of the narration.
Metric spaces in pure and applied mathematics

The close relationship between the theory of quadratic forms and distance analysis has been known for centuries, and the the- ory of metric spaces that formalizes distance analysis and was devel- oped over the last century, has obvious strong relations to quadratic- form theory. In contrast, the flrst paper that studied metric spaces as such { without trying to study their embeddability into any one of the standard metric spaces nor looking at them as mere 'presentations' of the underlying topological space { was, to our knowledge, written in the late sixties by John Isbell. In particular, Isbell showed that in the category whose objects are metric spaces and whose morphisms are non-expansive maps, a unique injective hull exists for every object, he provided an explicit construction of this hull, and he noted that, at least for flnite spaces, it comes endowed with an intrinsic polytopal cell structure. In this paper, we discuss Isbell's construction, we summarize the his- tory of | and some basic questions studied in | phylogenetic analysis, and we explain why and how these two topics are related to each other. Finally, we just mention in passing some intriguing analogies between, on the one hand, a certain stratiflcation of the cone of all metrics de- flned on a flnite set X that is based on the combinatorial properties of the polytopal cell structure of Isbell's injective hulls and, on the other, various stratiflcations of the cone of positive semi-deflnite quadratic forms deflned on R n that were introduced by the Russian school in the context of reduction theory.
The identification of missing information resources through the query difference operator

In this paper we consider the processing of queries posed over multiple information resources that advertise their contents in terms of globally available, domain-specific ontologies. We describe a technique to identify the exact portion of a user's query that may not be answered by the set of available information agents. This is achieved by reasoning over the advertisements of the agents relative to the user's query. Our technique is based on the realization that the set difference of the queries q/sub 1/ and q/sub 2/ may be computed as a syntactic manipulation of the expressions q/sub 1/ and q/sub 2/ for a well defined subset of the relational algebra over a restricted class of relational schemas. That is to say, one may, without materializing data, take the expressions for q/sub 1/ and q/sub 2/ apply the query difference formula to yield q/sub 3/, and be guaranteed that q/sub 3/ is logically equivalent to q/sub 1/-q/sub 2/. With this query difference operator defined, the ability to compute query intersection, subsumption and equivalence follow. These claims are formally defined and proven and an example from an on-line movie guide domain is provided. In addition to the identification of missing resource agents, we anticipate a number of other applications of the query difference operator. This includes, but is not limited to, limiting the generality of dynamically constructed user queries, efficient query planning, and monitoring and controlling access to sensitive information.
More on Acheulean Tools

There seems to be some consensus in the comments on McNabb et al.’s (CA 45:653–77) paper that Acheulean tools reveal a trend beginning with an imprecise kind of symmetry and leading to more defined regularities. Recent findings on how the brain functions can help to clarify why this sequence evolved. The visuo-spatial pathway (the “where/how” dorsal system), involving visually guided action, which would have been intimately associated with the making of tools, is thought to be “blind” (Ungerleider and Mishkin 1982, Goodale et al. 1991, Milner and Goodale 1995)—that is, more concerned with the parameters underpinning visuo-spatial guidance than with the overt identity of objects. In contrast, the “what” ventral pathway, which mediates explicit visual identification, may play down or even ignore visuo-spatial factors because these are largely irrelevant for a recognition system that strives to achieve object constancy (Turnbull, Carey, and McCarthy 1997, Turnbull, Beschin, and Della Sala 1997). The “where/how” pathway is thought to culminate in the superior parietal lobe. As this area is deemed to have undergone enlargement from Homo habilis through H. erectus to modern humans (Weaver 2002), the implications are obvious in the present context. The superior parietal lobe has been shown to be particularly active when an experienced stone knapper fashions a tool (Stout et al. 2000). Its enlargement from H. habilis to modern humans helps to explain the relative ineptness of chimps in manipulating tools. The makers of late, as opposed to early, Acheulean tools were therefore probably beginning to rely more on the “what” system than on the “where/how” pathway. Turnbull and collaborators believe that the inferior parietal lobe may supply some explicit form recognition to the visuo-spatial system, especially in non-optimal conditions and when mental rotation is required. Glover (2004) has proposed that enlargement of the phylogenetically newer inferior parietal lobe in humans is devoted to planning strategies for action, whereas on-line monitoring and control continue to be mediated by the superior parietal lobe. Tool and object use in particular required that human motor planning processes become integrated with some ventral pathway functions for object identification, which seems, in humans (in contrast