Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Patients Enrolled in Large Randomized Clinical Trials of Antiplatelet Treatment for Prevention After Transient Ischemic Attack or Ischemic Stroke Are Not Representative of Patients in Clinical Practice: The Netherlands Stroke Survey

Background and Purpose— Many randomized clinical trials have evaluated the benefit of long-term use of antiplatelet drugs in reducing the risk of new vascular events in patients with a recent transient ischemic attack or ischemic stroke. Evidence from these trials forms the basis for national and international guidelines for the management of nearly all such patients in clinical practice. However, abundant and strict enrollment criteria may limit the validity and the applicability of results of randomized clinical trials to clinical practice. We estimated the eligibility for participation in landmark trials of antiplatelet drugs of an unselected group of patients with stroke or transient ischemic attack from a national stroke survey. Methods— Nine hundred seventy-two patients with transient ischemic attack or ischemic stroke were prospectively and consecutively enrolled in the Netherlands Stroke Survey. We applied 7 large antiplatelet trials' enrollment criteria. Results— In total, 886 patients were discharged alive and available for secondary prevention. Mean follow-up was 2.5 years. The annual rate of transient ischemic attack, stroke, or nonfatal myocardial infarction was 6.7%. The proportions of patients fulfilling the trial enrollment criteria ranged from 25% to 67%. Mortality was significantly higher in ineligible patients (27% to 41%) than in patients fulfilling enrollment criteria (16% to 20%). Rates of vascular events were not higher in trial-eligible patients than in ineligible patients. Conclusions— Our data confirm that patients with ischemic attack and stroke enrolled in randomized clinical trials are only partially representative of patients in clinical practice. Use of less strict enrollment criteria could enhance “generalizability” and result in more efficient selection of patients for randomized clinical trials.
Access control with prohibitions and obligations

Most of access control mechanisms use the matrix model to represent protection states of computer systems. Firstly, we present a variant of the access control matrix model obtained by incorporating explicit prohibitions saying, e.g., that “it is not permitted that subject s performs action a on object o”. Secondly, we present a variant of the access control matrix model obtained by incorporating explicit obligations saying, e.g., that “it is obligatory that subject s performs action a on object o”. We then turn to the question whether the expressive power of the matrix model grows when enriching access control with explicit prohibitions or explicit obligations. In connection with these enriched models, we also discuss the solvable and unsolvable cases of one of the major themes of computer security, namely the classical safety problem for access control matrices.
The influence of locus control on adherence to treatment regimen among hypertensive patients

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of locus of control on adherence to a treatment regimen among hypertensive patients. Methods: The participants were 100 previously diagnosed hypertensive patients drawn from the Ituku-Ozalla University of Nigeria teaching hospital, using a purposive sampling technique. All participants were individually administered the Wallston, Wallston & Devellis (1978), Multidimensional Health Locus of Control (MHLC) scale, and Drug Adherence Questionaire (DAQ) by the researchers. A one-way factorial design and analysis of variance with unequal sample sizes were used to analyze the data. Results: Internally-oriented patients adhered more to their treatment regimen than externally-oriented patients, F(1.98) = 18.2 (P < 0.01). Conclusion: Locus of control should be taken into consideration in the review of treatment packages for patients. This is because the efficacy of drugs depends to a reasonable extent on adherence to the schedule. If drugs are not taken as prescribed, their potency may be affected or wrongly assessed.
3D simulation of complex shading affecting PV systems taking benefit from the power of graphics cards developed for the video game industry

Shading reduces the power output of a photovoltaic (PV) system. The design engineering of PV systems requires modeling and evaluating shading losses. Some PV systems are affected by complex shading scenes whose resulting PV energy losses are very difficult to evaluate with current modeling tools. Several specialized PV design and simulation software include the possibility to evaluate shading losses. They generally possess a Graphical User Interface (GUI) through which the user can draw a 3D shading scene, and then evaluate its corresponding PV energy losses. The complexity of the objects that these tools can handle is relatively limited. We have created a software solution, 3DPV, which allows evaluating the energy losses induced by complex 3D scenes on PV generators. The 3D objects can be imported from specialized 3D modeling software or from a 3D object library. The shadows cast by this 3D scene on the PV generator are then directly evaluated from the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Thanks to the recent development of GPUs for the video game industry, the shadows can be evaluated with a very high spatial resolution that reaches well beyond the PV cell level, in very short calculation times. A PV simulation model then translates the geometrical shading into PV energy output losses. 3DPV has been implemented using WebGL, which allows it to run directly from a Web browser, without requiring any local installation from the user. This also allows taken full benefits from the information already available from Internet, such as the 3D object libraries. This contribution describes, step by step, the method that allows 3DPV to evaluate the PV energy losses caused by complex shading. We then illustrate the results of this methodology to several application cases that are encountered in the world of PV systems design.
Edge Detection by Morphological Operations and Fuzzy Reasoning

This article presents a new edge detection method for gray level images by morphological operators and fuzzy reasoning. The method concerns edge gradient magnitude in images by various morphological operators as fuzzy membership functions. A fuzzy reasoning acrobatic coupled with few rules was then acquired for edge sharpening. The whereabouts merit of good edge detection was compared and the experimental results show the efficiency of sharpening and edge detection.
A Novel Sensing and Data Fusion System for 3-D Arm Motion Tracking in Telerehabilitation

In this paper, we present a novel sensing and data fusion system to track 3-D arm motion in a telerehabilitation program. A particle filter (PF) algorithm is adopted in the system to fuse data from inertial and visual sensors in a probabilistic manner. It is able to propagate multimodal distributions of system states based on an ldquoimportance samplingrdquo technique by using sets of weighted particles. To avoid the problem of conventional PF algorithms that suffer from particle degeneracy and perform poorly in a narrow distribution situation, we adopt two strategies in our system, namely state space pruning and an arm physical geometry constraint. Experimental results show that the proposed PF framework outperforms other fusion methods and provides accurate results in comparison to the ground truth.
Very Massive Galaxies: A Challenge for Hierarchical Models?

Hierarchical models of galaxy formation now provide a much closer match to observations than they did a few years ago. The progress has been achieved by adjusting the description of baryonic processes such as star formation and supernova/AGN feedback, while leaving the evolution of the underlying dark matter (DM) halos the same. Being most results very sensitive to the input baryonic physics, the ultimate vindication of the hierarchical paradigm should come from observational tests probing more directly the merging history of DM halos rather than the history of star formation. Two questions may start addressing this deeper level: is the predicted halo merging rate consistent with the observed galaxy merging rate? and, are predicted and observed evolution of the galaxy mass function consistent with each other. The current status of these issues is briefly reviewed.
Power consumption reduction in CPU datapath using a novel clocking scheme

Power consumption and performance are the crucial factors that determine the reliability of a CPU. In this paper, we discuss about some techniques that can be used for Instruction Level Parallelism which enhances the performance of the CPU by reducing the CPI there by reducing power consumption. We have also discussed about the power saving scheme using proper clocking strategies. We have mainly focused on implementing the simplified RISC pipeline datapath in HDL using two different clocking schemes to reduce the power consumption. We have adopted a new method which uses dual edge triggered clock that can decrease the power consumption of a pipelined datapath considerably, without sacrificing the throughput of the CPU. Finally, we have given the experimental result for our implementation of simplified RISC datapath.
A Simple Screening Score for Diabetes for the Korean Population

OBJECTIVE We developed and validated a self-assessment score for diabetes risk in Korean adults and compared it with other established screening models. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2001 and 2005 data were used to develop a diabetes screening score. After excluding patients with known diabetes, 9,602 participants aged ≥20 years were selected. Undiagnosed diabetes was defined as a fasting plasma glucose ≥126 mg/dL and/or nonfasting plasma glucose ≥200 mg/dL. The SAS Survey Logistic Regression analysis was used to determine predictors of undiagnosed diabetes (n = 341). We validated our model and compared it with other existing methods using the KNHANES 2007–2008 data (n = 8,391). RESULTS Age, family history of diabetes, hypertension, waist circumference, smoking, and alcohol intake were independently associated with undiagnosed diabetes. We calculated a diabetes screening score (range 0–11), and a cut point of ≥5 defined 47% of adults as being at high risk for diabetes and yielded a sensitivity of 81%, specificity of 54%, positive predictive value of 6%, and positive likelihood ratio of 1.8 (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.73). Comparable results were obtained in validation datasets (sensitivity 80%, specificity 53%, and AUC = 0.73), showing better performance than other non-Asian models from the U.S. or European population. CONCLUSIONS This self-assessment score may be useful for identifying Korean adults at high risk for diabetes. Additional studies are needed to evaluate the utility and feasibility of this score in various settings.
Vertical Composition of Reversible Atomic Objects Timos Antonopoulos

The classic Herlihy/Wing notion of concurrent objects has had great success in theories and implementations (e.g. java.util. concurrent), providing programmers with the simple abstraction of an atomic object. Since then, software transactions have appeared, also touting the the goal of providing an atomicity abstraction. However, despite some vertical composition strategies within particular STM implementations, a fundamental concept of vertical composition has remained elusive. In this paper, we distill the essence of vertical composition, with the notion of reversible atomic objects. By restricting occurrences of transactions to the method boundary and requiring that every object method construct its own inverse, we obtain a cleaner semantics that supports vertical composition. In fact, we do not even require that one layer use the same implementation (e.g. pessimism versus optimism) as another, nor that the object be transactional at all. Formally, we begin with a semantics in which abstract-level operations are composed from constituent base operations, accounting for conflict and inverses. These transactional implementations are put in the context of an environment that includes a novel a deadlock-mitigating contention manager that ensures progress. The contention manager may, at any point, apply inverses on behalf of a currently executing transaction. Our work has the first proof that programs composed with implementations in this framework are a contextual refinement of the same program instead composed with atomic specifications and that layers can be composed vertically. Our compositional treatment in terms of a single shared log gives rise to a novel transactional variant of the universal construction. We have implemented a library of reversible atomic objects. We demonstrate that it is easy and intuitive to build complex concurrent implementations (e.g. a multi-threaded layered filesystem) by vertical composition of atomic components.
Classifier prediction evaluation in modeling road traffic accident data

This paper illustrates the research work in exploring the application of data mining techniques to aid in the prediction of road accident patterns related to pedestrian characteristics. It also provides insight into pedestrian accidents by uncovering their patterns and their recurrent underlying characteristics in order to design defensive measures and to allocate resources for identified problems. In this study the Decision Tree algorithms viz. Random Tree, C4.5, J48 and Decision Stump are applied to a database of fatal accidents occurred during the year 2010 in Great Britain. We also used K-folds Cross-Validation methods to measure the unbiased estimate of the four prediction models for performance comparison purposes.
Zoledronate Attenuates Angiogenic Effects of Angiotensin II-Stimulated Endothelial Progenitor Cells via RhoA and MAPK Signaling

Background New vessel formation plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of neovascular-related diseases. Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) were found to contribute to neovascular-related diseases and interference with EPC neovascularization may be a novel target for these diseases. Zoledronate (Zol) was reported to exhibit anti-angiogenic effect. Basing on these evidences, we proposed that Zol may affect EPC function to exert novel anti-angiogenic effect. In this study, we therefore investigated the effects of Zol on multiple aspects of EPC function and explored the underlying mechanisms involved. Methodology/Principal Findings EPCs were cultured from bone marrow derived mononuclear cells. The potential effects of Zol on Angiotensin II (Ang II)-stimulated EPC proliferation, migration, adhesion, in vitro tube formation were investigated. The results showed that Ang II (1 µM) enhanced EPC migration, adhesion, in vitro tube formation but had no effect on cell proliferation. Zol (75 and 100 µM) inhibited proliferation of EPCs and 50 µM geranylgeranyol (GGOH) could reverse the decrease of EPC proliferation. We found for the first time that Zol (50–100 µM) dose dependently attenuated migration, adhesion, and in vitro tube formation of EPCs stimulated by Ang II. GGOH could reverse the attenuation of EPC function induced by Zol. However, Zol did not induce EPC apoptosis. In addition, the underlying mechanisms were determined. The results revealed that Zol markedly down-regulated active RhoA stimulated by Ang II and inhibited the phosphorylation of Erk1/2 and JNK. Moreover, RhoA silencing resulted in a notable inhibition of EPC in vitro tube formation, suggesting that RhoA suppression played a pivotal role in Zol antiangiogenic effect. Conclusions/Significance These findings suggested that Zol attenuated the promotion of EPC function stimulated by Ang II and exhibited novel antiangiogenic effect via RhoA and MAPK signaling. Thus, Zol may be served as a novel therapeutic agent for neovascular-related diseases treatment.
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF VITERBI DECODER

Viterbi decoder is employed in wireless communication to decode the convolutional codes; those codes are used in every robust digital communication systems. Convolutional encoding and viterbi decoding is a powerful method for forward error correction. This paper deals with synthesis and implementation of viterbi decoder with a constraint length of three as well as seven and the code rate of 1⁄2 in FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The performance of viterbi decoder is analyzed in terms of resource utilization. The design of viterbi decoder is simulated using Verilog HDL. It is synthesized and implemented using Xilinx 9.1ise and Spartan 3E Kit. It is compatible with many common standards such as 3GPP, IEEE 802.16 and LTE.
Facilitating Collaboration in Rare Genetic Disorders Through Effective Matchmaking in DECIPHER

DECIPHER (https://decipher.sanger.ac.uk) is a web‐based platform for secure deposition, analysis, and sharing of plausibly pathogenic genomic variants from well‐phenotyped patients suffering from genetic disorders. DECIPHER aids clinical interpretation of these rare sequence and copy‐number variants by providing tools for variant analysis and identification of other patients exhibiting similar genotype–phenotype characteristics. DECIPHER also provides mechanisms to encourage collaboration among a global community of clinical centers and researchers, as well as exchange of information between clinicians and researchers within a consortium, to accelerate discovery and diagnosis. DECIPHER has contributed to matchmaking efforts by enabling the global clinical genetics community to identify many previously undiagnosed syndromes and new disease genes, and has facilitated the publication of over 700 peer‐reviewed scientific publications since 2004. At the time of writing, DECIPHER contains anonymized data from ∼250 registered centers on more than 51,500 patients (∼18000 patients with consent for data sharing and ∼25000 anonymized records shared privately). In this paper, we describe salient features of the platform, with special emphasis on the tools and processes that aid interpretation, sharing, and effective matchmaking with other data held in the database and that make DECIPHER an invaluable clinical and research resource.
gNBXe - a Reconfigurable Neuroprocessor for Various Types of Self-Organizing Maps

In this paper we present the FPGA-based hardware ac- celerator gNBXe for emulation of classical Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) and Conscience SOM (CSOM) in a multi-FPGA environment. After dis- cussing how the CSOM is mapped to a resource-efficient digital hardware implementation, we present how the modular system architecture can be flexibly adapted to various application datasets. The hardware costs and scalability of a multi-FPGA based accelerator using Xilinx Virtex2 and Virtex4 FPGAs are discussed. Compared to a state-of-the-art multi-core PC, a speedup of 9.1 is achieved for a CSOM with 4, 840 neurons and 196 synaptic weights.
Range D D Get Flight Options Select Flight Option Travel Itinerary Booked Flight Booked Payment Made Confirmation Message Sent Pay by Credit Card Pay by Bank Transfer Less Costly

We introduce a modeling language, called Adaptive RML, for the representation of early requirements for Self-adaptive systems (SAS), which monitor and adapt to changing end-user requirements, operating context conditions, and resource availability. The language has graphical primitives in line with classical goal modeling languages and is formalized via a mapping to Techne. Such models enable the analyst to formulate and analyze the runtime requirements adaptation problem during early requirements engineering, before moving to detailed specification. Early validation is performed by modeling the same case study in an established goal modeling language and in Adaptive RML. The results suggest that context and resource concepts, as well as relegation and influence relations should be part of graphical modeling languages used to make early requirements models for SAS and to perform analysis over them. Keywords-Requirements Modeling, Self-Adaptive Systems
An evaluation of the Performance Enhancement Process (PEP) of the South African Police Service (SAPS) : a case study at Parow Police Station

The purpose of this thesis is to assess the performance appraisal system, namely the Performance Enhancement Process (PEP), of the South African Police Services at Parow. The premise of the study is that PEP is a sound policy document, but that there are potential problems with its implementation at station level. To this end, the reader is presented with an overview of the relevant literature pertaining to performance appraisals. The shift in managerial philosophy and the organisational change from a force to a service and its effect on performance appraisals are discussed. The results of the empirical study are presented and it is concluded that there are various problems with the implementation of PEP at station level. The researcher presents the following practical recommendations: Conduct an audit; Eliminate structural problems; Adequate appraiser training; Appraisee training; Connect the PA system to other organisation systems; and Obtain a charter from top management. The reader is then presented with a conclusion of the research.
Present-day central African forest is a legacy of the 19th century human history

The populations of light-demanding trees that dominate the canopy of central African forests are now aging. Here, we show that the lack of regeneration of these populations began ca. 165 ya (around 1850) after major anthropogenic disturbances ceased. Since 1885, less itinerancy and disturbance in the forest has occurred because the colonial administrations concentrated people and villages along the primary communication axes. Local populations formerly gardened the forest by creating scattered openings, which were sufficiently large for the establishment of light-demanding trees. Currently, common logging operations do not create suitable openings for the regeneration of these species, whereas deforestation degrades landscapes. Using an interdisciplinary approach, which included paleoecological, archaeological, historical, and dendrological data, we highlight the long-term history of human activities across central African forests and assess the contribution of these activities to present-day forest structure and composition. The conclusions of this sobering analysis present challenges to current silvicultural practices and to those of the future. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.20343. 001