Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Big data analytics of smart meter data using Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS)

The ever increasing human population and the associated demand for electricity have challenged the power sector to modernize its equipment and operations. This renovation activity has made the existing grid to incorporate Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Installation of Smart Meter is one of the significant changes due to developments in the power sector that establishes two-way communication between the Utility and the consumers. The Smart meters collect data at high velocity leading to tremendously huge volume of data and have been classified as Big Data. Uncovering useful information from these Smart Meter data is a Big Data challenge. In this paper, Smart Meter data is used to forecast the average electricity load for every hour on daily basis. The proposed method uses Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) to predict the load ahead of 24 hours from present day meter readings. The experimental results are promising with the overall prediction accuracy of 84.02%.
Topical ophthalmic NSAIDs: a discussion with focus on nepafenac ophthalmic suspension

The removal of diclofenac sodium ophthalmic solution as a viable pharmaceutical entity in September 1999 from the US market spurred considerable interest in the general safety and effectiveness of topical ophthalmic NSAIDs for treatment of anterior segment inflammation. In late 1999 the use of topical ocular NSAIDs declined in the US as a result of incidents involving corneal melts and toxicity surrounding use of generic diclofenac. However, since the removal of diclofenac sodium ophthalmic solution from the marketplace, ophthalmic NSAIDs have regained use as viable pharmacotherapeutic entities. Moreover, several new ophthalmic NSAID products have recently been introduced for commercial use in the US including the novel chemical entity nepafenac. The purpose of this report is to revisit the use of topical ophthalmic NSAIDs for the treatment of surgically induced anterior segment inflammation with a particular focus on nepafenac. Nepafenac is unique among ophthalmic NSAIDs in that it is a prodrug deaminated to amfenac, a highly effective non-selective cyclooxygenase inhibitor. In the case of topical ophthalmic NSAIDs, practitioners should carefully weigh the cost-benefit of implementing “highly potent” new drug products because perturbations in pharmacodynamic response due to the inherent novelty in terms of chemical designs may outweigh the demonstrated replicative pharmacologic action of all topical ophthalmic NSAIDs.
Is the 25-year hepatitis C marathon coming to an end to declare victory?

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) which was originally recognized as posttransfusion non-A, non-B hepatitis has been a major global health problem affecting 3% of the world population. Interferon/peginterferon and ribavirin combination therapy was the backbone of chronic HCV therapy for two decades of the journey. However, interferon based treatment success rate was around 50% with many side effects. Many chronic HCV patients with psychiatric diseases or even cytopenias were ineligible for HCV treatment. Now we no longer need any injectable medicine. New direct-acting antiviral agents against HCV allowed the advance of interferon-free and ribavirin-free oral regimens with high rates of response and tolerability. The cost of the medications should not be a barrier to their access in certain parts of the world. While we are getting closer, we should still focus on preventing the spread of the disease, screening and delivering the cure to those in need globally. In the near future, development of an effective vaccine against HCV would make it possible to eradicate HCV infection worldwide completely.
Familiarity or Conceptual Priming? Good Question! Comment on Stenberg, Hellman, Johansson, and Rosén (2009)

Stenberg et al. argued that FN400 brain potentials index familiarity rather than conceptual priming. Their data from a test of name recognition showed that both familiarity and FN400s were influenced by frequency but not fame, whereas separate behavioral measures of priming were influenced by fame but not frequency. However, this apparent dissociation was gravely weakened by confounds in task demands and inadequate behavioral measures of priming. Although Stenberg et al. failed to provide evidence suitable for disentangling neural correlates of familiarity from those of conceptual priming, an analysis of their report can be used to highlight difficulties that remain to be surmounted to understand recognition and the neural events that signal distinct memory functions engaged during recognition.
SQLVM: Performance Isolation in Multi-Tenant Relational Database-as-a-Service

A relational Database-as-a-Service provider, such as Microsoft SQL Azure, can share resources of a single database server among multiple tenants. This multi-tenancy enables cost reduction for the cloud service provider which it can pass on as savings to the tenants. However, resource sharing can adversely affect a tenant’s performance due to resource demands of other tenants’ workloads. Service providers today do not provide any assurances to a tenant in terms of isolating its performance from other co-located tenants. We present SQLVM, an abstraction for performance isolation which is built on a promise of reservation of key database server resources, such as CPU, I/O and memory, for each tenant. The key challenge is in supporting this abstraction within a DBMS without statically allocating resources to tenants, while ensuring low overheads and scaling to large numbers of tenants. Our contributions are in (1) formalizing the above abstraction of SQLVM; (2) designing mechanisms to support the promised resources; and (3) proposing low-overhead techniques to objectively meter resource allocation to establish accountability. We implemented a prototype of SQLVM in Microsoft SQL Azure and our experiments demonstrate that SQLVM results in significantly improved performance isolation from other tenants when compared to the state-of-the-art.
Biomarkers of Alzheimer’s Disease Risk in Peripheral Tissues; Focus on Buccal Cells

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive degenerative disorder of the brain and is the most common form of dementia. To-date no simple, inexpensive and minimally invasive procedure is available to confirm with certainty the early diagnosis of AD prior to the manifestations of symptoms characteristic of the disease. Therefore, if population screening of individuals is to be performed, more suitable, easily accessible tissues would need to be used for a diagnostic test that would identify those who exhibit cellular pathology indicative of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD risk so that they can be prioritized for primary prevention. This need for minimally invasive tests could be achieved by targeting surrogate tissues, since it is now well recognized that AD is not only a disorder restricted to pathology and biomarkers within the brain. Human buccal cells for instance are accessible in a minimally invasive manner, and exhibit cytological and nuclear morphologies that may be indicative of accelerated ageing or neurodegenerative disorders such as AD. However, to our knowledge there is no review available in the literature covering the biology of buccal cells and their applications in AD biomarker research. Therefore, the aim of this review is to summarize some of the main findings of biomarkers reported for AD in peripheral tissues, with a further focus on the rationale for the use of the buccal mucosa (BM) for biomarkers of AD and the evidence to date of changes exhibited in buccal cells with AD.
Flood disasters: Learning from previous relief and recovery operations

This briefing paper provides a synthesis of and introduction to key lessons from evaluations of relief and recovery/humanitarian response to flooding in the last 20 years from Africa, Asia and the Americas. The paper is intended for people working in relief and recovery operations for floods – those who have to decide if, when and how to intervene. Selected reading references are mentioned after each of the issues discussed and a listing of key resources and a bibliography of the evaluations used are included at the end of the paper.
Prediction of ventriculoperitoneal shunt dependency in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.

OBJECT Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage treated using external ventricular drainage due to obstructive hydrocephalus commonly remain shunt-dependent. Based on identified risk factors for external ventricular drain (EVD) challenge failure, the authors sought to determine the likelihood that a patient will require a permanent shunt. METHODS The authors reviewed 89 consecutive cases of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage with obstructive hydrocephalus for parameters associated with EVD challenge failure and permanent shunt requirement. Significant parameters were combined in a discriminant function analysis to create a failure risk index (FRI). Linear regression analysis was performed correlating the FRI with the actual rate of shunt dependency. RESULTS Patients requiring a permanent shunt had: a larger third ventricular diameter (7.0 vs 5.4 mm; p = 0.02) and a higher Hunt and Hess grade (3 vs 2; p = 0.02) at the time of admission; and a larger third ventricular diameter (6.6 vs 5.2 mm; p = 0.04), a larger bicaudate diameter (31.9 vs 30.2 mm; p = 0.03), and higher CSF protein levels (76.5 vs 40.3 mg/dl; p < 0.0001) at the onset of EVD challenge. These patients were also more likely to be female (p = 0.01) and have a posterior circulation location of their aneurysm (p = 0.01). The FRI score was calculated based on a weighted combination of the above parameters. Linear regression analysis between FRI values and the percentage of patients who required a permanent shunt had a correlation coefficient of 91%; the risk of a permanent shunt requirement increased linearly with a rising FRI score. CONCLUSIONS An FRI score created by discriminant function analysis can predict whether or not a permanent shunt is required, even if separate factors are not in agreement with each other or show a weak correlation when considered separately. An increased FRI score was strongly and linearly correlated with the risk of EVD challenge failure. A prospective study is necessary to validate the FRI.
High performance communications and tracking multi-beam antennas

Next generation multimedia satellite systems will need to deliver optimal performance while being lighter, smaller and less costly than current systems. Current systems often have four reflector antennas for transmit and another four reflector antennas for receive. A more optimal solution can be obtained by combining transmit and receive on each reflector antenna, thus halving the required number of reflectors and feed chains. Several enabling technologies had to be developed to alleviate, and often eliminate, the resulting RF performance degradation. These technologies include high efficiency feed chains, methods of equalizing transmit and receive beam widths, and RF sensing systems to minimize pointing error. This paper describes these technologies and how they address the needs of the next generation of multimedia satellites.
Influence of Liquid Organic Fertilizer on The Production and Carrying Capacity of Livestock from Setaria Grass (Setaria splendida)

The traditional market, everyday produces organic waste that could potentially give rise to pollution and disruption of human life. One of utilization that can be developed is to turn it into a liquid organic fertilizer and used in the cultivation of feed. Setaria splendida is a plant feed the forage can be given for all types of livestock. The research was done to get the best dosage of liquid organic fertilizer from traditional market waste. The treatment used is a mixture of liquid organic fertilizer for traditional market waste with water in comparison of 0:0, 1:1, 1:2 and 1:3. A Complete Random Design was used. Each treatment was repeated four times on a swath of size 1 × 1 square meters and data used the fourth defoliation age harvest every defoliation is 35 days. The parameters investigated is fresh forage production and carrying capacity for large and small cattle animals. The results showed the average production levels the range of 0.96375 kg – 1.083 kg per square meter, so it can be to maintain 13.38 – 15.04 head of cows or 53,52 – 60,16 head of goats per acre per year. The best treatment is a liquid organic fertilizer mixed with water comparison at 1:2.
Antiarrhythmic Effects of JTV‐519, a Novel Cardioprotective Drug, on Atrial Fibrillation/Flutter in a Canine Sterile Pericarditis Model

Introduction: A new cardioprotective drug, JTV‐519, blocks Na+ current and inwardly rectifying K+ current and inhibits Ca2+ current. However, its role in atrial electrophysiology is unknown. We investigated the antiarrhythmic effects of JTV‐519 on atrial fibrillation/flutter in the canine sterile pericarditis model.
Targeted Gene Disruption Reveals the Role of the Cysteinyl Leukotriene 2 Receptor in Increased Vascular Permeability and in Bleomycin-induced Pulmonary Fibrosis in Mice*

The cysteinyl leukotrienes (cys-LTs) mediate both acute and chronic inflammatory responses in mice, as demonstrated by the attenuation of the IgE/antigen-mediated increase in microvascular permeability and of bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis, respectively, in a strain with targeted disruption of leukotriene C4 synthase to prevent cys-LT synthesis. Our earlier finding that the acute, but not the chronic, injury was attenuated in a strain with targeted disruption of the cysteinyl leukotriene 1 (CysLT1) receptor suggested that the chronic injury might be mediated through the CysLT2 receptor. Thus, we generated CysLT2 receptor-deficient mice by targeted gene disruption. These mice developed normally and were fertile. The increased vascular permeability associated with IgE-dependent passive cutaneous anaphylaxis was significantly reduced in CysLT2 receptor-null mice as compared with wild-type mice, whereas plasma protein extravasation in response to zymosan A-induced peritoneal inflammation was not altered. Alveolar septal thickening after intratracheal injection of bleomycin, characterized by interstitial infiltration with macrophages and fibroblasts and the accumulation of collagen fibers, was significantly reduced in CysLT2 receptor-null mice as compared with the wild-type mice. The amounts of cys-LTs in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid after bleomycin injection were similar in the CysLT2 receptor-null mice and the wild-type mice. Thus, in response to a particular pathobiologic event the CysLT2 receptor can mediate an increase in vascular permeability in some tissues or promote chronic pulmonary inflammation with fibrosis.
Grand Canonical Monte Carlo Simulation of Ligand-Protein Binding

A new application of the grand canonical thermodynamics ensemble to compute ligand-protein binding is described. The described method is sufficiently rapid that it is practical to compute ligand-protein binding free energies for a large number of poses over the entire protein surface, thus identifying multiple putative ligand binding sites. In addition, the method computes binding free energies for a large number of poses. The method is demonstrated by the simulation of two protein-ligand systems, thermolysin and T4 lysozyme, for which there is extensive thermodynamic and crystallographic data for the binding of small, rigid ligands. These low-molecular-weight ligands correspond to the molecular fragments used in computational fragment-based drug design. The simulations correctly identified the experimental binding poses and rank ordered the affinities of ligands in each of these systems.
Physiological Basis and Long-Term Clinical Outcome of Discordance Between Fractional Flow Reserve and Coronary Flow Velocity Reserve in Coronary Stenoses of Intermediate Severity

Background—Discordance between fractional flow reserve (FFR) and coronary flow velocity reserve (CFVR) may reflect important coronary pathophysiology but usually remains unnoticed in clinical practice. We evaluated the physiological basis and clinical outcome associated with FFR/CFVR discordance. Methods and Results—We studied 157 intermediate coronary stenoses in 157 patients, evaluated by FFR and CFVR between April 1997 and September 2006 in which revascularization was deferred. Long-term follow-up was performed to document the occurrence of major adverse cardiac events: cardiac death, myocardial infarction, or target vessel revascularization. Discordance between FFR and CFVR occurred in 31% and 37% of stenoses at the 0.75, and 0.80 FFR cut-off value, respectively, and was characterized by microvascular resistances during basal and hyperemic conditions. Follow-up duration amounted to 11.7 years (Q1–Q3, 9.9–13.3 years). Compared with concordant normal results of FFR and CFVR, a normal FFR with an abnormal CFVR was associated with significantly increased major adverse cardiac events rate throughout 10 years of follow-up, regardless of the FFR cut-off applied. In contrast, an abnormal FFR with a normal CFVR was associated with equivalent clinical outcome compared with concordant normal results: ⩽3 years when FFR <0.75 was depicted abnormal and throughout 10 years of follow-up when FFR ⩽0.80 was depicted abnormal. Conclusions—Discordance of CFVR with FFR originates from the involvement of the coronary microvasculature. Importantly, the risk for major adverse cardiac events associated with FFR/CFVR discordance is mainly attributable to stenoses where CFVR is abnormal. This emphasizes the requirement of intracoronary flow assessment in addition to coronary pressure for optimal risk stratification in stable coronary artery disease.
A Framework for Fast and Robust Visual Odometry

Knowledge of the ego-vehicle’s motion state is essential for assessing the collision risk in advanced driver assistance systems or autonomous driving. Vision-based methods for estimating the ego-motion of vehicle, i.e., visual odometry, face a number of challenges in uncontrolled realistic urban environments. Existing solutions fail to achieve a good tradeoff between high accuracy and low computational complexity. In this paper, a framework for ego-motion estimation that integrates runtime-efficient strategies with robust techniques at various core stages in visual odometry is proposed. First, a pruning method is employed to reduce the computational complexity of Kanade–Lucas–Tomasi (KLT) feature detection without compromising on the quality of the features. Next, three strategies, i.e., smooth motion constraint, adaptive integration window technique, and automatic tracking failure detection scheme, are introduced into the conventional KLT tracker to facilitate generation of feature correspondences in a robust and runtime efficient way. Finally, an early termination condition for the random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm is integrated with the Gauss–Newton optimization scheme to enable rapid convergence of the motion estimation process while achieving robustness. Experimental results based on the KITTI odometry data set show that the proposed technique outperforms the state-of-the-art visual odometry methods by producing more accurate ego-motion estimation in notably lesser amount of time.
Water and sanitation status of families in Ikorodu: a peri-urban settlement in Lagos

In a rapidly developing city like Lagos, peri-urban communities are characterized by urban-rural drifts due to the heavy cost of shelter in central urban metropolis, leading to a clustered community in the suburban settlements. The paper investigates the water and sanitation status of families living in Ikorodu a peri-urban community of Lagos. Water source, domestic hygiene practices the incidences of water borne infections; the water storage behavior, number and type of latrines and distance to well, were considered in the research. A detailed household survey was undertaken among two hundred and eight families using structured questionnaire. The result showed that only 25% of the population has access to safe water through the public water system, with the rest of the population accessing water through the unprotected wells 48.1%, water tankers 16.3% and water hawkers 8.2%. The pit latrines and soak-away are located to the wells with 0-3m(24.5%), 4-6m(24.5%), 7-9m(27.4%) and >9m (18.8%). Diarrhea frequencies per month in the families range from 1-4 (41.3%), 5-8 (4.8%), 9-12(0.5%). The findings indicate that the water and sanitation facilities are inadequate. There is need for all stakeholders to ensure adequate provision of safe water and appropriate sanitation facilities to eliminate the frequency of diarrhea and other possible water borne infections if the Millennium Development Goals must be attained by 2015.
Introduction to Domination Analysis

In the recently published book on the Traveling Salesman Problem, half of Chapter 6 [18] is devoted to domination analysis (DA) of heuristics for the Traveling Salesman Problem. Another chapter [16] is a detailed overview of the whole area of DA. Both chapters are of considerable length. The purpose of this paper is to give a short introduction to results and applications of DA. While we do not prove any significant new results, we provide proofs to a few extensions and improvements of previously known theorems. Some open problems are also raised. In Section 2 we provide motivation for studying DA. Basic terminology and notation are given in Section 3. The minimum multiprocessor scheduling problem is considered in some detail in Section 4. Section 5 overviews several results on other combinatorial optimization problems. Sections 6 and 7 are devoted to results on DA for the greedy algorithm and upper bounds on the maximum domination number for polynomial time traveling salesman heuristics.
Big Data in Critical Infrastructures Security Monitoring: Challenges and Opportunities

Critical Infrastructures (CIs), such as smart power grids, transport systems, and financial infrastructures, are more and more vulnerable to cyber threats, due to the adoption of commodity computing facilities. Despite the use of several monitoring tools, recent attacks have proven that current defensive mechanisms for CIs are not effective enough against most advanced threats. In this paper we explore the idea of a framework leveraging multiple data sources to improve protection capabilities of CIs. Challenges and opportunities are discussed along three main research directions: i) use of distinct and heterogeneous data sources, ii) monitoring with adaptive granularity, and iii) attack modeling and runtime combination of multiple data analysis techniques.
Exploring realistic immersive geovisualizations as tools for inclusive approaches to coastal planning and management

Supervisory Committee Dr. Rosaline Canessa, Department of Geography, University of Victoria Supervisor Dr. Tara Sharma, Department of Geography, University of Victoria Departmental Member Dr. Cameron Owens, Department of Geography, University of Victoria Departmental Member Dr. Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria Outside Member