Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sexual function in hypertensive patients receiving treatment

In many forms of erectile dysfunction (ED), cardiovascular risk factors, in particular arterial hypertension, seem to be extremely common. While causes for ED are related to a broad spectrum of diseases, a generalized vascular process seems to be the underlying mechanism in many patients, which in a large portion of clinical cases involves endothelial dysfunction, ie, inadequate vasodilation in response to endothelium-dependent stimuli, both in the systemic vasculature and the penile arteries. Due to this close association of cardiovascular disease and ED, patients with ED should be evaluated as to whether they may suffer from cardiovascular risk factors including hypertension, cardiovascular disease or silent myocardial ischemia. On the other hand, cardiovascular patients, seeking treatment of ED, must be evaluated in order to decide whether treatment of ED or sexual activity can be recommended without significantly increased cardiac risk. The guideline from the first and second Princeton Consensus Conference may be applied in this context. While consequent treatment of cardiovascular risk factors should be accomplished in these patients, many antihypertensive drugs may worsen sexual function as a drug specific side-effect. Importantly, effective treatment for arterial hypertension should not be discontinued as hypertension itself may contribute to altered sexual functioning; to the contrary, alternative antihypertensive regimes should be administered with individually tailored drug regimes with minimal side-effects on sexual function. When phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors, such as sildenafil, tadalafil and vardenafil, are prescribed to hypertensive patients on antihypertensive drugs, these combinations of antihypertensive drugs and phosphodiesterase 5 are usually well tolerated, provided there is a baseline blood pressure of at least 90/60 mmHg. However, there are two exceptions: nitric oxide donors and α-adrenoceptor blockers. Any drug serving as a nitric oxide donor (nitrates) is absolutely contraindicated in combination with phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors, due to significant, potentially life threatening hypotension. Also, α-adrenoceptor blockers, such as doxazosin, terazosin and tamsulosin, should only be combined with phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitors with special caution and close monitoring of blood pressure.
The More Attractive, the Less Deceptive? Effects of Female Facial Attractiveness on Perceived Deceptiveness

We examined whether the facial attractiveness of females affects their perceived deceptiveness. We recorded three female models as they responded to 15 self-introductory interview questions while wearing makeup to make them look more and less attractive. The video clips were presented in high versus low attractiveness conditions to adolescent participants (both males and females), who rated the model’s attractiveness and deceptiveness after her reply to each of the questions. Two of the models in the high attractiveness condition were rated as significantly more attractive. Two-way ANOVAs on the deceptiveness ratings of each reply revealed that deceptiveness was generally, but not strongly, lower in the high attractiveness condition than in the low attractiveness condition. The present technique of manipulating facial attractiveness is applicable to future research.
On the nature of selective deficits involving nouns and verbs

In this paper we address the status of Verb-Noun (V-N) dissociation in aphasic patients, building on the results of a large-scale study (Luzzatti et al. 2002). We first briefly review the main positions that have emerged in the rich debate on this topic. We then reconsider the findings of Luzzatti et al. in light of such debate, offering a partially novel interpretation of their results. Our main (tentative) conclusions are the following. First, Luzzatti et al. do provide further evidence that V-N dissociations cannot be wholly explained in terms of extralinguistic aspects of our sensory/conceptual system. Second, such evidence can be accounted for, perhaps optimally, under the assumption that argument structure is what is involved in damage to verbs. A damage to argument structure would, in fact, not only selectively affect verbs over nouns; it would also arguably determine the type of compensatory strategy to be used in such cases. In particular, the easier it is for an action to be coded in mental visual images, the easier it will be to restore the corresponding argument structure (by extracting from the events the corresponding thetaroles). Selective damage to nouns, on the other hand, cannot as readily be accounted for in terms of damage to argument structure and, in fact, it must be caused by different underlying mechanisms.
Run-time Detection in Parallel and Distributed Systems : AnApplication to Safety-Critical

As systems are becoming more complex, there is increasing interest in their runtime analysis, understanding their dynamic behavior and possibly controling it as well. This paper describes complex distributed and parallel applications that use run-time analyses to attain scalability improvements with respect to the amount and complexity of the data transmitted, transformed, and shared among diierent application components. Such improvements are derived from using database techniques when manipulating data streams. Namely, by imposing a relational model on a data stream, lters and constraints on the stream may be expressed in the form of database queries evaluated against the data events comprising the stream. Streams may then be ltered using runtime optimization techniques derived from query optimization methods. This paper also presents a tool, termed Cnet, which ooers (1) means for the dynamic creation of queries and their application to distributed data streams, (2) permits the implementation and runtime use of multiplèquery optimization' techniques, and (3) supports the dynamic reoptimization of queries based on streams' dynamic behavior.
Of Catwalk Technologies and Boundary Creatures

Researchers designing and deploying technologies in the wild can find it difficult to balance pure innovation with scalable solutions. Tensions often relate to expectations around current and future roles of the technology development. We propose a catwalk technology metaphor where researchers as boundary creatures focus on innovation whilst providing links to prêt-à-porter (ready to wear) developments. Evidence from 140 participants, within three “in-the-wild” field-based learning case studies (for mobile, distributed, sensor and augmented reality systems), conceptualise the researchers’ “boundary creature” role in managing design process tensions. Stakeholders, including participants, expected the research projects to produce ready to wear (prêt-à-porter) boundary objects for current practices even when researchers sought to take catwalk approaches by innovating technologies and changing practices. The researcher design role (RDR) model articulates researchers’ narratives with the design team, stakeholders and users around what is innovated (e.g., technology, activities) and how the intervention changes or sustains current practices.
Development of visual odometry algorithm for mobile robot navigation

In this paper visual odometry method for processing single-view images has been presented. The developed system is designed as a main navigation sensor for a police mobile robot used for investigation of crime scenes. Verification of correctness of the algorithms have been performed and results of preliminary simulated tests are included as well as guidelines for further development of the method.
Options for treating postherpetic neuralgia in the medically complicated patient

Patients with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) are often of advanced age or immunocompromised and likely to have ≥1 comorbid medical condition for which they receive ≥1 medication (polypharmacy). Comorbidities affecting renal or hepatic function can alter pharmacokinetics, thereby impacting the efficacy or tolerability of PHN analgesic therapies. Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, or psychiatric comorbidities may increase patient vulnerability to potential adverse events associated with some PHN analgesic therapies. Because PHN is a localized condition, localized therapy with a topical analgesic (lidocaine patch 5% and capsaicin 8% patch or cream) may provide adequate efficacy while mitigating the risk of systemic adverse events compared with oral analgesics (eg, tricyclic antidepressants, anticonvulsants, opioids). However, combined therapy with a topical and an oral analgesic or with >1 oral analgesic may be needed for optimal pain management in some patients. This review summarizes how comorbidities and concomitant medications should be taken into account when selecting among available pharmacotherapies for PHN and provides recommendations for the selection of therapies that will provide analgesia while minimizing the risk of adverse events.
Talker identification across source mechanisms: experiments with laryngeal and electrolarynx speech.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine listeners' ability to learn talker identity from speech produced with an electrolarynx, explore source and filter differentiation in talker identification, and describe acoustic-phonetic changes associated with electrolarynx use. METHOD Healthy adult control listeners learned to identify talkers from speech recordings produced using talkers' normal laryngeal vocal source or an electrolarynx. Listeners' abilities to identify talkers from the trained vocal source (Experiment 1) and generalize this knowledge to the untrained source (Experiment 2) were assessed. Acoustic-phonetic measurements of spectral differences between source mechanisms were performed. Additional listeners attempted to match recordings from different source mechanisms to a single talker (Experiment 3). RESULTS Listeners successfully learned talker identity from electrolarynx speech but less accurately than from laryngeal speech. Listeners were unable to generalize talker identity to the untrained source mechanism. Electrolarynx use resulted in vowels with higher F1 frequencies compared with laryngeal speech. Listeners matched recordings from different sources to a single talker better than chance. CONCLUSIONS Electrolarynx speech, although lacking individual differences in voice quality, nevertheless conveys sufficient indexical information related to the vocal filter and articulation for listeners to identify individual talkers. Psychologically, perception of talker identity arises from a "gestalt" of the vocal source and filter.
Catastrophic Disruptions Revisited

Abstract We use a smooth particle hydrodynamics method to simulate colliding rocky and icy bodies from centimeter scale to hundreds of kilometers in diameter in an effort to define self-consistently the threshold for catastrophic disruption. Unlike previous efforts, this analysis incorporates the combined effects of material strength (using a brittle fragmentation model) and self-gravitation, thereby providing results in the “strength regime” and the “gravity regime,” and in between. In each case, the structural properties of the largest remnant are examined. Our main result is that gravity plays a dominant role in determining the outcome of collisions even involving relatively small targets. In the size range considered here, the enhanced role of gravity is not due to fracture prevention by gravitational compression, but rather to the difficulty of the fragments to escape their mutual gravitational attraction. Owing to the low efficiency of momentum transfer in collisions, the velocity of larger fragments tends to be small, and more energetic collisions are needed to disperse them. We find that the weakest bodies in the Solar System, as far as impact disruption is concerned, are about 300 m in diameter. Beyond this size, objects become more difficult to disperse even though they are still easily shattered. Thus, larger remnants of collisions involving targets larger than about 1 km in radius should essentially be self-gravitating aggregates of smaller fragments.
Do the US and Canada have a common nonlinear cycle in unemployment

To enable answering the question in the title, we introduce a bivariate censored latent effects autoregression, and discuss representation, parameter estimation, diagnostics and inference. We show that this bivariate nonlinear model is very useful for examining common nonlinearity. We apply the model to the monthly unemployment rate in the US and Canada to examine if these variables have common cyclical properties conditional on lagged explanatory variables such as industrial production, the oil price and interest spread. We find that US variables have explanatory value for Canadian unemployment, but that Canadian variables do not predict cyclical patterns in the US. Also, we find that recessionary shocks in Canada are more persistent than similar sized shocks in the US in the same period. Finally, we obtain some evidence for a common nonlinear business cycle.
A qualitative approach for refactoring of code clone opportunities using graph and tree methods

Reusing of code has been a very common practice in software development. This practice has been implemented to reduce programming time and efforts greatly. This copying and pasting behavior of programmers leads to cloning of codes and therefore has a very serious impact on the maintenance of the software systems. Many clone detection tool has been proposed to find out the copied code. However, refactoring of code is still a challenging part as most of the ongoing tools depend on detection of clone rather than the ability to make decision on refactorability. These tools do not guarantee whether such codes can be safely refactored or not. Our aim mainly lies on detecting the possibility of refactoring a code. To find out whether the code clone can be securely refactored or not, three methods are applied: Nesting Structure Mapping, Statement Mapping and Precondition Examination. In order to refactor the code, we apply some techniques like Pull-Up Method and Push-Down Method. In our approach, we have tried to find the refactorable code using the methods and also refactored the code so as to remove the problem of code cloning.
ToMaR -- A Data Generator for Large Volumes of Content

We present To MaR, a scalable application that supports the efficient integration of legacy applications within a MapReduce environment. The work is motivated by scenarios for scalable content processing developed in the context of the EC project SCAPE. ToMaR specifically addresses the need for extracting data sets from large volumes of binary content based on existing, content-specific applications within a scalable data management environment. This paper discusses the main functionalities of ToMaR and describes how ToMaR is utilized as part of a typical workflow. We present a real-word scenario that makes use of ToMaR for the characterization of archived web content. A workflow and experimental results which have been produced using sample content from the Web Archive Austria are discussed.
Energy-Saving Virtual Machine Placement in Cloud Data Centers

In cloud data centers, different mapping relationships between virtual machines (VMs) and physical machines (PMs) cause different resource utilization, therefore, how to place VMs on PMs to improve resource utilization and reduce energy consumption is one of the major concerns for cloud providers. The existing VM placement schemes are to optimize physical server resources utilization or network resources utilization, but few of them focuses on optimizing multiple resources utilization simultaneously. To address the issue, this paper proposes a VM placement scheme meeting multiple resource constraints, such as the physical server size (CPU, memory, storage, bandwidth, etc.) and network link capacity to improve resource utilization and reduce both the number of active physical servers and network elements so as to finally reduce energy consumption. Since VM placement problem is abstracted as a combination of bin packing problem and quadratic assignment problem, which is also known as a classic combinatorial optimization and NP-hard problem, we design a novel greedy algorithm by combining minimum cut with the best-fit, and the simulations show that our solution achieves better results.
"Un-googling" publications: the ethics and problems of anonymization

Digital tools of research dissemination make scholarly publications accessible to the public at large through simple search engines. As a result, the users that we study, interview, and cite may be at risk of exposure to unwelcome types of scrutiny and scholars must grapple with challenges to the ethics of exposure of our re-search participants. We present one approach to anonymization of research results with search engines in mind, which we call un-Googling, that we have developed to minimize risk to our participants. We discuss the considerations that this approach raises and pose a challenge to the HCI community to take up this discussion not only as an ethical consideration but also as a socio-technical research and design opportunity.
Untrusting network coding

In networks that perform linear network coding, an intermediate network node may receive a much larger number of linear equations of the source symbols than the number of messages it needs to send. For networks constructed by untrusted nodes, we propose a relaxed measure of security: we want to be untrusting, and allow each intermediate node to only learn as much information as the number of independent messages it needs to send. In this paper we formulate this problem and provide sufficient and necessary conditions for classes of combination networks.
Bones

The shift toward parallel processor architectures has made programming and code generation increasingly challenging. To address this programmability challenge, this article presents a technique to fully automatically generate efficient and readable code for parallel processors (with a focus on GPUs). This is made possible by combining algorithmic skeletons, traditional compilation, and “algorithmic species,” a classification of program code. Compilation starts by automatically annotating C code with class information (the algorithmic species). This code is then fed into the skeleton-based source-to-source compiler bones to generate CUDA code. To generate efficient code, bones also performs optimizations including host-accelerator transfer optimization and kernel fusion. This results in a unique approach, integrating a skeleton-based compiler for the first time into an automated flow. The benefits are demonstrated experimentally for PolyBench GPU kernels, showing geometric mean speed-ups of 1.4× and 2.4× compared to ppcg and Par4All, and for five Rodinia GPU benchmarks, showing a gap of only 1.2× compared to hand-optimized code.
Delivery of Two‐Part Self‐Healing Chemistry via Microvascular Networks

Multiple healing cycles of a single crack in a brittle polymer coating are achieved by microvascular delivery of a two‐part, epoxy‐based self‐healing chemistry. Epoxy resin and amine‐based curing agents are transported to the crack plane through two sets of independent vascular networks embedded within a ductile polymer substrate beneath the coating. The two reactive components remain isolated and stable in the vascular networks until crack formation occurs in the coating under a mechanical load. Both healing components are wicked by capillary forces into the crack plane, where they react and effectively bond the crack faces closed. Healing efficiencies of over 60% are achieved for up to 16 intermittent healing cycles of a single crack, which represents a significant improvement over systems in which a single monomeric healing agent is delivered.
IL-33 Receptor-Expressing Regulatory T Cells Are Highly Activated, Th2 Biased and Suppress CD4 T Cell Proliferation through IL-10 and TGFβ Release

Immunomodulatory Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) form a heterogeneous population consisting of subsets with different activation states, migratory properties and suppressive functions. Recently, expression of the IL-33 receptor ST2 was shown on Tregs in inflammatory settings. Here we report that ST2 expression identifies highly activated Tregs in mice even under homeostatic conditions. ST2+ Tregs preferentially accumulate at non-lymphoid sites, likely mediated by their high expression of several chemokine receptors facilitating tissue homing. ST2+ Tregs exhibit a Th2-biased character, expressing GATA-3 and producing the Th2 cytokines IL-5 and IL-13 –especially in response to IL-33. Yet, IL-33 is dispensable for the generation and maintenance of these cells in vivo. Furthermore, ST2+ Tregs are superior to ST2− Tregs in suppressing CD4+ T cell proliferation in vitro independent of IL-33. This higher suppressive capacity is partially mediated by enhanced production and activation of the anti-inflammatory cytokines IL-10 and TGFβ. Thus, ST2 expression identifies a highly activated, strongly suppressive Treg subset preferentially located in non-lymphoid tissues. Here ST2+ Tregs may be well positioned to immediately react to IL-33 alarm signals. Their specific properties may render ST2+ Tregs useful targets for immunomodulatory therapies.
Linear Precoding for Downlink MC-CDMA Systems

In this paper, as an alternative to post-detection techniques, we derive two iterative joint linear precoding and power allocation methods for downlink MC-CDMA systems with multiple transmit antennas at the base station. The first method optimally solves the so called assigned target SINRs problem, i.e. determines the precoding coefficients and the minimum sum-power allocation under a constraint on the SINR of each user. The second method instead solves the maximum sum-rate problem, i.e. maximizes the system throughput under a constraint on the overall transmit power. The main result of this paper is that the proposed joint precoding and power control solutions provide an advantage with respect to suboptimal solutions for a fully loaded system, i.e. when the number of users is equal to the spreading factor times the number of transmit antennas. For lower loads, performance of the various schemes becomes closer.
Matrix Ansatz, lattice paths and rook placements

We give two combinatorial interpretations of the Matrix Ansatz of the PASEP in terms of lattice paths and rook placements. This gives two (mostly) combinatorial proofs of a new enumeration formula for the partition function of the PASEP. Besides other interpretations, this formula gives the generating function for permutations of a given size with respect to the number of ascents and occurrences of the pattern $13-2$, the generating function according to weak exceedances and crossings, and the $n^{\mathrm{th}}$ moment of certain $q$-Laguerre polynomials.