Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bias determination and precision validation of ozone profiles from MIPAS-Envisat retrieved with the IMK-IAA processor

This paper characterizes vertical ozone profiles retrieved with the IMK-IAA (Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe ? Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia) science-oriented processor from spectra measured by the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) aboard the environmental satellite Envisat. Bias determination and precision validation is performed on the basis of correlative measurements by ground-based lidars, Fourier transform infrared spectrometers, and microwave radiometers as well as balloon-borne ozonesondes, the balloon-borne version of MIPAS, and two satellite instruments (Halogen Occultation Experiment and Polar Ozone and Aerosol Measurement III). Percentage mean differences between MIPAS and the comparison instruments for stratospheric ozone are within ±10%. The precision in this altitude region is estimated at values between 5 and 10% which gives an accuracy of 15 to 20%. Below 18 km, the spread of the percentage mean differences is larger and the precision increases to values of more than 20% depending on altitude and latitude. The main reason for the degraded precision at low altitudes is attributed to undetected thin clouds which affect MIPAS retrievals, and to the influence of uncertainties in the water vapor concentration.
The regulatory role of individual experiences with parents in coping of youth with mild intellectual disability in situations of interpersonal confl icts

Research fi ndings have documented that coping of individuals with mild intellectual disability depends on social and psychological factors (Kościelska, 1998; Zigler, 1999; Switzky, 1999; Kurtek, 2009). The aim of the empirical research was to verify the regulatory role of in- dividual experiences (conscious representation of parental attitudes) in coping of youth with mild intellectual disability in confl icts with parents. In the study of a group of 60 students (age: 14-20) from a special school, psychological methods belonging to a cognitive paradigm were used: te PCR Questionnaire (Parent-Child Relation Questionnaire) by A. Roe and M. Siegelman (1963) and RTSS Questionnaire (Coping in Diffi cult Social Situations) by Danuta Borecka-Bier- nat (2003). Both methods were adapted to low reading and understanding skills of the population (shorter items without abstract words). The results of multiple regression confi rmed the model of tendentious perception of object by R.H. Fazio (1986) in regulating coping strategies. Problem-oriented responses in confl icts with parents are explained in 30% of variance by individual experiences of Love (from mother and father as well) and not Demanding (rather Casual) mother. The predictors of aggressive coping tendency were experiences of father's Rejection and lack of mother's Attention (15% of var- iance). Finally the avoidance coping was explained in 10% by the experience of lack of mother's Love. Obtained data comply to the holistic model of social rehabilitation of mildly intellectual- ly disabled youth. WPROWADZENIE
Some Perspectives on the Evaluation of Information Retrieval Systems

As an introduction to the papers in this special issue, some of the major problems facing investigators evaluating information retrieval systems are presented. These problems include the question of the necessity of using real users, as opposed to subject experts, in making relevance judgements, the possibility of evaluating individual components of the retrieval process, rather than the process as a whole, the kinds of aggregation that are appropriate for the measures used in evaluating information retrieval systems, the value of an analytic or simulatory, as opposed to an experimental, approach in evaluating retrieval systems, the difficulties in evaluating interactive systems, and the kinds of generalization which are possible from information retrieval tests. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Vehicular cloud networking: architecture and design principles

Over the past several decades, VANET has been a core networking technology to provide safety and comfort to drivers in vehicular environments. Emerging applications and services, however, require major changes to its underlying computing and networking models, which demand new network planning for VANET. This article especially examines how VANET evolves with two emerging paradigms: vehicular cloud computing and information-centric networking. VCC brings the mobile cloud model to vehicular networks and thus changes the way of network service provisioning, whereas ICN changes the notion of data routing and dissemination. We envision a new vehicular networking system, vehicular cloud networking, on top of them. This article scrutinizes its architecture and operations, and discusses its design principles.
Specular Microscopy Ancillary Study Methods for Donor Endothelial Cell Density Determination of Cornea Donor Study Images

Purpose: To describe reliable methods for determining central corneal endothelial cell density (ECD) in a multicenter eye bank study. Methods: The Specular Microscopy Reading Center utilized a dual-grading procedure and adjudication process to classify image quality and determine ECD for a subset of donor endothelial images obtained in the Specular Microscopy Ancillary Study, which is part of the Cornea Donor Study.1 Two certified readers classified images as analyzable (excellent, good, fair) or unanalyzable and determined the ECD using a variable frame technique. An adjudicator also evaluated the images if quality classifications by the two readers differed by one grade, if any reader found the image unanalyzable, and/or if the ECD determination between the two readers was ≥ 5%. Results: Image quality categorization by the two readers was identical for 441 (64%) of 688 donor images. The ECD differed by < 5% for 442 (69%) of the 645 analyzable images. The ECD determined by the adjudicator was < 5% different than the ECD determined by at least one reader for 193 (95%) of the 203 remaining images. Conclusions: The dual-grading and adjudication procedures produce reliable, reproducible assessments of image quality and ECD. The importance of two independent readings is evident in that image quality ratings differed between the two readers by one grade in 36% of all images and ECD counts differed by ≥5% for 31% of analyzable images.
COSTS OF INFORMAL CARE FOR PATIENTS IN ADVANCED HOME CARE: A POPULATION-BASED STUDY

Objectives: Several studies have sought to analyze the cost-effectiveness of advanced home care and home rehabilitation. However, the costs of informal care are rarely included in economic appraisals of home care. This study estimates the cost of informal care for patients treated in advanced home care and analyses some patient characteristics that influence informal care costs. Methods: During one week in October 1995, data were collected on all 451 patients in advanced home care in the Swedish county of Östergötland. Costs were calculated by using two models: one including leisure time, and one excluding leisure time. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze factors associated with costs of informal care. Results: Seventy percent of the patients in the study had informal care around the clock during the week investigated. The patients had, on average, five formal care visits per week, each of which lasted for almost half an hour. Thus, the cost of informal care constituted a considerable part of the cost of advanced home care. When the cost of leisure time was included, the cost of informal care was estimated at SEK 5,880 per week per patient, or twice as high as total formal caregiver costs. When leisure time was excluded, the cost of informal care was estimated at SEK 3,410 per week per patient, which is still 1.2 times higher than formal caregiver costs (estimated at SEK 2,810 per week per patient). Informal care costs were higher among patients who were men, who were younger, who had their own housing, and who were diagnosed with cancer. Conclusions: Studies of advanced home care that exclude the cost of informal care substantially underestimate the costs to society, regardless of whether or not the leisure time of the caregiver is included in the calculations.
Sarcomere Dysfunction in Nemaline Myopathy

Nemaline myopathy (NM) is among the most common non-dystrophic congenital myopathies (incidence 1:50.000). Hallmark features of NM are skeletal muscle weakness and the presence of nemaline bodies in the muscle fiber. The clinical phenotype of NM patients is quite diverse, ranging from neonatal death to normal lifespan with almost normal motor function. As the respiratory muscles are involved as well, severely affected patients are ventilator-dependent. The mechanisms underlying muscle weakness in NM are currently poorly understood. Therefore, no therapeutic treatment is available yet. Eleven implicated genes have been identified: ten genes encode proteins that are either components of thin filament, or are thought to contribute to stability or turnover of thin filament proteins. The thin filament is a major constituent of the sarcomere, the smallest contractile unit in muscle. It is at this level of contraction – thin-thick filament interaction – where muscle weakness originates in NM patients. This review focusses on how sarcomeric gene mutations directly compromise sarcomere function in NM. Insight into the contribution of sarcomeric dysfunction to muscle weakness in NM, across the genes involved, will direct towards the development of targeted therapeutic strategies.
Low memory-cost scramble methods for constructing deterministic CS matrix

Compressed sensing (CS) is an emerging field in data acquisition that measures signal below the Nyquist rate through sensing matrix. Random matrices have been regarded as optimal sensing matrices in CS but cost too much memory space. Structured matrices are then proposed to decrease memory cost by deterministic sensing. Nevertheless, the recovery suffers from severe degradation when using these structured matrices as sensing matrices for signals which are sparse under specific domain. In this paper, we propose two scramble methods to compensate the performance loss of structured matrices under alternative region of interest. The proposed predefined scramble matrix (PSM) method is able to match the guarantee region of recovery of Gaussian random matrices. The PSM method requires as much memory space as the structured matrices and has sub-optimal recovery performance. On the other hand, the proposed built-in location selection (BLS) method is able to approximate the whole region of recovery of Gaussian random matrices. The BLS method can achieve optimal recovery performance with some extra memory and logic cost than PSM method. Compared to 128 × 512 Gaussian sensing matrix, the PSM method and the BLS method can reduce 98.4% and 96% of the memory cost, respectively.
Fast scoring for mixture of PLDA in i-vector/PLDA speaker verification

With the ubiquitous of mobile phones, users of speaker verification systems will perform authentication anywhere at anytime. As a result, practical speaker verification systems need to deal with utterances of different noise levels. Recently, an SNR-dependent mixture of PLDA model was proposed to deal with such practical situation. However, the scoring function of this model is significantly more complex than the conventional one. This paper proposes a method to reduce the computation burden of this mixture PLDA model. The idea is based on the observation that for most utterances, the posterior probabilities of SNR are very sparse so that it is possible to consider the top Gaussian only during scoring. The method effectively reduces the computational complexity from O(K2D3) to O(D3), where K and D are the number of mixtures and i-vector dimension, respectively. Experimental results based on NIST 2012 SRE suggest that the proposed method can reduce computation time by 60% with very minor degradation in performance.
OBSERVATIONS ON AN ISOLATED, INNERVATED PREPARATION OF RAT URINARY BLADDER.

Preparations of isolated tissues together with their extrinsic nerves are useful for obtaining information about the autonomic innervation and the mode of action of various drugs. a of rabbit bladder consisting of a strip of the detrussor muscle together with its periarterial nerves, and the whole isolated bladder of the marsupial possum with the periarterial nerves accompanying the blood vessels to the urethra and to the fundus. The isolated innervated preparation of the rat urinary bladder has been used previously for the study of drug action Hukovic Dezeli6, 1962; Hukovic Bubic, 1963) and it was demonstrated to the British Pharmacological Society by Hukovic, Rand & Vanov in 1964. This paper gives a further description of the preparation and its responses to drugs with reference to the autonomic innervation of the bladder. magnification seven-times. given generating pulses: details of the stimulus parameters are in Results. guanethidine sulphate, hemicholinium dibromide, hexamethonium bromide, S-hydroxytryptamine creatinine sulphate, hyoscine hydrobromide, morphine sulphate and procaine hydrochloride. Synthetic bradykinin (BRS 640, Sandoz) and methysergide (UML-491, Sandoz) were used from ampoules. Drugs were dissolved either in 0.9% saline or in distilled water. Dilutions for application to the organ-bath were made in McEwen's solution.
A Case of Cutaneous Nocardiosis with Involvement of the Trachea, Anterior Mediastinum and Sternum

Nocardiosis is a rare infectious disease due to Nocardia infections. In this report, we present a rare case of cutaneous nocardiosis with involvement of the trachea, anterior mediastinum and sternum. The strain of Nocardia has been isolated from bacterial culture of infected tissue. 16s rRNA sequencing confirmed that it contained the Nocardia genus. The patient was successfully treated with Co-SMZ.
Layout design of D Flip Flop for Power and Area Reduction

Design of low power device is now an essential field of research due to increase in demand of portable devices. In this paper a single edge triggered D flip flop with low power and low area requirements is proposed. This D flip flop has been implemented using 180 nm technology. The layout of D FF is designed using fully automatic, semi custom layout and fully custom layout techniques. It can be observed from simulation result the fully custom design has shown 38% reduction in area and 35% reduction in power as compared to fully automatic design. The overall design area is optimized to enhance the chip density. It can be used in various applications like digital VLSI clocking, buffers, registers, microprocessors etc.
The Use of English Request Strategy by Taiwanese College Students: A Pilot Study in the Academic Setting

The study aims to identify the request strategies used by Taiwanese college students in the academic setting. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), request is a face-threatening act. More often than not, speakers would adopt strategies to prevent damage to the hearer's or the speaker's own face. Chinese people have long been described as people who favor direct request strategies, which usually evoke rude and awkward impressions in the speakers since inappropriate requests in cross-cultural contact situations may lead to communication breakdown or even misunderstanding. The present study invited 18 Taiwanese female freshmen to respond to a written questionnaire in the form of the Discourse Completion Task. The data of 215 requests were analyzed according to Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper's (1989) coding scheme. The findings portrayed a different picture of stereotypes of Chinese students. In specific, the participants used significantly more indirect strategies (74%) than direct strategies. Among the indirect strategies used, 81% was hearer dominance. The favorite Supportive Moves were grounders. In terms of the structure of the Head Act and the Supportive Moves, pre-posed structure was preferred over post-posed structure.
PROCESSING AND ASSESMENT OF QUALITY CHARACTRISTIC OF CEREALS-LEGUMES COMPOSITE WEANING FOODS

The usefulness of weaning foods to meet the nutrient needs of children is well recognized, and most of them are precooked roller dried mixtures of cereal and/or legume flours which posses a high viscosity and bulk when reconstituted. The objective of this study was to formulate composite weaning foods using cereals, malted legumes and vegetable powders and analyze them for nutrients, functional properties and sensory attributes. Selected legumes (green gram and lentil) were germinated, dried and dehulled. Roasted wheat, rice, carrot powder and skim milk powder also were used. All the ingredients were mixed in different proportions to get four formulations, made into 30% slurry and dried in roller drier. The products were analyzed for proximate principles, mineral content, functional and sensory qualities. The results of analysis showed following range of constituents per 100g of formulations on dry weight basis, protein, 18.1-18.9 g ; fat, 0.78-1.36 g ; iron, 5.09-6.53 mg; calcium, 265-310 mg. The lowest water absorption capacity was in case of wheat green gram based and the highest was in rice lentil based sample. Overall sensory qualities of all foods were graded as “good” and “very good” with no significant differences. The results confirm that formulated weaning foods were nutritionally superior, functionally appropriate and organoleptically acceptable. Keywords-malted legumes, weaning foods, nutrition, functional properties
Music , Soundscape and Acoustic Sustainability

With environmental issues and the concept of sustainability being of current concern, some artists and musicians are considering their relationship to such issues, and asking what responsibility they might have as a result and what practical contributions they are qualified to make. Music in Western culture, I would argue, has become separated from its broader environmental context over the last two centuries, both in the classical tradition of privileging standardized performance spaces, and by the processes of commodification in the commercial context. When music is conceived as an abstract art form, it is not surprising that this separation from context, or more precisely, its inclusion in standardized contexts, becomes the norm. References to real-world imagery can be made in such music, but they remain at the level of metaphor in instrumental music and textual references in vocal music. The expansion of musical resources in the 20 century appeared to bring “non-musical” sounds and noises into the realm of composition, often in direct reference to the growing industrialization of society (Thompson 2002, chap. 4), but the direction of influence was largely from the environment into the music, and not the other way round. It remained for John Cage most notably to suggest a reversal of that process in the sense of listening to the environment as if it were music, most famously in his 4’33” work. However, it is not clear if such an expanded awareness should lead to musicians taking any responsibility or action that would relate to environmental and social issues.
A genome-wide association study of men with symptoms of testicular dysgenesis syndrome and its network biology interpretation

Background Testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS) is a common disease that links testicular germ cell cancer, cryptorchidism and some cases of hypospadias and male infertility with impaired development of the testis. The incidence of these disorders has increased over the last few decades, and testicular cancer now affects 1% of the Danish and Norwegian male population. Methods To identify genetic variants that span the four TDS phenotypes, the authors performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using Affymetrix Human SNP Array 6.0 to screen 488 patients with symptoms of TDS and 439 selected controls with excellent reproductive health. Furthermore, they developed a novel integrative method that combines GWAS data with other TDS-relevant data types and identified additional TDS markers. The most significant findings were replicated in an independent cohort of 671 Nordic men. Results Markers located in the region of TGFBR3 and BMP7 showed association with all TDS phenotypes in both the discovery and replication cohorts. An immunohistochemistry investigation confirmed the presence of transforming growth factor β receptor type III (TGFBR3) in peritubular and Leydig cells, in both fetal and adult testis. Single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the KITLG gene showed significant associations, but only with testicular cancer. Conclusions The association of single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the TGFBR3 and BMP7 genes, which belong to the transforming growth factor β signalling pathway, suggests a role for this pathway in the pathogenesis of TDS. Integrating data from multiple layers can highlight findings in GWAS that are biologically relevant despite having border significance at currently accepted statistical levels.
Adaptive Supervised Discriminant Projection

Considering the weakness of Unsupervised Discriminant Projection (UDP), a novel feature extraction algorithm, termed Adaptive Supervised Discriminant Projection Analysis (ASDP), is proposed in the paper. The proposed algorithm does not only integrate a kind of dynamic feedback mechanism into construction of scatter matrices but also make full use of the class label information. The experimental results on AR and FERET face databases show the proposed method is more effective than some existing feature extraction methods such as UDP, LDA, etc.
Nerve Growth Factor Receptor‐immunoreactive Fibres Innervate the Reticular Thalamic Nucleus: Modulation by Nerve Growth Factor Treatment in Neonate, Adult and Aged Rats

Terminal arborizations expressing nerve growth factor receptor (NGF‐R) have been detected with immunohistochemistry in the reticular thalamic nucleus of neonate, adult and aged rats. Intracerebroventricular administration of nerve growth factor (NGF) resulted in a dramatic increase in NGF‐R immunoreactivity throughout the lifespan. This effect was paralleled by a concomitant increase in NGF‐R immunopositivity in the neurons of the basal forebrain, which was here demonstrated also in aged animals, thus indicating that the NGF‐R immunoreactivity within the reticular thalamic nucleus derives in all likelihood from cholinergic neuronal cell bodies of the basal forebrain. Our results demonstrate a prominent ability of NGF to up‐regulate its receptors within fibres innervating the reticular thalamic nucleus, and show that this up‐regulation of NGF‐R is maintained throughout the lifetime. Altogether this indicates that the reticular thalamic nucleus may represent a new, important site of action of endogenous NGF or NGF‐like molecules within the brain. In view of the crucial role played by the reticular thalamic nucleus in gating thalamocortical information, the autoregulation of NGF‐R in this structure may have important concomitants in both physiological and pathological conditions.