Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study on the Sleep Patterns and Problems of University Business Students in Hong Kong

Abstract Objective: To investigate sleep patterns and problems of university business students. Participants: Undergraduate Chinese business students in Hong Kong. Methods: Self-reported questionnaires were completed during class lectures and through online system. Results: Of the 620 participating students (mean age 19.9 years), sleep duration was significantly shorter during weekdays (6.9 hours) than weekends (8.6 hours). Two thirds of students reported sleep deprivation. The following factors were associated with being a “poor sleeper” (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index > 5): attending early morning lectures (odds ratio [OR] = 1.90), living on-campus (OR = 1.89), Sleep Sufficiency Index less than 0.8 (OR = 2.55), sleep debt (differences of total time-in-bed between weekday and weekend ≥ 75 minutes) (OR = 1.58), and minor psychiatric disturbances (OR = 2.82). Conclusions: Poor sleep quality and sleep deprivation were prevalent in university business students in Hong Kong, especially for those attending early morning lectures and living on-campus. Systemic education on the importance of sleep and stress and time management is needed for university students.
LikeStarter: a Smart-contract based Social DAO for Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has become a popular form of collective funding, in which small donations or investments, made by groups of people, support the development of new projects in exchange of free products or different types of recognition. Social network sites, on the other hand, promote user cooperation and currently are at the basis of any individuals cyber-interactions. In this paper, we present LikeStarter, a blockchain-based decentralized platform that combines social interactions with crowdfunding mechanisms, allowing any user to raise funds while becoming popular in the social network. Being built over the Ethereum blockchain, LikeStarter is structured as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), that fosters crowdfunding without the intervention of any central authority, and recognizes the active role of donors, enabling them to support artists or projects, while making profits.
Fusion of Monostatic/Bistatic InSAR Stacks for Urban Area Analysis via Distributed Scatterers

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is a powerful technique providing meter-precision elevation maps and millimeter-precision surface displacement maps. Since 2007, the high-resolution SAR satellite TerraSAR-X allows monitoring of even single buildings from space using advanced monostatic repeat-pass stacking techniques. Furthermore, the launch of its twin satellite TanDEM-X in 2010 facilitates bistatic single-pass SAR interferometry. The main objective of this mission is the generation of a global digital elevation model. It also provides a configurable SAR platform for demonstrating new interferometric techniques and applications. However, in dense urban areas, standard TanDEM-X elevation models are inaccurate because ambiguities in radar layover areas cannot be solved. This letter describes the potential of joint monostatic and bistatic (motion-free and atmosphere-free) SAR interferometric stacking for an improved scene elevation and surface deformation estimation in complex urban areas. It involves exploiting distributed scatterers (DSs) using an advanced high-resolution small-baseline subset algorithm. Since most of the scatterers within a radar image can be classified as DSs, there is an increasing focus on an optimal processing of DSs for urban area monitoring. The fusion technique and an application test case are presented using a high-resolution spotlight mixed TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X data stack of Las Vegas, USA.
Association of Radical Hysterectomy Surgical Volume and Survival for Early-Stage Cervical Cancer.

OBJECTIVE To examine the association between surgical volume and survival of women with early-stage cervical cancer who underwent radical hysterectomy. METHODS This is a nationwide multicenter retrospective study examining consecutive women with clinical stage IB1-IIB cervical cancer who underwent radical hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy from 2004 to 2008 (N=5,964). The surgical volume per site over the 5-year period was defined as low-volume (fewer than 32 surgeries, 46 [39.7%] institutions, n=649 [10.9%]), mid-volume (32-104 surgeries, 60 [51.7%] institutions, n=3,662 [61.4%]), and high-volume (105 surgeries or more, 10 [8.6%] institutions, n=1,653 [27.7%]). Surgical volume-specific survival was examined with multivariable analysis and propensity score matching. RESULTS The median number of surgeries per site was 44 (interquartile range, 17-65). The 5-year disease-free survival rates among stage IB1-IIB disease were 77.2%, 79.9%, and 84.5% for low-, mid-, and high-volume groups, respectively. On multivariable analysis, women in high-volume centers had a decreased risk of recurrence (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0.69, 95% CI 0.58-0.82, P<.001) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR 0.73, 95% CI 0.59-0.90, P=.003) compared with those in mid-volume centers. Specifically, women in high-volume centers had a decreased risk of local recurrence (adjusted HR 0.62, 95% CI 0.49-0.78, P<.001) but not distant recurrence (adjusted HR 0.85, 95% CI 0.67-1.06, P=.142) compared with those in mid-volume centers. Among 1,700 women with clinical stage IB1 disease treated with surgery alone, surgery at high-volume centers was associated with a decreased risk of recurrence (adjusted HR 0.45, 95% CI 0.25-0.79, P=.006) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR 0.29, 95% CI 0.11-0.76, P=.013) compared with surgery at mid-volume centers on multivariable analysis. After propensity score matching, surgery at high-volume centers remained an independent prognostic factor for decreased recurrence (adjusted HR 0.69, 95% CI 0.57-0.84, P<.001) and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR 0.75, 95% CI 0.59-0.95, P=.016) compared with surgery at mid- and low-volume centers on multivariable analysis. CONCLUSION Hospital volume for radical hysterectomy may be a prognostic factor for early-stage cervical cancer. Surgery at high-volume centers is associated with decreased local recurrence risk and improved survival.
Robust Node ID Assignment for Mobile P2P Networks

The advancement of portable mobile wireless devices such as smart-phones, PDA, etc., brought mobile peer-to-peer (P2P) as an extension of traditional P2P networks to provide efficient, low-cost communication among them in a cellular network. It is challenging to assign a unique identifier to each user, as an adversary can target to disrupt the P2P system, by carefully selecting user IDs or obtaining many pseudo-IDs. This work proposes a robust node-ID assignment mechanism for secure peer joining in mobile P2P system called PJ-Sec. PJ-Sec facilitates to generate nodeID for a joining peer by a collaborative effort of an existing peer (within the vicinity) and pre-selected vicinity head. PJ-Sec is formally analyzed using AVISPA model checker and found to be attack resistant.
Esophageal laceration after percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube removal attempt: alternative route of extraction

Removal of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube is recommended after patients resume oral intake [1]. There are three main techniques described to remove a PEG tube: 1) external traction at the skin level; 2) the cut and push technique; and 3) retrograde esophageal exteriorization under endoscopic control [1–3]. The choice depends mainly on endoscopist preference and local guidelines. Several risk factors for tube deterioration have been described, such as heat and fungal colonization [3, 4]. We report the case of an 83-year-old woman with a PEG tube inserted 2 years previously for dysphagia in the context of Parkinson’s disease. After PEG placement, the patient did not attend any of the scheduled appointments. After 2 years, the patient’s family contacted our Video 1 Use of laparoscopic scissors inserted through a gastrostomy tract to perform multiple radial incisions in a stony bumper in order to facilitate its collapse when extracting it through the stoma.
A novel similarity calculation for collaborative filtering

Collaborative filtering, one of the most successful technologies for automated product recommendation, is widely used in electronic commerce. One notable task in practical systems is to compute the similarities between users (items) which can be represented with rating vectors. There has been a variety of similarity methods according to distance and vector-based similarity computing. However, those methods, such as the Pearson correlation method and Cosine similarity method, have never been questioned about the rationality behind those original results. In this paper, we propose a new concept named fluctuation factor which refers to the count of the common rated items between two rating vectors. In addition, one feasible way is presented to remove the influence of different fluctuation factors by z-score method. Finally, 4 kinds of similarity measurements, in both user-based and item-based collaborative filtering algorithm, are combined with the concept to check the effect. After the comparison of the experiment, results demonstrate that those methods can lead to a better recommendation quality when the influence of different fluctuation factors is removed.
RLS Precoding for Massive MIMO Systems with Nonlinear Front-End

To keep massive MIMO systems cost-efficient, power amplifiers with rather small output dynamic ranges are employed. They may distort the transmit signal and degrade the performance. This paper proposes a distortion aware precoding scheme for realistic scenarios in which RF chains have nonlinear characteristics. The proposed scheme utilizes the method of regularized least-squares (RLS) to jointly compensate the channel impacts and the distortion imposed by the RF chains. To construct the designed transmit waveform with low computational complexity, an iterative algorithm based on approximate message passing is developed. This algorithm is shown to track the achievable average signal distortion of the proposed scheme tightly, even for practical system dimensions. The results demonstrate considerable enhancement compared to the state of the art.
An Energy-Efficient Medium Access Control for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a contention-based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, Synchronized Sensor Medium Access Control (SS-MAC), for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To solve the high energy consumption problem in boundary nodes between virtual clusters in Sensor-MAC (S-MAC), SS-MAC introduces the global synchronization of schedules in WSNs. The novelty of our protocol is that it can improve the connectivity of WSNs compared with S-MAC. We illustrate the efficiency and scalability of the scheme via simulation
Pyroelectric Energy Conversion and Its Applications—Flexible Energy Harvesters and Sensors

Among the various forms of natural energies, heat is the most prevalent and least harvested energy. Scavenging and detecting stray thermal energy for conversion into electrical energy can provide a cost-effective and reliable energy source for modern electrical appliances and sensor applications. Along with this, flexible devices have attracted considerable attention in scientific and industrial communities as wearable and implantable harvesters in addition to traditional thermal sensor applications. This review mainly discusses thermal energy conversion through pyroelectric phenomena in various lead-free as well as lead-based ceramics and polymers for flexible pyroelectric energy harvesting and sensor applications. The corresponding thermodynamic heat cycles and figures of merit of the pyroelectric materials for energy harvesting and heat sensing applications are also briefly discussed. Moreover, this study provides guidance on designing pyroelectric materials for flexible pyroelectric and hybrid energy harvesting.
Geranylgeraniol Suppresses the Expression of IRAK1 and TRAF6 to Inhibit NFκB Activation in Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Inflammatory Responses in Human Macrophage-Like Cells

Geranylgeraniol (GGOH), a natural isoprenoid found in plants, has anti-inflammatory effects via inhibiting the activation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NFκB). However, its detailed mechanism has not yet been elucidated. Recent studies have revealed that isoprenoids can modulate signaling molecules in innate immune responses. We found that GGOH decreased the expression of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammatory genes in human macrophage-like THP-1 cells. Furthermore, we observed that the suppression of NFκB signaling proteins, in particular interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 1 (IRAK1) and tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6), occurred in GGOH-treated cells prior to LPS stimulation, suggesting an immunomodulatory effect. These results indicate that GGOH may modulate and help prevent excessive NFκB activation that can lead to numerous diseases.
Understanding Pedestrian-Vehicle Interactions with Vehicle Mounted Vision: An LSTM Model and Empirical Analysis

Pedestrians and vehicles often share the road in complex inner city traffic. This leads to interactions between the vehicle and pedestrians, with each affecting the other's motion. In order to create robust methods to reason about pedestrian behavior and to design interfaces of communication between self-driving cars and pedestrians we need to better understand such interactions. In this paper, we present a data-driven approach to implicitly model pedestrians' interactions with vehicles, to better predict pedestrian behavior. We propose a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model that takes as input the past trajectories of the pedestrian and ego-vehicle, and pedestrian head orientation, and predicts the future positions of the pedestrian. Our experiments based on a real-world, inner city dataset captured with vehicle mounted cameras, show that the usage of such cues improve pedestrian prediction when compared to a baseline that purely uses the past trajectory of the pedestrian.
Natural Compounds for Alzheimer’s Disease Therapy: A Systematic Review of Preclinical and Clinical Studies

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder related with the increase of age and it is the main cause of dementia in the world. AD affects cognitive functions, such as memory, with an intensity that leads to several functional losses. The continuous increase of AD incidence demands for an urgent development of effective therapeutic strategies. Despite the extensive research on this disease, only a few drugs able to delay the progression of the disease are currently available. In the last years, several compounds with pharmacological activities isolated from plants, animals and microorganisms, revealed to have beneficial effects for the treatment of AD, targeting different pathological mechanisms. Thus, a wide range of natural compounds may play a relevant role in the prevention of AD and have proven to be efficient in different preclinical and clinical studies. This work aims to review the natural compounds that until this date were described as having significant benefits for this neurological disease, focusing on studies that present clinical trials.
Few-layer bismuthene for robust ultrafast photonics in C-Band optical communications

The ultrafast photonics of different conventional two-dimensional (2D) materials have been studied intensively. Few-layer structure bismuthene has been reported as a new type of 2D material with high efficient electronics, strong mechanics and outstanding photonics properties. In this paper, a robust ultrafast pulse generation in communications-Band (C-Band) based on few-layer bismuthene has been reported. The characteristics and the ultrafast optical nonlinear properties of few-layer bismuthene have been investigated experimentally. The optical induced deposition method is employed to fabricate the saturable absorber based on bismuthene (BiSA). Most importantly, we also utilize BiSA for the ultrafast photonics, which demonstrates that a high-splitting-threshold robust ultrafast fiber laser with 1.3-ps pulse duration at 1531 nm has been obtained in the experiments. Even though we increase the pump power from the self-starting threshold (i.e. 86 mW) to 314 mW, the soliton pulse does not split. Moreover, the high-splitting-threshold laser operation can be achieved stably even if the lasers are exposed in air for at least half a year. It is demonstrated that the proposed bismuthene nonlinear components can be potentially applied to the optical communications with C-Band (i.e. 1530–1565 nm wavelength) to broaden the communications window.
Flunisolide for the treatment of asthma

Inhaled corticosteroids (ICSs) are recommended for treatment of persistent asthma. Several ICSs are available and delivered by a variety of devices. After the banning of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), a formulation of hydrofluoroalkane (HFA)-flunisolide marketed with an in-built spacer has been developed, complying with the request of efficacy and safety for children and adults. It delivers an aerosol with mass median aerodynamic diameter smaller than that of the CFC-formulation (1.2 vs 3.8 m). The extrafine aerosol and the add-on spacer are peculiarities of HFA-flunisolide with respect to the traditional ICSs, assuring larger lung deposition, lower oro-pharyngeal dose and targeting small airways. HFA-flunisolide with the spacer is effective at one-third the dose of CFC-flunisolide delivered without spacer. HFA-flunisolide may be considered an effective alternative to currently available ICSs for asthma management of adult and pediatric patients 6 years of age and older.
Effects of Subcutaneous Ochratoxin-A Exposure on Immune System of Broiler Chicks

Ochratoxin A (OTA), an immunosuppressive mycotoxin, can increase the risk of many infectious diseases and contribute to economic losses to the poultry industry. The immunosuppressive effect has mainly been investigated through oral exposure; however, birds may also be contaminated through skin absorption. The present study investigated the influence of OTA exposure on the defense system of broiler chicks through the subcutaneous route and including low doses. Groups of broiler chicks (Cobb), 05 days old, were exposed to subcutaneous inoculation of OTA at concentrations of 0.1; 0.5; 0.9; 1.3; and 1.7 mg OTA/kg body weight. The size of the lymphoid organs, circulating immune cells, and total IgY and IgA levels were evaluated 21 days post inoculation. Subcutaneous OTA exposure decreased the weight of the thymus, spleen, and bursa of Fabricius, and leukocytopenia (p < 0.05) was detected in chicks of the OTA treated groups. In a dose-dependent way, decreased levels of circulating lymphocytes and heterophils (p < 0.05), and increased levels of monocytes (p < 0.05) were detected. Decreased IgY and IgA serum concentrations were noted in the OTA treated groups (p < 0.05). In conclusion, subcutaneous OTA exposure induces immunosuppression even at low levels.
Identifying Android malware with system call co‐occurrence matrices

With the popularity of Android devices, mobile malware in Android has became more prevalent. Malware causes lots of harm to users, such as stealing personal information and using too much battery or CPU. Detecting mobile malware is the main task in Android security. In this work, we use a dynamic analysis method to distinguish malware with system call sequences. At first, we track the system calls of applications under different events. Then two different feature models, the frequency vector and the co‐occurrence matrix, are employed to extract features from the system call sequence. Finally, we apply Adaptive Regularization Of Weight Vectors and other machine learning algorithms to identify Android malware based on the aforementioned two models, respectively. We evaluate our method with 1189 benign applications and 1227 malicious applications. The experiment results show that the co‐occurrence matrix can achieve a much better detection rate than the frequency vector. Our best detection rate is 97.7per cent with false positive rate being 1.34per cent, which is better than those of the existing methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Molecular characterization of rotaviruses, noroviruses, sapovirus, and adenoviruses in patients with acute gastroenteritis in Thailand

Outbreaks of viral gastroenteritis occur worldwide including Thailand. Unfortunately, there is limited information since etiologic agents have not been identified in several outbreaks of nonbacterial gastroenteritis. The genotype of enteric viruses causing acute gastroenteritis in Thailand was determined using reverse transcription‐multiplex polymerase chain reaction and DNA sequencing. From January 2006 to February 2007, stool samples were collected from patients with acute gastroenteritis of all age groups attending a hospital in Thailand, and patients with nonbacterial acute gastroenteritis (262 patients) were tested for enteric viruses. The overall positive detection rate of enteric viruses was 14.9%; group A rotaviruses (6.1%), noroviruses (6.5%): GI (0.8%) and GII (5.7%), adenoviruses (1.5%), and sapoviruses (0.8%) were found. Group B and C rotaviruses, and astroviruses were not detected in the enrolled patients. Viral acute gastroenteritis occurred in children less than 15 years of age (25.2%, 33/131) with higher frequency than in adults (4.6%, 6/131), P‐value <0.001. Rotavirus G1 was the most predominant genotype, followed by G3, and G9. Among noroviruses, GI‐2 was identified; whereas, GII was predominant with a high frequency of GII‐4 observed, followed by GII‐16, GII‐2, GII‐3, and GII‐12. Sapovirus GII‐3 and human adenoviruses were identified. This study suggests that enteric viruses play an essential role in patients with acute gastroenteritis attending hospital and mainly in children who have a higher prevalence of group A rotaviruses and noroviruses. The genetic analyses provide molecular epidemiological data for viruses important to public health. J. Med. Virol. 81:345–353, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A priority-based model for smartphone screen touches

The distribution of intervals between human actions such as email posts or keyboard strokes demonstrates distinct properties at short vs long time scales. For instance, at long time scales, it has been shown that those inter-event intervals follow a scale-invariant (or power-law) distribution. In contrast, little do we know about the events that occur at the shorter time-scales and how they relate to the scale-invariant pattern. Here, we analysed the intervals between smartphone screen touches of 84 individuals which span several orders of magnitudes (from milliseconds to days). To capture these intervals, we propose a priority-based generative model for smartphone touching events. At short-time scale, the model is governed by refractory effects, while at longer time scales, the inter-touch intervals are governed by the priority difference between smartphone tasks and other tasks. The flexibility of the model allows to capture inter-individual variations at short and long time scales while its tractability enables very efficient model fitting. We show that each individuals has a specific power-low exponent which is tightly related to the effective refractory time constant suggesting that the fine motor control properties (which influence short intervals) are related to the higher cognitive processes (which affect longer intervals).