Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variations in lung cancer risk among smokers.

BACKGROUND Although there is no proven benefit associated with screening for lung cancer, screening programs are attracting many individuals who perceive themselves to be at high risk due to smoking. We sought to determine whether the risk of lung cancer varies predictably among smokers. METHODS We used data on 18 172 subjects enrolled in the Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET)-a large, randomized trial of lung cancer prevention-to derive a lung cancer risk prediction model. Model inputs included the subject's age, sex, asbestos exposure history, and smoking history. We assessed the model's calibration by comparing predicted and observed rates of lung cancer across risk deciles and validated it by assessing the extent to which a model estimated on data from five CARET study sites could predict events in the sixth study site. We then applied the model to evaluate the risk of lung cancer among smokers enrolled in a study of lung cancer screening with computed tomography (CT). RESULTS The model was internally valid and well calibrated. Ten-year lung cancer risk varied greatly among participants in the CT study, from 15% for a 68-year-old man who has smoked two packs per day for 50 years and continues to smoke, to 0.8% for a 51-year-old woman who smoked one pack per day for 28 years before quitting 9 years earlier. Even among the subset of CT study participants who would be eligible for a clinical trial of cancer prevention, risk varied greatly. CONCLUSIONS The risk of lung cancer varies widely among smokers. Accurate risk prediction may help individuals who are contemplating voluntary screening to balance the potential benefits and risks. Risk prediction may also be useful for researchers designing clinical trials of lung cancer prevention.
UAV Attitude Estimation Using Unscented Kalman Filter and TRIAD

A main problem in autonomous vehicles in general, and in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in particular, is the determination of the attitude angles. A novel method to estimate these angles using off-the-shelf components is presented. This paper introduces an attitude heading reference system (AHRS) based on the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) using the three-axis attitude determination (TRIAD) algorithm as the observation model. The performance of the method is assessed through simulations and compared to an AHRS based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF). The paper presents field experiment results using a real fixed-wing UAV. The results show good real-time performance with low computational cost in a microcontroller.
Emerging issues and trends in education

social context and that there are no universal solutions “that can be straightforwardly applied in different places” (p. 285). That is undoubtedly true, but realising that is a good enough reason to recommend this book with its impressive array of excellent contributions from across the world, which may well address specific contextual issues, but ones that can shed light on another situation in another education system. I’m surprised, however, that there is no contribution from the UK, in particular Robert Jackson’s work across Europe. I would like to warn readers not to be put off by some of the comments made in the foreword by Keith Watson, wherein arguing for the importance of religion in societies, he concludes that the Lisbon Treaty’s lack of reference to Europe’s Christian roots means that “[b]ecause there is no longer a set of rights and wrongs that used to be taught in schools, there is now a moral vacuum where anything goes as long as it is pleasurable”. That doesn’t reflect these chapters, nor my own experience of sitting in countless classrooms over the years.
Summary attributes and perceived search quality

We conducted a series of experiments in which surveyed web search users answered questions about the quality of search results on the basis of the result summaries. Summaries shown to different groups of users were editorially constructed so that they differed in only one attribute, such as length. Some attributes had no effect on users' quality judgments, while in other cases, changing an attribute had a "halo effect" which caused seemingly unrelated dimensions of result quality to be rated higher by users.
A Study on Practices against Malware in Free Software Projects

Many popular applications are developed using a free software model, through the collaborative effort of a community which makes the source code available for free. Unfortunately, malicious third parties may attempt to take advantage of this combination of popularity and openness by introducing software components that infect end-users who install the application. To reduce this security risk, several technical procedures and community management practices can be used during software development and distribution. This paper studies these procedures in the free source domain and evaluates their application in two widely-used open source projects, Symfony and Chromium.
The Notion of Perceptual Distance : The Case of Afro-Asiatic Languages

This study investigates the notion of perceptual distance among the Afro-Asiatic family. It is based on a “same/different” task involving French subjects and items from 10 languages or dialects (8 Afro-Asiatic: Amharic, Moroccan Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, Tarifit Berber, Touareg Berber, Hausa, Hebrew, Somali and 2 intruders: Armenian and Turkish). The task was judged very difficult by the subjects. Preliminary results seem to indicate that both segmental and suprasegmental features are involved in the discrimination process, and especially broad phonotactics and syllable structure.
Greens-Type Annual Bluegrass Resistance to Abiotic and Biotic Stresses During Winter

Unseeded annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.) is an important component of golf greens in many regions of northern countries. Although this turfgrass species has desirable playing attributes, it suffers from susceptibility to environmental and biological stresses including subfreezing temperatures, anoxia, and snow molds. During the last decade (1999-2008), we undertook a series of experiments to better understand the mechanisms of adaptation and resistance of annual bluegrass to winter biotic and abiotic stresses. When assessing freezing tolerance of three genotypes originating from North Eastern Canada and United States, we observed that the genotypes differed significantly in their freezing tolerance with an unexpected lower level of tolerance for the genotype originating from the most northern latitude, in Quebec, where the depth and duration of snow cover are important factors affecting winter survival. After assessing the level of organic reserves, the results showed that the genotype originating from Quebec maintained higher levels of reserves than the two other genotypes. Our studies also showed that annual bluegrass is sensitive to anoxic conditions and that its susceptibility could be linked to the reduction of organic reserves under these conditions. We observed large genetic variability for pink snow mold resistance among 29 genotypes collected on golf greens located in Quebec and Ontario and concluded that snow mold disease exerts major selection pressure for the generation of genetic diversity among annual bluegrass genotypes in northern climates. Our results suggest that high level of reserves is a characteristic of annual bluegrass genotypes adapted to deep, long lasting snow cover and could be more critical for winter survival than freezing tolerance to allow plants to survive long winter period without new carbohydrate synthesis.
Performance analysis of non-coherent multicarrier frequency-hopping code division multiple-access systems: uncoded and coded schemes

The multiuser performance of a multicarrier frequency-hopping (MC-FH) CDMA system employing non-coherent detection is evaluated. We derive the bit error rate, of the system for both uncoded and coded systems in AWGN and slowly frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels, based on a Gaussian distribution assumption for the decision variable. We use a practical low-rate convolutional error correcting code, which does not require any extra bandwidth beyond what is needed by the uncoded scheme. Our numerical results indicate that the coded scheme significantly outperforms the uncoded scheme in both AWGN and fading channels. Furthermore, it is observed that the performance enhancement due to an increase of diversity order is more significant for a coded scheme.
Fabrication and transient responses of highly flexible and humidity-insensitive ionic polymer–metal composites in different sensory modes

Ionic polymer–metal composites, although with attracting properties such as flexibility, easy processing, resilience, and high sensitivity, have some drawbacks including the fragility of electrodes and strong humidity dependence which limit their practical applications. This study aims to fabricate ionic polymer–metal composites with sputtered gold thin film electrodes and to coat them with a waterproof acrylic material to extend their consistent sensory response over time. For this aim, after explaining the sensing mechanism of ionic polymer–metal composites based on streaming potential hypothesis for compression, bending, and shear modes, the fabrication process of the proposed ionic polymer–metal composites is presented. A signal conditioner is designed based on the measurement results of the equivalent resistance and capacitance of the devices. A shock tube setup is then utilized to obtain the impulse response of fabricated ionic polymer–metal composite devices in different modes of deformation. To verify how this waterproof coating maintains the ionic polymer–metal composite’s sensing performance, some experiments are carried out over a period of 6 days after fabrication for both acrylic-coated and uncoated samples. Analyzing the results shows that fabricated ionic polymer–metal composites represent an appropriate linearity, sensitivity, and reliability over time and this coating approach not only suppresses the diluent permeation but also has a negligible effect on the ionic polymer–metal composite electromechanical properties.
Integrated Decomposition and Covering with Area vs. Running Time Trade-o in FPGA Technology Mapping

A major drawback of the previous technology mapping algorithms for lookup-table based FPGAs is the lack of a fast, and reasonably accurate evaluation scheme to direct the decomposition procedure. Therefore, most of the previous decomposition algorithms have used very simplistic evaluation schemes. It has been shown that decomposition has signi cant impact on the quality of the nal mapping result. In this paper, we propose an iterative technology dependent decomposition and covering algorithm for LUT minimization in FPGA technology mapping. We use a very fast covering algorithm as the evaluation engine to guide the decomposition phase. A BDD-based decomposition technique is developed and used as part of the proposed algorithm. By properly setting the control parameters, our algorithm can turn into a very fast technology mapping algorithm for LUT minimization, which can be used as an accurate prediction tool to provide quick feedback to the higher levels in the FPGA design hierarchy. Furthermore, we will show that our algorithm provides a framework to allow controllable trade-o between the running time and the mapping quality. Experiments on a large number of MCNC benchmark circuits show signi cant improvement on the number of LUTs and CLBs, compared to the previous techniques. We have improved the number of LUTs by 6% to 76%, and the number of CLBs by 14% to 59% , compared to previously reported results. The results of experiments verify the e ectiveness and accuracy of the proposed prediction methodology. Our proposed prediction algorithm achieves results in time that is two orders of magnitude faster. The proposed method, being extremely fast, allows technology mapping to be used in the innerloop of higher-level design steps. Topic: T4.2 Technology Dependent Logic Synthesis.
Culminating Paths

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Culminating paths Mireille Bousquet-Mélou, Yann Ponty
Reliable Accuracy Estimates from k-Fold Cross Validation

It is popular to evaluate the performance of classification algorithms by <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation. A reliable accuracy estimate will have a relatively small variance, and several studies therefore suggested to repeatedly perform <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation. Most of them did not consider the correlation among the replications of <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation, and hence the variance could be underestimated. The purpose of this study is to explore whether <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation should be repeatedly performed for obtaining reliable accuracy estimates. The dependency relationships between the predictions of the same instance in two replications of <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation are first analyzed for <italic>k</italic>-nearest neighbors with <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k= 1$</tex-math><alternatives><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>k</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math><inline-graphic xlink:href="wong-ieq1-2912815.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>. Then, statistical methods are proposed to test the strength of the dependency level between the accuracy estimates resulting from two replications of <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation. The experimental results on 20 data sets show that the accuracy estimates obtained from various replications of <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation are generally highly correlated, and the correlation will be higher as the number of folds increases. The <italic>k</italic>-fold cross validation with a large number of folds and a small number of replications should be adopted for performance evaluation of classification algorithms.
Improving Reliability and Performance of Voxel-Based Registration by Coincidence Thresholding and Volume Clipping

Two techniques supporting voxel-based image registration are described and their benefits evaluated. The first method explicitly computes the overlapping region of both images. For a set of test registrations, this was found to save 12.1% of total computation time (minimum 7.7% faster). Second, a novel thresholding scheme for increased robustness against image noise is presented. The proposed technique considers voxel pairs rather than model and reference voxel in separate. For PET to MRI registration, a reduction of maximum errors was found. No significant loss in accuracy and reliability was experienced for CT to MRI and MRI to MRI registration. The described thresholding method may therefore generally be applied to improve registration of noisy data without affecting the accuracy when only minor noise is present.
VISUAL POSITIONING OF A DELTA ROBOT

An uncalibrated dynamic look and move visual servoing is successfully implemented on a light weight Delta robot to position it relative to an object which its position is sensed by a USB camera and is driven by Dynamixel motors. The online estimated Jacobian is proposed to map the deference in joint space to the difference of parameters in image space. The paper demonstrates that the estimated Jacobian is accurate and can be used for a dynamic look and move visual servoing in this case. The experiment demonstrates that the robot is three dimensional point to point position controlled in image space with its accuracy is defined in this space as well.
Potentially Ineffective Care: Time for Earnest Reexamination

The rising costs and suboptimal quality throughout the American health care system continue to invite critical inquiry, and practice in the intensive care unit setting is no exception. Due to their relatively large impact, outcomes and costs in critical care are of significant interest to policymakers and health care administrators. Measurement of potentially ineffective care has been proposed as an outcome measure to evaluate critical care delivery, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act affords the opportunity to reshape the care of the critically ill. Given the impetus of the PPACA, systematic formal measurement of potentially ineffective care and its clinical, economic, and societal impact merits timely reconsideration.
Using Motor Imagery Training to Improve Reach Estimation in the Elderly: Implications for Reducing Fall Risk

According to recent Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, falls are one of the main causes of accidents and fatalities among the elderly. Whereas a several factors may contribute to falls, it has been suggested that weak mental representation of intended actions is a factor. For example, in a reach setting, many older adult’s overor underestimation reach abilities, thus posing a higher risk due to loss of postural control. The intent of this study was to determine if a reach-specific motor imagery training program could improve reach planning and potentially reduce fall risk. The present study involved a group of 23 older adult participants, aged 65-81 years, divided into three groups: a control group and two intervention groups categorized by age, 65to 73 years and 74to 81 years. Intervention groups were administered a reach-specific imagery training program three days a week over the course of 4 weeks. Participants were preand post-tested on estimation of reach via use of motor imagery in three conditions: seated, standing-on-2-feet, and standing-on-1-foot. Results indicated that both intervention groups significantly improved their reach estimation, p<. 05, whereas the control group scores did not differ. No noticeable difference was seen between the two intervention groups or between reach conditions. These findings suggest that motor imagery training has promise as ineffective tool in reducing fall risk among the elderly.
Multi-task code reuse in genetic programming

We propose a method of knowledge reuse between evolutionary processes that solve different optimization tasks. We define the method in the framework of tree-based genetic programming (GP) and implement it as code reuse between GP trees that evolve in parallel in separate populations delegated to particular tasks. The technical means of code reuse is a crossbreeding operator which works very similar to standard tree-swapping crossover. We consider two variants of this operator, which differ in the way they handle the incompatibility of terminals between the considered problems. In the experimental part we demonstrate that such code reuse is usually beneficial and leads to success rate improvements when solving the common boolean benchmarks.
Inhibitory Phosphorylation of Separase Is Essential for Genome Stability and Viability of Murine Embryonic Germ Cells

Activity of separase, a cysteine protease that cleaves sister chromatid cohesin at the onset of anaphase, is tightly regulated to ensure faithful chromosome segregation and genome stability. Two mechanisms negatively regulate separase: inhibition by securin and phosphorylation on serine 1121. To gauge the physiological significance of the inhibitory phosphorylation, we created a mouse strain in which Ser1121 was mutated to Ala (S1121A). Here we report that this S1121A point mutation causes infertility in mice. We show that germ cells in the mutants are depleted during development. We further demonstrate that S1121A causes chromosome misalignment during proliferation of the postmigratory primordial germ cells, resulting in mitotic arrest, aneuploidy, and eventual cell death. Our results indicate that inhibitory phosphorylation of separase plays a critical role in the maintenance of sister chromatid cohesion and genome stability in proliferating postmigratory primordial germ cells.
Towards a Unified Trust Model in Pervasive Systems

The pervasive systems are weaving themselves in our daily life, making it possible to collect user information invisibly, in an unobtrusive manner by even unknown parties. So run time trustworthiness calculation would be a major issue in these environments. The huge number of interactions between users and pervasive devices necessitate a comprehensive trust model which unifies different trust factors like context, recommendation, and history to precisely calculate trustworthiness of each party. In this paper we review previous trust models in pervasive systems and analyze them to highlight the importance of our research, and then we introduce a Unified Trust Model (UTM) which calculates entities trustworthiness based on history, recommendation, and context and formally use these factors in trustworthiness calculation. Finally we describe our future research plan to add platform properties using Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) in calculating trustworthiness.
Antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder

Personality disorder is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2000) (DSM - IV) as "enduring pattern[s] of inner experience and behavior" which causes p erson into repeated conflicts with his or her social and occupational environment . A ccording to DSM - IV , these dysfunctional patterns must be considered as nonconforming or deviant by the person's culture, and cause significant emotional pain and/or difficulties in relationships and occupational performance. This is because , th ey usually sees the disorder as being consistent with his or he r self - image (ego - syntonic). Meaning to say, these individuals do not see themselves as abnormal/out of ord inary. Instead, they may blame the people around him/her for his/ her condition; social, educational, or work - related problems (ibid). There are many types of personality disorder, namely, schizoid, paranoid, historic as well as narcissistic, among others. In this essay, I will focus on two types of personality disorder; the antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.
On the evaluation of inversion mapping performance in the acoustic domain

The two measures typically used to assess the performance of an inversion mapping method, where the aim is to estimate what articulator movements gave rise to a given acoustic signal, are root mean squared (RMS) error and correlation. In this paper, we investigate whether “task-based” evaluation using an articulatory-controllable HMM-based speech synthesis system can give useful additional information to complement these measures. To assess the usefulness of this evaluation approach, we use articulator trajectories estimated by a range of different inversion mapping methods as input to the synthesiser, and measure their performance in the acoustic domain in terms of RMS error of the generated acoustic parameters and with a listening test involving 30 participants. We then compare these results with the standard RMS error and correlation measures calculated in the articulatory domain. Interestingly, in the acoustic evaluation we observe one method performs with no statistically significant difference from measured articulatory data, and cases where statistically significant differences between methods exist which are not reflected in the results of the two standard measures. From our results, we conclude such task-based evaluation can indeed provide interesting extra information, and gives a useful way to compare inversion methods. Index Terms: Inversion mapping, evaluation, HMM synthesis