Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bathing adaptations in the homes of older adults (BATH-OUT): protocol for a feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT)

Introduction The Care Act 2014 has placed a responsibility on local authorities in England to provide services that prevent deterioration and minimise the use of other health and social care services. Housing adaptations have been identified as 1 of the 10 most promising prevention services for older adults, with bathing adaptations being the most requested. However, many local authorities have lengthy waiting times which may increase costs, reduce effectiveness and reduce the preventive effect. There is no robust evidence of the effect of these adaptations on: health, well-being and functional ability. Methods and analysis This is a feasibility randomised controlled trial (RCT) with nested qualitative interview study. The RCT will recruit between 40 and 60 people who have been referred for an accessible showering facility, and their carers, from 1 local authority in England. They will be randomised to either usual adaptations (∼3-month wait) or immediate adaptations (no wait). The primary outcome is the feasibility of conducting a powered study. The outcomes assessed will be: health and social care-related quality of life, independence in activities of daily living and bathing, falls and use of health and social care services. Outcomes will be assessed at 3 and 6 months. Preliminary health economic feasibility will be established. Ethics and dissemination Favourable ethical opinion was provided by the Social Care Research Ethics Committee (reference number 16/IEC08/0017). The results of this study will lay the foundations for a further powered study. This would investigate the effect of bathing adaptations on quality of life and whether increased waiting times are associated with poorer outcomes and increased costs. The results have further potential to inform trials of other housing or social care interventions using the novel waiting list control method. Dissemination will include peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences. Trial registration number ISRCTN14876332; Pre-results.
Getting to Graduation: The Completion Agenda in Higher Education

The United States, long considered to have the best higher education in the world, now ranks eleventh in the proportion of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college degree. As other countries have made dramatic gains in degree attainment, the U.S. has improved more slowly. In response, President Obama recently laid out a national "completion agenda" with the goal of making the U.S. the best-educated nation in the world by the year 2020. "Getting to Graduation" explores the reforms that we must pursue to recover a position of international leadership in higher education as well as the obstacles to those reforms. This new completion agenda puts increased pressure on institutions to promote student success and improve institutional productivity in a time of declining public revenue. In this volume, scholars of higher education and public policymakers describe promising directions for reform. They argue that it is essential to redefine postsecondary education and to consider a broader range of learning opportunities - beyond the research university and traditional bachelor degree programs-to include community colleges, occupational certificate programs, and apprenticeships. The authors also emphasize the need to rethink policies governing financial aid, remediation, and institutional funding to promote degree completion.
Comparison of the cryptic nematode species Caenorhabditis brenneri sp. n. and C. remanei (Nematoda: Rhabditidae) with the stem species pattern of the Caenorhabditis Elegans group

The new gonochoristic member of the Caenorhabditis Elegans group, C. brenneri sp. n. , is described. This species is reproductively isolated at the postmating level from its sibling species, C. remanei. Between these species, only minute morphological differences are found, but there are substantial genetic differences. The stem species pattern of the Elegans group is reconstructed. C. brenneri sp. n. deviates from this character pattern only in small diagnostic characters. In mating tests of C. brenneri sp. n. females with C. remanei males, fertilization takes place and juveniles occasionally hatch. In the reverse combination, no offspring were observed. Individuals from widely separated populations of each species can be crossed successfully (e.g. C. brenneri sp. n. populations from Guadeloupe and Sumatra, or C. remanei populations from Japan and Germany). Both species have been isolated only from anthropogenic habitats, rich in decomposing organic material. C. brenneri sp. n. is distributed circumtropically, C. remanei is only found in northern temperate regions. To date, no overlap of the ranges was found. Hypotheses to explain the allopatric distribution of the two species are discussed. One suggests that the speciation center for the Elegans group was in East Asia, and globally distributed members dispersed from there.
Automatic and semantic pre — Selection of features using ontology for data mining on data sets related to cancer

Analysis of medical data sets can reveal important information, especially data coming from patients with cancer. That can be improved by use of data mining. However, to obtain coherent results coming from data mining, the correct selection of more semantic features should occur but, usually, that does not happen. Therefore, this work presents a proposal of automatic and semantic pre - selection of features. Four famous data sets coming from patients with cancer were used in experiments and the results show the validity of the proposal.
Normalized LMS algorithm with evolutionary change of orthogonal correction factors

This paper proposes a normalized LMS algorithm which automatically determines the number of orthogonal correction factors using an evolutionary method. The evolutionary method increases or decreases the number of orthogonal correction factors by comparing the squared output errors with some threshold. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has not only a fast convergence rate and a small steady-state estimation error but also lower computational complexity than the existing algorithms with multiple input vectors.
A user study for comparing the programming efficiency of modifying executable multimodal interaction descriptions: a domain-specific language versus equivalent event-callback code

The present paper describes an empirical user study intended to compare the programming efficiency of our proposed domain-specific language versus a mainstream event language when it comes to modify multimodal interactions. By concerted use of observations, interviews, and standardized questionnaires, we managed to measure the completion rates, completion time, code testing effort, and perceived difficulty of the programming tasks along with the perceived usability and perceived learnability of the tool supporting our proposed language. Based on this experience, we propose some guidelines for designing comparative user studies of programming languages. The paper also discusses the considerations we took into account when designing a multimodal interaction description language that intends to be well regarded by its users.
Lateral Mobility of Presynaptic L-Type Calcium Channels at Photoreceptor Ribbon Synapses

At most synapses, presynaptic Ca2+ channels are positioned near vesicle release sites, and increasing this distance reduces synaptic strength. We examined the lateral membrane mobility of presynaptic L-type Ca2+ channels at photoreceptor ribbon synapses of the tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) retina. Movements of individual Ca2+ channels were tracked by coupling quantum dots to an antibody against the extracellular α2δ4 Ca2+ channel subunit. α2δ4 antibodies labeled photoreceptor terminals and colocalized with antibodies to synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2 and voltage-gated Ca2+ channel 1.4 (CaV1.4) α1 subunits. The results show that Ca2+ channels are dynamic and move within a confined region beneath the synaptic ribbon. The size of this confinement area is regulated by actin and membrane cholesterol. Fusion of nearby synaptic vesicles caused jumps in Ca2+ channel position, propelling them toward the outer edge of the confinement domain. Channels rebounded rapidly toward the center. Thus, although CaV channels are mobile, molecular scaffolds confine them beneath the ribbon to maintain neurotransmission even at high release rates.
Pathogenesis of Arcuate Field Defect in Glaucoma

Private Practice Ophthalmology Porterville, California (USA) Before we enter on the subject, it is imperative to mention the arrangement of the nerve fibers in the retina and optic disc and the sequence in which the nerve fibers are being destroyed in chronic glaucoma. There are about one million nerve fibers originating from the retinal ganglion cells (RGC) which leave the eye ball through meshwork of the lamina cribrosa and form the optic disc.
On the Limitations of Government Borrowing: a Framework for Empirical Testing

This paper seeks to distinguish empirically between two views on the limitations of government borrowing. According to one view, nothing precludes the government from running a permanent budget deficit, paying interest due on the growing debt load simply by issuing new debt, An alternative perspective holds that creditors would be unwilling to purchase government debt unless the government made a credible commitment to balance its budget in present value terms. We show that distinguishing between these possibilities is mathematically equivalent to testing whether a continuing currency inflation might be fueled by speculation alone or is instead driven solely by economic fundamentals. Empirical tests which have been developed for this economic question lead us to conclude that postwar U.S. deficits are largely consistent with the proposition that the government budget must be balanced in present-value terms.
A comparison of adaptive beamforming implementations for wideband scenarios

In this paper, we compare low cost implementations of wideband adaptive beamformers utilising the generalised sidelobe canceller (GSC) in combination with the least-mean squares algorithms. DFT based techniques suffer from unjustified narrowband assumptions. We therefore derive and investigate an overlap-save implementation of the GSC, which offers a steady state suppression of jammers equivalent to a time domain GSC but may be prone to slow convergence. Finally, subband techniques offer a more robust convergence trade-off for a somewhat higher computational cost. Analysis and simulation results revealing some of the algorithms' properties are presented.
Probabilistic algorithms in finite fields

We present probabilistic algorithms for the problems of finding an irreducible polynomial of degree n over a finite field, finding roots of a polynomial, and factoring a polynomial into its irreducible factors over a finite field. All of these problems are of importance in algebraic coding theory, algebraic symbol manipulation, and number theory. These algorithms have a very transparent, easy to program structure. For finite fields of large characteristic p, so that exhaustive search through ${\text{Z}}_p $, is not feasible, our algorithms are of lower order in the degrees of the polynomial and fields in question, than previously published algorithms.
Mean-Absolute Deviation Optimization Model for Hedging Portfolio Selection Problems

The paper presents the idea of hedging portfolio selection and establishes the Mean- Absolute Deviation (MAD) optimization model for hedging portfolio selection problems. The MAD model uses absolute-deviation of returns of a hedging portfolio as measure of hedging risk. The MAD model can be converted into a linear programming model equivalently and the optimal solutions for the model can be calculated efficiently by the pivoting algorithm. Numerical experiments using the history data from NYBOT show that the hedging strategies based on MAD model have better hedging effectiveness than traditional hedging strategies.
The Block Is Hot: A Survey of the State of Bitcoin Regulation and Suggestions for the Future

Bitcoin and Blockchain technology pose a number of novel regulatory and legal issues. This note examines how government agencies and courts have attempted to keep society safe for — and sometimes from — Bitcoin and Blockchain users (with consumers and investors on one end and drug dealers, terrorists, and violent criminals on the other). This note concludes with policy suggestions for changes to disclosure requirements and tax classifications to facilitate the broader adoption of Bitcoin as a currency by the general public.
A Testbed for Evaluation of Architectures for Physical Agents

Although cognitive architectures provide an excellent infrastructure for research stretching over various fields, their integration of multiple modules makes their evaluation difficult. Due to the lack of analytical criteria, the cost of demonstrations, and varying specifications among different architectures, developing evaluation methods is a challenge. In this paper, we describe a testbed for evaluation that revolves around an in-city driving environment. With its familiar but challenging missions cast in a rich setting, the testbed provides a uniform and competitive environment for evaluating cognitive architectures.
Virtual Backbone-Based Routing in Multihop Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

Recent research ([12][15][19]) shows that the flooding mech anism (for topology update or route request) used in existing protocols for ad ho c wireless networks greatly degrades the network capacity. If we force the effective bro adcasts of control packets happen in a small subset of hosts in the network, the proto col overhead caused by global flooding can be substantially reduced. This is the b asic idea ofvirtual backbone-based routing in ad hoc wireless networks, in which all hosts forming the virtual backbone are in charge of control packets dissemina tio . This strategy works quite effectively in decreasing message overhead. However , constructing a virtual backbone is not trivial. In our study, the virtual backbone i s approximated byminimum connected dominating set (MCDS) in unit-disk graphs, which is NP-hard [9]. We propose two distributed time/message efficient approximat ion algorithms to compute MCDS. Both algorithms have linear message complexities. Al gorithm I is cost-aware, which accommodates the strict network resources in virtual backbone construction. Algorithm II is degree-aware, which generates the best resu lt in literature so far to our knowledge. We not only give theoretical performance analys is for both algorithms, but also conduct extensive simulation to compare our algori thms with those in literature. Simulation results and theoretical analysis show th at both algorithms perform very well.
Equating interestingness of causal rules via graded response theory

Multi-database mining has attracted a lot of attention because it is an important research topic for large companies that have many branches to generate powerful insights that lead to benefits. However it is difficult for existing algorithm to generate both global and local patterns and compare interestingness of patterns because there is no unified measures in data mining area. This paper proposes a method of equating interestingness of patterns for extracting and comparing both global and local patterns via unified measure latent trait based on graded response theory.
Wilkinson's inertia‐revealing factorization and its application to sparse matrices

We propose a new inertia‐revealing factorization for sparse symmetric matrices. The factorization scheme and the method for extracting the inertia from it were proposed in the 1960s for dense, banded, or tridiagonal matrices, but they have been abandoned in favor of faster methods. We show that this scheme can be applied to any sparse symmetric matrix and that the fill in the factorization is bounded by the fill in the sparse QR factorization of the same matrix (but is usually much smaller). We describe our serial proof‐of‐concept implementation and present experimental results, studying the method's numerical stability and performance.
Just Transitions/Design for Transitions: Preliminary Notes on a Design Politics for a Green New Deal

ABSTRACT Mobilizations occurring around just transitions and design for transition contain many potential points of overlap. They are presently remarkably disengaged. This article seeks to rectify this situation by offering some preliminary notes on how convergences between these currents might facilitate modes of anti-racist, feminist and ecosocialist design futuring that can get us to think beyond degrowth/Left ecomodern binaries and toward a design politics that can support a Green New Deal. I proceed by mapping the evolution of labor-focused just transition discussions and indicate how feminist, climate justice and decolonial contributions have expanded and complicated understandings of the labors of transition. I then go on to suggest how such currents could productively engage further with the emerging field of design for transition. Design is not to be trusted. However, post-carbon futures are not simply going to emerge through protest and policy shifts alone. Just transitions will have to be imagined and built, fabricated and realized, coded and created. This will involve the channeling of enormous amounts of creative labor and inventive praxis. It will also involve the construction of public spaces and public institutions where new knowledge practices can meet. Bringing radical traditions of design, invention and innovation into dialogue with movements pushing for just transitions could make significant contributions to achieving this end.
Volume growth, curvature decay, and critical metrics

We make some improvements to our previous results in [TV05a] and [TV05b]. First, we prove a version of our volume growth theorem which does not require any assumption on the first Betti number. Second, we show that our local regularity theorem only requires a lower volume growth assumption, not a full Sobolev constant bound. As an application of these results, we can weaken the assumptions of several of our theorems in [TV05a] and [TV05b].
2 The Plurix System 2 . 1 Distributed Shared Memory

The Plurix project implements an object-oriented operating system (OS) for PC clusters. Network communication is implemented via the distributed shared memory (DSM) paradigm. Memory consistency is maintained by restartable transactions and an optimistic synchronization scheme, that have been used in database technology in the past. Originally, DSM systems were built to support parallel algorithms, but using DSM as a foundation for a general purpose OS offers interesting perspectives in designing and using distributed applications. The OS, including kernel and all drivers, is written in Plurix Java. Our Java compiler directly translates Java source code into Intel machine instructions. Some minor language extensions support device-level programming. During the development of the system we identified conceptual problems which are caused by the restartability requirement of transactions. Clearly interrupts do not reoccur in case of an aborted transaction. Without proper precaution interrupts would get lost or devices could receive broken commands. In this paper we shortly review our DSM system and present the “smart buffer” concept to bridge the gap between restartable DSM transactions and non-restartable device operations and events. Finally, we validate our proposed solution by performance measurements and compare the kernel interface to traditional operating systems.
Self-Correcting Broadcast in Distributed Hash Tables

We present two broadcast algorithms that can be used on top of distributed hash tables (DHTs) to perform group communication and arbitrary queries. Unlike other P2P group communication mechanisms, which either embed extra information in the DHTs or use random overlay networks, our algorithms take advantage of the structured DHT overlay networks without maintaining additional information. The proposed algorithms do not send any redundant messages. Furthermore the two algorithms ensure 100% coverage of the nodes in the system even when routing information is outdated as a result of dynamism in the network. The first algorithm performs some correction of outdated routing table entries with a low cost of correction traffic. The second algorithm exploits the nature of the broadcasts to extensively update erroneous routing information at the cost of higher correction traffic. The algorithms are validated and evaluated in our stochastic distributed-algorithms simulator.
A framework to understand the asymptotic properties of Kriging and splines

Kriging is a nonparametric regression method used in geostatistics for estimating curves and surfaces for spatial data. It may come as a surprise that the Kriging estimator, normally derived as the best linear unbiased estimator, is also the solution of a particular variational problem. Thus, Kriging estimators can also be interpreted as generalized smoothing splines where the roughness penalty is determined by the covariance function of a spatial process. We build off the early work by Silverman (1982, 1984) and the analysis by Cox (1983, 1984), Messer (1991), Messer and Goldstein (1993) and others and develop an equivalent kernel interpretation of geostatistical estimators. Given this connection we show how a given covariance function influences the bias and variance of the Kriging estimate as well as the mean squared prediction error. Some specific asymptotic results are given for one dimensional corresponding Matern covariances that have as their limit cubic smoothing splines.
A language to specify mappings between ontologies

The ontology mediation field aims at finding techniques and frameworks to allow interoperability between overlapping heterogeneous ontologies. One of the solutions is to designing mappings that link the corresponding entities. Many systems and algorithms have been built by different parties, but each system represents the mappings in its own format. To allow reusability of the mapping tools and of the results of the algorithms, we have designed a language to express these mappings. In this paper, we will present this mapping language.
Dynamic Resource Management In a Massively Parallel Stream Processing Engine

The emerging interest in Massively Parallel Stream Processing Engines (MPSPEs), which are able to process long-standing computations over data streams with ever-growing velocity at a large-scale cluster, calls for efficient dynamic resource management techniques to avoid any waste of resources and/or excessive processing latency. In this paper, we propose an approach to integrate dynamic resource management with passive fault-tolerance mechanisms in a MPSPE so that we can harvest the checkpoints prepared for failure recovery to enhance the efficiency of dynamic load migrations. To maximize the opportunity of reusing checkpoints for fast load migration, we formally define a checkpoint allocation problem and provide a pragmatic algorithm to solve it. We implement all the proposed techniques on top of Apache Storm, an open-source MPSPE, and conduct extensive experiments using a real dataset to examine various aspects of our techniques. The results show that our techniques can greatly improve the efficiency of dynamic resource reconfiguration without imposing significant overhead or latency to the normal job execution.