Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financing Urban Services in Latin America: Spatial Distribution Issues

This paper integrates information from both economics and the physical sciences to survey the effects of natural disasters in the region. A first section surveys the human and economic impact of natural disasters in the region at both the household and aggregate levels, noting both the geographical distribution of disaster risk and its long-term implications for development. A second section reviews types of disasters prevalent in the region, and future disaster risks, as well as the socio-economic sources of vulnerability to disasters resulting from development and migration patterns. A third section discusses risk management strategies at the household and community level, with public policy options and proposals for emergency response and finding an appropriate mix of local, national and market-based solutions.
In-Line Phase-Contrast X-ray Imaging and Tomography for Materials Science

X-ray phase-contrast imaging and tomography make use of the refraction of X-rays by the sample in image formation. This provides considerable additional information in the image compared to conventional X-ray imaging methods, which rely solely on X-ray absorption by the sample. Phase-contrast imaging highlights edges and internal boundaries of a sample and is thus complementary to absorption contrast, which is more sensitive to the bulk of the sample. Phase-contrast can also be used to image low-density materials, which do not absorb X-rays sufficiently to form a conventional X-ray image. In the context of materials science, X-ray phase-contrast imaging and tomography have particular value in the 2D and 3D characterization of low-density materials, the detection of cracks and voids and the analysis of composites and multiphase materials where the different components have similar X-ray attenuation coefficients. Here we review the use of phase-contrast imaging and tomography for a wide variety of materials science characterization problems using both synchrotron and laboratory sources and further demonstrate the particular benefits of phase contrast in the laboratory setting with a series of case studies.
Rapid increase in hospitalization and mortality rates for severe sepsis in the United States: A trend analysis from 1993 to 2003*

Objective:To determine recent trends in rates of hospitalization, mortality, and hospital case fatality for severe sepsis in the United States. Design:Trend analysis for the period from 1993 to 2003. Setting:U.S. community hospitals from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample that is a 20% stratified sample of all U.S. community hospitals. Patients:Subjects of any age with sepsis including severe sepsis who were hospitalized in the United States during the study period. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:Utilizing International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes for septicemia and major organ dysfunction, we identified 8,403,766 patients with sepsis, including 2,857,476 patients with severe sepsis, who were hospitalized in the United States from 1993 to 2003. The percentage of severe sepsis cases among all sepsis cases increased continuously from 25.6% in 1993 to 43.8% in 2003 (p < .001). Age-adjusted rate of hospitalization for severe sepsis grew from 66.8 ± 0.16 to 132.0 ± 0.21 per 100,000 population (p < .001). Age-adjusted, population-based mortality rate within these years increased from 30.3 ± 0.11 to 49.7 ± 0.13 per 100,000 population (p < .001), whereas hospital case fatality rate fell from 45.8% ± 0.17% to 37.8% ± 0.10% (p < .001). During each study year, the rates of hospitalization, mortality, and case fatality increased with age. Hospitalization and mortality rates in males exceeded those in females, but case fatality rate was greater in females. From 1993 to 2003, age-adjusted rates for severe sepsis hospitalization and mortality increased annually by 8.2% (p < .001) and 5.6% (p < .001), respectively, whereas case fatality rate decreased by 1.4% (p < .001). Conclusions:The rate of severe sepsis hospitalization almost doubled during the 11-yr period studied and is considerably greater than has been previously predicted. Mortality from severe sepsis also increased significantly. However, case fatality rates decreased during the same study period.
Chinese Herbal Bath Therapy for the Treatment of Knee Osteoarthritis: Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Objective. Chinese herbal bath therapy (CHBT) has traditionally been considered to have analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects. We conducted the first meta-analysis evaluating its benefits for patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Methods. We searched three English and four Chinese databases through October, 2014. Randomized trials evaluating at least 2 weeks of CHBT for knee OA were selected. The effects of CHBT on clinical symptoms included both pain level (via the visual analog scale) and total effectiveness rate, which assessed pain, physical performance, and wellness. We performed random-effects meta-analyses using mean difference. Results. Fifteen studies totaling 1618 subjects met eligibility criteria. Bath prescription included, on average, 13 Chinese herbs with directions to steam and wash around the knee for 20–40 minutes once or twice daily. Mean treatment duration was 3 weeks. Results from meta-analysis showed superior pain improvement (mean difference = −0.59 points; 95% confidence intervals [CI], −0.83 to −0.36; p < 0.00001) and higher total effectiveness rate (risk ratio = 1.21; 95% CI, 1.15 to 1.28; p < 0.00001) when compared with standard western treatment. No serious adverse events were reported. Conclusion. Chinese herbal bath therapy may be a safe, effective, and simple alternative treatment modality for knee OA. Further rigorously designed, randomized trials are warranted.
muFP, a language for VLSI design

In this paper, we present a VLSI design language μFP, which is a variant of Backus' FP [Backus 78, 81]. μFP differs from conventional VLSI design languages in that it can describe both the semantics (or behaviour) of a circuit and its layout (or floorplan) [Sheeran 83]. We chose to base our design language on FP for several reasons. Functional programs are easier to write and to reason about than imperative ones. We hope to bring some of these benefits to IC design. FP, in particular, is designed to allow the programmer to reason about his or her programs by manipulating the programs themselves. Likewise, in μFP, programs (or circuit descriptions) are just expressions “made” from a small number of primitive functions and combining forms (functionals that map functions into functions). These functions and combining forms (CFs) were chosen because they have nice algebraic properties. Thus, circuit descriptions are concise and can be easily manipulated using the algebraic laws of the language. Also, each CF has a simple geometric interpretation, so that every μFP expression has an associated floorplan. This interpretation exists because μFP expressions represent functions rather than objects, allowing us to associate a function with each section of the floorplan. Most VLSI design languages are designed either for layout description or for behavioural specification. μFP, with its dual interpretation, allows the designer to consider the effect on the final layout of a particular design decision or to manipulate the layout while keeping the semantics constant. In the following sections, we show how μFP is constructed from FP by the addition of a single combining form μ, which encapsulates a very simple notion of “state”.
Actomyosin Dynamics Determine the Extension and Retraction of Filopodia on Neuronal Dendrites

Impact Statement In this study, using a combination of computational and experimental approaches we show that a complex dynamic behavior of dendritic filopodia that is essential for synaptogenesis is explained by an interplay among forces generated by actin retrograde flow, myosin contractility, and substrate adhesion. Abstract Dendritic filopodia are actin-filled dynamic subcellular structures that sprout on neuronal dendrites during neurogenesis. The exploratory motion of the filopodia is crucial for synaptogenesis but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. To study the filopodial motility, we collected and analyzed image data on filopodia in cultured rat hippocampal neurons. We hypothesized that mechanical feedback among the actin retrograde flow, myosin activity and substrate adhesion gives rise to various filopodial behaviors. We have formulated a minimal one-dimensional partial differential equation model that reproduced the range of observed motility. To validate our model, we systematically manipulated experimental correlates of parameters in the model: substrate adhesion strength, actin polymerization rate, myosin contractility and the integrity of the putative microtubule-based barrier at the filopodium base. The model predicts the response of the system to each of these experimental perturbations, supporting the hypothesis that our actomyosin-driven mechanism controls dendritic filopodia dynamics.
Autonomous Concept Formation: an Architecture-based Analysis

The invention is directed to an apparatus and a method for controlling the operating characteristic quantities of an internal combustion engine, with a characteristic set up with operating quantities of the internal combustion engine for pre-control of engine variables influencing the operating characteristic quantities, and with a control arrangement, responsive to at least one engine variable, for correctively influencing the characteristic values. The values stored in the characteristic field and selected in dependence on operating characteristic quantities of the internal combustion engine are modified via the control arrangement to correctively influence the characteristic values. In addition, the characteristic values lying within the defined region of the characteristic value modified are also changed in dependence on the modification of this particular characteristic value. The fact that the modification of a characteristic region in dependence on the modification of its respective characteristic value is weighted, permits a rapid and accurate adaptation of the characteristic to the actual operating conditions of the internal combustion engine. The invention is advantageously suitable for use in various control systems contolling air-fuel metering, ignition point, charge-air pressure, exhaust-gas recirculation of idle speed, for example.
Implicitly-Defined Neural Networks for Sequence Labeling

In this work, we propose a novel, implicitly-defined neural network architecture and describe a method to compute its components. The proposed architecture forgoes the causality assumption used to formulate recurrent neural networks and instead couples the hidden states of the network, allowing improvement on problems with complex, long-distance dependencies. Initial experiments demonstrate the new architecture outperforms both the Stanford Parser and baseline bidirectional networks on the Penn Treebank Part-of-Speech tagging task and a baseline bidirectional network on an additional artificial random biased walk task.
The impact of unintentional discrete charges in a nominally undoped channel of a thin body double gate MOSFET: classical to full quantum simulation

A comparison of full quantum device simulation with semi-classical methods is made for an unintended single atomistic dopant at various locations in a 10 nm double gate MOSFET transistor. The density gradient method comes closest to the non-equilibrium Green function results for fails seriously when the unwanted charge is located well-within the channel.
Biologically active insolation over Antarctic waters: Effect of a highly reflecting coastline

Near an Antarctic coastline or sea ice edge, multiple reflection of photons between the high-albedo surface and a cloud will increase the downwelling surface insolation not only over the high-albedo surface itself but also out over the adjacent open water. This insolation enhancement is examined with a Monte Carlo radiative transfer model. The insolation enhancement extends to a typical distance of 4 km out to sea, with the most important effects being within 2 km of the coastline. The strength of the multiple reflection effect depends primarily on cloud base height and cloud optical depth and only slightly on cloud geometrical thickness. The insolation enhancement is also a function of wavelength, being larger for ultraviolet wavelengths than for the visible. This is due to a slightly greater contribution from Rayleigh scattering at the shorter wavelengths, although at ultraviolet wavelengths where ozone absorption is strong, tropospheric ozone absorption can offset the Rayleigh scattering contribution at larger cloud optical depths. On the basis of the limited range of the multiple reflection effect (2–4 km out to sea) the insolation enhancement due to the high-albedo coastline is unlikely to be a major influence on the primary productivity of all Antarctic waters; however, it may influence phytoplankton blooms near the coast and photobiological experiments carried out at coastal research stations. Also, the insolation enhancement may have significance in sea ice leads and polynyas.
Incremental spectral clustering and seasons: Appearance-based localization in outdoor environments

The problem of appearance-based mapping and navigation in outdoor environments is far from trivial. In this paper, an appearance-based topological map, covering a large, mixed indoor and outdoor environment, is built incrementally by using panoramic images. The map is based on image similarity, so that the resulting segmentation of the world corresponds closely to the human concept of a place. Using high-resolution images and the epipolar constraint, the resulting map is shown to be very suitable for localization, even when the environment has undergone seasonal changes.
The Mouse Genome Database: Genotypes, Phenotypes, and Models of Human Disease

The laboratory mouse is the premier animal model for studying human biology because all life stages can be accessed experimentally, a completely sequenced reference genome is publicly available and there exists a myriad of genomic tools for comparative and experimental research. In the current era of genome scale, data-driven biomedical research, the integration of genetic, genomic and biological data are essential for realizing the full potential of the mouse as an experimental model. The Mouse Genome Database (MGD; http://www.informatics.jax.org), the community model organism database for the laboratory mouse, is designed to facilitate the use of the laboratory mouse as a model system for understanding human biology and disease. To achieve this goal, MGD integrates genetic and genomic data related to the functional and phenotypic characterization of mouse genes and alleles and serves as a comprehensive catalog for mouse models of human disease. Recent enhancements to MGD include the addition of human ortholog details to mouse Gene Detail pages, the inclusion of microRNA knockouts to MGD’s catalog of alleles and phenotypes, the addition of video clips to phenotype images, providing access to genotype and phenotype data associated with quantitative trait loci (QTL) and improvements to the layout and display of Gene Ontology annotations.
dbTouch in action database kernels for touch-based data exploration

A fundamental need in the era of data deluge is data exploration through interactive tools, i.e., being able to quickly determine data and patterns of interest. dbTouch is a new research direction towards a next generation of data management systems that inherently support data exploration by allowing touch-based interaction. Data is represented in a visual format, while users can touch those shapes and interact/query with gestures. In a dbTouch system, the whole database kernel is geared towards quick responses in touch input; the user drives query processing (not just query construction) via touch gestures, dictating how fast or slow data flows through query plans and which data parts are processed at any time. dbTouch translates the gestures into interactive database operators, reacting continuously to the touch input and analytics tasks given by the user in real-time such as sliding a finger over a column to scan it progressively; zoom in with two fingers over a column to progressively get sample data; rotate a table to change the physical design from row-store to column-store, etc. This demo presents the first dbTouch prototype over iOS for iPad.
Geology of the Brick Flat massive sulfide body, Iron Mountain cluster, West Shasta District, California

The Brick Flat massive sulfide body is one of a group of eight individual bodies that constitute the Iron Mountain cluster in the southern part of the West Shasta district. Before they were separated by postmineral faulting, five of the eight sulfide bodies formed a single large deposit about 1,375 m long with a mass of some 23 million metric tons. The pyritic Brick Flat sulfide body is one of the five faulted segments of this deposit. It was stripped of its overlying cover and partly mined for its sulfur content in the 1950s and 1960s, and was mapped and sampled in some detail as part of the recent West Shasta project investigations.The Brick Flat massive sulfide lies within medium phenocryst rhyolite that is characteristic of the ore-bearing middle unit of the Balaklala Rhyolite. It is interpreted to be downfaulted a vertical distance of 75 to 85 m from the Old Mine sulfide-gossan orebody along the north-dipping Camden South fault. It is bounded in turn on its north side by another parallel fault, the Camden North, which drops the orebody down another 75 m to the level of the Richmond orebody. A weakly pyritized rhyolitic tuff lies a few tens of meters beneath the sulfide and a discontinuous belt of tuff lies a few tens of meters above and parallel to the N 60 degrees E-trending main belt of massive sulfides in the Iron Mountain cluster. The spatial coincidence of massive sulfide bodies and tuff beds at a stratigraphic level several tens of meters higher suggests that either a graben or a narrow elongate basin constituted the depositional environment at the time the deposits were formed.
Order Effects of Combined Strength and Endurance Training on Testosterone, Cortisol, Growth Hormone, and IGF-1 Binding Protein 3 in Concurrently Trained Men

Abstract Rosa, C, Vilaça-Alves, J, Fernandes, HM, Saavedra, FJ, Pinto, RS, and dos Reis, VM. Order effects of combined strength and endurance training on testosterone, cortisol, growth hormone, and IGF-1 binding protein 3 in concurrently trained men. J Strength Cond Res 29(1): 74–79, 2015—Concurrent training (CT) has been widely used in fitness centers to simultaneously optimize cardiovascular and neuromuscular fitness, and induce a high-energy expenditure. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the acute effects of 2 different orders of CT on hormonal responses in concurrently trained men. Fourteen men (mean ± SD: 24.7 ± 5.1 years) were randomly divided into 2 groups: endurance training followed by strength (ES, n = 7) and strength training followed by endurance (SE, n = 7). Serum concentrations of testosterone, cortisol, growth hormone, and IGF-1 binding protein 3 (IGFBP-3) were measured before and after both training orders. A significant interaction between exercise order and time was only found in the IGFBP-3 levels (p = 0.022). The testosterone and IGFBP-3 concentrations significantly increased in the ES group after the exercise trainings (57.7 ± 35.1%, p = 0.013 and 17.0 ± 15.5%, p = 0.032, respectively) but did not change significantly in the SE group (15.5 ± 36.6%, p = 0.527 and −4.2 ± 13.9%, p = 0.421, respectively). Conversely, cortisol and growth hormone concentrations significantly increased in both ES (169.2 ± 191.0%, p = 0.021 and 13,296.8 ± 13,009.5%, p = 0.013, respectively) and SE (92.2 ± 81.5%, p = 0.017 and 12,346.2 ± 9714.1%, p = 0.001, respectively) groups compared with baseline values. No significant correlations were found between the changes in the hormonal concentrations. In conclusion, these results suggest that immediately postexercise testosterone and IGFPB-3 responses are significantly increased only after the ES order. Therefore, an ES training order should be prescribed if the main focus of the training intervention is to induce an acute postexercise anabolic environment.
FPGA implementation of trellis coded modulation encode on SDR communication system

This paper refers to the standard coding architecture of Trellis-Coded Modulation (TCM) specified in IESS-310 (INTELSAT EARTH STATION STANDARDS), illustrates and analyzes the Phase Ambiguity Resolution Encoder, Convolutional Encoder and Constellation Mapper in TCM coding mechanism, and also explores and produces the integration design of coding and modulation of TCM. Different from the conventional TCM trellis diagram, this paper adopts special designed TCM coding diagram to produce the coding procedure. Finally, it realizes the hardware circuit of proposed TCM coding on the system platform of Software Define Radio (SDR) [1].
The estimated burden of HIV/AIDS in Uganda, 2005–2010

Objectives:To estimate the burden of HIV disease in Uganda and the effect of HIV/AIDS control programmes to mitigate it. Design:Mathematical modelling and projecting using surveillance and census data. Methods:Using antenatal clinic surveillance (1986–2002) and a recent population-based survey (2004–2005) data, we modelled the adult national HIV prevalence over time (1981–2004), and kept prevalence constant at 6.4% for the years 2004–2010. Using Spectrum software and census data, we estimated the national burden of HIV disease and the effect of selected HIV-related prevention and treatment programmes. Results:In 2005, we estimated that there were 135 300 new HIV infections (adult HIV incidence 0.96%), 691 900 asymptomatic prevalent infections, 88 100 AIDS cases, and 76 400 AIDS deaths. An estimated 647 000 (80%) HIV-infected adults were unaware of their infection; one third of all adult deaths were HIV related. As a result of population growth, by 2008 a similar number of people will be HIV infected (1.1 million) as during the peak of the epidemic in 1994. Although antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage is expected to rise from 67 000 (2005) to 160 000 (2010), the number of persons needing but not receiving ART will decrease only slightly from 127 600 (2005) to 111 100 (2010). The use of single-dose in 2005 nevirapine probably averted only 4% of the estimated 20 400 vertical infections. Conclusion:HIV/AIDS continues to be a leading cause of adult disease and death in Uganda. Universal ART access is probably unachievable. With the absolute burden of HIV disease approaching the historic peak in the early 1990s, more effective prevention programmes are of paramount importance.
The Impact of Light Including Non-Image Forming Effects on Visual Comfort

Keywords: lighting conditions ; visual comfort ; work environment ; non‐image forming effects ; photometric measurement ; circadian rhythms These Ecole polytechnique federale de Lausanne EPFL, n° 6007 (2013)Programme doctoral EnvironnementFaculte de l'environnement naturel, architectural et construitInstitut d'ingenierie civileLaboratoire d'energie solaire et physique du bâtimentJury: Ph. Thalmann (president), M. Knoop, L. Ortelli, B. Paule Public defense: 2013-12-9 Reference doi:10.5075/epfl-thesis-6007Print copy in library catalog Record created on 2013-12-02, modified on 2016-08-09