Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Atypical herpes simplex encephalitis

An atypical form of herpes simplex encephalitis produced by HSV-1 documented in the present article demonstrates that (1) prominent EEG abnormality may correlate with subtle increase in signal intensity on MRI; (2) the disease may start with prominent involvement of the cingulate gyri; and (3) viral infection of the brainstem may cause early onset of severe neurologic dysfunction and coma.
Surgical Trials in Intracerebral Hemorrhage

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is crucially important neurological emergency with high societal impact of >1 million deaths worldwide each year.1–3 The pathophysiology of intracerebral hemorrhage can be considered to occur in ≤2 conceptual phases. In the first phase, there is immediate cellular injury in the hemorrhage core because of the acute bleed and early hemorrhagic expansion. The final hemorrhagic volume after the period of hemorrhagic expansion and the location are of hemorrhage are strong predictors of outcome.4,5 Prevention of hemorrhagic expansion can be achieved,6 but doing so does not improve outcome. The second conceptual phase of brain hemorrhage is the persistent hematoma phase characterized by progressive damage to perihematomal tissue caused by mass effect, excitotoxic edema, and progressive neurotoxicity resulting from iron, thrombin, blood breakdown products, free radical formation, protease activation and inflammation, and hyperglycolysis.7–12 The evolutionary damage to the perihematomal tissue is complex and involves multiple mechanisms that are presumed to be linked to the presence of the mass of collected blood and progressive edema. Animal models demonstrate that persistence of the hematoma in brain tissue results in progressive brain edema, metabolic distress, and potentially other mechanisms, which result in long-term disability. We hypothesize that in humans, early removal of the hemorrhage from the parenchyma will result in avoidance or mitigation of these secondary insults and result in substantially enhanced neurological recovery. The effectiveness of craniotomy in the treatment of ICH remains controversial, despite having been evaluated during the past 4 decades. To date, ≤7 randomized trials of surgical intervention have been completed and published in the English language (Table). 13–19 Results of individual trials have generally failed to demonstrate improvement in outcome in surgically treated patients. View this table: Table. Randomized Surgical Trials for Intracerebral Hemorrhage Interestingly, the 1 positive trial used a minimally invasive surgical …
Multimodel assessment of water scarcity under climate change

Water scarcity severely impairs food security and economic prosperity in many countries today. Expected future population changes will, in many countries as well as globally, increase the pressure on available water resources. On the supply side, renewable water resources will be affected by projected changes in precipitation patterns, temperature, and other climate variables. Here we use a large ensemble of global hydrological models (GHMs) forced by five global climate models and the latest greenhouse-gas concentration scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways) to synthesize the current knowledge about climate change impacts on water resources. We show that climate change is likely to exacerbate regional and global water scarcity considerably. In particular, the ensemble average projects that a global warming of 2 °C above present (approximately 2.7 °C above preindustrial) will confront an additional approximate 15% of the global population with a severe decrease in water resources and will increase the number of people living under absolute water scarcity (<500 m3 per capita per year) by another 40% (according to some models, more than 100%) compared with the effect of population growth alone. For some indicators of moderate impacts, the steepest increase is seen between the present day and 2 °C, whereas indicators of very severe impacts increase unabated beyond 2 °C. At the same time, the study highlights large uncertainties associated with these estimates, with both global climate models and GHMs contributing to the spread. GHM uncertainty is particularly dominant in many regions affected by declining water resources, suggesting a high potential for improved water resource projections through hydrological model development.
Heuristic design of a fuzzy controller for a flexible robot

A ratio is identified as a heuristic to assist in designing fuzzy logic system (FLS) controllers with a low number of membership functions (MFs), high tracking precision, and fast execution time for the control of a two-link flexible space robot. Comparing simulation results for an FLS with three, five, seven, and nine triangular and Gaussian membership functions provides a combination of type and number of MF for optimal tracking control and execution time. Optimal control occurs when the ratio of the FLS output scaling gain to the number of MFs is equal to the output variable universe of discourse. The optimal FLS design is chosen with three triangular membership functions at an output scaling gain of 15, giving a design ratio of five and execution time of 1 min 40 s while tracking a square trajectory
An Explicit Analytic Compact Model for Nanocrystalline Zinc Oxide Thin-Film Transistors

A new explicit model for long-channel nanocrystalline zinc oxide thin-film transistors is presented. The proposed equation is fully explicit by virtue of its use of the Lambert function. Consequently, the drain current can be directly calculated without the need of numerical iteration or approximations. Additionally, the proposed equation is analytically differentiable, allowing the straightforward derivation of explicit expressions for the transconductance and the output conductance of these devices.
Toward the Accurate Read‐out of Quantum Dot Barcodes: Design of Deconvolution Algorithms and Assessment of Fluorescence Signals in Buffer

Since the introduction of quantum dot (QD) barcoding technology for biological applications in 2001, their development from academic research labs to commercial applications has been slow. Excitement in the concept of QD-barcodes stems from their ability to measure multiple protein and nucleic acid targets simultaneously with high sensitivity. Compared to producing barcodes using organic fluorophores, the use of QDs could lead to a greater number of barcodes because of their tuneable emission and narrow spectral linewidth; furthermore, QD-barcodes require only a lowpower single excitation source due to their large absorption cross-section and continuous absorbance profile, which greatly reduces the complexity and cost of instrumentation. It has been suggested that such a system could rival microarray technologies, which are commonly used for measuring large numbers of biological molecules in a short timeframe. Much effort in the last five years has focused on the reproducible synthesis of QD-barcodes. The method for reading the QD-barcodes and the impact of environmental conditions on fluorescence stability of the barcodes have been largely ignored. Without considering these two constraints, the accurate identification of the barcodes could be compromised leading to false detection outcomes. The purpose of this manuscript is to explore signal processing methods for deconvolving the fluorescence signals of the QD-barcodes and to use this method to determine a practical number of available barcodes for biological applications. Furthermore, we will describe other chemical constraints that are important in the identification of the QD-barcodes. Figure 1 shows seven QD-barcodes and their corresponding fluorescence spectra upon a single 488 nm optical excitation. By varying concentrations and emissions of the QDs inside the microbeads, barcodes with unique spectral signatures can be created. The fluorescence spectra of the different emitting QD barcodes are rather close to each other and a method to deconvolve the signal will be required.
OPTIMIZATION OF THE WATER DISTRIBUTION NETWORKS WITH SEARCH SPACE REDUCTION

A water distribution network is a system containing pipes, reservoirs, pumps, and valves of different types, which are connected to each other to provide water to consumers. In the case of the design of a pipe network the optimization problem can be stated as follows: minimize the cost of the network components subject to the satisfactory performance of the water distribution system (mainly, the satisfaction of the allowable pressures in demand nodes). This leads to difficult constrained combinatorial optimization problem. Various algorithms ranging from artificial intelligence to the optimization domain have been applied. In this paper modified, two step GA methodology was used to solve this problem.
Mining Transaction Data for Process Instance Monitoring in Legacy Systems

REQUIRED) End-to-End business processes in organizations are implemented across multiple applications, legacy systems, ERP systems and products. In such scenarios where applications are developed over a period of time and with varying technologies, monitoring end-to-end business processes is a challenge. Typical methods for providing process monitoring capabilities are intrusive methods like changing code and introducing probes; or introducing new software tools like EAI and BAM. We propose a non-intrusive process instance monitoring (PIM) method that uses the persistent data generated by the business transactions to monitor the process instances in Legacy Information Systems. We propose a slightly unconventional data mining method where the transaction data is parsed from the application data stores, loaded into custom schema and then associated to the process flow for monitoring the state of individual process instances. The approach further provides for alerting when business events like an SLA violation occur.
The Semantics of Dialogue Acts

This paper presents an update semantic for dialogue acts, defined in terms of combinations of very simple 'elementary update functions'. This approach allows fine-grained distinctions to be made between related types of dialogue acts, and relations like entailment and exclusion between dialogue acts to be established. The approach is applied to dialogue act representations as defined in the Dialogue Act Markup Language (DiAML), part of the recently proposed ISO standard 24617-2 for dialogue act annotation.
Combining Sequential Geometry and Texture Features for Distinguishing Genuine and Deceptive Emotions

In this paper, we explore a new type of automatic emotion recognition task - distinguishing genuine and deceptive emotions from video clips. For this task, it is not enough only using static images clipped from the video data, as there's only subtle differences between two types of emotions, which makes it even harder for automatic analysis. To utilize the temporal information, we introduce temporal attention gated model for this emotion recognition task. Compared to texture features which describe the whole face area, the facial landmark sequences may also indicate the temporal changes of the face, thus we utilize them by encoding feature sequence unsupervisedly.
Force Response as a Probe of the Jamming Transition

A few years ago a “jamming diagram” has been proposed as a nonequilibrium phase diagram to describe the physics of glass transitions and granular materials in a unified way. Granular systems “jam”, i.e. develop a yield stress, when their packing fraction reaches a certain critical value upon compression. At zero temperature and load, this transition from “liquid” to “disordered solid” is governed by a critical point. We calculate the linear response to a point force for frictionless packings of various pressure. From the averaged response we obtain the effective Young modulus and Poisson ratio of the packings through fitting the coarse grained behaviour to continuum elastic theory. The elastic coefficients obtained this way show scaling behaviour near the jamming point.
A common architecture for different text processing techniques in an information retrieval environment

The following paper gives an overview on a text processing software called REALIST (Retrieval Aids by Linguistics and Statistics) which integrates different text processing techniques into a common surface. It supports the user by offering the environment of a given term, using morphological, syntactic and statistic means. The user can call up the processing results, use it for indexing, classification or retrieval purposes and combine them as he wishes e.g. to set up a search logic. The text processing is done on a main frame computer, the results are transferred to a minicomputer where the evaluation is performed. REALIST is a stand alone package, fitting any existing search systems. In the retrieval context, this technique reduces connecting time and improves the search results. REALIST is able to run on English and German texts. Each REALIST component has been separately tested with good success. An integrated version is currently under test at the US Patent ad Trademark Office using 150000 English patent abstracts, and a German version is being tested with 12000 legal texts of the European Community.
Piecewise approximate circuit simulation

Conventional circuit simulation methods are inflexible and slow, especially for large circuits. Piecewise approximate circuit simulation, an alternative that can be more efficient and allows variable accuracy in the simulation process, is discussed. Thus, the tradeoff between accuracy and CPU time is in the hands of the user. SPECS (simulation program for electronic circuits and systems) is the prototype implementation of a piecewise approximate, tree/link based, event driven, variable accuracy circuit simulation algorithm that uses table models for device evaluation. The models can be built at various levels of accuracy, and concomitant levels of precision are reflected in the simulation results. SPECS has been benchmarked on some large, industrial circuits and has proven to be an efficient and reliable simulator. However, it suffers a penalty in run time while simulating stiff circuits, or circuits with a wide range of time constants. The authors present enhanced algorithms used in SPECS to ensure efficient steady-state computation for stiff circuits. <<ETX>>
Isolated nocturnal desaturation in COPD: prevalence and impact on quality of life and sleep

Background and aims: The clinical impact of nocturnal desaturation on health related quality of life (HRQL) and sleep in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has been little studied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and clinical impact of nocturnal desaturation in a typical outpatient population with COPD. Patients and methods: Between 2002 and 2005, consecutive patients with COPD attending outpatient services at the study centre underwent resting oximetry if they were not on domiciliary oxygen therapy. If their resting saturations were less than 95%, overnight pulse oximetry was performed. Significant nocturnal desaturation was defined as spending more than 30% of at least one of two nights with a saturation of less than 90%. The Chronic Respiratory Questionnaire (CRQ) and Short Form 36 (SF36) were used to assess HRQL, and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Epworth Sleepiness Score (ESS) and Functional Outcomes of Sleep (FOSQ) questionnaires were used to assess sleep quality and daytime function. Results: Of 1104 patients, 803 underwent resting oximetry and 79 had resting oxygen saturations of less than 95%. Of these, 59 agreed to undergo overnight oximetry (mean age 70 years, forced expiratory volume in 1 s 37.2% predicted, resting Po2 on air 8.9 kPa). Significant nocturnal desaturation was seen in 29 (49.2%) of the 59 subjects. Assuming the less hypoxic patients do not have nocturnal desaturation, the prevalence of nocturnal desaturation in the whole clinic population could be estimated at 4.8%. There were no significant differences in CRQ, SF36, PSQI, ESS or FOSQ scores for desaturators compared with non-desaturators. Conclusion: Significant nocturnal desaturation was common in patients with COPD with resting saturations of less than 95%, but was estimated to have a prevalence of less than 5% in the whole outpatient population. Nocturnal desaturation was not associated with impairment of HRQL, sleep quality or daytime function.
Accelerating XPath evaluation in any RDBMS

This article is a proposal for a database index structure, the XPath accelerator, that has been specifically designed to support the evaluation of XPath path expressions. As such, the index is capable to support all XPath axes (including ancestor, following, preceding-sibling, descendant-or-self, etc.). This feature lets the index stand out among related work on XML indexing structures which had a focus on the child and descendant axes only. The index has been designed with a close eye on the XPath semantics as well as the desire to engineer its internals so that it can be supported well by existing relational database query processing technology: the index (a) permits set-oriented (or, rather, sequence-oriented) path evaluation, and (b) can be implemented and queried using well-established relational index structures, notably B-trees and R-trees.We discuss the implementation of the XPath accelerator on top of different database backends and show that the index performs well on all levels of the memory hierarchy, including disk-based and main-memory based database systems.
Planar fabrication of a mesoscale voice coil actuator

Mesoscale robots are devices with characteristic dimensions in the centimeter to millimeter scale, with feature sizes ranging from millimeters to micrometers. Due to the physics involved in scaling down conventional motors, such robots frequently require novel approaches to actuation. Actuation can have a very significant effect on robot performance, particularly at small scales where locomotion becomes energetically expensive; however, existing options for small-scale actuation are quite limited. We present a mesoscale voice coil actuator (VCA) with favorable scaling characteristics and a design that minimizes costly frictional effects at small scales while allowing fast, linear, high-displacement motion. The VCA is fabricated using planar manufacturing techniques, making it well-suited for integration into a number of mesoscale robotic platforms and for mass production. The designed VCA has a mass of 310mg, maximum force of 11.8mN, bandwidth of 51Hz, and a stroke of 4mm.
Proteolytic cleavage of versican during cardiac cushion morphogenesis

The proteoglycan versican is essential to the formation of endocardial cushion mesenchyme by epithelial–mesenchymal transformation (EMT). A potentially important factor in the regulation of versican activity during cushion EMT is proteolysis by ADAMTS metalloproteinases. Using antibodies to the DPEAAE neoepitope created by ADAMTS proteolysis of versican, we detected the amino terminal 70‐kDa versican cleavage fragment in cardiac cushions. Initially (i.e., 9.5 days post coitum [dpc]), the fragment is associated with endocardial cells undergoing EMT and with newly derived mesenchymal cells. ADAMTS‐1 and its cofactor fibulin‐1 were also associated with these cells. As cushions become increasingly populated with mesenchymal cells (10.5–12.5 dpc), the fragment remains asymmetrically distributed compared with the pattern of total versican. Highest levels of the fragment are present in regions immediately subjacent to the endocardium characterized as having densely packed, rounded cells, lacking cellular protrusions. With further development (i.e., 12.5–14.5 dpc), the pattern of fragment distribution within cushions broadens to include the ECM surrounding loosely packed mesenchymal cells in the cushion core. Together, the findings reveal that versican proteolysis leading to the production of the 70‐kDa fragment is integral to the formation and differentiation of endocardial cushion mesenchyme. Developmental Dynamics 235:2238–2247, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Use of Kaczmarz's method in intelligent-particle swarm optimization

Intelligent-particle swarm optimization algorithm (IPSO) is an improved heuristic method estimating the quadratic model of the problem in the hand. The conventional way to find the coefficients of the second order equation is to solve the nonhomogeneous linear equation (Ax = b), where A is the Vandermonde matrix. Although this method seems to be quite simple to execute, matrix inversion must be performed at every iteration. Another disadvantage is that the Vandermonde matrix must be square, which means all data from the members in population cannot be used. Therefore, in this study, the iterative Kaczmarz's Method is integrated to IPSO. The obtained results are compared with the conventional algorithm.
Clinical nutrition: inadequate teaching in medical schools.

BACKGROUND AND AIM The teaching of Clinical Nutrition (CN) is frequently neglected in Medical Schools, though many official institutions strongly recommend its incorporation in their curricula. This work aimed to assess CN knowledge among final-year medical students and final-year dietology diploma students. METHODS AND RESULTS We compared the performances of final-year Medical School students who did and who did not take the CN course and final-year dietology students in a computer-based multiple choice question examination related to core CN competencies that primary-care physicians and dieticians should know and be able to put into practice. The medical students who did not take the CN course correctly answered significantly fewer questions compared with those who did and the dietology students (both p < 0.001). There was also a difference in the percentages of who passed the test: students who did not take the course: those 18%; those who did: 77%; dietology students: 76% (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS There are numerous barriers to the incorporation of nutrition in Medical School curricula. The medical school students may have achieved poorer results because dietology students followed nutrition education programs later in their curriculum. Our Medical School has therefore included CN education as part of its internal medicine course since 1998.
Interactive Learning and its Role in Pervasive Robotics

As robots have become lower-cost, more ubiquitous, and more capable, the importance of enabling untrained users to interact with them has increased. Such robots have the potential to provide assistance and reduce workloads in the home, in the workplace, and in the context of assistive technologies. However, it is difficult to predict the specific tasks that these robots should be programmed to assist with before they are deployed, and in these settings, robots will often be interacting with non-expert end users. In this paper, we argue that one approach to dealing with this type of humanrobot interaction is teachable robotics, in which robots learn to perform novel tasks in novel environments from humans using intuitive teaching modalities, such as natural language. We describe two recent projects that make progress in this direction, and discuss the challenges revealed by this work.
InGaAs/InP core–shell and axial heterostructure nanowires

InGaAs/InP heterostructure nanowires were grown by gas source molecular beam epitaxy on InP (111)B substrates using self-assembled Au particles as a growth catalyst. These structures were analysed by scanning electron microscopy, high resolution transmission electron microscopy, and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy. The material interfaces showed significant transition regions and a distinct bulging morphology, attributed to transient group-III material in the Au catalyst. Sidewall growth of InGaAs on InP and a deficiency of Ga in the InGaAs section were observed, and occur due to the shorter surface diffusion length of Ga adatoms compared to In.