Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Control of cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania major in south‐eastern Morocco

The incidence of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) caused by Leishmania major has increased in Morocco over the last decade, prompting the Ministry of Health to take intersectoral response measures including vector and reservoir control. The aim of this article was to describe the CL outbreak response measures taken in the province of Errachidia, where the reservoir of L. major, a sand rat (Meriones shawi), was targeted using strychnine‐poisoned wheat baits from 2010 to 2012.
Supporting Large Speculative Threads for Databases and Beyond

Thread level speculation (TLS) has proven to be a promising method of extracting parallelism from both integer and scientific workloads. In this paper we use TLS to exploit intra-transaction parallelism in database workloads, and demonstrate that previous hardware support for TLS is insufficient for the resulting large speculative threads (or epochs) and the complexity of the dependences between them. In this paper we extend previous TLS support in three ways to facilitate large epochs: (i) we propose a method for buffering speculative state in the L2 cache, instead of solely using an extended store buffer, L1 data cache, or specialized table to track speculative changes; (ii) we tolerate cross-epoch data dependences through the use of sub-epochs, significantly reducing the cost of mis-speculation; and (iii) with programmer assistance we escape speculation for database operations which can be performed non-speculatively. With this support we can effectively exploit intra-transaction parallelism in a database and dramatically improve transaction performance: on a simulated 4-processor chip-multiprocessor, we improve the response time by 46–66% for three of the five TPC-C transactions.
Applying Web Usability Criteria for Vision-Impaired Users: Does It Really Improve Task Performance?

Available accessibility guidelines do not necessarily guarantee usable Web sites, particularly when specific groups of users with special needs are considered. We have identified 15 Web design criteria aiming to provide integrated support of accessibility and usability for vision-impaired users. In this article, we present the results of a study investigating whether the application of such guidelines for vision-impaired users can actually improve their task performance when accessing Web applications. We report on two user tests, both involving vision-impaired users, that aim to provide empirical validation of the design criteria. During each test, users had to access and navigate two versions of a Web site, one version supporting the selected design criteria and one obtained with traditional techniques. Our results indicate that the 15 design criteria improved Web site usability both quantitatively and qualitatively by reducing the navigation time needed to perform the assigned tasks and by making the Web sites easier to navigate for blind and low-vision users.
Spatio–Temporal FastICA Algorithms for the Blind Separation of Convolutive Mixtures

This paper derives two spatio-temporal extensions of the well-known FastICA algorithm of Hyvarinen and Oja that are applicable to the convolutive blind source separation task. Our time-domain algorithms combine multichannel spatio-temporal prewhitening via multistage least-squares linear prediction with novel adaptive procedures that impose paraunitary constraints on the multichannel separation filter. The techniques converge quickly to a separation solution without any step size selection or divergence difficulties, and unlike other methods, ours do not require special coefficient initialization procedures to obtain good separation performance. They also allow for the efficient reconstruction of individual signals as observed in the sensor measurements directly from the system parameters for single-input multiple-output blind source separation tasks. An analysis of one of the adaptive constraint procedures shows its fast convergence to a paraunitary filter bank solution. Numerical evaluations of the proposed algorithms and comparisons with several existing convolutive blind source separation techniques indicate the excellent relative performance of the proposed methods.
Influence of Slag as Additive on Compressive Strength of Fly Ash-Based Geopolymer

Slag was utilized as an additive for fly ash-based geopolymers in this study. It was found that the incorporation of slag could significantly increase the compressive strength of the geopolymer. The compressive strength of geopolymer with 4.0% slag reached 50 and 70 MPa when cured for 14 days at 30 and 70°C , respectively. The mechanism of slag as additive on the enhancement of compressive strength of geopolymer was investigated using X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP). The XRD and FTIR results showed that the addition of slag could generate more amorphous products and accelerate the reaction rate of raw materials. From XPS results, the decrease of binding energy and a broadening of peaks were observed for Si 2p , Al 2p , and O 1s elements due to the Ca2+ provided by slag. The decrease in binding energy was more favorable to zeolite formation. The results of MIP suggested that the 4% sl.
Supra‐normal age‐linked retrograde amnesia: Lessons from an older amnesic (H.M.)

MacKay and James ( 2001 ) demonstrated greater‐than‐normal retrograde amnesia (RA) for lexical‐semantic information in amnesic H.M. , a deficit that worsened with aging or represented supranormal age‐linked RA (SARA). The present experiments extend these earlier observations to new types of information. Experiment 1 participants (H.M. and carefully matched memory‐normal controls) named pictures on the Boston Naming Test and H.M. correctly named reliably fewer pictures with low frequency names, he produced unusual naming errors, and he benefited reliably less than the controls from phonological cues to the target word. Experiment 2 participants recalled irregularly‐spelled aspects of familiar words in a two‐choice recognition memory task and H.M. chose the correct spelling reliably less often than the controls. Experiment 3 participants read low frequency words aloud at age 73 and H.M. produced reliably more reading errors than the controls. Results of all three experiments indicate supranormal RA (SRA) for information once familiar to H.M. and comparisons with earlier studies using similar or identical stimuli indicated that H.M. 's SRA has worsened with aging from 1980 to 1999. In short, H.M. exhibits SARA for phonological and orthographic information, consistent with the MacKay and James results and with interactions between aging and amnesia predicted under binding theory. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Genetic, ecological and morphological differences among populations of the cactophilic Drosophila mojavensis from southwestern USA and northwestern Mexico, with descriptions of two new subspecies

A variety of molecular markers have consistently shown that little gene flow occurs among the geographically isolated populations of the cactophilic Drosophila mojavensis Patterson and Crow of southwestern USA and northwestern Mexico. The molecular studies support previous subspecies designations of D. mojavensis (D. m. mojavensis from the Mojave Desert and D. m. baja from the Baja California peninsula) and, in addition, suggest that two additional subspecies should be recognized (D. m. sonorensis from Sonora and Sinaloa, Mexico to southern Arizona and D. m. wrigleyi from Santa Catalina Island, California). Here we review evidence from studies on population genetics, ecology and behaviour that supports the subspecies assignments in D. mojavensis, and provide descriptions of D. m. sonorensis and D. m. wrigleyi. We also provide redescriptions of D. m. mojavensis and D. m. baja. Morphologically, the four subspecies are similar in external appearance, but showed differences in the male genitalia.
Evaluation of the Improvement in the Figure of Merit of Bi_2Te_3-Based Alloys with Addition of Ultrafine Scattering Centers

The addition of ultrafine scattering centers into Bi{sub 2}Te{sub 3}-based materials and their impact on the thermal and electrical transport properties in a 200-500 K temperature range are discussed. Based on previous theoretical efforts, the resulting improvements in the figure of merit of these heavily doped thermoelectric semiconductors were calculated as a function of composition, temperature, doping level, particulate size and concentration. Determination of the lattice thermal conductivity of the various alloys was conducted by considering phonon-phonon, carrier-phonon, point defect and inert scattering center scattering mechanisms. Degradation of the electrical properties due to the increase scattering rate was also taken into account. Practical application of these results is considered.
TNFR 1-dependent pulmonary apoptosis during ischemic acute kidney injury

Laura E. White, Rachel J. Santora, Yan Cui, Frederick A. Moore, and Heitham T. Hassoun Department of Surgery and Research Institute, The Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas; Department of Surgery, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Florida; The Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, Houston, Texas; and Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland
Design on Reputation Mechanism for the Medical Consumables Suppliers Based on Fuzzy Clustering

Trust problem of medical consumables supply chain has been increasingly a focus of people’s attention. Business competition based on reputation management becomes the new strategy for business development in medical consumables supply chain. The reputation relationships among entities are dynamic. The medical consumables supply reputation management involves many different elements: the collaboration among entities, collection of the information to assess the reputation, and the standards for reputation assessment. The design factors are found for consideration of medical consumables supply reputation evaluation and the reputation mechanism is designed on the basis of fuzzy clustering.
Group recommendation using feature space representing behavioral tendency and power balance among members

This paper proposes an algorithm to estimate appropriate or novel content for groups of people who know each other such as friends, couples, and families. To achieve high recommendation accuracy, we focus on "Groupality", the entity or entities that characterize groups such as the tendency of content selection and the relationships among group members. Our algorithm calculates recommendation scores using a feature space that consists of the behavioral tendency of a group and the power balance among group members based on individual preference and the behavioral history of group. After gathering the behavioral history of subject groups when watching TV, we verify that our proposed algorithm can recommend appropriate content, and find novel content. Evaluations show that our proposal achieves higher performance than existing methods.
Geodesic Information Flows: Spatially-Variant Graphs and Their Application to Segmentation and Fusion

Clinical annotations, such as voxel-wise binary or probabilistic tissue segmentations, structural parcellations, pathological regions-of-interest and anatomical landmarks are key to many clinical studies. However, due to the time consuming nature of manually generating these annotations, they tend to be scarce and limited to small subsets of data. This work explores a novel framework to propagate voxel-wise annotations between morphologically dissimilar images by diffusing and mapping the available examples through intermediate steps. A spatially-variant graph structure connecting morphologically similar subjects is introduced over a database of images, enabling the gradual diffusion of information to all the subjects, even in the presence of large-scale morphological variability. We illustrate the utility of the proposed framework on two example applications: brain parcellation using categorical labels and tissue segmentation using probabilistic features. The application of the proposed method to categorical label fusion showed highly statistically significant improvements when compared to state-of-the-art methodologies. Significant improvements were also observed when applying the proposed framework to probabilistic tissue segmentation of both synthetic and real data, mainly in the presence of large morphological variability.
A New Ti-Based Amorphous Powder Synthesized by Mechanical Alloying

A new quaternary amorphous alloy powder Ti50Fe22Ni22Sn6 are prepared by mechanical alloying. The milling was performed under an argon atmosphere in a high-energy planetary ball mill. After milled 70h, fully amorphous Ti50Fe22Ni22Sn6 powders can be obtained, with the condition of the milling speed, 300rpm, and the weighs ratio of ball to powder, 10:1. Crystal structure of the milled powders is investigated by XRD. Thermal analysis show that when the heating rate increasing from 10K/min to 40K/min, the super-cooled liquid region of milled amorphous alloy increased from 93K to 110K.
Saliva analysis using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy technique

We report a post-growth microwave heating implementation to improve on the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) performance of a metal-polymer substrate. This technique generates SERS-active nanostructures on the gold film deposited on hierarchical polystyrene (PS) beads. A significant improvement in SERS signals of bioanalyte (saliva) is achieved, demonstrating its potential to enhance SERS activities in metal-polymer substrates for biomedical applications.
Automatic synthesis of out-of-core algorithms

We present a system for the automatic synthesis of efficient algorithms specialized for a particular memory hierarchy and a set of storage devices. The developer provides two independent inputs: 1) an algorithm that ignores memory hierarchy and external storage aspects; and 2) a description of the target memory hierarchy, including its topology and parameters. Our system is able to automatically synthesize memory-hierarchy and storage-device-aware algorithms out of those specifications, for tasks such as joins and sorting. The framework is extensible and allows developers to quickly synthesize custom out-of-core algorithms as new storage technologies become available.
Effect of vesicoureteric reflux on renal growth in children with urinary tract infection

Renal growth was studied for periods ranging from 2 to 22 years (average 9·4) in 70 children who presented between 2 weeks and 12 years of age with urinary tract infection and who were found to have vesicoureteric reflux. They were managed on a conservative regimen of continuous prophylaxis and regular, complete voiding. Renal growth over the entire period of observation was normal in relation to the child's growth in height in 100 of the 111 kidneys originally drained by refluxing ureters. During the time that reflux was known to be still present, renal growth was within normal limits in 101 kidneys. Renal growth was impaired in 11 kidneys. Ten of them were exposed to a recurrence of urinary tract infection. The eleventh child had an unproved symptomatic infection. Seven of these kidneys were also already scarred and 4 had gross reflux. In 2 of these children a fresh scar developed, one in a previously normal kidney. Because of the tendency for reflux to disappear, the renal growth during the first 2 years of observation was also analysed. A significant association was found between impaired growth and, independently, infection and renal scarring. No independent association was found between impaired growth and the severity of reflux. Small kidneys tended to grow at the expected rate. If growth was compared in pairs of kidneys with unilateral reflux, no difference in rate could be found if the kidneys were unscarred, but a significant difference was found if the refluxing ureter drained a scarred kidney; this tended to grow slowly, and the unscarred non-refluxing kidney tended to accelerate in growth. The small group of kidneys which grew least well had established severe scarring associated with severe persisting vesicoureteric reflux and each had a further infection during the period of observation, although no rise in plasma creatinine concentration was observed in any of these children. It is in such children that the results of a controlled comparison of medical and surgical management will be of greatest value.
Development of the inner ear in Splotch mutant mice

The Splotch mouse, a Pax 3 mutation, represents a model of Waardenburg syndrome I. We show that the homozygous Splotch mutation (Sp2H) is associated with severe defects that prevent the formation of the cochlea and vestibulo-cochlear ganglion. To clarify the role of Pax 3 in inner ear formation, we examined the expression of polysialic acid (PSA) associated with neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM). In accordance with the occurrence of phenotypic abnormalities, PSA NCAM was expressed early in otocyst development in the otic epithelium and the vestibulo-cochlear anlage. During the period of vestibular and cochlear ganglia formation, PSA NCAM expression was decreased. In the late phase of embryonic development, the expression of calcium binding proteins (S100) in the vestibulo-cochlear ganglion was also decreased. Minor differences in S100 immunostaining were found postnatally between the cochleas of heterozygous and wild type animals.
Difference feedback can stabilize uncertain steady states

The paper is concerned with the stabilization of uncertain steady states by the state difference feedback. The feedback method has a peculiar feature that it uses only the difference between the present state x(t) and the past state x(t-T), considering exact information on the steady state is unavailable. Hitherto a condition is known under which such stabilization can not be realized. The article conversely shows that the state difference feedback can stabilize only if the exclusion condition is not true. Furthermore a dynamic output difference feedback is shown to be able to stabilize under quite a mild condition that the steady state is not associated with zero eigenvalues. The ability of the method is illustrated by using a cart-pendulum system which moves along a one dimensional varying slope.
PSO and P&O based MPPT technique for SPV panel under varying atmospheric conditions

This paper presents Particle Swarm Optimization and Perturbation & Observation techniques to find the optimum operating parameters of a solar photovoltaic panel under varying atmospheric conditions. The terminal voltage, current and corresponding duty-cycle, at which the DC/DC converter should be switched to obtain maximum power output, are determined. Simulation of maximum power point tracking of a DSP210 solar panel is done, using both methods, in MATLAB. It is observed from the results that the particle swarm optimization based algorithm can track the maximum power point for the whole range of solar data (irradiance and temperature) and has high conversion performance.
Strength and Related Properties of Concrete: A Quantitative Approach

This book addresses concrete strength. It contains the quantitative tools necessary to understand, assess and improve concrete quality. Chapter headings include the following: 1. Compressive Strength of Hardened Concrete; 2. Other Concrete Strengths; 3. Strength Development of Portland Cement; 4. Structure of Hardened Cement Paste and Concrete; 5. Relationship Between Composition and Strength of Concrete; and 6. Elastic Deformation of Concrete. The book also contains a floppy IBM PC disk which holds computerized formulas for strength testing.
Timing of Fixation of Major Fractures in Blunt Polytrauma: Role of Conventional Indicators in Clinical Decision Making

Grading of the clinical status in patients with multiple trauma is important regarding the treatment plan. In recent years, 4 different clinical conditions have been described: stable, borderline, unstable, in extremis. Clinical parameters have been widely used in patients with penetrating injuries, and 3 categories were found to be important: shock, hypothermia, coagulopathy. However, in blunt trauma patients, the role of conventional parameters for decision making regarding the timing of fracture treatment is poorly described. After blunt trauma, additional factors seem to play a role, because the injuries affect multiple body regions. These additional factors are summarized under the term, “soft-tissue injuries,” which may include the soft tissues of the extremities, lung, abdomen, and pelvis. The study describes four pathophysiologic cascades that are relevant to the clinical conditions listed above. Threshold values for separation of the patient conditions are documented, leading to a staged surgical strategy.
Categorization of Indoor Places Using the Kinect Sensor

The categorization of places in indoor environments is an important capability for service robots working and interacting with humans. In this paper we present a method to categorize different areas in indoor environments using a mobile robot equipped with a Kinect camera. Our approach transforms depth and grey scale images taken at each place into histograms of local binary patterns (LBPs) whose dimensionality is further reduced following a uniform criterion. The histograms are then combined into a single feature vector which is categorized using a supervised method. In this work we compare the performance of support vector machines and random forests as supervised classifiers. Finally, we apply our technique to distinguish five different place categories: corridors, laboratories, offices, kitchens, and study rooms. Experimental results show that we can categorize these places with high accuracy using our approach.
Endogenous Vascular Hydrogen Peroxide Regulates Arteriolar Tension In Vivo

Background— Although many studies suggested direct vasomotor effects of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in vitro, little is known about the vasomotor effects of H2O2 in vivo. Methods and Results— We have generated mice overexpressing human catalase driven by the Tie-2 promoter to specifically target this transgene to the vascular tissue. Vessels of these mice (cat++) expressed significantly higher levels of catalase mRNA, protein, and activity. The overexpression was selective for vascular tissue, as evidenced by immunohistochemistry in specimens of aorta, heart, lung, and kidney. Quantification of reactive oxygen species by fluorescence signals in cat++ versus catalase-negative (catn) mice showed a strong decrease in aortic endothelium and left ventricular myocardium but not in leukocytes. Awake male cat++ at 3 to 4 months of age had a significantly lower systolic blood pressure (sBP, 102.7±2.2 mm Hg, n=10) compared with their transgene-negative littermates (catn, 115.6±2.5 mm Hg, P=0.0211) and C57BL/6 mice (118.4±3.06 mm Hg, n=6). Treatment with the catalase inhibitor aminotriazole increased sBP of cat++ to 117.3±4.3 mm Hg (P=0.0345), while having no effect in catn (118.4±2.4 mm Hg, n=4, P>0.05). In contrast, treatment with the NO-synthase inhibitor nitro-l-arginine methyl ester (100 mg · kg BW−1 · d−1) increased sBP in cat++ and C57Bl/6 to a similar extent. Likewise, phosphorylation of vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein in skeletal muscle, left ventricular myocardium, and lung was identical in cat++ and catn. Endothelium- and NO-dependent aortic vasodilations were unchanged in cat++. Aortic KCl contractions were significantly lower in cat++ and exogenous H2O2 (10 &mgr;mol/L)–induced vasoconstriction. Conclusions— These data suggest that endogenous H2O2 may act as a vasoconstrictor in resistance vessels and contribute to the regulation of blood pressure.