Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual function-specific perimetry to identify glaucomatous visual loss using three different definitions of visual field abnormality.

PURPOSE To compare the most recent versions of standard automated perimetry (SAP), short-wavelength automated perimetry (SWAP), and frequency-doubling technology (FDT) using three definitions of visual field (VF) abnormality: single-test abnormality, abnormality confirmed by the same test, and abnormality confirmed by a different test. METHODS Data obtained from one eye of each of 174 patients with glaucoma and 164 age-matched healthy control subjects from the Diagnostic Innovations in Glaucoma Study and African Descent and Glaucoma Evaluation Study were included, based on the appearance of the optic disc on stereophotographs. Each participant had two reliable 24-2 SAP-SITA, SWAP-SITA, and Matrix FDT tests. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated for the PSD of each test to equate the tests at 90% and 95% specificity. SAP, SWAP, and FDT were compared under each definition of VF abnormality by assessing the sensitivities, the agreement between tests and the overlap in deficit location at these set specificities. The tests were also compared using the machine-derived PSD. RESULTS At a set specificity of 95%, single-test sensitivities of 30% (SAP), 29% (SWAP), and 28% (FDT) were observed (all P > 0.05). Sensitivities ranged from 24% to 27% (all P > 0.05) when same-test confirmation was used and from 20% to 23% (all P > 0.05) when different-test confirmation was used. SAP/SAP sensitivity was higher than all different-test combinations (all P < 0.05), and SWAP/FDT sensitivity was lower than all same-test combinations (all P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Confirming VF abnormality is important and optimal when an abnormal SAP is confirmed by a subsequent SAP or SWAP test.
Analysis of the Behrens-Fisher Problem Based on Bayesian Evidence

The Behrens-Fisher problem concerns the inferences for the difference between the means of two normal populations without making any assumption about the variances. Although the problem has been extensively studied in the literature, researchers cannot agree on its solution at present. In this paper, we propose a new method for dealing with the Behrens-Fisher problem in the Bayesian framework. The Bayesian evidence for testing the equality of two normal means and a credible interval at a specified level for the difference between the means are derived. Simulation studies are carried out to evaluate the performance of the provided Bayesian evidence.
Community-acquired pneumonia: evidence of functional inactivation of alpha 1 proteinase inhibitor.

Quantitative and qualitative elastase inhibitory capacity (EIC) alpha 1 proteinase inhibitor (alpha 1 PI) was measured in pulmonary arterial and systemic arterial blood of patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Eleven patients with uncomplicated CAP were compared with 16 patients with fulminating pneumonia requiring intensive care management. An appropriate increase in quantitative alpha 1 PI was demonstrated in all patients. A significant functional inactivation of alpha 1 PI was demonstrated in the ICU-treated patients that was not apparent in the uncomplicated CAP patients (p less than .01). This low EIC returned to normal 4 wk after hospital discharge in all survivors. A significant (p less than .02) difference in EIC between the pulmonary arterial and systemic arterial blood was found in the nonsurvivors on admission, which suggests that alpha 1 PI is inactivated in the lungs of patients with fulminating CAP. The present data demonstrate that alpha 1 PI is functionally inactivated in patients with fulminating CAP. This low serum functional alpha 1 PI may result in proteolytic lung damage and an unfavorable outcome.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN TURKISH SMES: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY

Recently, Knowledge Management (KM) has gained incredible attention in business world because of the rising importance of knowledge as a competitive power and strategic resource. However, Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) have faced some challenges about the employment of Knowledge Management (KM) practices. The principal objective of this study is to explore the regarded challenges of Turkish SMEs to implement as well as their perceptions about KM. It is also aimed to determine KM infrastructure Turkish SMEs that is necessary for them. The findings of this research show that Turkish SMEs are aware of the impact of knowledge in their business performances. However, the majority of them do not still have KM program and have not completed KM infrastructure that is necessary to manage knowledge systematically and effectively.
Communicating Protest Movements: The Case of Occupy

How do you communicate a protest movement? And how do communication practices shape its character and power relations? Based on a view of communication as constitutive of protest movements, this talk considers these questions as two sides of the same coin. The focus lies on the Occupy movement and particularly on its use of digital media. Characterised by a belief in direct participation and a rejection of central leadership, Occupy emerged through a bottom-up process of organizing that spanned different platforms and physical places, from Facebook pages to public squares. The process of constructing the collective involved the creation of communication sites and foundational texts, and their interlinking. This process was influenced by the rules, affordances and proprietary character of media platforms and physical spaces, as well as the diverse cultures and strategies of the activists using them. A closer look at this process sheds light on the power relations within the movement and particularly on five sources of communication power. These range from the power to create communication sites and texts to the power to access or link them together. The picture that emerges is complex, revealing a movement with both centralizing and decentralizing dynamics. Ultimately, it was the balance between these opposing dynamics that determined both the emergence of the movement and its decline. Acknowledgement: This contribution is the podcast of a talk Anastasia Kavada gave in the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI)'s Research Seminar Series on February 25, 2015, at the University of Westminster.
Soft, curved electrode systems capable of integration on the auricle as a persistent brain–computer interface

Significance Conventional electroencephalogram (EEG) recording systems, particularly the hardware components that form the physical interfaces to the head, have inherent drawbacks that limit the widespread use of continuous EEG measurements for medical diagnostics, sleep monitoring, and cognitive control. Here we introduce soft electronic constructs designed to intimately conform to the complex surface topology of the auricle and the mastoid, to provide long-term, high-fidelity recording of EEG data. Systematic studies reveal key aspects of the extreme levels of bending and stretching that are involved in mounting on these surfaces. Examples in persistent brain–computer interfaces, including text spellers with steady-state visually evoked potentials and event-related potentials, with viable operation over periods of weeks demonstrate important advances over alternative brain–computer interface technologies. Recent advances in electrodes for noninvasive recording of electroencephalograms expand opportunities collecting such data for diagnosis of neurological disorders and brain–computer interfaces. Existing technologies, however, cannot be used effectively in continuous, uninterrupted modes for more than a few days due to irritation and irreversible degradation in the electrical and mechanical properties of the skin interface. Here we introduce a soft, foldable collection of electrodes in open, fractal mesh geometries that can mount directly and chronically on the complex surface topology of the auricle and the mastoid, to provide high-fidelity and long-term capture of electroencephalograms in ways that avoid any significant thermal, electrical, or mechanical loading of the skin. Experimental and computational studies establish the fundamental aspects of the bending and stretching mechanics that enable this type of intimate integration on the highly irregular and textured surfaces of the auricle. Cell level tests and thermal imaging studies establish the biocompatibility and wearability of such systems, with examples of high-quality measurements over periods of 2 wk with devices that remain mounted throughout daily activities including vigorous exercise, swimming, sleeping, and bathing. Demonstrations include a text speller with a steady-state visually evoked potential-based brain–computer interface and elicitation of an event-related potential (P300 wave).
Text, Discourse and Corpora: Theory and Analysis

Introduction John Sinclair Chapter 1 - Lexical priming and literary creativity Michael Hoey Chapter 2 - Grammatical creativity: a corpus perspective Michael Hoey Chapter 3 - Parole-linguistics and the diachronic dimension of the discourse Wolfgang Teubert Chapter 4 - Natural and Human Rights, Work and Property in the Discourse of Catholic Social Doctrine Wolfgang Teubert Chapter 5 - On texts, corpora and models of language Michael Stubbs Chapter 6 - Quantitative data on mulit-word sequences in English: the case of the word world Michael Stubbs Chapter 7 - Lexical items in discourse: identifying local textual functions of sustainable development Michaela Mahlberg Chapter 8 - Corpus stylistics: bridging the gap between linguistic and literary studies Michaela Mahlberg.
THE MOJO IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

Digital technology has revolutionized the journalist's toolkit with affordable miniaturized still and video cameras for producing high-quality multimedia, and connection equipment enabling that content to be transmitted via satellite from almost anywhere on the globe for publication on the Internet. Two results have been the advent of news production by an innovative type of lone, multimedia reporter, known as a “mojo” (mobile journalist) or “sojo” (solo journalist), and an increasing focus on “hyper-local” news on media websites. In an era of heightened newspaper and television competition driven by steadily declining North American readership and viewer numbers, many media managers have embraced with enthusiasm the solo journalist—able to move fast and travel light, at lower cost than traditional news teams. This paper surveys the impact that developments in multimedia publishing have had on the news produced by such solo journalists. It finds evidence of degradation of the genre in some, but not all, cases and concludes that since the Pandora's box of mojo journalism has been opened, if used judiciously by journalists with sufficient experience, there is some hope that the new modalities may result in responsible journalism enriched with multifaceted storytelling.
An object-oriented library incorporating efficient projection/backprojection operators for volume reconstruction in 3D PET

Iterative reconstruction methods applied to image reconstruction in three-dimensional (3D) positron emission tomography (PET) should result in possibly better images than analytical reconstruction algorithms. However, the long reconstruction time has remained an obstacle to their development and, moreover, their clinical routine use. Together with the constant increase in performances of the computing platforms, recent developments in parallel processing techniques offer practical ways to speed up the calculations and attain clinically viable processing rates [1]. The aim of this paper is to present the development of a library of object-oriented building blocks for the implementation of both analytical and iterative reconstruction algorithms in 3D PET.
Biotransformations of drugs and foreign chemicals in the human fetal-placental unit.

Several communications pertaining to research on human fetal drug biotransformation have appeared in the literature in the past 3 to 4 years (Aranda et al. 1979; Cresteil et al. 1982; Pacifici et al. 1981; Pacifici and Rane 1982, 1983; Schroeter and Amon 1983). In general, research in this area has produced no major recent surprises, but it has confirmed, extended, and supported the earliest findings through those of the mid-1970s and has served to expand our understanding of these important systems. The important aspects of our current knowledge may be summarized very briefly as follows: Each of the major drug metabolic reactions (oxidations, reductions, hydrolyses, and conjugations) can be catalyzed at generally low rates by enzymes present in human fetal and placental tissues. Reaction rates appear, in general, to increase with advancing gestational age. Placental xenobiotic-biotransforming monooxygenases display a high sensitivity to the effects of MC-type (methylcholanthrene) but not PB-type (phenobarbital) inducing agents during the later stages of gestation. Responsivity is minimal during early gestation. Monooxygenases in other fetal tissues (liver, adrenal gland, etc.) appear to respond minimally to inducing agents, at least during the earlier stages of gestation. Glucuronyl transferase activities appear to be very low in all fetal and placental tissues. Epoxide hydrolase, glutathione S-transferase, and sulfotransferase (and perhaps others) activities can be relatively high in prenatal primate hepatic tissues but, at present, are difficult to predict. Some of these may respond to environmental inducers in situ, but solid evidence for this is still lacking. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Modeling Natural Sounds with Gaussian Modulation Cascade Processes

The computational principles underpinning auditory processing are not well understood. This fact stands in stark contrast to early visual processing for which computational theories, and especially those built on statistical models, have recently enjoyed great success. We believe one of the reasons for this disparity is the paucity of rich, learnable generative models for natural scenes with an explicit temporal dimension. To that end we introduce a new generative model for the dynamic Fourier components of sounds. This comprises a cascade of modulatory processes which evolve over a wide range of time-scales. We show the model is capable of capturing both the sparse marginal distribution and the prevelance of amplitude modulation in natural sounds, to which the auditory system appears to listen so attentively. Moreover, we demonstrate that it is relatively easy to learn and to do inference in the Gaussian Modulation Cascade Process, due to the structure of its non-linearity. We hope that this provides a first step toward furthering our understanding of auditory computations.
The spectral parameter estimation by using prefiltering and matrix pencil method

A new approach called the band-pass matrix pencil (BPMP) method for estimating the parameters of exponentially damped or undamped sinusoidal signals is developed. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be enhanced by using the prefiltering process when prior information about the approximate location and the bandwidth of the signal is available. This information can be obtained by checking the periodogram of the signal. The matrix pencil (MP) method is then applied to the filtered data to estimate frequencies and damping factors of sinusoidal signals. The prefiltering process is not trivial, therefore, the approach presented utilizes the backward process for the IIR filtering and circular convolution for the FIR filtering. Monte Carlo simulations are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed estimation procedure. <<ETX>>
Migration, Citizenship, and the European Welfare State: A European Dilemma

This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare state facing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging across the EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysis of migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies for diversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time. Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East? This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.
An Approach towards Efficient Ranked Search over Encrypted Cloud

In present, Cloud computing is a dominant field in information technology. With the increased rate of data outsourcing over cloud data privacy of sensitive data becomes a big issue. For the security purpose data is encrypted before outsourcing. But encrypted data is very difficult to be retrieved efficiently. Although some traditional search schemes are available for searching encrypted data, but these techniques are merely base on Boolean search and not deals with the relevance of files. These approaches suffer from two main shortcomings. Firstly, if one user has no pre-knowledge of encrypted data, has to process every retrieved file to find results of his use. Secondly, every time retrieving all the files containing query keyword increases network traffic. This work is dedicated to develop an approach for secure and effective retrieval of cloud data. Ranked search greatly improves the performance by returning the files in ranked order based on some similarity relevance criteria. To achieve more practical performance, system demonstrates an approach for symmetric searchable encryption (SSE) which utilizes information retrieval and cryptography primitives. Hence the implementation is based on order-preserving symmetric encryption (OPSE).
Children's peer relations : from development to intervention

Children's Peer Relations is a compilation of virtually everything that is known about the association between children's peer relations and the development of peer rejection, aggression, and antisocial behavior. Looking beyond the peer rejection process, this volume also covers dyadic relationships, cliques, and associations with difference types of peers as well as the effects of family influences. It is comprehensive in covering the last three decades of research that connect the dynamical features of the social and emotional processes associated with peer problems in childhood and mediators of peer experiences.
Nonlinear Approach Of Construction of Fast Unitary Transforms

This paper presents a novel approach to compose discrete unitary transforms that are induced by given input signals and applied over other signals. Such transforms are parameterized. Parameters are defined by the signal-generators and the systems of decision equations, of which specified cases are considered. Properties and examples of new transforms, which we call discrete signal-induced heap transforms, are described. The transforms are fast, have simple forms of decomposition, and can be applied for signals of any length.
Quality of Life Among Stroke Survivors Evaluated 1 Year After Stroke: Experience of a Stroke Unit

Background and Purpose We sought to study overall and domain-specific quality of life in stroke survivors 1 year after stroke and to identify variables that could predict quality of life after stroke. Methods We followed up for 1 year a cohort of 118 patients consecutively admitted to our stroke unit at San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid, Spain. The final series at 1-year follow-up consisted of 90 survivors (41 women and 49 men; mean age, 68 years; range, 32 to 90 years). A cross-sectional, descriptive design was developed. Patients completed a questionnaire that included socioeconomic variables, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), Short Form 36, Frenchay Index, Barthel Index, Rankin Scale, and Scandinavian Stroke Scale. Independent variables were sex, age, functional status, motor impairment, and depression. We developed an ANOVA model for statistical analysis. Results We interviewed 79 patients with ischemic and 11 with hemorrhagic stroke. Thirty-eight percent of patients scored in the depressed range. Variables related to depression were status as a housewife, female sex, inability to work because of disability, and diminished social activity (P <0.0001). Mean total SIP (24.3), SIP psychosocial dimension (27.5), and SIP physical dimension (21.2) were correlated with disability, female sex, motor impairment, and depression (P <0.0001). Conclusions Functional status and depression were identified as predictors of quality of life. Patients independent in their activities of daily living suffered from a deterioration of the psychosocial dimension of the SIP.
Simultaneous object class and pose estimation for mobile robotic applications with minimalistic recognition

In this paper we address the problem of simultaneous object class and pose estimation using nothing more than object class label measurements from a generic object classifier. We detail a method for designing a likelihood function over the robot configuration space. This function provides a likelihood measure of an object being of a certain class given that the robot (from some position) sees and recognizes an object as being of some (possibly different) class. Using this likelihood function in a recursive Bayesian framework allows us to achieve a kind of spatial averaging and determine the object pose (up to certain ambiguities to be made precise). We show how inter-class confusion from certain robot viewpoints can actually increase the ability to determine the object pose. Our approach is motivated by the idea of minimalistic sensing since we use only class label measurements albeit we attempt to estimate the object pose in addition to the class.