Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cannabis intoxication and fatal road crashes in France: population based case-control study

Abstract Objectives To evaluate the relative risk of being responsible for a fatal crash while driving under the influence of cannabis, the prevalence of such drivers within the driving population, and the corresponding share of fatal crashes. Design Population based case-control study. Participants 10 748 drivers, with known drug and alcohol concentrations, who were involved in fatal crashes in France from October 2001 to September 2003. Main outcome measures The cases were the 6766 drivers considered at fault in their crash; the controls were 3006 drivers selected from the 3982 other drivers. Positive detection of cannabis was defined as a blood concentration of Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol of over 1 ng/ml. The prevalence of positive drivers in the driving population was estimated by standardising controls on drivers not at fault who were involved in crashes resulting in slight injuries. Results 681 drivers were positive for cannabis (cases 8.8%, controls 2.8%), including 285 with an illegal blood alcohol concentration (0.5 g/l). Positive cannabis detection was associated with increased risk of responsibility (odds ratio 3.32, 95% confidence interval 2.63 to 4.18). A significant dose effect was identified; the odds ratio increased from 2.18 (1.22 to 3.89) if 0 < Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol < 1 ng/ml to 4.72 (3.04 to 7.33) if Δ9tetrahydrocannabinol 5 ng/ml. The effect of cannabis remains significant after adjustment for different cofactors, including alcohol, with which no statistical interaction was observed. The prevalence of cannabis (2.9%) estimated for the driving population is similar to that for alcohol (2.7%). At least 2.5% (1.5% to 3.5%) of fatal crashes were estimated as being attributable to cannabis, compared with 28.6% for alcohol (26.8% to 30.5%). Conclusions Driving under the influence of cannabis increases the risk of involvement in a crash. However, in France its share in fatal crashes is significantly lower than that associated with positive blood alcohol concentration.
Recent Advances in Handwriting Recognition

Machine simulation of human reading has been subject of intensive research for the last three decades. This paper presents a summary about the recent advances in terms of character, word, numeral string, and setence recognition. In addition, the main new trends in the field of handwriting recognition are discussed and some important contributions are presented.
Remote Elderly Assisted Living System-A preliminary research, development and evaluation

This paper describes the idea and preliminary results for a Remote Elderly Assisted Living (REAL) system. This system is designed to assist monitoring the increasing numbers of elderly and vulnerable people living on their own. The proposed system aims to monitor the normal activities of the elderly without intrusion into a person's normal living environment. If the system detects some deviation in the baseline of the observed habits such as less energy consumption, it could be an indicator that the observed person has difficulties and the system can trigger an event. In this paper we describe the methodology of the system designed to work based on multisensory information for remotely monitoring the activities of elderly and present a set of preliminary collected results from the proof of concept implementation.
Analysis of the human erythrocyte lipid in various functional conditions of the thyroid.

Analyses of the erythrocyte lipid by means of thin layer chromatography (TLC) and photodensitometry (PDM) were performed in five normal human adults, four patients with hyperthyroidism and four patients with hypothyroidism. Lipids were extracted from washed red cells with a 2:1 (v/v) chloroform-methanol mixture. TLC of total lipids was performed on a Silica Gel G plate using a mixture of chloroform-methanol-water in a proportion of 65:24:4 (v/v). Lipid spots were identified by comparing them with standard lipid spots and quantitative analysis of each lipid was carried out by means of PDM after charring the lipid spots. The major components of erythrocyte lipids were cholesterol (unesterified), lecithin, sphingomyelin, lysolecithin, phosphatidyl ethanolamine, phosphatidyl serine, and cerebrosides. Although there were no striking differences in erythrocyte lipids in different functional states of the thyroid, relative quantitative analyses suggested that cholesterol values were high and lecithin values low in hypothyroid-ism, and phosphatidyl ethanolamine values low in hyperthyroidism.
Heterogeneous wireless sensor networks using CoAP and SMS to predict natural disasters

Even in the 21st century human is still handicapped with natural disaster. Flood is one of the most catastrophic natural disasters. Early warnings help people to take necessary steps to save human lives and properties. Sensors can be used to provide more accurate early warnings due to possibilities of capturing more detail data of surrounding nature. Recent advantages in protocol standardization and cost effectiveness of sensors it is possible to easily deploy and manage sensors in large scale. In this paper, a heterogeneous wireless sensor network is proposed and evaluated to predict natural disaster like flood. In this network CoAP is used as a unified application layer protocol for exchanging sensor data. Therefore, CoAP over SMS protocol is used for exchanging sensor data. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the heterogeneous wireless sensor network for predicting natural disaster is presented in this paper.
Effects of Orthogonal Rotating Electric Fields on Electrospinning Process

Electrospinning is a nanotechnology process whereby an external electric field is used to accelerate and stretch a charged polymer jet, so as to produce fibers with nanoscale diameters. In quest of a further reduction in the cross section of electrified jets hence of a better control on the morphology of the resulting electrospun fibers, we explore the effects of an external rotating electric field orthogonal to the jet direction. Through extensive particle simulations, it is shown that by a proper tuning of the electric field amplitude and frequency, a reduction of up to a $30 \%$ in the aforementioned radius can be obtained, thereby opening new perspectives in the design of future ultra-thin electrospun fibres. Applications can be envisaged in the fields of nanophotonic components as well as for designing new and improved filtration materials.
Effect of Gene Therapy on Baseline Thermal Pain and Mechanical Sensitivity in Rodents Study Vector System Transgene Pain Model Results

Chronic, unremitting pain is perhaps the most common reason that patients seek medical care. In general, conservative techniques, such as medical management, are implemented as first-line therapy. Local anesthesia and lytic procedures, followed by interventional techniques, such as dorsal column stimulation and intrathecal drug delivery systems, are second-line therapies. However, for refractory and severe pain, which is not adequately controlled by other modes of therapy, new emerging options, including molecular or gene therapy, may become more widely utilized as experimental results are translated into clinical options.
A Super-Resolution Video Player Based on GPU Accelerated Upscaling from Local Self-Examples

Many super-resolution algorithms have been proposed for upscaling static images, yet upscaling video footages in real-time with descent quality remains a challenging problem. In this work, we started out developing a super-resolution video player based on upscaling from local self-examples[Freedman and Fattal 2010], for the approach is essentially suitable for applications where maintaining temporal coherences between frames is critical. The algorithm takes advantage of the fact that a natural image patch is similar to some of its neighboring patches, and thus is redundant within its locality. Therefore, it utilizes neighboring patches, namely, selfexamples, as hints on the high-frequency detail that is lost in interpolative upscaling. High two-dimensional locality in image accessing pattern makes this algorithm an excellent candidate to be parallelized and implemented on commodity GPUs. With CUDA, we achieved a 75-times acceleration and a frame rate of about 20 fps for 1.5-times on-line upscaling of video of VCD quality. CR Categories: I.3. 1 [Computer Graphics]: Hardware Architecture—Graphics Processors; I.3. 3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Viewing Algorithms; I.4. 3 [Image Processing and Computer Vision]: Enhancement—Sharpening and Deblurring;
Low-pain, high-gain multicore programming in Haskell: coordinating irregular symbolic computations on multicore architectures

With the emergence of commodity multicore architectures, exploiting tightly-coupled parallelism has become increasingly important. Functional programming languages, such as Haskell, are, in principle, well placed to take advantage of this trend, offering the ability to easily identify large amounts of fine-grained parallelism. Unfortunately, obtaining real performance benefits has often proved hard to realise in practice. This paper reports on a new approach using middleware that has been constructed using the Eden parallel dialect of Haskell. Our approach is ``low pain'' in the sense that the programmer constructs a parallel program by inserting a small number of higher-order algorithmic skeletons at key points in the program. It is ``high gain'' in the sense that we are able to get good parallel speedups. Our approach is unusual in that we do not attempt to use shared memory directly, but rather coordinate parallel computations using a message-passing implementation. This approach has a number of advantages. Firstly, coordination, i.e. locking and communication, is both confined to limited shared memory areas, essentially the communication buffers, and is also isolated within well-understood libraries. Secondly, the coarse thread granularity that we obtain reduces coordination overheads, so locks are normally needed only on (relatively large) messages, and not on individual data items, as is often the case for simple shared-memory implementations. Finally, cache coherency requirements are reduced since individual tasks do not share caches, and can garbage collect independently. We report results for two representative computational algebra problems. Computational algebra is a challenging application area that has not been widely studied in the general parallelism community. Computational algebra applications have high computational demands, and are, in principle, often suitable for parallel execution, but usually display a high degree of irregularity in terms of both task and data structure. This makes it difficult to construct parallel applications that perform well in practice. Using our system, we are able to obtain both extremely good processor utilisation (97%) and very good absolute speedups (up to 7.7) on an eight-core machine.
Efficient Protocols for Identifying the Missing Tags in a Large RFID System

Compared to the classical barcode system, radio frequency identification (RFID) extends the operational distance from inches to a number of feet (passive RFID tags) or even hundreds of feet (active RFID tags). Their wireless transmission, processing, and storage capabilities enable them to support full automation of many inventory management functions in industry. This paper studies the practically important problem of monitoring a large set of active RFID tags and identifying the missing ones-the objects that the missing tags are associated with are likely to be missing as well. This monitoring function may need to be executed frequently and therefore should be made efficient in terms of execution time in order to avoid disruption of normal inventory operations. Based on probabilistic methods, we design a series of missing-tag identification protocols that employ novel techniques to reduce the execution time. Our best protocol reduces the time for detecting the missing tags by an order of magnitude when compared to existing protocols.
Laparoscopic Treatment of 1522 Adnexal Masses: An 8-Year Experience

Objective. To reevaluate the long-term effectiveness and safety of laparoscopy in benign ovarian pathology. Materials and Methods. 1522 women with benign adnexal cysts, laparoscopically treated in the 3rd Department of Ob/Gyn, General University hospital “Attikon” and “Lito” Maternity Hospital between July 1998 and December 2006, were included. Results. The diagnosis in 1222 (80,6%) cases was endometriosis of the ovary, 60 (4%) hydrosalpinx, 51 (3,3%) serous cystadenomas, 44 (2,9%) dermoid ovarian cyst, 38 (2,5%) borderline tumors, 35 (2,3%) unruptured follicles, and 33 (2,2%) paraovarian cysts. In 174 cases (11,5%) laparoscopy was converted to laparotomy due to technical difficulties or suspicion of cancer. In particular, laparotomy was performed in 119 (8%) women due to severe adhesions and 18 (1,2%) women due to bleeding that could not be controlled safely by laparoscopy. In 36 (2,4%) women frozen section during operation revealed malignancy and laparoscopy was converted to laparotomy. A few operative complications were recorded like post-op fever, small hematomas at the trocar entries. Conclusions. Laparoscopic surgery seems to offer significant advantages such as reduced hospital stay, less adverse effects, better quality of life, and superior vision especially on surgical treatment of cases like endometriosis.
Complete genome analysis of hepatitis B virus in human immunodeficiency virus infected and uninfected South Africans

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections are highly endemic in South Africa. Data on the complete genome sequences of HBV in HIV‐positive patients in South Africa are scanty. This study characterized the complete HBV genome isolated from both HIV‐positive and negative patients at the Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital (DGMAH), Pretoria. Serum samples from nine (five HIV‐positive and four HIV‐negative) patients attending the DGMAH from 2007 to 2011 were serologically tested, amplified, and sequenced for complete genome. Phylogenetic tree was constructed using MEGA6.0. Mutations were analyzed by comparing the sequences with genotype‐matched GenBank references. Eight patients were HBsAg positive, with only one from the HIV positive group being negative. Phylogenetic analysis of the complete genome sequences classified them into five genotypes; A1 (n = 4), A2 (n = 1), C1 (n = 2), D1 (n = 1), and D3 (n = 1). Deletions up to 35 nucleotides in length were identified in this study. No drug resistance mutations were identified in the P ORF, while the L217R mutation was identified in one subgenotype A2 sequence. The double (A1762T/G1764A) and triple (T1753C/A1762T/G1764A) mutations in the Basal core promoter were identified in four and two sequences, respectively. In the core region, mutation G1888A was identified in four of the subgenotype A1 sequences. In conclusion, this study has added to the limited South African data on HBV genotypes and mutations in HBV/HIV co‐infected and HBV mono‐infected patients, based on complete HBV genome analysis. Subgenotype A1 was predominant, and no drug‐resistant mutants were detected in the study. J. Med. Virol. 88:1560–1566, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
How Chaos Arises from a Homoclinic Flip Bifurcation

Homoclinic bifurcations are organizing centers for the creation of chaotic dynamics. We study a specific homoclinic bifurcation called a homoclinic flip bifurcation of case C, where a homoclinic orbit to a saddle equilibrium with real eigenvalues changes from being orientable to nonorientable. This bifurcation is of codimension two, meaning that it can be found as a bifurcation point on a curve of homoclinic bifurcations in a suitable two-parameter plane. In fact, this is the lowest codimension for a homoclinic bifurcation of a real saddle that generates chaotic behavior in the form of (suspended) Smale horseshoes and strange attractors. We present a detailed study of how global stable and unstable manifolds of the saddle equilibrium and of bifurcating periodic orbits interact in the unfolding of the homoclinic flip bifurcation of case C. This represents the next and final step in understanding the generic cases of homoclinic flip bifurcations, which started with the study of the simpler cases A and B. In a threedimensional vector field due to Sandstede, we compute relevant bifurcation curves in the two-parameter bifurcation diagram near the central codimension-two bifurcation in unprecedented detail. We present representative images of invariant manifolds, computed with a boundary value problem setup, both in phase space and as intersection sets with a suitable sphere. In this way, we are able to identify infinitely many cascades of homoclinic bifurcations that accumulate on specific codimension-one heteroclinic bifurcations between an equilibrium and various saddle periodic orbits. Our computations confirm what is known from theory but also show the existence of different phenomena that were not considered before. Specifically, we identify the boundaries of the Smale– horseshoe region in the parameter plane, one of which creates a strange attractor of Rössler type. The computation of a winding number reveals a complicated overall bifurcation structure that involves infinitely many further homoclinic flip bifurcations associated with so-called homoclinic bubbles. Keywords— global invariant manifolds, homoclinic tangencies, homoclinic and heteroclinic bifurcations, inclination flip, saddle periodic orbits, chaos
estudo comparativo das normas de um conjunto de 400 figuras entre crianças brasileiras e americanas A comparative study of norms for a 400 picture set between brazilian and north american children

Objective: This study compared Brazilian and North American children regarding naming, familiarity and visual complexity of a set of 400 pictures. Methods: Thirty-six Brazilian children (18 boys) aged 5 to 7 were evaluated. Their characteristics and the study procedure and measures were the same as those employed for the North American population enabling direct comparison of data from the two samples through Spearman rho correlations and Student t tests. Results: Positive significant correlations between overall results of Brazilian and North American children were observed for all measures. Qualitative analysis showed that both groups gave modal names that differed from the intended names for the same 59 pictures. The Brazilian children named 72 pictures differently from the intended names that were correctly named by the North American children, who named 26 pictures differently from the intended names that were correctly named by the Brazilians. Conclusion: The 400 picture set was shown to be an adequate tool for use in different cultures. However, it is advisable to avoid pictures that produced naming inconsistencies by the Brazilian and North American children in studies in other cultures with the same age group until specific norms are made available.
An extension of the NIG-S&ARCH model with an application to Value at Risk

A new model for conditional skewness and kurtosis based on the Normal Inverse Gaussian (NIG) distribution is proposed. The new model and two previously used NIG models are evaluated by their Value at Risk (VaR) forecasts on a long series of daily Standard and Poor’s 500 returns. All three models perform very well compared to extant models and clearly outperform a Gaussian GARCH model. Moreover, the results show that only the new model produces satisfactory VaR forecasts for both 1% and 5% VaR.
p53 Gene Mutation in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Induced by 2‐Amino‐3‐methylimidazo[4,5‐f]quinoline in Nonhuman Primates

2‐Amino‐3‐methylimidazo[4,5‐f]quinoline (IQ) is one of several heterocyclic amines formed during the cooking of proteinaceous foods. IQ is a potent carcinogen in rodent bioassays and causes a high incidence of hepatocellular carcinomas in nonhnman primates. We examined 20 hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs) from nonhuman primates for mutations of the p53 gene using polymerase chain reaction‐single strand conformational polymorphism analysis. Mutations in the p53 gene were detected in 4 of 20 HCCs (20%) with 3 showing G‐to‐T transversions and one a G‐to‐A transition. Three of these mutations were observed in codons 175 and 248 that are known mutational hot spots in human cancers. These data indicate that part of the IQ‐induced HCCs in nonhuman primates may involve inactivation of the p53 gene and suggest that IQ and possibly other heterocyclic amines may participate in human carcinogenesis by a similar mechanism.
On tackling virtual data center embedding problem

Virtualizing data center networks has been considered a feasible alternative to satisfy the requirements of advanced cloud services. Proper mapping of virtual data center (VDC) resources to their physical counterparts, also known as virtual data center embedding, can impact the revenue of cloud providers. Similar to virtual networks, the problem of mapping virtual requests to physical infrastructures is known to be NPhard. Although some proposals have come up with heuristics to cope with the complexity of the embedding process focusing on virtual machine placement, these solutions ignore the correlation among other data resources, such as switches and storage. In this paper, we propose a new embedding solution for data centers that, in addition to virtual machine placement, explicitly considers the relation between switches and links, allows multiple resources of the same request to be mapped to a single physical resource, and reduces resource fragmentation in terms of CPU. Simulations show that our solution results in high acceptance ratio of VDC requests, improves utilization of the physical substrate, and generates increased revenue for infrastructure providers.
Tertiary Denitrification of the Secondary Effluent by Denitrifying Biofilters Packed with Different Sizes of Quartz Sand

Tertiary denitrification of the secondary effluent in wastewater treatment plants is necessary to control the eutrophication of receiving water bodies. Two denitrifying biofilters (DNBF), one packed with quart sand with sizes of 2–4 mm (DNBFS) and the other of 4–6 mm (DNBFL), were operated for tertiary denitrification under empty bed retention times (EBRTs) of 30 min, 15 min and 7.5 min, respectively. Under EBRTs of 30 min, 15 min and 7.5 min, the NO3−-N removal percentages were 93%, 82% and 83% in DNBFS, and were 92%, 68% and 36% in DNBFL, respectively. The nitrogen removal loading rates increased with decreasing EBRTs, and at the EBRT of 7.5 min, the rate was 2.15 kg/(m3·d) in DNBFS and 1.08 kg/(m3·d) in DNBFL. The half-order denitrification coefficient of DNBFS increased from 0.42 (mg/L)1/2/min at the EBRT of 30 min to 0.70 (mg/L)1/2/min at the EBRT of 7.5 min, while did not vary much in DNBFL with values from 0.22 to 0.25 (mg/L)1/2/min. The performance of both DNBFs was stable within each backwashing cycle, with the NO3−-N removal percentage variation within 5%. Better denitrification was achieved in DNBFS but with a slightly high decreased flow rate during the operation.