Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environment modeling with stereo vision

We consider the problem of creating compact surface-based environment models from stereo vision images taken from a stereo-camera equipped mobile robot. The stereo images can be quite complex and correlation stereo suffers from considerable noise at ranges over a few metres. We construct the environment models by segmenting the scene viewed from a stereo camera into rectangular planar surfaces through the use of the patchlets surface element data structure. Patchlets are the projection of the stereo pixels onto detected surfaces in the scene. They have position, orientation, size and sensor-based confidence measures. The confidence measures allow proper weighting of patchlet parameters when aggregating patchlets into larger surfaces.
Health‐related quality of life in a cohort of adult patients with mild hemophilia A

Summary. Objectives: To compare the health‐related quality of life among adult males affected with mild hemophilia A due to the same mutation (Val2016ala) to that of unaffected age and sex matched controls from the same general population. Methods: The Short‐Form 36 (SF‐36) and Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) were used to measure health‐related quality of life and physical function. Other measures included bleeding history, a measure of joint damage, body mass index, age, and viral infection status. Cross‐sectional data were collected through research clinics and a retrospective chart audit over a two‐year period. Results and Conclusions: The study included 47 affected males and 33 controls. The affected males had a higher level of co‐morbidity, prior bleeding, and existing joint damage than controls. With the exception of the social function and health transition scales, mean scores for each of the SF‐36 domains were worse among affected males. Mean differences were more than a clinically important five points in five of eight domains, with the general health scale showing more than a 10‐point difference. Despite the degree of difference noted, only two of the differences were statistically significant (general health and role emotional scales) because of the small sample size and considerable individual variation in SF‐36 scale scores. Multiple regression analyses suggested existing joint damage and presence of heart disease as the strongest associates of lower physical health‐related quality of life. Joint damage in turn was partly related to prior hemarthroses. Compared to the Canadian population, affected males had lower scores in six out of eight SF‐36 domains as well as the physical component summary score. There were no significant differences found in the HAQ scores between the two groups. So‐called mild hemophilia A was associated with a negative effect on physical health‐related quality of life, contributed to by joint damage as a result of prior bleeding.
Role of I-region gene products in macrophage induction of an antibody response. II. Restriction at the level of T cell in recognition of I-J- subregion macrophage determinants

The effect of specific anti-I-J reagents on macrophage-T cell interactions was studied in an in vitro antibody response to burro erythrocytes. Macrophages were prepared from the spleens of F1 hybrid mice whose parental strains differed at the I-J subregion. Two F1 hybrids were used for these experiments, [B10.A(3R) X B10.A(5R)]F1 and [B10.S(9R) X B10.HTT]F1. F1 macrophages responded equally well with F1 T-B cells or with T-B cells of either parental strain. When F1 macrophages were pretreated with anti-I-J serum (without complement) specific for one parental haplotype, they were only able to cooperate with T helper (TH) cells of the unblocked haplotype and with F1 TH cells. Identical results were obtained with (Jb X Jk)F1 and (Js X Jk)F1 mice. The results indicate that TH cells possess genetically restricted receptors for macrophage I-J-subregion gene products and that the interaction between this receptor and the macrophage I-J-subregion determinants is essential for the initiation of a primary in vitro antibody response to an erythrocyte antigen.
JASIST open access

Wikipedia (the “free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit”) is having a huge impact on how a great many people gather information about the world. So, it is important for epistemologists and information scientists to ask whether people are likely to acquire knowledge as a result of having access to this information source. In other words, is Wikipedia having good epistemic consequences? After surveying the various concerns that have been raised about the reliability of Wikipedia, this article argues that the epistemic consequences of people using Wikipedia as a source of information are likely to be quite good. According to several empirical studies, the reliability of Wikipedia compares favorably to the reliability of traditional encyclopedias. Furthermore, the reliability of Wikipedia compares even more favorably to the reliability of those information sources that people would be likely to use if Wikipedia did not exist (viz., Web sites that are as freely and easily accessible as Wikipedia). In addition, Wikipedia has a number of other epistemic virtues (e.g., power, speed, and fecundity) that arguably outweigh any deficiency in terms of reliability. Even so, epistemologists and information scientists should certainly be trying to identify changes (or alternatives) to Wikipedia that will bring about even better epistemic consequences. This article suggests that to improve Wikipedia, we need to clarify what our epistemic values are and to better understand why Wikipedia works as well as it does. Somebody who reads Wikipedia is “rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom,” says Mr. McHenry, Britannica's former editor. “It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him. ” One wonders whether people like Mr. McHenry would prefer there to be no public lavatories at all. The Economist (Vol. 379, April 22, 2006, pp. 14–15) © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Failure mode and effects analysis of the universal anaesthesia machine in two tertiary care hospitals in Sierra Leone

Background Anaesthesia care in developed countries involves sophisticated technology and experienced providers. However, advanced machines may be inoperable or fail frequently when placed into the austere medical environment of a developing country. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a method for engaging local staff in identifying real or potential breakdowns in processes or work systems and to develop strategies to mitigate risks. Methods Nurse anaesthetists from the two tertiary care hospitals in Freetown, Sierra Leone, participated in three sessions moderated by a human factors specialist and an anaesthesiologist. Sessions were audio recorded, and group discussion graphically mapped by the session facilitator for analysis and commentary. These sessions sought to identify potential barriers to implementing an anaesthesia machine designed for austere medical environments—the universal anaesthesia machine (UAM)—and also engaging local nurse anaesthetists in identifying potential solutions to these barriers. Results Participating Sierra Leonean clinicians identified five main categories of failure modes (resource availability, environmental issues, staff knowledge and attitudes, and workload and staffing issues) and four categories of mitigation strategies (resource management plans, engaging and educating stakeholders, peer support for new machine use, and collectively advocating for needed resources). Conclusions We identified factors that may limit the impact of a UAM and devised likely effective strategies for mitigating those risks.
Assessing sensor reliability for multisensor data fusion within the transferable belief model

This paper presents a method for assessing the reliability of a sensor in a classification problem based on the transferable belief model. First, we develop a method for the evaluation of the reliability of a sensor when considered alone. The method is based on finding the discounting factor minimizing the distance between the pignistic probabilities computed from the discounted beliefs and the actual values of data. Next, we develop a method for assessing the reliability of several sensors that are supposed to work jointly and their readings are aggregated. The discounting factors are computed on the basis of minimizing the distance between the pignistic probabilities computed from the combined discounted belief functions and the actual values of data.
Bidirectional Modulation of Hippocampal Long-Term Potentiation under Stress and No-Stress Conditions in Basolateral Amygdala-Lesioned and Intact Rats

Hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) is widely considered as a cellular model for learning and memory formation. We have shown previously that protein synthesis-independent, early dentate gyrus (DG) LTP, lasting ∼4-5 h, can be transformed into a late-LTP with a duration of ≥24 h by a brief acute swim stress experience (high-stress condition). This reinforcement requires the activation of mineralocorticoid receptors and protein synthesis. The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is known to modulate glucocorticoid effects on the consolidation of spatial/contextual memory via a β-adrenergic mechanism. Interestingly, hippocampal DG-LTP can also be indirectly modulated by β-adrenergic and cholinergic/muscarinergic processes. Here, we show that the reinforcement of early-DG-LTP under high-stress conditions depends on the processing of novel spatial/contextual information. Furthermore, this reinforcement was blocked in BLA-lesioned animals compared with sham-operated and intact controls; however, it was not dependent on β-adrenergic or cholinergic/muscarinergic receptor activation. In contrast, under low-stress conditions, the induction of late-LTP in BLA-lesioned animals is facilitated, and this facilitation, again, was dependent on β-adrenergic activation. The data suggest that DG-LTP maintenance can be influenced by the BLA through different mechanisms: a short-lasting corticosterone-dependent and β-adrenergic-independent mechanism and a long-lasting mechanism that facilitated hippocampal β-adrenergic mechanisms.
Patterns of Individual and Population-Level Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy and Risk Factors for Poor Adherence in the First Year of the DART Trial in Uganda and Zimbabwe

Background:Good adherence is essential for successful antiretroviral therapy (ART) provision, but simple measures have rarely been validated in Africa. Methods:This was an observational analysis of an open multicenter randomized HIV/AIDS management trial in Uganda and Zimbabwe. At 4-weekly clinic visits, ART drugs were provided and adherence measured through pill usage and questionnaire. Viral load response was assessed in a subset of patients. Drug possession ratio (percentage of drugs taken between visits) defined complete (100%) and good (≥95%) adherence. Results:In 2957 patients, 90% had pill counts at every visit. Good adherence increased from 87%, 4 weeks after ART initiation, to 94% at 48 weeks, but only 1454 (49%) patients achieved good adherence at every visit in the first year. Complete adherence was associated with 0.32 greater reduction in log10 viral load (95% confidence interval 0.05, 0.60 P = 0.02) and was independently associated with higher baseline CD4 count, starting ART later in the trial, reporting a single regular sexual partner, clinical center, and time on ART. Conclusions:Population level adherence improved over time suggesting an association with clinical experience. Most patients had at least one visit in the year on which they reported not having good adherence, showing the need for continued adherence interventions.
Marital status and survival in patients with cancer.

PURPOSE To examine the impact of marital status on stage at diagnosis, use of definitive therapy, and cancer-specific mortality among each of the 10 leading causes of cancer-related death in the United States. METHODS We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program to identify 1,260,898 patients diagnosed in 2004 through 2008 with lung, colorectal, breast, pancreatic, prostate, liver/intrahepatic bile duct, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, head/neck, ovarian, or esophageal cancer. We used multivariable logistic and Cox regression to analyze the 734,889 patients who had clinical and follow-up information available. RESULTS Married patients were less likely to present with metastatic disease (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 0.83; 95% CI, 0.82 to 0.84; P < .001), more likely to receive definitive therapy (adjusted OR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.51 to 1.56; P < .001), and less likely to die as a result of their cancer after adjusting for demographics, stage, and treatment (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.79 to 0.81; P < .001) than unmarried patients. These associations remained significant when each individual cancer was analyzed (P < .05 for all end points for each malignancy). The benefit associated with marriage was greater in males than females for all outcome measures analyzed (P < .001 in all cases). For prostate, breast, colorectal, esophageal, and head/neck cancers, the survival benefit associated with marriage was larger than the published survival benefit of chemotherapy. CONCLUSION Even after adjusting for known confounders, unmarried patients are at significantly higher risk of presentation with metastatic cancer, undertreatment, and death resulting from their cancer. This study highlights the potentially significant impact that social support can have on cancer detection, treatment, and survival.
BAD LUC@WMT 2016: a Bilingual Document Alignment Platform Based on Lucene

We participated in the Bilingual Document Alignment shared task of WMT 2016 with the intent of testing plain cross-lingual information retrieval platform built on top of the Apache Lucene framework. We devised a number of interesting variants, including one that only considers the URLs of the pages, and that offers — without any heuristic — surprisingly high performances. We finally submitted the output of a system that combines two informations (text and url) from documents and a post-treatment for an accuracy that reaches 92% on the development dataset distributed for the shared task.
Reasoning about learning object metadata for adapting SCORM courseware

In this work the problem of selecting and composing learning resources in the Semantic Web is considered. The starting point is the SCORM framework, used for the representation of learning objects. A proposal is done for describing a learning resource at the knowledge level, in terms of prerequisites and knowledge supplied, in order to enable the use of automated reasoning techniques (like planning) thus achieving forms of adaptation taken from the field of adaptive educational hypermedia. The description of learning strategies at the knowledge level opens the way to Semantic Web scenarios where learning resources are distributed over the network and reasoning systems can automatically select and compose them on-the-fly according to the user’s needs. The advantages are an increase of reuse of the resources and a greater openness.
Metamaterial Dispersion Engineering Concepts and Applications

Metamaterial dispersion engineering is presented as a general concept for engineering the phase versus frequency response of microwave materials and devices. Two categories of metamaterials are considered, composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line and multiscale ferromagnetic nanowire (FMNW) metamaterials. The dispersive Drude properties of CRLH metamaterials are derived and corresponding application examples are described in terms of CRLH dominant Taylor dispersive parameters: a tight broadband coupled-line coupler (phase velocity parameter), an ultra-wideband pulse position modulator transmitter (group velocity parameter), and a leaky-wave antenna based real-time spectrum analyzer (group velocity dispersion parameter). FMNW metamaterials are discussed as a double-Lorentz example of a multiscale metamaterial with unique properties, and their applications are illustrated with the example of a dual-band edge-mode isolator based on the recently discovered double ferromagnetic resonance.
Imaging of Renal Medullary Carcinoma

Renal medullary carcinoma (RMC) is a rare, highly aggressive tumor recognized as an independent pathological entity. African-descent adolescents and young adults with sickle cell hemoglobinopathy are the most affected groups. This rare subtype of renal cell carcinoma has its own morphogenetic and pathological characteristics. The major clinical manifestations include gross hematuria, abdominal or flank pain, and weight loss. The prognosis is very poor, with 95% of cases diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease. In this review, we summarize the morphologic and dynamic characteristics of RMC under various imaging modalities such as ultrasound, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance. Differential diagnosis and management strategies are also discussed.
Scheduling methods for broadcasting multiple continuous media data

Recently, various schemes for broadcasting continuous media data such as music or movies have been studied. These schemes reduce the waiting time for playing the data under the continuity condition, i.e., playing continuous media data without any intermittence until the end of the data. These schemes usually employ multiple channels to broadcast the data. However, most clients are not able to receive data from multiple channels concurrently. In this paper, we propose methods for reducing client waiting time for multiple data via a single channel. In our proposed methods, we divide each data into several segments and produce a schedule that includes the first segment of each data more frequent than the rest. By changing the number of segments according to the playback ratio, client waiting time is effectively reduced.
Component coding, three-item coding, and consensus methods.

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Irrationality of certain p-adic periods for small p

Following Apery's proof of the irrationality of zeta(3), Beukers found an elegant reinterpretation of Apery's arguments using modular forms. We show how Beukers arguments can be adapted to a p-adic setting. In this context, certain functional equations arising from Eichler integrals are replaced by the notion of overconvergent p-adic modular forms, and the periods themselves arise not as coefficients of period polynomials but as constant terms of p-adic Eisenstein series. We prove that the analogue of zeta(3) is irrational for p = 2 and 3, as well as the 2-adic analogue of Catalan's constant.
Global Amphibian Declines, Loss of Genetic Diversity and Fitness: A Review

It is well established that a decrease in genetic variation can lead to reduced fitness and lack of adaptability to a changing environment. Amphibians are declining on a global scale, and we present a four-point argument as to why this taxonomic group seems especially prone to such genetic processes. We elaborate on the extent of recent fragmentation of amphibian gene pools and we propose the term dissociated populations to describe the residual population structure. To put their well-documented loss of genetic diversity into context, we provide an overview of 34 studies (covering 17 amphibian species) that address a link between genetic variation and >20 different fitness traits in amphibians. Although not all results are unequivocal, clear genetic-fitness-correlations (GFCs) are documented in the majority of the published investigations. In light of the threats faced by amphibians, it is of particular concern that the negative effects of various pollutants, pathogens and increased UV-B radiation are magnified in individuals with little genetic variability. Indeed, ongoing loss of genetic variation might be an important underlying factor in global amphibian declines.
No TWEAK for COPD

To the Editor: The therapy with the greatest functional benefit in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is pulmonary rehabilitation [1]; while the mode of action is probably multifactorial the functional benefit of pulmonary rehabilitation is associated with strength gain in the quadriceps [2]. This suggests that muscle hypertrophy, or countering atrophy, could be at least one of the mechanisms through which pulmonary rehabilitation is beneficial. However, despite the success of pulmonary rehabilitation, there are several occasions in which an effective adjunctive drug therapy might have a place in clinical practice; for example in patients who are too unwell to exercise, in patients unwilling or unable to complete pulmonary rehabilitation, or indeed to magnify or extend benefit in those who do. In order to conduct stratified medicine studies of future novel anabolic agents for skeletal muscle dysfunction in COPD, biomarkers to identify potential responders will be required. In particular, it is likely that such therapies may be aimed at subsets of patients with COPD rather than, as is the …
Developing Innovative Technology for Future Personalized Autism Research and Treatment

Rapid developments in technology can be shaped to create a new future for people on the autism spectrum. Before we illustrate that future, consider a common, modernday scenario: A person goes to an unfamiliar clinic or laboratory and is asked to perform a new task with someone they don’t know while wearing possibly uncomfortable medical technology (perhaps with electrodes placed on the body and wires taped to their skin). Their personal information streams down wires to a computer where the data are read by researchers, averaged over a dozen or more people who participated in the same assessment, compared to a control group, and then published in a research article months or perhaps years later. The participant (and/or family) may later read the article and learn, for example, that “the autism group has higher average heart rate” or that “the autism group has more of a specific kind of brain activity,” or something else that supposedly holds for that study group. However, these findings may not actually apply to any one individual who was in the group: their data may appear in significant clusters not numerically in the center, or represent statistical outliers on one or more scales. Scientists know these statistical limitations and are aware that they are trading off conclusions about the individual for conclusions about the group 1 ; however, this represents only one concern with today’s approach. Another