Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gender Difference in the Association of Metabolic Syndrome and Its Components with Age-Related Cataract: The Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2008-2010

Purpose To explore the relationship of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and its components with age-related cataract in a representative Korean population. Methods We analyzed the data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (2008–2010). A total of 11,076 adults (4,811 men and 6,265 women) aged 40 and over who completed ophthalmologic examination were evaluated. Cataract was defined as the presence of cortical, nuclear, anterior (sub)capsular or posterior subcapsular cataract, from slit-lamp examination or previous cataract surgery. MetS was defined according to the Joint Interim Statement proposed in 2009 from the International Diabetes Federation and the American Heart Association/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Results The prevalence of cataract and MetS in this population was 39.4% (37.1% for men and 41.6% for women) and 38.5% (37.6% for men and 39.4% for women), respectively. Cataract prevalence tended to increase with the number of MetS components in both genders (both P< 0.001). After being controlled for confounders, however, MetS was significantly associated with cataract only in women (adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 1.24; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02–1.50]. Reduced HDL cholesterol, elevated fasting glucose, and elevated triglycerides were also significantly associated with cataract in women (aOR, 95% CI; 1.27 (1.07–1.50), 1.23 (1.01–1.50), and 1.26 (1.04–1.52), respectively). In the subgroup analysis for cataract subtype, MetS and reduced HDL cholesterol were significantly associated with nuclear cataract in women (aOR, 95% CI; 1.25 (1.07–1.55) and 1.25 (1.03–1.52), respectively). However, such associations were not found in men. Conclusions Our results suggest that MetS and its components appear to be associated with age-related cataract only among Korean women, especially in nuclear cataract.
Filter design with Craziness based Particle Swarm Optimization Technique

based particle swarm optimization (CRPSO) technique for designing the 8th order low pass Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter. CRPSO, the much improved version of PSO, is a population based global heuristic search algorithm which finds near optimal solution in terms of a set of filter coefficients. Effectiveness of this algorithm is justified with a comparative study of some well established algorithms, namely, real coded genetic algorithm (RGA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Simulation results affirm that the proposed algorithm CRPSO, outperforms over its counterparts not only in terms of quality output i.e. sharpness at cutoff , pass band ripple, stop band ripple, and stop band attenuation but also in convergence speed with assured stability.
DETECTABILITY AND ERROR ESTIMATION IN ORBITAL FITS OF RESONANT EXTRASOLAR PLANETS

We estimate the conditions for detectability of two planets in a 2/1 mean-motion resonance from radial velocity data, as a function of their masses, number of observations and the signal-to-noise ratio. Even for a data set of the order of 100 observations and standard deviations of the order of a few meters per second, we find that Jovian-size resonant planets are difficult to detect if the masses of the planets differ by a factor larger than ∼4. This is consistent with the present population of real exosystems in the 2/1 commensurability, most of which have resonant pairs with similar minimum masses, and could indicate that many other resonant systems exist, but are currently beyond the detectability limit. Furthermore, we analyze the error distribution in masses and orbital elements of orbital fits from synthetic data sets for resonant planets in the 2/1 commensurability. For various mass ratios and number of data points we find that the eccentricity of the outer planet is systematically overestimated, although the inner planet's eccentricity suffers a much smaller effect. If the initial conditions correspond to small-amplitude oscillations around stable apsidal corotation resonances, the amplitudes estimated from the orbital fits are biased toward larger amplitudes, in accordance to results found in real resonant extrasolar systems.
Developmentally Regulated Chromosome Fragmentation Linked to Imprecise Elimination of Repeated Sequences in Paramecia

ABSTRACT The chromosomes of ciliates are fragmented at reproducible sites during the development of the polyploid somatic macronucleus, but the mechanisms involved appear to be quite diverse in different species. In Paramecium aurelia, the process is imprecise and results in de novo telomere addition at locally heterogeneous positions. To search for possible determinants of chromosome fragmentation, we have studied an ∼21-kb fragmentation region from the germ line genome of P. primaurelia. The mapping and sequencing of alternative macronuclear versions of the region show that two distinct multicopy elements, a minisatellite and a degenerate transposon copy, are eliminated by an imprecise mechanism leading either to chromosome fragmentation and the formation of new telomeres or to the rejoining of flanking sequences. Heterogeneous internal deletions occur between short direct repeats containing TA dinucleotides. The complex rearrangement patterns produced vary slightly among genetically identical cell lines, show non-Mendelian inheritance during sexual reproduction, and can be experimentally modified by transformation of the maternal macronucleus with homologous sequences. These results suggest that chromosome fragmentation in Paramecium is the consequence of imprecise DNA elimination events that are distinct from the precise excision of single-copy internal eliminated sequences and that target multicopy germ line sequences by homology-dependent epigenetic mechanisms.
A 100×100 pixel silicon retina for gradient extraction with steering filter capabilities and temporal output coding

A 100/spl times/100 pixel analog very large scale integration retina is proposed to extract the magnitude and direction of spatial gradients contained in sensed images. The retina implements in a massively parallel fashion, at pixel level, an algorithm based on the concept of steerable filters to compute the gradients. An output rate of up to 1000 frames per second is achieved in a standard CMOS 0.5 /spl mu/m process. The retina provides address-event coded output on two asynchronous buses, one dedicated to the the gradient's direction and another to the gradient's magnitude. The gradient information is temporally ordered from the largest to the smallest gradient's magnitude. Rationales for such an order are borrowed from information theory. Precise timing of the address events is controlled by a decreasing threshold function, whose slope can be dynamically modified to regulate the data flow on the communication bus so as to reduce the number of collisions. Quantitative experimental results from a fully functional silicon demonstrator are presented.
Topology Analysis of Social Networks Extracted from Literature

In a world where complex networks are an increasingly important part of science, it is interesting to question how the new reading of social realities they provide applies to our cultural background and in particular, popular culture. Are authors of successful novels able to reproduce social networks faithful to the ones found in reality? Is there any common trend connecting an author’s oeuvre, or a genre of fiction? Such an analysis could provide new insight on how we, as a culture, perceive human interactions and consume media. The purpose of the work presented in this paper is to define the signature of a novel’s story based on the topological analysis of its social network of characters. For this purpose, an automated tool was built that analyses the dialogs in novels, identifies characters and computes their relationships in a time-dependent manner in order to assess the network’s evolution over the course of the story.
On the asymptotic variance in the central limit theorem for particle filters

Particle filters algorithms approximate a sequence of distributions by a sequence of empirical measures generated by a population of simulated particles. In the context of Hidden Markov Models (HMM), they provide approximations of the distribution of optimal filters associated to these models. Given a set of observations, the asymptotic behaviour of particle filters, as the number of particles tends to infinity, has been studied: a central limit theorem holds with an asymptotic variance depending on the fixed set of observations. In this paper we establish, under general assumptions on the hidden Markov model, the tightness of the sequence of asymptotic variances when considered as functions of the random observations as the number of observations tends to infinity. We discuss our assumptions on examples and provide numerical simulations. The case of the Kalman filter is treated separately.
Nature-Inspired Clustering Algorithms for Web Intelligence Data

Clustering algorithms are an important component of data mining technology which has been applied widely in many applications including those that operate on Internet. Recently a new line of research namely Web Intelligence emerged that demands for advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms for supporting knowledge discovery mainly in the Web environment. The so called Web Intelligence data are known to be dynamic, loosely structured and consists of complex attributes. To deal with this challenge standard clustering algorithms are improved and evolved with optimization ability by swarm intelligence which is a branch of nature-inspired computing. Some examples are PSO Clustering (C-PSO) and Clustering with Ant Colony Optimization. The objective of this paper is to investigate the possibilities of applying other nature-inspired optimization algorithms (such as Fireflies, Cuckoos, Bats and Wolves) for performing clustering over Web Intelligence data. The efficacies of each new clustering algorithm are reported in this paper, and in general they outperformed C-PSO.
Data in Everyday Life: Visualizing Time-Varying Data on a Calendar

A BSTRACT Designing visualization for everyday life is challenging, yet design approaches in this field are not well explored. We propose a design approach that implements data as additional media in an existing information ecosystem rather than within a stand-alone application, hoping to enhance on-going awareness and lower the cost of long-term maintenance. This approach was implemented as a web application that integrates time-varying data as an additional visualization layer in a personal digital calendar. We suggest that personal digital calendars can provide personal context to assist with data interpretation and can lower the barriers of accessing data without interfering with daily routines. We deployed our prototype in two pilot field studies, with data streams from household electricity meters and Fitbit devices, respectively. The preliminary results were encouraging. As a different approach towards designing visualizations that can fit into people’s routines, we hope our work can inspire future exploration of design approaches that can bring the power of visualization to people’s everyday lives.
Effect of an Oral Hygienic Care Program for Stroke Patients in the Intensive Care Unit

Purpose The effects of an oral hygienic care program (OHCP) have been reported in several diseases. However, no study exists investigating the influence of an OHCP on stroke patients or patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) has been reported, thus we sought to investigate the potential effect of an OHCP. Materials and Methods Fifty-six consecutive stroke patients who were admitted to the ICU were randomly assigned to two groups: the intervention (29 patients) and control groups (27 patients). The OHCP included tooth brushing with an inter-dental brush and tongue cleaner and cleaning with chlorhexidine was administered to patients by one dentist once per day during admission in the ICU (mean, 2.2 weeks). The plague index, gingival index, clinical attachment loss, and colonization degree of candida albicans were assessed. Results After OHCP, the plaque index, gingival index, and colonization degree of candida albicans in saliva showed a significant decrease in the intervention group compared to those of the control group (p<0.05). However, no significant difference was observed in clinical attachment loss and the colonization degree of candida albicans on the tongue (p>0.05). Conclusion Our OHCP was effective in improving the oral hygienic status and periodontal health of stroke patients during their stay in the ICU. Therefore, we recommend administration of the OHCP for stroke patients during their stay in the ICU.
An intelligent key related attack using NSGA II algorithm

Growing in cyber attacks has driven a growth in demand for network security. Cryptology is the science of secret communication systems including cryptography and cryptanalysis. Different heuristic and meta heuristic algorithms has been used for cryptanalysis and certainly one of the most important one is GA. Usually N-gram and Dictionary attack are used to have a suitable fitness and best chromosomes which are time consuming and poor performance methods. In this paper a new method is proposed that not only improve performance of analysis but also it needs time not much as mentioned methods. NSGA-II (one of the most important multi-objective GAs) is used for better key evaluation and increasing the accuracy and performance. This analysis has been employed on a substitution cipher and some good results achieved.
Assessing Software Quality by Program Clustering and Defect Prediction

Many empirical studies have shown that defect prediction models built on product metrics can be used to assess the quality of software modules. So far, most methods proposed in this direction predict defects by class or file. In this paper, we propose a novel software defect prediction method based on functional clusters of programs to improve the performance, especially the effort-aware performance, of defect prediction. In the method, we use proper-grained and problem-oriented program clusters as the basic units of defect prediction. To evaluate the effectiveness of the method, we conducted an experimental study on Eclipse 3.0. We found that, comparing with class-based models, cluster-based prediction models can significantly improve the recall (from 31.6% to 99.2%) and precision (from 73.8% to 91.6%) of defect prediction. According to the effort-aware evaluation, the effort needed to review code to find half of the total defects can be reduced by 6% if using cluster-based prediction models.
Analysis of a silica cladded silicon nanowire having a deep sub-wavelength central air hole

This paper presents different properties of silicon nanowire when a hole of sub-wavelength diameter is introduced in the central region. The analysis has been carried out using edge element based vector finite element method (FEM). It has been found that the light enhancement and the average mode intensity are higher within smaller holes. The nonlinear coefficient and the group velocity dispersion are also calculated which appear to be very promising for varieties of applications.
High speed content addressable memory with reduced size and less power consumption

Content Addressable Memory is a data storage device that is widely used in many applications. It is especially used in areas needing fast memory access. However, due to use of parallel based search approach and frequent charge and discharge of Match lines and Bit lines/ search lines; the power consumption of CAM is considerable. This paper presents a new cell design for reduction in power consumption of Ternary Content Addressable Memory over the chip. TCAM design techniques at the architectural level are reviewed and an optimized solution is provided. The size of CAM cell is further reduced with better speed and less power consumption as compared to previously implemented designs. A novel ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) cell is proposed that can be used both as Binary CAM and Ternary CAM. The proposed design can be utilized as per needs and requirements of the designers.
Genetic, biochemical, and cross-resistance studies with mutants of Chinese hamster ovary cells resistant to the anticancer drugs, VM-26 and VP16-213.

The effects of the anticancer drugs 4′-demethylepipodophyllotoxin thenylidene β-d-glucoside and 4′-demethylepipodophyllotoxin ethylidene β-d-glucoside on the growth and viability of Chinese hamster ovary cells have been examined. Stable mutants which are from 4- to 12-fold more resistant to these drugs ( VpmR mutants) are obtained in a single selection step in Chinese hamster ovary cells at a frequency of between 0.2 × 10-6 and 0.5 × 10-6. However, treatment of cells with the mutagen ethyl methanesulfonate (300 µg/ml for 20 hr) increased the frequency of resistant mutants by about 20- to 30-fold in different experiments. The two VpmR mutants which have been studied in detail exhibited significantly increased cross-resistance to a number of anticancer drugs and other compounds, including actinomycin D, Adriamycin, bruceantin, chromomycin A3, colchicine, daunomycin, ellipticine, ethidium bromide, 5-fluorouracil, ftorafur, mithramycin, puromycin, and vinblastine. However, the level of resistance of these mutants towards several podophyllotoxin derivatives (namely, podophyllotoxin, 4′-demethylepipodophyllotoxin, and podophyllotoxin β-d-glucoside) and a number of other anticancer drugs, namely, 9-β-d-arabinofuranosyladenine, chlorambucil, hexamethylmelamine, hydroxyurea, maytansine, methotrexate, methylglyoxal (bis)guanylhydrazone, mitomycin C, and taxol, was found to be unaltered. Interestingly, the sensitivity of the above mutant cell lines toward a number of other anticancer drugs, namely, bleomycin, cis -diamminedichloroplatinum(II), and 1-β-d-arabinofuranosylcytosine, was found to be enhanced in comparison to the parental cells. The mutant cell lines showed reduced uptake of [3H]daunomycin in comparison to the sensitive cells, and this result, together with the cross-resistance of the mutants to unrelated drugs, indicates that the genetic lesion in these mutants is most probably affecting the membrane permeability of various drugs. In cell hybrids formed between the resistant and the sensitive cells, the drug-resistant phenotype of both of the above mutants behaved in a codominant manner. The results of these studies are discussed in relation to the mechanism of action of 4′-demethylepipodophyllotoxin thenylidene β-d-glucoside and 4′-demethylepipodophyllotoxin ethylidene β-d-glucoside.
An Area-Efficient CMOS Bandgap Reference Utilizing a Switched-Current Technique

An area-efficient CMOS bandgap reference (BGR) with switched-current and current-memory techniques is presented. The proposed circuit uses only one parasitic bipolar transistor to generate a reference voltage so that significant area reduction can be achieved. In addition, bipolar transistor device mismatch can be eliminated. The circuit produces an output of about 650 mV, and simulated results show that the temperature coefficient of the output is less than 10.4 ppm/°C in the temperature range from 0°C to 100°C. The average current consumption is about 49.5 μA in the above temperature range. Furthermore, the output can be set to almost any value. The circuit was designed and simulated in 0.25- μm CMOS technology. The layout occupies less than 0.0011 mm2 (100 μm × 110 μm).
Psychiatry and the Myth of “Medicalization”

Whatever happened to common sense? You know what I mean—these psychiatrists medicalize every ordinary feeling and behavior, every normal stress and strain of living. Why, the way they want to call ordinary shyness “Social Anxiety Disorder,” or ordinary grief “Major Depressive Disorder”—it’s ridiculous! These so-called diagnoses are just false positives—not cases of disease or disorder. These self-appointed experts keep invading the territory of normal human experience like conquistadors! Then they prescribe all kinds of harmful medications for nonexistent diseases. And now, they are expanding their diagnostic system, to the point where nobody is normal anymore!
Crossing the Shapeless River on a Government Craft: How Military-Affiliated Students Navigate Community College Transfer

ABSTRACT Many community college entrants, attracted by these institutions’ variety of academic offerings and low cost, intend to earn a baccalaureate degree but never transfer to a four-year institution. A growing number of researchers seek to understand transfer patterns and behavior, but they often overlook some student groups, including those who receive military benefits. Military-affiliated students may fail to transfer at the same rate as their peers, or their unique supports may help them navigate the transfer process more successfully. In this paper, we draw from three years of longitudinal qualitative interviews to investigate the transfer journey of 16 veterans and active duty soldiers in Central Texas, as well as the experiences of nonveteran students who have access to family members’ veterans’ benefits. We focus on the institutional factors and the individual characteristics that contribute to transfer. Our findings suggest that receiving military benefits increases students’ interactions with college staff, limits financial pressures, and encourages students to pursue behaviors that may contribute to a successful transfer process. We conclude with suggestions for practice and future research.
Plans should abstractly describe intended behavior

Planning is the process of formulating a potential course of action. How courses of action (plans) produced by a planning module are represented and how they are used by execution-oriented modules of a complex agent to influence or dictate behavior are critical architectural issues. In contrast to the traditional model of plans as executable programs that dictate precise behaviors, we claim that autonomous agents inhabiting dynamic, unpredictable environments can make better use of plans that only abstractly describe their intended behavior. Such plans only influence or constrain behavior, rather than dictating it. This idea has been discussed in a variety of contexts, but it is seldom incorporated into working complex agents. Experiments involving instantiations of our Adaptive Intelligent Systems architecture in a variety of domains have demonstrated the generality and usefulness of the approach, even with our currently simple plan representation and mechanisms for plan following. The behavioral benefits include (1) robust improvisation of goal-directed behavior in response to dynamic situations, (2) ready exploitation of dynamically acquired knowledge or behavioral capabilities, and (3) adaptation based on dynamic aspects of coordinating diverse behaviors to achieve multiple goals. In addition to these run-time advantages, the approach has useful implications for the designmore » and configuration of agents. Indeed, the core ideas of the approach are natural extensions of fundamental ideas in software engineering. « less