Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transmission Dynamics and Final Epidemic Size of Ebola Virus Disease Outbreaks with Varying Interventions

The 2014 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa was the largest and longest ever reported since the first identification of this disease. We propose a compartmental model for EVD dynamics, including virus transmission in the community, at hospitals, and at funerals. Using time-dependent parameters, we incorporate the increasing intensity of intervention efforts. Fitting the system to the early phase of the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, we estimate the basic reproduction number as 1.44. We derive a final size relation which allows us to forecast the total number of cases during the outbreak when effective interventions are in place. Our model predictions show that, as long as cases are reported in any country, intervention strategies cannot be dismissed. Since the main driver in the current slowdown of the epidemic is not the depletion of susceptibles, future waves of infection might be possible, if control measures or population behavior are relaxed.
Experimental assessment of corneal anisotropy.

PURPOSE To determine the variation of corneal biomechanical properties with anatomical orientation. METHODS Strip specimens extracted from fresh porcine corneas were tested under uniaxial tension with strain rates representing static and dynamic loading conditions. The specimens were extracted from the vertical, horizontal, and 45 degrees diagonal directions. The load elongation results were used to derive the stress-strain behavior of each specimen. The average behavior for specimens taken in each anatomical direction was determined along with the effect of strain rate. Specimens from a small number of human corneas were included in the study to verify the findings. RESULTS Specimens extracted from the vertical direction of porcine and human corneas demonstrated the highest strength (fracture stress) followed by horizontal then diagonal specimens. Vertical specimens were 10% to 20% stronger than horizontal specimens in porcine and human corneas. At low strain rates (1%/min), vertical specimens displayed similar stiffness (resistance to deformation) to horizontal specimens but greater stiffness than diagonal specimens. On increasing the strain rate to 500%/min, the stiffness behavior matched that of strength with vertical specimens being 10% to 20% stiffer than horizontal specimens in porcine and human corneas. CONCLUSIONS The corneal anisotropic behavior is compatible with the preferential orientation of stromal fibrils in the vertical and horizontal directions. Quantifying the effect of this nonuniform fibril organization on corneal anisotropic behavior will be useful in developing numerical models of the cornea for applications where its integrity is compromised such as in simulating refractive surgery procedures.
Illumination-Invariant Color Recognition for Mobile Robot Navigation

The changes of the ambient illumination can significantly disturb the color measurement in the image. Abdellatif 1,2) introduced a new approach for color constancy by measuring the illumination from the reflection of a camera-attached surface “nose”. We developed a real time color constancy system based on his theory and used it to navigate an experimental mobile robot in following a colored target. Experiments show that the perceived color of a target is relatively constant, which enabled the mobile robot to track and follow the target.
A comparative analysis of the costs of administration of an OSCE (objective structured clinical examination)

&NA; BACKGROUND. The objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) has become an accepted technique for the evaluation of clinical competence in medicine. Although advances have been made in our knowledge of the psychometric aspects of the OSCE, extremely little has been written about feasibility and cost issues. Given the current economic imperative to control costs and the extremely scant literature on the costs of developing and administering an examination in medicine, the authors felt it timely and relevant to explore issues related to the cost of the OSCE. METHOD. In 1991–92 and in 1992–93, costs and time requirements to implement and administer a structured oral (SO) examination and a six‐station OSCE for a surgical clerkship at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine were gathered by review of invoices, interviews with those involved, and perusal of diaries kept by staff. RESULTS. To develop and administer the six‐station OSCE, 327.5 hours of staff and faculty time were required for each rotation of surgical clerks (8.2 hours per student). The SO examination required 110 hours of staff and faculty time (2.75 hours per student). Direct expenses for the OSCE amounted to U.S. $6.90 per student per station, compared with no direct expense for the SO examination. CONCLUSION. The OSCE was more time‐consuming and more expensive in human and material costs than the SO examination. However, costs of the OSCE can be substantially reduced from approximately U.S. $35 to U.S. ! per student per station if test developers, standardized patients, support staff, and examiners can donate their time. The authors compare the costs and time requirements of their OSCE with those of other OSCEs reported in the literature, and they provide guidelines to assist educators in deciding whether the costs of an OSCE are justifiable in the educators' individual settings.
Coordinated movement, neuromuscular synaptogenesis and trans-synaptic signaling defects in Drosophila galactosemia models.

The multiple galactosemia disease states manifest long-term neurological symptoms. Galactosemia I results from loss of galactose-1-phosphate uridyltransferase (GALT), which converts galactose-1-phosphate + UDP-glucose to glucose-1-phosphate + UDP-galactose. Galactosemia II results from loss of galactokinase (GALK), phosphorylating galactose to galactose-1-phosphate. Galactosemia III results from the loss of UDP-galactose 4'-epimerase (GALE), which interconverts UDP-galactose and UDP-glucose, as well as UDP-N-acetylgalactosamine and UDP-N-acetylglucosamine. UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (UGP) alternatively makes UDP-galactose from uridine triphosphate and galactose-1-phosphate. All four UDP-sugars are essential donors for glycoprotein biosynthesis with critical roles at the developing neuromuscular synapse. Drosophila galactosemia I (dGALT) and II (dGALK) disease models genetically interact; manifesting deficits in coordinated movement, neuromuscular junction (NMJ) development, synaptic glycosylation, and Wnt trans-synaptic signalling. Similarly, dGALE and dUGP mutants display striking locomotor and NMJ formation defects, including expanded synaptic arbours, glycosylation losses, and differential changes in Wnt trans-synaptic signalling. In combination with dGALT loss, both dGALE and dUGP mutants compromise the synaptomatrix glycan environment that regulates Wnt trans-synaptic signalling that drives 1) presynaptic Futsch/MAP1b microtubule dynamics and 2) postsynaptic Frizzled nuclear import (FNI). Taken together, these findings indicate UDP-sugar balance is a key modifier of neurological outcomes in all three interacting galactosemia disease models, suggest that Futsch homolog MAP1B and the Wnt Frizzled receptor may be disease-relevant targets in epimerase and transferase galactosemias, and identify UGP as promising new potential therapeutic target for galactosemia neuropathology.
Parenting Digital Youth: How Now?

This paper gives initial results from a project on family dynamics around digital media use. From a large survey and (ongoing) interviews, we provide a wealth of data on parental concerns and mediation practices with "digital youth" of all ages. "Addiction" is a primary concern. Results underscore the contribution of parenting and family factors in moderating use. The need for better "parental controls" is palpable; we suggest reimagining them as collaborative tools to help train self-regulation.
A method for characterizing basement rocks from borehole images

Abstract Basement rocks tend to have negligible primary (rock matrix) porosity and, where present, almost all porosity is fracture-related. An insight into fracture type and distribution is therefore of importance when attempting to predict potential flow zones in hydrocarbon reservoirs. In the absence of core, borehole images provide a proven means of characterizing fractures within basement rocks. This paper will concentrate upon the classification and characterization of basement structural elements, including fractures, faults and breccias, versus lithological elements, such as foliations and intrusion boundaries from borehole images. In addition, suggestions of how to differentiate present-day in-situ stress indicators from natural fractures will be made as these features may provide important information regarding open fracture set orientations. Examples of microresistivity and acoustic borehole images acquired in fractured igneous basement rocks from oil wells in Yemen will be presented together with a suggested methodology for their interpretation. The discussion will be based on hydrocarbon reservoirs; however, the methodology outlined can potentially have wider applications in, for example, groundwater pollution prevention schemes or groundwater extraction, radioactive waste disposal, geothermal energy resources and deep-drilling research programmes.
Seam carving for media retargeting

Traditional image resizing techniques are oblivious to the content of the image when changing its width or height. In contrast, media (i.e., image and video) retargeting take s content into account. For example, one would like to change the aspect ratio of a video without making human figures look too fat or too skinny, or change the size of an image by automatically removing "unnecessary" portions while keeping the "important" features intact. We propose a simple operator; we term seam carving to support image and video retargeting. A seam is an optimal 1D path of pixels in an image, or a 2D manifold in a video cube, going from top to bottom, or left to right. Optimality is defined by minimizing an energy function that assigns costs to pixels. We show that computing a seam reduces to a dynamic programming problem for images and a graph min-cut search for video. We demonstrate that several image and video operations, such as aspect ratio correction, size change, and object removal, can be recast as a successive operation of the seam carving operator.
Closed-form design of fixed fractional hubert transformer using discrete sine transform

In this paper, the closed-form design of fixed fractional Hilbert transformer (FHT) using discrete sine transform (DST) is presented. First, the DST-based interpolation method is applied to reconstruct the continuous-time signal from the given discrete-time signal. Then, the filter coefficients of the transfer function of fixed FHT are obtained from the DST reconstruction results by using suitable index mapping. The main feature of the proposed method is that the closed-form design can be obtained without performing any optimization procedure. Finally, several numerical examples are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed design method.
[Optical coherence tomography angiography in the diagnosis of neovascular age-related macular degeneration].

AIM to determine optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography signs of classic and occult choroidal neovascularization (CNV) in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and evaluate their information value in monitoring the effect of anti-VEGF therapy. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study enrolled 76 patients (87 eyes), including 68 patients (72 eyes) with wet AMD and 8 patients (15 eyes) with no signs of neovascularization. All patients underwent spectral-domain OCT, OCT angiography, and fluorescein angiography (FA). OCT angiography was used to evaluate neovascular networks in terms of their location, shape, size, and extent of visualization. Sensitivity and specificity of the method were assessed separately in a group of 37 CNV eyes and 15 unsuspicious eyes, specific findings at FA being the main diagnostic criteria. To determine the information value of OCT angiography in monitoring the effect of intravitreal ranibizumab therapy, 9 patients (9 eyes) were selected, in whom the exam was performed the day before the injection and then at days 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31. RESULTS The patients were divided into two groups. Group 1 consisted of 43 eyes with occult CNV, group 2--of 29 eyes with classic CNV. Neovascular loops underneath the retinal pigment epithelium were found in 76.74% of occult CNV cases. In patients with classic CNV, the neovasculature was clearly visible in 82.76% of eyes, loop-like and tree-like networks occurring with similar frequency (51.72% and 42.28% respectively). OCT angiography results obtained prior to and following ranibizumab injection revealed a change in not only the size of neovascularization, but also the density, thickness, and branching pattern of newly formed blood vessels. Sensitivity and specificity of OCT angiography has been shown to be 89.2% and 93.3% respectively. CONCLUSION OCT angiography enables diagnosis of both classic and occult choroidal neovascularization in patients with AMD as well as dynamic assessment of the size of the neovascular complex during anti-VEGF treatment. The method has high sensitivity and specificity.
Local opinion leaders: effects on professional practice and health care outcomes.

BACKGROUND Clinical practice is not always evidence-based and, therefore, may not optimise patient outcomes. Opinion leaders disseminating and implementing 'best evidence' is one method that holds promise as a strategy to bridge evidence-practice gaps. OBJECTIVES To assess the effectiveness of the use of local opinion leaders in improving professional practice and patient outcomes. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched Cochrane EPOC Group Trials Register, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE, HMIC, Science Citation Index, Social Science Citation Index, ISI Conference Proceedings and World Cat Dissertations up to 5 May 2009. In addition, we searched reference lists of included articles. SELECTION CRITERIA Studies eligible for inclusion were randomised controlled trials investigating the effectiveness of using opinion leaders to disseminate evidence-based practice and reporting objective measures of professional performance and/or health outcomes. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Two review authors independently extracted data from each study and assessed its risk of bias. For each trial, we calculated the median risk difference (RD) for compliance with desired practice, adjusting for baseline where data were available. We reported the median adjusted RD for each of the main comparisons. MAIN RESULTS We included 18 studies involving more than 296 hospitals and 318 PCPs. Fifteen studies (18 comparisons) contributed to the calculations of the median adjusted RD for the main comparisons. The effects of interventions varied across the 63 outcomes from 15% decrease in compliance to 72% increase in compliance with desired practice. The median adjusted RD for the main comparisons were: i) Opinion leaders compared to no intervention, +0.09; ii) Opinion leaders alone compared to a single intervention, +0.14; iii) Opinion leaders with one or more additional intervention(s) compared to the one or more additional intervention(s), +0.10; iv) Opinion leaders as part of multiple interventions compared to no intervention, +0.10. Overall, across all 18 studies the median adjusted RD was +0.12 representing a 12% absolute increase in compliance in the intervention group. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS Opinion leaders alone or in combination with other interventions may successfully promote evidence-based practice, but effectiveness varies both within and between studies. These results are based on heterogeneous studies differing in terms of type of intervention, setting, and outcomes measured. In most of the studies the role of the opinion leader was not clearly described, and it is therefore not possible to say what the best way is to optimise the effectiveness of opinion leaders.
Activities and Event-Driven-Based Role Engineering

Many companies adopt authorization management to authorize the appropriate permission for users to operate their resources. After role-based access control (RBAC) is proposed and accepted, companies adopt a role, i.e. job position, to achieve authorization management. Although RBAC has become the preferred approach to managing access control, role engineering is an important process to go through before using RBAC. Role engineering is the process of defining roles and related information as they pertain to the user's functional use. Role engineering is a critical success factor in implementing RBAC. This study proposes activities and event-driven-based role engineering. An event is a routine task, and activities are triggered by events. Roles are created by many overlapping events. Among the roles, events and activities form many to many relationships. Our approach adopts the relationships to define the roles and assign permissions to them. The proposed approach is suitable for organizations attempting to achieve refined role-permission planning, no matter whether or not they are using RBAC.
Direct and Indirect Effects Based on Difference-in-Differences With an Application to Political Preferences Following the Vietnam Draft Lottery

Abstract We propose a difference-in-differences approach for disentangling a total treatment effect within specific subpopulations into a direct effect and an indirect effect operating through a binary mediating variable. Random treatment assignment along with specific common trend and effect homogeneity assumptions identify the direct effects on the always and never takers, whose mediator is not affected by the treatment, as well as the direct and indirect effects on the compliers, whose mediator reacts to the treatment. In our empirical application, we analyze the impact of the Vietnam draft lottery on political preferences. The results suggest that a high draft risk due to the draft lottery outcome leads to an increase in mild preferences for the Republican Party, but has no effect on strong preferences for either party or on specific political attitudes. The increase in Republican support is mostly driven by the direct effect not operating through the mediator that is military service.
COLIBROS: Educational operating system

This paper gives an overview of educational operating system called COLIBROS. It is small, object oriented, library operating system, based on micro-kernel concepts, supporting high level concurrency and synchronization primitives. In fact, COLIBROS is simplified operating system kernel accompanied with hardware emulation layer that emulates keyboard, monitor, disk and interrupt mechanism. A concurrent COLIBROS program behaves like stand alone program executing in emulated environment, in our case as plain GNU/Linux process. Encapsulating all critical concepts in host operating system user space makes COLIBROS development and debugging easier and more user friendly.
Stable Throughput and Delay Analysis of a Random Access Network With Queue-Aware Transmission

In this paper, we consider a two-user and a three-user slotted ALOHA network with multi-packet reception (MPR) capabilities and a queue-aware transmission control. In this setting, the nodes can adapt their transmission probabilities and their transmission parameters based on the status of the other nodes. Each user has external bursty arrivals that are stored in their infinite capacity queues. We focus on the fundamental problem of characterizing the stable throughput region, as well as of investigating the queueing delay. For the two- and the three-user cases, we obtain the exact stability region, whereas in the former case, we also provide the conditions under which the stability region is a convex set. We perform a detailed mathematical analysis to study the queueing delay in the two-user case by formulating two boundary value problems, the solution of which provides the generating function of the joint stationary probability distribution of the queue size at user nodes. Furthermore, for the two-user symmetric case with MPR, we obtain a lower and an upper bound for the average delay without the need of solving a boundary value problem. In addition, we provide a closed form expression for the gap between the lower and the upper bound. The bounds as it is seen in the numerical results appear to be tight. Explicit expressions for the average delay are obtained for the symmetrical model with capture effect. We also provide a closed form expression for the optimal transmission probability that minimizes the average delay in the symmetric capture case. Finally, we evaluate numerically the presented theoretical results.
Treacher Collins syndrome

Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS) is a rare autosomal dominant disorder of craniofacial development. It is a congenital malformation of first and second branchial arch which may affect the size and shape of the ears, eyelids, cheek bones, and jaws. The extent of facial deformity varies from one affected individual to another. A case of 20-year-old boy having TCS is briefly described in this article.
Antarctic Ice Sheet melting in the southeast Pacific

The first oceanographic measurements across a deep channel beneath the calving front of Pine Island Glacier reveal a sub-ice circulation driven by basal melting of 10–12 m yr−1. A salt box model described here gives a melt rate similar to that of ice balance and numerical models, 5–50 times higher than averages for the George VI and Ross Ice Shelves. Melting is fueled by relatively warm Circumpolar Deep Water that floods the deep floor of the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Sea continental shelves, reaching the deep draft of this floating glacier. A revised melt rate for ice shelves in the Southeast Pacific sector raises circumpolar ice shelf melting to 756 Gt yr−1. Given prior estimates of surface accumulation and iceberg calving, this suggests that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently losing mass to the ocean.
Design and Evaluation of Adverb Palette: A GUI for Selecting Tradeoffs in Multi-Objective Optimization Problems

An important part of expressing human intent is identifying acceptable tradeoffs among competing performance objectives. We present and evaluate a set of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), that are designed to allow a human to express intent by expressing desirable tradeoffs. The GUIs require an algorithm that identifies the set of Pareto optimal solutions to the multi-objective decision problem, which means that all the solutions are equally good in the sense that there are no other solutions better for every objective. Given the Pareto set, the GUIs provide different ways for a human to express intent by exploring tradeoffs between objectives; once a tradeoff is selected, the solution is chosen. The GUI designs are applied to interactive human-robot path-selection for a robot in an urban environment, but they can be applied to other tradeoff problems. A user study evaluates GUI designs by requiring users to select a tradeoff that satisfies a specified mission intent. Results of the user study suggest that GUIs designed to support an artist's palette-metaphor can be used to express intent without incurring unacceptable levels of human workload.