Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ABC of sleep disorders. Impact and epidemiology of sleep disorders.

We know that one in seven Americans have a chronic sleep/wake disorder, and although similar data are not available for other Western countries the figures are probably similar. In developing countries factors such as poverty have a profound influence on sleep. In India, for example, it is estimated that one third ofthe population goes to sleep where they are standing when it is time to sleep. Europe has the highest proportion of elderly people, in whom many sleep problems, such as insomnia and sleep apnoea, are more common. When taken together with the fact that hypnotics are among the most widely prescribed drugs, the impact of sleep disorders and their treatment merits particular attention in Western society. The United Kingdom, however, has lagged behind other countries in terms ofdeveloping specialised facilities for treating sleep disorders. At present the impact of sleep disorders on morbidity and mortality is not widely appreciated. This article provides basic information about the epidemiology of a range of sleep disorders and highlights some of the implications of sleep disorders.
Interfaces et capteurs pour une chaine de micro-téléopération. (Sensors and devices for a micro-teleoperation system)

La teleoperation ouvre des possibilite nouvelles d'interaction avec le micro-monde. Avec des systemes adaptes il devient possible de manipuler des elements aux echelles microscopiques. L'ajout d'un retour haptique apporte une information supplementaire necessaire a une interaction naturelle. Cette these aborde la problematique de la conception d'une chaine de teleoperation haptique par la conception de ses elements clefs. La premiere partie decrit l'optimisation de l'interface haptique a un degre de liberte haute fidelite issue des precedents travaux du laboratoire. Un premier travail augmente la precision des efforts produits. Cette amelioration est liee a une optimisation de la mesure de la vitesse de l'interface a des frequences d’echantillonnage elevees. Un second point traite de la validation et quantification precise des forces de l'interface. La deuxieme partie decrit deux nouveaux capteurs de force concu specifiquement pour les interactions avec le micro-monde. Ces fonctionnent sur le meme principe de mesure par compensation. Deux approches sont suivies pour augmenter les frequences des forces mesurable par le capteur. La premiere s'attache a reduire la masse en concevant un nouveau capteur a l'echelle micrometrique avec des technologies MEMS. Une deuxieme approche modifie la conception du capteur et supprime la raideur dans le guidage. La troisieme partie decrit la conception d'une nouvelle interface haptique a plusieurs degres de liberte. Les elements clefs de sa conception sont l'utilisation d'un palier a air, pour un guidage sans frottement, et de moteurs lineaires a induction, pour une inertie reduite.
1 CON : Anesthetic Choice Makes no Difference in Delirium in Cardiac Surgery

A spectrum of adverse neurologic outcomes manifest in the early postoperative period in patients having undergone cardiac surgery. Though stroke can present as a dramatic neurologic catastrophe, it thankfully remains an uncommon, though highly relevant, event with an incidence generally under 5%. (1) Other more subtle adverse outcomes, such as postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) have received considerable attention. (2,3) Somewhere between stroke and POCD, lay other encephalopathic states, with delirium being most notable. Delirium is one of the most common acute neurologic consequences of cardiac surgery but has a widely variable incidence. This variability (reported from 5-80%), is in part due to differences in patient risk factors, but is also due to differences in the diagnostic criteria used to define it. (4-8) When it does occur, it has been associated with significant major morbidity as well as mortality. (9,10) Coupled with this, delirium results in a substantive increase in the utilization of healthcare resources. (11) As a result, post-cardiac surgery delirium is a common problem of major significance impacting quality of recovery, morbidity and mortality, as well as healthcare costs. (9,11,12)
Improved BP Neural Network Controller Based on GA Optimization

BP neural network is a kind of multi-layer network trained by error back propagation algorithm and it can be integrated to genetic algorithm(GA) to obtain an excellent approach for global optimization search and local time-frequency characteristics. For the deficiency of BP network, we propose a BP neural network controller based on improved GA. It designs fitness function based on performance index, adaptive crossover probability, mutation probability, and introduces migration genetic algorithm to effectively hold back precocity and maintain the variety of colony. The method overcome the problems of GA in slow convergence speed, falling into premature convergence, and bad computing stability and so on, which further improves the performance of BP neural network.
LOGICAL NIHILISM: COULD THERE BE NO LOGIC?*

Logical monists and pluralists disagree about how many correct logics there are; the monists say there is just one, the pluralists that there are more. Could it turn out that both are wrong, and that there is no logic at all? Such a view might with justice be called logical nihilism and here I’ll assume a particular gloss on what that means: nihilism is the view that there are no laws of logic, so that all candidates—e.g. the law of excluded middle, modus ponens, disjunctive syllogism et. al.—fail. Nihilism might sound absurd, but the view has come up in recent discussions of logical pluralism. Some pluralists have claimed that different logics are correct for different kinds of case, e.g. classical logic for consistent cases and paraconsistent logics for dialethic ones. Monists have responded by appealing to a principle of generality for logic: a law of logic must hold for absolutely all cases, so that it is only those principles that feature in all of the pluralist’s systems that count as genuine laws of logic. The pluralist replies that the monist’s insistence on generality collapses monism into nihilism, because, they maintain, every logical law fails in some cases. 1(Cotnoir, forthcoming) distinguishes two kinds of logical nihilism, the first of which is the view that natural languages have no correct logic, and the second of which is that the consequence relation is empty. The view I have in mind here is the second. 2Monism has been the default view for many centuries, but it has recently been explicitly defended by Priest (2006). Pluralists include Carnap (1937), Varzi (2002), Beall and Restall (2006), Russell (2008) and Field (2009). There is not much recent mainstream literature on this kind of logical nihilism. Cotnoir (forthcoming) discusses a related view by the same name. Two close relatives of my version of nihilism are defended by Mortensen (1989), one based on the idea that nothing is necessary, the other on the idea that nothing is true in all mathematical models. Mortensen, on my reading, is a nihilist about logical truth, though I am unsure whether he would want to generalise this to logical consequence. Nihilism is also discussed in terms of models in Estrada-González (2015). 3Beall and Restall (2006); Priest (2006); Bueno and Shalkowski (2009); Russell (2013); Cotnoir (forthcoming) 4For example “The obvious reply to this argument is that it is only truth-preservation over all situations that is, strictly speaking, validity. One of the points about deductive logic is that it will work come what may: we do not have to worry about anything except the premises. ” (Priest, 2006:202) 5“. we see no place to stop the process of generalisation and broadening of accounts of
İktisadi Kriz Karşısında ‘Sürdürülebilir’ Refah Devleti

Iktisadi kriz ile refah devleti (RD) arasinda konjonkturel bir iliski vardir. 2008 krizi, RD’ye olan ihtiyaci yeniden artirmistir. Dunyada mevcut her RD (Anglosakson, korporatist, ve Iskandinav tipi) model uygulandigi iktisadi sistemin bir eseridir. Ancak hepsinin ortak ozelligi, en az duzeyde sosyal guvenlik, sosyal yardim ve hizmetleri sunmasidir. Iktisadi krizlerin sosyo-ekonomik esitsizliklere yol acmak gibi ciddi dramatik sonuclari vardir. Bu yuzden RD’nin daha etkin ve surdurulebilirlik yaklasimiyla uygulanmasi gerekmektedir. RD’nin ‘surdurulebilir’ ozellik tasiyabilmesi icin istikrarli hukumetler, comert Keynesci butceler ve ekolojik uretim-tuketim zorunludur. Neoliberal politikalarin etkisi altindaki kuresel dunyada RD’ye karsi bazi cekinceler varolabilir. Turkiye, AB’ye tam uyelik icin “Avrupa Sosyal Şarti”na gore sosyal politikalari surdurmekte israrli olmalidir.
Exploring Hardware Parallelism’s Influence on Programming Through Convolution in CUDA and PyTorch

1 SUMMARY In our final project, we explored programming paradigms for general parallel computing on GPUs. In a world in which performance gains increasingly come from parallel hardware, our goals were (1) to understand how sequential programming paradigms compare to those used on the massively parallel hardware of a GPU and (2) to understand the benefits and drawbacks of the parallel paradigms that seek to replace sequential ones. We began by exploring the historical context of CUDA and GPGPU and by getting an understanding of how parallel hardware architectures influence which programming constructs can be executed efficiently. We then implemented several solutions to a classic parallel problem, image convolution, directly in CUDA and benchmarked against implementations we wrote using PyTorch, cuDNN, and sequential and parallel C++. We found CUDA to be surprisingly natural to use for sequential programmers, even compared to the wrappers that intend to abstract it away. We also found that it offered significantly more freedom in programming patterns by allowing intra-kernel compositionality. We concluded our project by exploring the benefits of that compositionality on programmability and performance by generating the following edge saturation effect.
Dexamethasone suppression test abnormalities in multiple sclerosis

We studied the 1-mg overnight dexamethasone suppression test (DST) in patients with MS. In about 50% of patients, serum cortisol did not fall below 5.0 ug/dl. This percentage was similar in patients with major depression, but contrasted to 11% in normal controls. MS nonsuppressors were not more depressed than suppressors; dexamethasone bioavailability may have contributed because nonsuppressors had lower serum dexamethasone levels than suppressors. Suppressors improved in the week following ACTH therapy; nonsuppressors did not. Furthermore, serum dexamethasone values correlated positively with clinical response to ACTH treatment. The DST may be a useful neuroendocrine test of glucocorticoid sensitivity in MS patients.
A Simple and Efficient Tool for Design Analysis of Synchronous Reluctance Motor

We present an efficient tool for design analysis of a synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM). We use winding function analysis (WFA) instead of finite-element analysis (FEA). With WFA, parameter sensitivity can be analyzed and the effects of parameters on the machine design can be evaluated very rapidly (under linear condition). We investigated the effect of rotor skewing, stator winding chording, pole arc, and interpolar air-gap length on average torque and torque ripple. We compare the results obtained by WFA with those obtained by 2-D FEA. We show that the two methods give approximately the same results but WFA requires less computation time.
Shared Genetic Effects among Measures of Cognitive Function and Leukoaraiosis

The aging process influences cognitive and physical functioning through a variety of biological mechanisms. Multiple facets of cognitive function decline with age, including executive function, memory, language, visuomotor coordination, and information processing speed. Strong epidemiological trends show that areas of brain injury due to ischemic damage also increase with age. Areas of ischemic damage known as leukoaraiosis appear as hyperintense spots on MRI of the white matter of the brain. Leukoaraiosis is a strong predictor of ischemic stroke and vascular dementia, independent of other known risk factors (Markus et al., 2005). It is also strongly associated with cognitive impairment and cognitive decline in individuals who have not yet progressed to dementia (Pantoni et al., 2007; Schmidt et al., 2007). Few studies have examined the genetic contribution to later-age cognitive changes in relationship to markers of subclinical ischemic brain injury such as leukoaraiosis. After increasing age, the main risk factors for leukoaraiosis are elevated blood pressure and lack of hypertension control (van Dijk et al., 2004). However, there is a significant amount of inter-individual variation in leukoaraiosis among subjects with similar duration and severity of hypertension (Schmidt et al., 2004; Szolnoki & Melegh, 2006). Cognitive functioning is also highly variable, and it is likely that genetic variability accounts for a significant portion of the variation in both structural characteristics of the brain such as leukoaraiosis and measures of cognitive function (Deary et al., 2004). In this chapter, we present a review of the biological mechanisms that influence leukoaraiosis and cognitive function, discuss the public health implications of the clinical manifestations of cerebrovascular disease, and explore the broad genetic attributes that explain inter-individual variation and covaraition (i.e., pleiotropy) among these brain traits.
Systematic Review of Prognostic Models in Patients with Acute Stroke

Prognostic models in stroke may be useful in clinical practice and research. We systematically reviewed the methodology and results of studies that have identified independent predictors of survival, independence in activities of daily living, and getting home in patients with acute stroke. Eligible studies (published in full in English) included at least 100 patients in whom at least 3 predictor variables were assessed within 30 days of stroke onset and who were followed up for at least 30 days. We recorded 25 indicators of the validity and practicality of each model and identified variables that were consistent independent predictors of each outcome. Eighty-three separate prognostic models were found but most had potentially serious deficiencies in internal and statistical validity, many had limited generalisability, and none had been adequately validated. Only 4 studies met 8 simple quality criteria. Over 150 different predictor variables have been analysed but most were assessed in only 1 or 2 models. None of the existing prognostic models have been sufficiently well developed and validated to be useful in either clinical practice or research. Better quality models must be produced to enable, for example, adequate case-mix correction when comparing outcome among different groups of stroke patients.
GABA Promotes Human β-Cell Proliferation and Modulates Glucose Homeostasis

γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) exerts protective and regenerative effects on mouse islet β-cells. However, in humans it is unknown whether it can increase β-cell mass and improve glucose homeostasis. To address this question, we transplanted a suboptimal mass of human islets into immunodeficient NOD-scid-γ mice with streptozotocin-induced diabetes. GABA treatment increased grafted β-cell proliferation, while decreasing apoptosis, leading to enhanced β-cell mass. This was associated with increased circulating human insulin and reduced glucagon levels. Importantly, GABA administration lowered blood glucose levels and improved glucose excursion rates. We investigated GABA receptor expression and signaling mechanisms. In human islets, GABA activated a calcium-dependent signaling pathway through both GABA A receptor and GABA B receptor. This activated the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase–Akt and CREB–IRS-2 signaling pathways that convey GABA signals responsible for β-cell proliferation and survival. Our findings suggest that GABA regulates human β-cell mass and may be beneficial for the treatment of diabetes or improvement of islet transplantation.
An Enumeration of RFID Related Threats

In this paper we present a holistic view on RFID security using logical entities that most RFID applications will use. Starting from an abstract model of anRFID-system we propose a generalized threat model for RFID-systems based on the classical terms of information security: confidentiality, availability and integrity. We use the method of attack trees for a listing of threats that apply to RFID-systems. The key benefitis that this threat model enables a systematic analysis of a specific RFID-system's security and it allows to compare the security of RFID-systems. By analyzing this threat listing we show that all parts of an RFID Systemare vulnerable to attacks and a single weakpoint in the system can breach information security.
Germinal center B cell development has distinctly regulated stages completed by disengagement from T cell help

To reconcile conflicting reports on the role of CD40 signaling in germinal center (GC) formation, we examined the earliest stages of murine GC B cell differentiation. Peri-follicular GC precursors first expressed intermediate levels of BCL6 while co-expressing the transcription factors RelB and IRF4, the latter known to repress Bcl6 transcription. Transition of GC precursors to the BCL6hi follicular state was associated with cell division, although the number of required cell divisions was immunogen dose dependent. Potentiating T cell help or CD40 signaling in these GC precursors actively repressed GC B cell maturation and diverted their fate towards plasmablast differentiation, whereas depletion of CD4+ T cells promoted this initial transition. Thus while CD40 signaling in B cells is necessary to generate the immediate precursors of GC B cells, transition to the BCL6hi follicular state is promoted by a regional and transient diminution of T cell help. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.19552. 001
In Worship of an Echo

This column critically examines the hypothesis that the Internet is responsible for creating echo chambers, in which groups can seal themselves off from heterodox opinion, via filtering and recommendation technology. Echo chambers are held responsible by many for political polarization, and the growth of extremism, yet the evidence doesn't seem to support this view. Echo chambers certainly exist, and can be detrimental to deliberation and discussion, but equally have a role to play in group formation, solidarity, and identity. The case for intervening in Internet governance to suppress echo chambers is not proven.
Wave-function approach to dissipative processes in quantum optics.

A novel treatment of dissipation of energy from a "small" quantum system to a reservoir is presented. %'e replace the usual master equation for the small-system density matrix by a wave function evolution including a stochastic element. This wave-function approach provides new insight and it allows calculations on problems which would otherwise be exceedingly complicated. The approach is applied here to a two- or three-level atom coupled to a laser field and to the vacuum modes of the quantized electromagnetic field. PACS numbers: 42.50. — p, 32.80. — t A typical model system in quantum optics consists of an atom coupled simultaneously to a laser field and to the vacuum modes of the quantized electromagnetic field. The atom-laser interaction, responsible for absorption and stimulated emission processes, is coherent, whereas the coupling between the atom and the vacuum modes, responsible for spontaneous emission processes, is fundamentally incoherent. This leads to a dissipation of energy from the "small system" (atom+ laser) to the "reservoir" (vacuum field), which is usually treated by a density operator approach. A master equation, usually referred to as the optical Bloch equations (OBE's), is written for the reduced atomic density matrix pz [1]. We present here an alternative approach using a wave-function treatment to describe the atomic system. The apparent incompatibility between such a wavefunction approach and the inherent irreversibility of the spontaneous processes is lifted by introducing repeated "gedanken measurements" on the atomic system simulating the detection of the spontaneous photons. The random result of each of these measurements determines the atomic state afterwards, and is at the origin of the irreversibility. We show that this treatment is equivalent to the standard density matrix approach leading to the OBE's. There are two main interests in this approach. First, it gives new insights into the processes taking place in the interaction of an atom with light. Here we will give two examples concerning the Rabi transitory regime for a two-level atom and the "dark resonance" problem. Second, it provides an efficient computational tool. If we consider an atomic system with N states, the master equation treatment requires the simultaneous solution of W OBE's, while in this new approach, we deal with wave functions and we have to look for the evolution of no more than W variables. For instance, in problems related to a quantum treatment of laser cooling, N includes both the number of internal and external atomic states and can be very large. This makes the density matrix approach unwieldy except for simple one-dimensional configuraI ttI(t+dt)) =I vr"'(t+dt))+
On the effect of phenotypic dimensionality on adaptation and optimality

What proportion of the traits of individuals has been optimally shaped by natural selection and what has not? Here, we estimate the maximal number of those traits using a mathematical model for natural selection in multitrait organisms. The model represents the most ideal conditions for natural selection: a simple genotype–phenotype map and independent variation between traits. The model is also used to disentangle the influence of fitness functions and the number of traits, n, per se on the efficiency of natural selection. We also allow n to evolve. Our simulations show that, for all fitness functions and even in the best conditions optimal phenotypes are rarely encountered, only for n = 1, and that a large proportion of traits are always far from their optimum, specially for large n. This happens to different degrees depending on the fitness functions (additive linear, additive nonlinear, Gaussian and multiplicative). The traits that arise earlier in evolution account for a larger proportion of the absolute fitness of individuals. Thus, complex phenotypes have, in proportion, more traits that are far from optimal and the closeness to the optimum correlates with the age of the trait. Based on estimated population sizes, mutation rates and selection coefficients, we provide an upper estimation of the number of traits that can become and remain adapted by direct natural selection.