Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dyspnea scoring in patients with COPD

COPD is a progressive disorder diagnosed with recognition of the symptoms and spirometry. The parameters of spirometry are well defined in several guidelines. According to GOLD rearranged at 2004, a post bronchodilator FEV1/FVC rate smaller than 70% is accepted as a diagnostic criterion for COPD. Symptoms are also important as well as spirometric evaluation. Indeed, these symptoms are the clinical representation of the present inflammation. Among symptoms, dyspnea is the most important one alarming the patient. So, classification of dyspne in a simple and objective way has a great value. In this study, we emphasized the presence of dyspnea in outpatients of our Chest Disease Department who smoked more than 10 pack/yr. Patients are classified into two groups as COPD and non-COPD group according to symptoms and spirometric evaluations. Each individual was expected to carry out a selfadministered questionnaire for symptom scoring following spirometry. Presence of a rustling sound (A), preexisting pulmonary disease (B), and short of breath (C) were questioned and scored one by one. A, B, C and total ABC scores were significantly different in groups with and without COPD (p<0.001). Symptom scoring according to staging/stages in COPD group revealed that as COPD worsened A, B, C and total ABC scores increased. There was a significant difference regarding symptom scoring especially among patients without COPD and COPD patients at stage 2B and 3. As the patients reached higher scores, all of the spirometric parameters significantly decreased (p<0.001). It is important to explore and express dyspnea in the best possible way in order to avoid misdiagnosing and maltreatment.Examination of dyspne should not require administration of very complex questionnaires, moreover, with simple questionnaires it is possible to achieve reliable scoring.
Polarization insensitive single mode Al2O3 rib waveguide design for applications in active and passive optical waveguides

Both passive and active, single mode, wavelength and polarization insensitive design of Al2O3 rib waveguides on SiO2 substrate is reported. Influence of the waveguide height, etch depth, waveguide width and operation wavelength to the mode number, mode size, birefringence and polarization sensitivity were analyzed with Beam Propagation Method. Design parameters for targeted properties are computed for waveguide widths ranging from 0 to 10 µm, and for etch depth ranging from 0 to 0.5 µm for fixed waveguide height of 0.5 µm. A design window for a fixed width of 3.5 µm and etch depths between 0.325 to 0.375 µm is identified for single mode, wavelength and polarization insensitive operation of Al2O3 waveguides on thermal oxide. A novel rib TE mode selective filter design is also suggested as an output of the numerical simulations.
Multifractal Analysis Of Selected Multicast Routing Protocols In IP Networks

The article presents results of studies using simulations on computer network devices, designed to examine the effectiveness of routing protocols with the video streaming and generated traffic for Jperf applications. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the selected protocols several simulation scenarios were made using different sized UDP packets. The traffic was analyzed in terms of statistical self-similarity. Multifractal analysis has also been made, using two kinds of spectrums. The study determined the relationship between them. These tasks were designed to determine the multifractal and long-term relationship for a given process.
Effects of Extracts Obtained from Nepeta italica L. and Nepeta cilicia Boiss. Apud Bentham on Antioxidant Enzymes Nepeta italica L. ve Nepeta cilicia Boiss. Apud Bentham Türlerinden Elde Edilen Ekstraktlarin Antioksidant Enzimler Üzerine Etkileri

A B S T R A C T I n the study, the effects of methanol and hexane extracts obtained from Nepeta italica L. and Nepeta cilicia Boiss. apud Bentham on antioxidant enzymes in healthy rat erythrocyte were studied. The ethanol extract of N. cilicia caused a decrease in glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) activity and an increase in catalase (CAT) activity. There wasn't significant enzyme value in the group treated with the hexane extract of N. cilicia. However, the ethanol extract of N. italica caused a decrease in superoxide dismutase (SOD) and CAT activities. In group treated with hexane extract of N. italica, a significant decrease in SOD and CAT activities was observed, whereas a significant increase in G6PD activity was observed. Also, a statistically significant difference in MDA wasn't found in all groups. In conclusion, it may suggest that the extracts are devoid of pro- oxidant properties, because lipid peroxidation hasn't been observed, although the extracts have caused some changes in antioxidant enzymes.
Market Multiples Adjustments for Differences in Risk Profile-An Airline Company Example

Companies whose data can be found in databases usually are not comparable enough to the valuation subject to assure direct use of their multiples (i.e. to assure reliability of valuation resulting from direct use of their multiples). Key differences usually relate to size, but also to other characteristics (financial performance, territory, business profile, expected growth, etc.), all of impact on specific risks. This paper shows how to adjust multiples for risk profile differences to achieve satisfactory level of comparability and consequent reliability of valuation on the example of airline company.
INSIGHT WITH HANDS 1 Insight with Hands and Things

Two experiments examined whether different task ecologies influenced insight problem solving. The 17 animals problem was employed, a pure insight problem. Its initial formulation encourages the application of a direct arithmetic solution, but its solution requires the spatial arrangement of sets involving some degree of overlap. Participants were randomly allocated to either a tablet condition where they could use a stylus and an electronic tablet to sketch a solution or a model building condition where participants were given material with which to build enclosures and figurines. In both experiments, participants were much more likely to develop a working solution in the model building condition. The difference in performance elicited by different task ecologies was unrelated to individual differences in working memory, actively open-minded thinking, or need for cognition (Experiment 1), although individual differences in creativity were correlated with problem solving success in Experiment 2. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the prevailing metatheoretical commitment to methodological individualism that places the individual as the ontological locus of cognition.
Experimental Assessment and Thermal Characterization of ETFE Foil

Co-polymer facade materials have been a recent and popular option in the building industry as an alternative to glazing. Ethylene TetraFluoroEthylene (ETFE) is a promising case in this category. ETFE has been successfully used in many high-profile projects as an innovative solution to energy-conscious design challenges. In addition, ETFE presents significant savings in cost and structural support requirements, compared with conventional glazing, due to its low weight, and has potential for energy performance benefits due to its relatively high visible light transmittance. There is a lack of detailed published data reporting its thermal behaviour. This study focuses on the examination of heat transfer through the ETFE membrane, surface temperatures, heat losses and solar gains. The paper examines the impact of the material on the overall energy use of a building, as well as thermal comfort and interior conditions. Through field-testing the research will inspect the material’s thermal properties to obtain results that will assist in evaluating the suitability of ETFE use in a broader spectrum of building applications. Such an assessment of performance will provide information for further investigation to improve the material’s features and optimise energy performance.
Relevant Quality of Digital Elevation Models in Earth and Environmental Studies

The conceptions of various earth and environmental studies and applications tend to explain and increase understanding of the observable (natural) phenomena. Such studies verify talus cones stability due to hazards related to geological, geomorphological, hydrological or extreme weather phenomena, or talus cones types for modeling pika habitat, coral reef resilience or landscape and ecological connectivity due to climate changes, local wind and solar conditions in order to decrease carbon footprints, etc. These rising themes are supported with geoinformatics and other disciplines, such as conservation science; environmental geography, geology and archaeology; palaeoenvironmental, agriculture and ecosystems analysis; balanced urban development, etc. Many related conceptions handle various kinds of geospatial datasets, such as digital elevation/ terrain models, where the quality of derived information needs to be comprehensively considered.
Search for novel antifungal com pounds among arylamides of 3-[3,5-dioxy-1,2,4,5-tetrahydro- 1,2,4-triazinyl-6]-propionic acid

De sign and syn the sis of a set of 3,5-dioxy-1,2,4-triazinyl-6-propionic acid (TPA) arylamides were de vel oped in or der to search for new com pounds with fungistatic prop er ties on the ba sis of azapyrimidine de riv a tives. Carboxamides ca pa ble to block tran scrip tion were re vealed among ob tained com pounds us ing T7 RNA-pol model test-sys tem in vi tro, and the only de riv a tives con tain ing halogene-substituent in pharmacophore part showed the in hib i tory prop er ties. The model of vir tual tri ple non-pro duc tive com plex at poly mer ase cat a lytic site (in hib i tor-en zyme-DNA tem plate) was pro posed, il lus trat ing a pos si ble mech a nism of in hib i tory ac tion of such com pounds on RNA syn the sis. Pre lim i nary screen ing of new triazine de riv a tives re vealed their in hib i tory ac tion against some kinds of fungi and bac te ria.
Detection and Mitigation of Strong Azimuth Ambiguities in High Resolution SAR Images

Azimuth ambiguities of bright point-like targets become more pronounced in case of high resolution SAR imaging. When improving the spatial resolution, the compression gain in SAR image formation becomes larger, which increases the dynamic range of SAR images. The increased point target intensity also implies a correspondingly higher azimuth ambiguity power, which often exceeds the reflectivity of the surrounding homogeneous areas. This paper proposes a new approach to identifying and mitigating azimuth ambiguities of bright targets within areas of distributed homogeneous backscattering. The method makes use of two independent range looks. While the main signal in the two looks is considered nearly identical, the ambiguous signal becomes mis-registered, i.e. the azimuth position shifts as a function of the range look center frequency. This property is used to derive a suitable mitigation approach. It is tested with X-band data acquired by DLR’s F-SAR sensor in step-frequency mode.
EXPLICIT SOLUTION FOR THE ONE-PHASE STEFAN PROBLEM WITH LATENT HEAT DEPENDING ON THE POSITION AND A CONVECTIVE BOUNDARY CONDITION AT THE FIXED FACE

An explicit solution of a similarity type is obtained for a onephase Stefan problem in a semi-infinite material using Kummer functions. It is considered a phase-change problem with a latent heat defined as a power function of the position with a non-negative real exponent and a convective boundary condition at the fixed face x = 0. Existence and uniqueness of the solution is proved. Relationship between this problem and the problems with temperature and flux boundary condition is also analysed. Furthermore it is studied the limit behaviour of the solution when the coefficient which characterizes the heat transfer at the fixed boundary tends to infinity. Computing this limit allows to demonstrate that the problem proposed in this paper with a convective boundary condition generalizes the problem with Dirichlet boundary condition. Numerical computation of the solution is done over certain examples, with a view to comparing this results with those obtained by general algorithms that solve Stefan problems. AMS Subject Classification: 35R35, 80A22, 35C05
Use of COSMO-SAC to Determine the Activity Coefficient and Predict Phase Equilibrium of Binary Systems Involving Methanol, Glycerol and Water

With advances in computational chemistry, phase behavior predictions without any experimental data are becoming possible. Models based on COSMO (COnductor-like Screening MOdels) are viable alternatives to group-contribution methods. These methods may be used to determine the activity coefficient of the components in any mixtures. In this paper, the model COSMO-SAC, developed by Lin and Sandler (2002), was used to predict the activity coefficients for binary mixtures (methanol + glycerol), (methanol + water) and (glycerol + water). Prior to these calculations, the software Gaussian 03 was used to perform the structure optimization of molecules of water, methanol and glycerol, in order to find which molecule conformation has lower energy. Then, sigma profiles of the components were obtained using the software MOPAC. Data of experimental activity coefficients (γ ୶୮ ) obtained from literature (Soujanya et al., 2010) were compared with calculated values (γ ୡୟ୪ୡ ) by two different methods. In the first method, the sigma profiles obtained from software MOPAC were used to calculate the activity coefficients. In the second one, they were obtained from the software known as JCOSMO, which uses the sigma profiles from VT-2005 database. The mean absolute deviation between γ ୶୮ e γ ୡୟ୪ୡ by the two methods analyzed were calculated. The results show that the method based on COSMO not adequately predicted the activity coefficients of the mixtures analyzed for both methods of obtaining the sigma profile. Despite the sigma profiles generated by the software MOPAC are different from those obtained by VT-2005 database, the values of the activity coefficients obtained by both methods showed no major deviations. Furthermore, COSMO-SAC model was used to calculate phase equilibrium by minimizing the Gibbs energy of the binary mixtures. These calculations were performed in the software GAMS. It was found that, although promising, the COSMO-SAC model still need refinements.
Abdominal blockage of iliohypogastric and ilio-inguinal nerves for management of post-caesarean pain: A novel method

Objective. The aim of this study was to compare pain relief after caesarean section achieved by an intra-abdominal iliohypogastric and ilio-inguinal (IHII) nerve block with levobupivacaine with that in patients given a placebo. Study design. A total of 60 healthy women scheduled for caesarean delivery under general anaesthesia were enrolled in the study. The patients were randomised to an abdominal IHII nerve block with levobupivacaine (levobupivacaine group) or administration of saline (placebo group). Instead of the classic percutaneous method, the block was administered intra-operatively from the peritoneal aspect. Scores on a visual analogue scale (VAS) at 2, 6, 12 and 24 hours, adverse effects, morphine consumption and success of blockage by a pinprick test were recorded. Results. In the levobupivacaine group, the pinprick test showed there to be successful bilateral block in 22 patients and unilateral block in 5, while the block failed in 3. No block was recorded in the placebo group. When morphine consumption at 12 and 24 hours were compared, consumption was found to be significantly low for both time points in the levobupivacaine group. VAS scores 2, 6 and 12 hours after the operation were also significantly lower in the levobupivacaine group. Conclusion. A block of the IHII nerves from inside the abdomen just before abdominal closure appears to be an effective and safe way of relieving pain after caesarean section. SAJOG • January 2012, Vol. 18, No. 1
An Evaluation of Age Estimation Structures for Lake Whitefish in Lake Michigan: Selecting an Aging Method Based on Precision and a Decision Analysis

Abstract Declines in growth and condition of lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis in Lakes Huron and Michigan have led to increased mean age in the harvest and greater difficulty in scale age interpretation. We evaluated the precision and efficiency of scale acetate impressions, transverse pectoral fin ray sections, and transverse sagittal otolith sections for three lake whitefish stocks (Bailey's Harbor, Naubinway, and Saugatuck) that were sampled in Lake Michigan during 2004 and 2005. We conducted a decision matrix analysis that incorporated capital, production, and personnel costs and precision of age estimates to determine the best aging method given current management priorities. For the Bailey's Harbor stock, age estimates were systematically lower based on scales (mean = 7.85 years) than based on fin rays (8.44 years) or otoliths (8.78 years); fin ray and otolith estimates did not differ significantly. Similar results were observed for both Naubinway and Saugatuck stocks. For Bailey's Harbor lake .
Extracting Emotive Patterns for Languages with Rich Morphology

This paper describes a method of acquiring emotive patterns for morphosyntactically rich languages. The goal is to maximize the recall of automatically generated sentiment lexicons in a resource lean fashion. The algorithm requires a small corpus with morphosyntactic annotations to acquire candidates for emotive patterns and evalute the vocabulary, and web as corpus for lexical expansion. The approach, which involves rule mining and contrast sets discovery, is demonstrated and evaluated for Polish.
THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF ABOVEGROUND BIOMASS IN TROPICAL FORESTS OF MEXICO

Biomass stocks and their spatial distribution remain poorly understood in tropical forests and reliable estimations are critical in the calculations of carbon stocks and fluxes. This report aims to estimate and contrast aboveground biomass stocks, AGB, in tropical forests of Mexico by employing three different evaluation techniques. Mexican tropical forests were classified as dry, moist and rainy. The first method uses a simple mean biomass density value per each forest class times the area of each forest. The second approach improves the spatial resolution by classifiying forests per each region and a mean biomass density is multiplied by the area of each forest class. The third methodology calculates biomass stocks by developing an empirical model using mean annual precipitation as the independent variable and then the equation is applied to the mean annual rainfall of each tropical forest times the area of the forest. Results showed that all three methods of aboveground biomass stock estimations are quite consistent since they have mean (confidence interval) values of 2.65 (0.74), 2.67 (0.68), and 2.08 (0.85) Pg estimated by approaches 1, 2, and 3, respectively. Deviations between evaluation methodologies did not surpass 0.33 Pg or 14% of the mean aboveground biomass stock. Using all three statistics, mean (confidence interval) aboveground biomass stocks for Mexican tropical forests is 2.46 (0.76) Pg. This statistic deviates by more than one order of magnitude when contrasting it with other six independent AGB estimates. However, the mean figure reported in this study or a mean AGB calculated across all estimation methods provides a dataset that is important for conducting carbon stocks and fluxes for Mexican tropical forests.
Competitive Balance Measures in Sports Leagues: The Effects of Variation in Season Length

This paper examines the distributional properties of the ratio of standard deviations (RSD) of points percentages, the most common measure of competitive balance (CB) in the sports economics literature, in comparison with other standard-deviation-based CB measures. Simulation methods are used to evaluate the effects of changes in season length on the distributions of CB measures for different distributions of the strengths of teams in a league. The popular RSD measure performs as expected in cases of perfect balance but, if there is imbalance in team strengths, its distribution is very sensitive to changes in season length. This has important implications for comparisons of RSD values for different sports leagues with different numbers of teams and/or games played.
Rethinking Plans and Scripts Realization in the Age of Web-mining

In this paper we introduce some ideas for reusing cognitive science concepts which realizing before was impossible due to the technical limits. We concentrate on the Schankian scripts which could help to build plans as the basic method for achieving goals. In contradistinction to the authors of classic cognitivistic ideas, we can currently use powerful computers and terabytes of data which could help to make their concepts usable in not restricted domains for any kind of application using commonsense knowledge. Many useful projects were abandoned because of difficulties due to the manual input of big sets of data. We plan to build a commonsense processing systems which retrieves commonsensical data from the WWW resources. This paper introduces the theoretical side of our research with some results of preliminary tests.
Triops-induced morphological defences in Daphnia magna: Combining large scale-, micro- and ultrastructural defences

1. Phenotypic plasticity in defensive traits has been proven to be effective in ecosystems with frequently changing predator regimes. However, if a single dominant predator exerts predation pressure on each ontogenetic stage, prey should adapt by developing defensive traits for each life stage within a cost-benefit framework. This may require a change of defensive mechanisms between juvenile and adult life stages. 2. In this study, we examined the morphological defences of the cladoceran Daphnia magna Strauss induced by the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis Bosc. We tested for the induction of morphological defences by directly exposing daphnids to the predator and conducted a life span experiment to determine if the expression of the induced morphological defences varies throughout the life span of D. magna. In addition, we studied the adaptive value, i.e. the effectiveness, of the Triopsinduced morphological defences in D. magna by conducting predation trials. 3. We found that, in D. magna, the expression of an array of inducible morphological defences, which act synergistically to provide effective protection, changes during the daphnids lifetime in response to the tadpole shrimp T. cancriformis. This gradual switch in the protective function of single traits between juvenile and adult stages represents a novel functionality and complexity of inducible defences. Both direct contact with the predator and chemical cues (kairomones) released by T. cancriformis induce an increased body length, body width and an elongation of the tail spine in D. magna. This study is the first to show that kairomones released by a predator can induce ‘bulkiness’ as a defensive mechanism in Daphnia. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the Triops-induced morphological defences (i.e. an elongated tail spine and increased bulkiness) by conducting predation trials. 4. Our study provides rare evidence for morphological defences in D. magna, and in addition shows that prey species gradually switch between plastic traits to maintain effective defences throughout their entire lifetime. Hence, our results help to shed light on the mechanisms governing phenotypic plasticity within natural populations.