Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Assessment of Dosimetric Characteristics of Inline 2.5 Mega Voltage Unflattened Imaging X-Ray Beam

Purpose: The aim of this work is to study the dosimetric parameters of newly introduced 2.5 MV imaging x-ray beam used as inline imaging to do setup verification of the patient undergoing radiation therapy. As this x-ray beam is in megavoltage range but comprises of a lower energy spectrum. It is essential to study the pros and cons of 2.5 MV imaging x-ray beam for clinical use. Methods: The mean energy was calculated using the NIST XCOM table through MAC. Profile analysis was done using RFA to understand the percentage depth dose, degree of unflatteness, symmetry, penumbra and out of field dose. Dose to skin for the 2.5 MV x-ray beam was analysed for field sizes 10x10 cm2, 20x20 cm2, 30x30 cm2. Leakage measurements for treatment head and at the patient plane were done using IEC 819/98 protocol. Finally, the spatial resolution and contrast were analyzed with and without patient scatter medium. Results: The MAC at 15 cm off-axis was found to be lower than that at the CAX. Similarly, there was a decrease in mean energy from 0.47 MV to 0.37 MV at 15 cm off-axis. The reduction of mean energy towards off-axis is lower than the other high energy MV x-ray beams. The tuned absolute dose of 1 cGy/MU is consistent and within < ±1 %. The relative output factors were found to be in correlation with Co-60. The beam quality of 2.5 MV x-ray beam was found to be 0.4771. The profile parameters like the degree of unflatness of the 2.5 x-ray beam were studied at 85 %, 90 %, 95 % lateral distances, and the penumbra at different depth and field sizes are higher than the 6 MV treatment beam. In addition, out of field dose also drastically increases to a maximum of up to 30 % laterally at 5cm at deeper depths. The skin dose increases from 48.51 % to 88.15 % from 6 MV to 2.5 MV x-ray beam for the field size 10x10 cm2. Also, the skin dose increases from 88.15 % to 91.78 % from the field size 10x10 cm2 to 30x30 cm2. Although the measured leakage radiation for 2.5 MV x-ray beam at the patient plane and other than patient planes are with the tolerance limit, an increase in exposure towards gantry side compared to other areas around treatment head and the patient plane may lead to more skin dose to head and chest while imaging pelvis region. The MLC transmission of 2.5 MV x-ray beam such as inter, intra and edge effect are 0.40 %, 0.37 % and 11% respectively. The spatial resolution of 2.0, 1.25 and 0.9 LP/mm was observed for KV, 2.5MV, and 6 MV x-ray beams. The spatial resolution and contrast of 2.5 MV x-ray beam are superior to 6 MV x-ray beam and inferior to KV x-rays. Conclusions: The 2.5 MV x-ray imaging beam is analysed in view of beam characteristics and radiation safety to understand the above-studied concepts while using this imaging beam in a clinical situation. In future, if 2.5MV x-ray beam is used for treatment purpose with increased dose rate, the above-studied notions can be incorporated prior to implementation.
A Compact Microstrip λ / 4-SIR Dual-Band Band-pass Filter Design

In this paper, we proposed a dual-band band-pass filter using three microstrip λ / 4 Stepped Impedance Resonator (SIR). In the design, the first and the second bandpass is composed of λ / 4 SIR and the middle λ / 4 SIR that helps to improve the passband characteristics. The characteristic impedance ratio and the electrical length ratio in an intermediate λ / 4 SIR structures are used. It has the advantage of being able to adjust the 1st band easily and accurately. Further, we increased the capability of the rejection band and reduced the insertion loss between the two pass-bands. Specially, the first band and the second band frequencies can be operated at 3.52 GHz and 6.30 GHz respectively. The experiment results show that the insertion loss (S21) of the first band and the second band were 3.97 dB and 3.3 dB, and the reflection coefficients (S11) were 15.1dB and 15.47 dB respectively. Keywords— Dual-Band Band-Pass Filter; SIR Filter; Microstrip Line; Impedance.
Outage analysis of nonorthogonal in‐band relay‐aided device‐to‐device communications in Rayleigh fading channels

Minimizing the outage probability and/or maximizing the throughput, optimally realize relay‐aided nonorthogonal in‐band (NO‐IB) device‐to‐device (D2D) communications. In this letter, we derive closed‐form expressions for the outage probability of NO‐IB amplify‐and‐forward (AF) and decode‐and‐forward (DF) relay‐aided D2D communications in Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical analyses show that the closed‐form formulas are in close agreement with the simulation results. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of signal‐to‐noise ratio and the distances between D2D pairs and relay nodes as well as cellular users. First results show that in the low‐noise regime, AF outperforms DF while they perform very close in the moderate noise level and DF outperforms AF in the high‐noise power. Second, we indicate that the relay‐aided AF/DF D2D communications is more reliable than the direct one when the TX/RX nodes of a D2D pair is distant approximately more than half of the cell radius.
Velocity field computation in vibrated granular media using an optical flow based multiscale image analysis method

An image analysis method has been developed in order to compu te the velocity field of a granular medium (sand grains, mean diameter 600 μm) submitted to different k inds of mechanical stresses. The differential method based on optical flow conservation consists in descri bing a dense motion field with vectors associated to each pixel. A multiscale, coarse-to-fine, analytical app roach through tailor sized windows yields the best compromise between accuracy and robustness of the results, while enabling an acceptable computation time. The corresponding algorithm is presented and its validatio n d scussed through different tests. The results of the validation tests of the proposed approach show that the meth od is satisfactory when attributing specific values to parameters in association with the size of the image analy sis window. An application in the case of vibrated sand has been studied. An instrumented laboratory device pr ovides sinusoidal vibrations and enables external optical observations of sand motion in 3D transparent boxes . At 50 Hz, by increasing the relative acceleration Γ, the onset and development of two convective rolls can be obs rved. An ultra fast camera records the grain avalanches, and several pairs of images are analysed by the p roposed method. The vertical velocity profiles are deduced and allow to precisely quantify the dimensions o f the fluidized region as a function of Γ.
Biomechanical Study of a Novel, Expandable, Non-Metallic and Radiolucent CF/PEEK Vertebral Body Replacement (VBR)

Vertebral body replacement is well-established to stabilize vertebral injuries due to trauma or cancer. Spinal implants are mainly manufactured by metallic alloys; which leads to artifacts in radiological diagnostics; as well as in radiotherapy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the biomechanical data of a novel carbon fiber reinforced polyetheretherketone (CF/PEEK) vertebral body replacement (VBR). Six thoracolumbar specimens were tested in a six degrees of freedom spine tester. In all tested specimens CF/PEEK pedicle screws were used. Two different rods (CF/PEEK versus titanium) with/without cross connectors and two different VBRs (CF/PEEK prototype versus titanium) were tested. In lateral bending and flexion/extension; range of motion (ROM) was significantly reduced in all instrumented states. In axial rotation; the CF/PEEK combination (rods and VBR) resulted in the highest ROM; whereas titanium rods with titanium VBR resulted in the lowest ROM. Two cross connectors reduced ROM in axial rotation for all instrumentations independently of VBR or rod material. All instrumented states in all planes of motion showed a significantly reduced ROM. No significant differences were detected between the VBR materials in all planes of motion. Less rigid CF/PEEK rods in combination with the CF/PEEK VBR without cross connectors showed the smallest reduction in ROM. Independently of VBR and rod material; two cross connectors significantly reduced ROM in axial rotation. Compared to titanium rods; the use of CF/PEEK rods results in higher ROM. The stiffness of rod material has more influence on the ROM than the stiffness of VBR material.
M ay 2 01 9 Evaluating Variable-Length Multiple-Option Lists in Chatbots and Mobile Search Pepa Atanasova

In recent years, the proliferation of smart mobile devices has lead to the gradual integration of search functionality within mobile platforms. This has created an incentive to move away from the “ten blue links” metaphor, as mobile users are less likely to click on them, expecting to get the answer directly from the snippets. In turn, this has revived the interest in Question Answering. Then, along came chatbots, conversational systems, and messaging platforms, where the user needs could be better served with the system asking follow-up questions in order to better understand the user’s intent. While typically a user would expect a single response at any utterance, a system could also return multiple options for the user to select from, based on different system understandings of the user’s intent. However, this possibility should not be overused, as this practice could confuse and/or annoy the user. How to produce good variable-length lists, given the conflicting objectives of staying short while maximizing the likelihood of having a correct answer included in the list, is an underexplored problem. It is also unclear how to evaluate a system that tries to do that. Here we aim to bridge this gap. In particular, we define some necessary and some optional properties that an evaluation measure fit for this purpose should have. We further show that existing evaluation measures from the IR tradition are not entirely suitable for this setup, and we propose novel evaluation measures that address it satisfactorily.
WIND ENERGY CONVERSION SYSTEM WITH PMSG AND ENERGY

The paper presents the stand-alone wind energy conversion system with permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The considered system is composed of wind turbine, PMSG, Switch Mode Rectifier (SMR), bidirectional DC/DC converter and Load Side Converter (LSC). The battery energy storage device is connected to the wind energy conversion system through the DC/DC bidirectional converter. In the control of SMR the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm including Hill Climbing Search method (HCS) has been applied. The application of HCS algorithm allows obtaining of the maximum power from the wind turbine independently from wind turbine power characteristics. The control of the LSC allows regulating the value of the amplitude and frequency of the load voltage. In order to obtain high power quality of energy the three-phase LC filter has been used in the output circuits of the LSC. The simulation studies have been carried out in order to evaluate the efficiency of the considered control strategy. The simulation results confirmed the high efficiency and high accuracy of the considered stand-alone wind energy conversion system. Streszczenie: W artykule przedstawiono autonomiczny system elektrowni wiatrowej z generatorem synchronicznym o magnesach trwałych (PMSG). Rozpatrywany system składa się z: generatora PMSG, prostownika diodowego, przekształtnika DC/DC typu Boost, dwukierunkowego przekształtnika DC/DC oraz przekształtnika obciążenia. Do sterowania przekształtnika DC/DC typu Boost zastosowano algorytm śledzenia mocy maksymalnej MPPT z wykorzystaniem algorytmu HCS. Algorytm HCS pozwala na uzyskanie maksymalnej mocy z turbiny wiatrowej bez dokładnej znajomości charakterystyk turbiny wiatrowej. Do układu przetwarzania energii wiatru zastosowano również system baterii magazynujących energię z dwukierunkowym przekształtnikiem DC/DC. Przekształtnik obciążenia LSC pozwala na sterowanie wartością napięcia i częstotliwości na obciążeniu. Dla uzyskania wysokiej jakości energii, na wyjściu przekształtnika obciążenia zastosowano trójfazowy filtr LC. W celu potwierdzenia skuteczności rozpatrywanych metod sterowania przeprowadzono badania symulacyjne. Wykonane badania symulacyjne potwierdziły wysoką dokładność i skuteczność rozpatrywanych układów i algorytmów sterowania autonomicznego systemu przetwarzania energii wiatru.
A Robust Visibility Restoration Framework for Rainy Weather Degraded Images

Visibility restoration of color rainy images is inevitable task for the researchers in many vision based applications. Rain produces a visual impact on image, so that the intensity and visibility of image is low. Therefore, there is a need to develop a robust visibility restoration algorithm for the rainy images. In this paper we proposed a robust visibility restoration framework for the images captured in rainy weather. The framework is the combined form of convolution neural network for rain removal and low light image enhancement for low contrast. The output results of the proposed framework and other latest de-rainy algorithms are estimated in terms of PSNR, SSIM and UIQI on rainy image from different databases. The quantitative and qualitative results of the proposed framework are better than other de-rainy algorithms. Finally, the obtained visualization result also shows the efficiency of the proposed framework.
Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among Indigenous Australian children aged 0–3 years and association with sociodemographic, life circumstances and health factors

Abstract Objective: To explore beverage intake and associations between sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake and sociodemographic, life circumstances, health and well-being factors in a national cohort of Indigenous children. Design: We calculated prevalence ratios for any SSB consumption across exposures, using multilevel Poisson regression (robust variance), adjusted for age group and remoteness. A key informant focus group contextualised these exploratory findings. Setting: Diverse settings across Australia. Participants: Families of Indigenous children aged 0–3 years, in the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. Results: Half (50·7 %, n 473/933) of children had ever consumed SSB at survey, increasing from 29·3 % of 0–12-month-olds to 65·7 % of 18–36-month-olds. SSB consumption prevalence was significantly lower in urban and regional v. remote areas, and in families experiencing socio-economic advantage (area-level advantage, caregiver employed, financial security), better life circumstances (caregiver social support, limited exposure to stressors) and caregiver well-being (non-smoking, social and emotional well-being, physical health). SSB consumption prevalence was significantly lower among those engaged with health services (adequate health-service access, regular prenatal check-ups), except SSB consumption prevalence was higher among those who received home visits from an Aboriginal Health Worker compared with no home visits. Key informants highlighted the role of water quality/safety on SSB consumption. Conclusions: A substantial proportion of Indigenous children in this sample consumed SSB from an early age. Health provider information needs to be relevant to the context of families’ lives. Health system strategies must be paired with upstream strategies, such as holistic support programmes for families, reducing racism and improving water quality.
Assessing the clinical impact of CYP2C9 pharmacogenetic variation on phenytoin prescribing practice and patient response in an integrated health system.

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of CYP2C9 variation on phenytoin patient response and clinician prescribing practice where genotype was unknown during treatment. METHODS A retrospective analysis of Resource on Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging cohort participants who filled a phenytoin prescription between 1996 and 2017. We used laboratory test results, medication dispensing records, and medical notes to identify associations of CYP2C9 genotype with phenytoin blood concentration, neurologic side effects, and medication dispensing patterns reflecting clinician prescribing practice and patient response. RESULTS Among 993 participants, we identified 69% extensive, 20% high-intermediate, 10% low-intermediate, and 2% poor metabolizers based on CYP2C9 genotypes. Compared with extensive metabolizer genotype, low-intermediate/poor metabolizer genotype was associated with increased dose-adjusted phenytoin blood concentration [21.3 pg/mL, 95% confidence interval (CI): 13.6-29.0 pg/mL; P < 0.01] and increased risk of neurologic side effects (hazard ratio: 2.40, 95% CI: 1.24-4.64; P < 0.01). Decreased function CYP2C9 genotypes were associated with medication dispensing patterns indicating dose decrease, use of alternative anticonvulsants, and worse adherence, although these associations varied by treatment indication for phenytoin. CONCLUSION CYP2C9 variation was associated with clinically meaningful differences in clinician prescribing practice and patient response, with potential implications for healthcare utilization and treatment efficacy.
In vitro inhibitory effects of kaempferitrin on human liver cytochrome P450 enzymes

Abstract Context: Kaempferitrinis (KF) is a bioactive flavonoid and possesses numerous pharmacological activities. However, whether KF affects the activity of human liver cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes remains unclear. Objective: This study investigates the effects of KF on eight major CYP isoforms in human liver microsomes (HLMs). Materials and methods: In vitro, HLMs were used to investigate the inhibitory effects of KF (100 μM) on the eight human liver CYP isoforms (i.e., 1A2, 3A4, 2A6, 2E1, 2D6, 2C9, 2C19, and 2C8), and corresponding probe substrates were used. Enzyme kinetic studies (0–50 μM of KF) were conducted to determine the inhibition mode of KF on CYP enzymes. Results: The results showed that KF inhibited the activity of CYP1A2, 3A4, and 2C9, with IC50 values of 20.56, 13.87, and 14.62 μM, respectively, but that other CYP isoforms were not affected. Enzyme kinetic studies showed that KF was not only a noncompetitive inhibitor of CYP3A4, but also a competitive inhibitor of CYP1A2 and 2C9, with Ki values of 7.11, 10.24, and 7.58 μM, respectively. In addition, KF is a time-dependent inhibitor for CYP3A4 with KI/Kinact value of 10.85/0.036 min/μM. Discussion: The in vitro studies of KF with CYP isoforms indicate that KF has the potential to cause pharmacokinetic drug interactions with other co-administered drugs metabolized by CYP1A2, 3A4, and 2C9. Conclusion: It is recommended that KF should not be used with other drugs metabolized by CYP1A2, 3A4, and 2C9. Further clinical studies are needed to evaluate the significance of this interaction.
School of Computing 2008-0101 Back to the Future : Knowledge Light Case Base

The domain of cookery has been of interest for Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) research for many years since the CHEF case-based planning system in the mid 1980s. This paper returns to look at this domain, emphasising a knowledge-light approach. Our approach focuses on; the design of a structured case representation which encapsulates the details of a recipe, on leveraging WordNet for identifying food items and the relationships between them, and on using Active Learning to assist in labelling recipes with meal and cuisine types. Users can search for recipes by specifying the ingredients they wish to include in, or exclude from, the recipe and optionally specifying the type of meal and/or cuisine they are interested in. Recipes are retrieved based on a weighted similarity of the ingredients, the meal and/or cuisine types (if specified) and the textual similarity between the query and specific fields of the recipe text. The system includes substitution adaptation where a recipe can be recommended with a replacement ingredient, where appropriate.
GPU Communication Performance Engineering for the Lattice Boltzmann Method

The increasing importance of GPUs for general-purpose computation on supercomputers makes a good GPU support by High-Performance Computing (HPC) software frameworks such as waLBerla a valuable feature. waLBerla is a massively parallel software framework that supports a wide range of physical phenomena. Although it presents good performance on CPUs, tests have shown that its available GPU communication solutions perform poorly. In this work, we present solutions for improving waLBerla’s performance, memory usage efficiency and usability on GPUbased supercomputers. The proposed communication infrastructure for CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPUs executed 25 times faster than the GPU communication mechanism previously available on waLBerla. Our solution for improving GPU memory usage efficiency allowed for using 55% of the memory required by a naive approach, which makes possible for running simulations with larger domains or using fewer GPUs for a given domain size. In addition, as CUDA kernel performance showed to be very sensitive to the way data is accessed in GPU memory and kernel implementation details, we proposed a flexible domain indexing mechanism that allows for configuring thread block sizes. Finally, a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) application was developed with highly optimized CUDA kernels in order to carry out all experiments and test all proposed solutions for waLBerla.
A Multi Gene Targeting Approach to Treating Liver Diseases with Metadichol®

Liver diseases are becoming a major health concern. In the developing countries it is due to microbial infection. In the rest of the developed world it is due to alcohol abuse. Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis are a significant health concern in western countries. It is the fifth most common cause of death, after heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chest disease. The liver is capable of regeneration, but it can be overwhelmed leading to liver diseases like cirrhosis and hepatocellular cancer (HCC). Vitamin D levels are low in most patients with liver diseases, and this suggests possible therapeutic beneﬁts with use of vitamin D or its analogues. Vitamin D, through the vitamin D nuclear receptor (VDR) plays a crucial role in mineral ion homeostasis. The liver has a central role in vitamin D synthesis and there is a need for an agent that will not lead to hypercalcemia. Metadichol, a nano emulsion of long-chain alcohols derived from food, is an inverse agonist of Vitamin D can fill this void. In Diabetic rat studies, it inhibits TNF alpha, ICAM1 (intracellular adhesion molecule), CCL2 (chemokine C-C motif) also referred to as monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP1). All these cytokines, chemokines are known to have important role in liver diseases. We show that Metadichol indeed does work in liver disease patients by normalizing essential liver enzymes ALT, AST and ALP, and GGT. This approach is an example where Metadichol targets multiple genes and via multiple pathways to bring about homeostasis of the liver and is a useful, safe, non- toxic product in treating liver diseases and alleviating a global threat.
Machine Learning Prediction Models of Electrical Efficiency of Photovoltaic-Thermal Collectors

Solar energy is a renewable resources of energy which is broadly utilized and have the least pollution impact between the available alternatives of fossil fuels. In this investigation, machine leaening approaches of neural networks (NN), neuro-fuzzy and least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) are used to build the models for prediction of the thermal performance of a photovoltaic-thermal solar collector (PV/T) by estimating its efficiency as an output of the model while inlet temperature, flow rate, heat, solar radiation, and heat of sun are input of the designed model. Experimental measurements was prepared by designing a solar collector system and 100 data extracted. Different analyses are also performed to examine the credibility of the introduced approaches revealing great performance. The suggested LSSVM model represented the best performance regarding the mean squared error (MSE) of 0.003 and correlation coefficient (R2) value of 0.99, respectively.