Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In Search of Ambiguity: A Three-Stage Workflow Design to Clarify Annotation Guidelines for Crowd Workers

We propose a novel three-stage FIND-RESOLVE-LABEL workflow for crowdsourced annotation to reduce ambiguity in task instructions and, thus, improve annotation quality. Stage 1 (FIND) asks the crowd to find examples whose correct label seems ambiguous given task instructions. Workers are also asked to provide a short tag that describes the ambiguous concept embodied by the specific instance found. We compare collaborative vs. non-collaborative designs for this stage. In Stage 2 (RESOLVE), the requester selects one or more of these ambiguous examples to label (resolving ambiguity). The new label(s) are automatically injected back into task instructions in order to improve clarity. Finally, in Stage 3 (LABEL), workers perform the actual annotation using the revised guidelines with clarifying examples. We compare three designs using these examples: examples only, tags only, or both. We report image labeling experiments over six task designs using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Results show improved annotation accuracy and further insights regarding effective design for crowdsourced annotation tasks.
Determining Optimal Parameters of the Self-Referent Encoding Task: A Large-Scale Examination of Self-Referent Cognition and Depression

Although the self-referent encoding task (SRET) is commonly used to measure self-referent cognition in depression, many different SRET metrics can be obtained. The current study used best subsets regression with cross-validation and independent test samples to identify the SRET metrics most reliably associated with depression symptoms in three large samples: a college student sample (n = 572), a sample of adults from Amazon Mechanical Turk (n = 293), and an adolescent sample from a school field study (n = 408). Across all 3 samples, SRET metrics associated most strongly with depression severity included number of words endorsed as self-descriptive and rate of accumulation of information required to decide whether adjectives were self-descriptive (i.e., drift rate). These metrics had strong intratask and split-half reliability and high test–retest reliability across a 1-week period. Recall of SRET stimuli and traditional reaction time (RT) metrics were not robustly associated with depression severity.
A statistical approach for optimal order adjustment of a moving average filter

The moving average (MA) filter is a smoothing filter well-known in the digital signal processing community. The MA filter has only one configuration parameter, N, which is the order of the filter and is used to adjust the smoothing effect of an MA filter. The MA filtering technique can be effectively used to de-noise signals coming from inertial sensors. One of the drawbacks of the MA filter is that the theory behind digital signal processing does not provide a formal method to determine the value of N. Thus, N is usually chosen based on the previous experience of the MA filter designer. The present work proposes a novel approach to find the optimal value of N. The methodology compares two signals, one coming from a low-cost, MA-filtered inertial sensor, and another coming from a high-end inertial sensor. A statistical significance analysis is done for several orders of an MA filter for a particular low-cost inertial sensor. Finally, N is chosen considering the lowest MA filter order that performs the highest level of de-noising with respect to the high-end inertial sensor. The adjustment methodology is tested on four MEMS IMUs using a real-world trajectory generated by driving a vehicle. As a result, inertial sensors under study experience a noise reduction up to 52% for noisier inertial sensors.
Buyagain Grocery Recommender Algorithm for Online Shopping of Grocery and Gourmet Foods

Online shopping of grocery and gourmet products differ from other shopping activities due to its routine nature of buy-consume-buy. The existing recommendation algorithms of ecommerce websites are suitable only to render recommendation for products of one time purchase. So, in order to identify and recommend the products that users are likely to buy again and again, a novel recommender algorithm is proposed based on linguistic decision analysis model. The proposed buyagain recommender algorithm finds the semantic value of the user comments and computes the semantic value along with the user rating to render recommendation to the user. The efficiency of the buyagain recommender algorithm is evaluated using the grocery and gourmet dataset of amazon ecommerce websites. The end result proves that the algorithm accurately recommends the product that the user likes to purchase once again.
A 180-GHz Schottky Diode Frequency Doubler With Counter-Rotated  $E$ -Fields to Provide In-Phase Power-Combining

This letter reports on the first demonstration of a power-combined Schottky diode frequency doubler that uses counter-rotated <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$E$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-fields at the output of two frequency doublers to enable in-phase <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-plane power-combining. The single chip integrated circuit comprises of a four-anode structure on a 20-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-thick GaAs substrate that when used individually demonstrates a peak efficiency of 34% and the maximum output power of 109 mW at 180 GHz. In a power-combined configuration, the frequency doubler with counter-rotated <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$E$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-fields exhibits a 3-dB bandwidth of 10% and a peak conversion efficiency of 37% for input powers between 150 and 200 mW. This doubler delivers 130-mW output power and 26% conversion efficiency for 500-mW input. The novel <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$H$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-plane power-combined frequency doubler is compared with the single-chip doubler to show the combining efficiency and the chip-to-chip variation for multiple circuit builds.
Automatic Analysis of Affect and Membership in Group Settings

Automatic affect analysis and understanding has become a well established research area in the last two decades. However, little attention has been paid to the analysis of the affect expressed in group settings, either in the form of affect expressed by the whole group collectively or affect expressed by each individual member of the group. When it comes to group settings, in addition to affect, analysis of group dynamics is also important for understanding groups, such as group membership, which has an important effect on trustworthiness and cooperation among group members. This PhD project focuses on affect and social dynamic analysis in group settings.
Private Information Retrieval for Secure Distributed Storage Systems

In this paper, we investigate a private information retrieval (PIR) problem for secure distributed storage systems in the presence of an eavesdropper. We design the secure distributed database and the corresponding PIR scheme, which protect not only user privacy (concealing the index of the desired message) from the databases, but also data security (concealing the messages themselves) from an eavesdropper. In our proposed scheme, we use a secret sharing scheme in storing the messages for data security at each of the databases. We consider two different scenarios on whether the databases are aware of the index sets of the secret shares stored in other databases. The key idea in designing an efficient PIR procedure is to exploit the secret shares of undesired messages as a side information by means of storing the secret shares at multiple databases. In particular, it is shown that the rates of the proposed PIR schemes are within a constant multiplicative factor from the derived upper-bound on the capacity of PIR problem.
The role of nursing in pediatric palliative home care – Experiences from Lower Saxony, Germany

Background: In 2007, the patient’s right to specialized pediatric palliative home care (SPPHC) became law in Germany. In Lower Saxony, a German federal state with a low population density, an adequate care for children suffering from life-limiting conditions (LLC) should be ensured in the context of low patient numbers and low numbers of specialists. A close cooperation with regional primary health care providers can facilitate the performance of this task. Nursing home services play a decisive role in delivering pediatric palliative home care. Methods : The descriptive retrospective study aimed on the evaluation of nursing home services involvement in and contribution to palliative care in children and adolescents. A second aim was to implement a SPPHC to assure an optimal care provision. Therefore, a standardized questionnaire survey was disseminated to 22 home nursing services, 14 (63%) of them returned the completed form. Data analysis was descriptive. The evaluated needs have been included in the conception of a comprehensive SPPHC in Lower Saxony which was implemented in 2010. Results: In 2008, the home nursing services reported on 168 patients suffering from life-limiting conditions. As incentives for delivering palliative home care, the nursing teams emphasized the support by a specialized team, a 24-hour on-call duty and the increase of educational programs. To meet this demand, a SPPHC was implemented. Since April 2010, a central office undertakes the coordination and administration, while different regional teams comprising nursing, medical and psycho-social specialists care for the children and adolescents suffering from complex conditions due to LLC. Additionally a central hotline service provides 24/7 specialist availability. During the first three years of operation, the SPPHC providers were involved in the management of 131 children suffering from LLC. In total, 6452 hours of SPPHC were delivered, predominantly spent on joint patient care with regional health care providers like nursing teams or resident physicians (30.2%), driving time (22.5%) and coordination of care (15.3%). Nurses specialized in pediatric palliative care delivered 45.3% of SPPHC in Lower Saxony. Conclusions: The provision of a comprehensive SPPHC in a region of low population density is possible. A high percentage of coordinative and logistic efforts is needed to enable the specialist care in each child and all areas. General nursing services and nurses specialized in pediatric palliative care as part of the SPPHC play a crucial role in delivering palliative home care for children and adolescents with LLC .
Association between abdominal adiposity and 20-year subsequent aortic stiffness in an initially healthy population-based cohort

Background: Aortic stiffness is a feature of arterial aging and is associated with dismal cardiovascular prognosis. We examined whether central and general adiposity is an independent predictor of accelerated aortic stiffening 20 years later in initially healthy midlife individuals. Methods: Participants from the STANISLAS cohort study (826 initially healthy participants aged 30–60 from the Lorraine region in France) underwent clinical and biological measurements at baseline (1994–1995) and after ≈20 years (2011–2016). Adiposity measurements included waist circumference/BMI ratio, BMI, waist circumference, and ‘body shape index’ [waist circumference/(BMI2/3 height1/2)]. Real carotid–femoral pulse wave velocity (cfPWV) was measured at end of follow-up. Our primary analysis was to test the association between waist circumference/BMI ratio and cfPWV. Results: In a multiple linear regression model adjusted for sex, age and mean arterial pressure, waist circumference -to-BMI ratio was positively associated (for 1SD increase) with higher cfPWV [regression coefficient &bgr; = 0.32, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.19–0.45, P < 0.001]. The cfPWV was less strongly associated with body shape index (&bgr; = 0.17, 95% CI 0.022–0.32, P < 0.05) and negatively associated with BMI (−0.20, 95% CI −0.31 to −0.093, P < 0.001) and waist circumference (−0.14, 95% CI −0.28 to 0.00, P < 0.05). Sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the risk of cfPWV associated with waist circumference-to-BMI ratio remained significant after adjustment for heart rate, metabolic risk factors and inflammatory markers. Conclusion: Central adiposity (and more specifically waist circumference-to-BMI ratio) is an independent predictor of 20-year subsequent aortic stiffness in initially healthy midlife subjects.
Operation of three-level single-phase half-bridge NPC inverter-based shunt active power filter under non-ideal grid voltage condition with sliding mode controller

In this paper, a new control method is presented for a single-phase three-level neutral point clamped half-bridge shunt active power filter with the aim of eliminating the grid current harmonics. It is shown that the proposed control method accurately detects the positive-sequence voltage component under distorted grid condition. With this feature, the performance of the single-phase active power filter under distorted grid voltage condition is improved considerably. Furthermore, the imbalance in the capacitor voltages which occurs in the half-bridge topology is eliminated by adding a feedback term to the current control loop. The performance of the proposed control method is verified by simulation results obtained from MATLAB/Simulink.
Clinical significance of serum-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide in patients with acute cerebral stroke.

BACKGROUND To investigate the relationships of the changes of serum N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) level with the severity of the disease (infarct size, amount of bleeding, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale [NIHSS] Score and Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] Score) and prognosis in acute cerebral stroke patients. METHODS Acute cerebral stroke patients admitted to our hospital from August 2015 to August 2017 were enrolled in this study. The NT-proBNP level, infarct size, amount of bleeding, NIHSS Score, GCS Score and Modified Rankin Scale (MRS) Score at 3 months after onset in patients in cerebral infarction group and cerebral hemorrhage group were observed at 24 h, (5±2) d and (12±2) d. The correlations of NT-proBNP level with the severity of the disease and MRS Score at 3 months after onset were also analyzed. RESULTS The serum NT-proBNP levels in patients in infarction group and hemorrhage group were significantly higher than those in control group at 24 h and (5±2) d after onset (P<0.01). The serum NT-proBNP level at 24 h after onset in hemorrhage group had statistically significant difference from that at (5±2) d in the same group, and those at 24 h and (5±2) d after onset in infarction group and hemorrhage group had statistically significant difference from those at (12±2) d in the same group (P<0.01). There were significant differences in NT-proBNP levels among subgroups with different NIHSS scores (P<0.01). GCS Score was significantly correlated with NT-proBNP level (P<0.01). The higher the level of serum NT-proBNP, the higher the patient's MRS Score at 3 months after onset was. CONCLUSIONS Serum NT-proBNP level can be used as a serum biological indicator to evaluate the severity and prognosis of cerebral stroke patients.
Relaxant effect of Cuminum cyminum on guinea pig tracheal chains and its possible mechanism(s)

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relaxant effects of the macerated and aqueous extracts of Cuminum cyminum on the tracheal chains of guinea pig. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The relaxant effects of cumulative concentrations of macerated and aqueous extracts (0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0 g%) in comparison with saline and theophylline (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0 mM) were examined on pre-contracted tracheal chains of guinea pigs under different conditions. RESULTS: In Group 1 experiments (contracted by KCl) only the last two concentrations of theophylline and the highest concentration of macerated extract showed significant relaxant effect compared to that of saline (P CONCLUSION: These results show a potent relaxant effect of Cuminum cyminum on guinea pig tracheal chains which may be due to a stimulatory effect of the plant on β-adrenoceptors and/or an inhibitory effect on histamine H1 receptors.
New roughage source of Pennisetum purpureum cv. Mahasarakham utilization for ruminants feeding under global climate change

Objective As the climate changes, it influences ruminant’s feed intake, nutrient digestibility, rumen methane production and emission. This experiment aimed to evaluate the effect of feeding Sweet grass (Pennisetum purpureum cv. Mahasarakham; SG) as a new source of good quality forage to improve feed utilization efficiency and to mitigate rumen methane production and emission. Methods Four, growing crossbred of Holstein Friesian heifers, 14 months old, were arranged in a 4×4 Latin square design to receive four dietary treatments. Treatment 1 (T1) was rice straw (RS) fed on ad libitum with 1.0% body weight (BW) of concentrate (C) supplementation (RS/1.0C). Treatment 2 (T2) and treatment 3 (T3) were SG, fed on ad libitum with 1.0% and 0.5% BW of concentrate supplementation, respectively (SG/1.0C and SG/0.5C, respectively). Treatment 4 (T4) was total Sweet grass fed on ad libitum basis with non-concentrate supplementation (TSG). Results The results revealed that roughage and total feed intake were increased with SG when compared to RS (p<0.01) while TSG was like RS/1.0C treatment. Digestibility of nutrients, nutrients intake, total volatile fatty acids (VFAs), rumen microorganisms were the highest and CH4 was the lowest in the heifers that received SG/1.0C (p<0.01). Total dry matter (DM) feed intake, digestibility and intake of nutrients, total VFAs, NH3-N, bacterial and fungal population of animals receiving SG/0.5C were higher than those fed on RS/1.0C. Reducing of concentrate supplementation with SG as a roughage source increased NH3-N, acetic acid, and fungal populations, but it decreased propionic acid and protozoal populations (p<0.05). However, ruminal pH and blood urea nitrogen were not affected by the dietary treatments (p>0.05). Conclusion As the results, SG could be a good forage to improve rumen fermentation, decrease methane production and reduced the level of concentrate supplementation for growing ruminants in the tropics especially under global climate change.
Efficient Algorithm for Maximizing Life Time of Wireless Sensor Networks

: In this paper we give domatic partition algorithm for obtaining the maximum number of disjoint dominating sets. At a time only one dominating set activated and other puts into rest mode. We also explore grid-based coordinated routing in wireless sensor networks and compare the energy available in the network over time for different grid sizes. A test area is divided into square-shaped grids of certain length. Fully charged battery powered nodes are randomly placed in the area with a fixed source and sink nodes. One node per grid is elected as the coordinator which does the actual routing. The source node starts flooding the network with every coordinator joining in the routing. Once the flooding reaches the sink node, information is sent back to the source by finding the back route to the source this process is continued until a node (coordinator) along that route runs out of energy. New coordinators are elected to replace the depleted ones. The source node refloods the network so that the sink can find a new back route to send information. This entire process continues until the network is partitioned and the connectivity between the source and the sink nodes is lost. In this work we compare domatic partition algorithm with grid based algorithm.
Pulsed time‐of‐flight pixel with on‐chip 20 klux background light suppression in standard CMOS technology

A novel time‐of‐flight pixel designed in 0.18‐μm standard CMOS technology with an indirect pulsed technique is presented. This design is capable of operating in ambients with high levels of background light, since a novel in‐pixel background suppression circuit makes it robust up to 20 klux of ambient light. In addition to this, the pixel incorporates an adaptive number of accumulations circuit that selects the optimum number of accumulations for each situation at pixel level, avoiding saturation even under high illumination conditions.
Spontaneous T-cell responses against the immune check point programmed-death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) in patients with chronic myeloproliferative neoplasms correlate with disease stage and clinical response

ABSTRACT The Chronic Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN) are cancers characterized by hyperinflammation and immune deregulation. Concurrently, the expression of the immune check point programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) is induced by inflammation. In this study we report on the occurrence of spontaneous T cell responses against a PD-L1 derived epitope in patients with MPN. We show that 71% of patients display a significant immune response against PD-L1, and patients with advanced MPN have significantly fewer and weaker PD-L1 specific immune responses compared to patients with non-advanced MPN. The PD-L1 specific T cell responses are CD4+ T cell responses, and by gene expression analysis we show that expression of PD-L1 is enhanced in patients with MPN. This could imply that the tumor specific immune response in MPN could be enhanced by vaccination with PD-L1 derived epitopes by boosting the anti-regulatory immune response hereby allowing tumor specific T cell to exert anti-tumor immunity.
Comment on Three-Element Item Selection Procedures for Multiple Forms Assembly

A recent article in this journal addressed the choice between specialized heuristics and mixed-integer programming (MIP) solvers for automated test assembly. This reaction is to comment on the mischaracterization of the general nature of MIP solvers in this article, highlight the quite inefficient modeling of the test-assembly problems used in its empirical examples, and counter these examples by presenting the MIP solutions for a set of 35 real-world multiple-form assembly problems.
A quality model: how to improve the object-oriented software process

We have established a quality model for the object oriented paradigm. Quality is divided into factors and these into criteria. We have designed 350 measures, bearing in mind a particular attribute of the object orientation, and have been connected to the criteria to set up the model. We outline a new methodology for applying this model to improve the object oriented software process by establishing a set of steps to be applied in the phases of object oriented development.
ImmunomeBrowser: a tool to aggregate and visualize complex and heterogeneous epitopes in reference proteins

Motivation Datasets that are derived from different studies (e.g. MHC ligand elution, MHC binding, B/T cell epitope screening etc.) often vary in terms of experimental approaches, sizes of peptides tested, including partial and or nested overlapping peptides and in the number of donors tested. Results We present a customized application of the Immune Epitope Database's ImmunomeBrowser tool, which can be used to effectively aggregate and visualize heterogeneous immunological data. User provided peptide sets and associated response data is mapped to a user‐provided protein reference sequence. The output consists of tables and figures representing the aggregated data represented by a Response Frequency score and associated estimated confidence interval. This allows the user to visualizing regions associated with dominant responses and their boundaries. The results are presented both as a user interactive javascript based web interface and a tabular format in a selected reference sequence. Availability and implementation The ‘ImmunomeBrowser’ has been a longstanding feature of the IEDB (http://www.iedb.org). The present application extends the use of this tool to work with user‐provided datasets, rather than the output of IEDB queries. This new server version of the ImmunomeBrowser is freely accessible at http://tools.iedb. org/immunomebrowser/.