Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Allocation of Free Stuff

We study online matching settings with selfish agents when everything is free. Inconsiderate agents break ties arbitrarily amongst equal maximal value available choices, even if the maximal value is equal to zero. \par Even for the simplest case of zero/one valuations, where agents arrive online in an arbitrary order, and agents are restricted to taking at most one item, the resulting social welfare may be negligible for a deterministic algorithm. This may be surprising when contrasted with the 1/2 approximation of the greedy algorithm, analogous to this setting, except that agents are considerate (i.e., they don't take zero-valued items). \par We overcome this challenge by introducing a new class of algorithms, which we refer to as prioritization algorithms. We show that upgrading a random subset of the agents to "business class" already improves the approximation to a constant. For more general valuations, we achieve a constant approximation using $log n$ priority classes, when the valuations are known in advance. We extend these results to settings where agents have additive valuations and are restricted to taking up to some $q\geq 1$ items. Our results are tight up to a constant.
Influence of Patient Selection on the Outcome of Capsule Endoscopy in Patients With Chronic Gastrointestinal Bleeding

Background: In chronic gastrointestinal bleeding, success rates in the range of 48% to 76% have been reported for diagnosing clear bleeding sources using capsule endoscopy. The influence of patient selection on the numbers of positive findings yielded by capsule endoscopy is as yet unclear. Methods: From April 2001 to June 2003, capsule endoscopy was carried out in 74 of a total of 127 patients (58%) who presented for capsule endoscopy with a high suspicion of gastrointestinal bleeding in the small-bowel region. Seventy of the 74 patients were included in the analysis. This group of patients was divided into a study group (32 patients) and a post-study group (38 patients), and the two groups were compared. Results: Stricter patient selection was carried out in the study group than in the post-study group: 49% of those in the study group underwent capsule endoscopy, compared with 65% of those in the post-study group. The overall success rate for detecting relevant bleeding sources was 54%; in the study group, the rate was 66%; whereas in the post-study group, it was only 45%. Significant differences observed between the two groups of patients included the lowest hemoglobin value (5.9 ± 1.4 g/dL in the study group, compared with 7.7 ± 2.1 g/dL in the post-study group) and transfusion requirements (a median of 10 units in the study group, vs. 2 units in the post-study group). None of the patients who had a minimum hemoglobin value ≥10 g/dL had a positive capsule result. Conclusions: Patient selection has a considerable influence on the success rate of capsule endoscopy. In patients with chronic gastrointestinal bleeding, the minimum hemoglobin value and transfusion requirements appear to be the decisive parameters.
A very simple analog control for QSW-ZVS source/sink dc-dc converters with seamless mode transition

A simple, analog, control circuit is proposed for seamless transition between source and sink modes in a Quasi-Square-Wave Zero Voltage Switching (QSW-ZVS) source/sink dc-dc converters. The inductor current is controlled by a variable-width hysteretic current mode control. The upper and lower bounds of the hysteretic band are clamped to ensure QSW-ZVS operation with a single current command and independently from the power flow direction. This enables the control of any PWM converter able to operate in QSW-ZVS with a single control loop. Implementing a complex multi-mode or look-up-table based digital control is no longer required. A 50W buck converter and a 100W boost converter are built to demonstrate the proposed control circuit.
Segmentation and identification of presence of Sinhala characters in Facebook Images

With the rapid growths of social network, people are connected to one platform and build closed relationships without caring any geographical barriers. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn can be seen as most popular social media. By studying the content on social media, can get views of the society of a current topic which is talked in the society. In Sri Lanka, there are large number of Sinhala typed optical image posts are shared by public groups to the Facebook. To study those content, first it is necessary to identify Sinhala content images. All images are not containing characters and all characters are not Sinhala. So it is necessary to filter only images with Sinhala characters. One way of identify the availability of Sinhala characters is by doing the whole process of Object Character Recognition. But when a large number of images are processing, it is a disadvantage to have non-character and non-Sinhala character images with the Sinhala content images. So it is better to filter only Sinhala character images to do the process. But there were no researches to identify the availability of Sinhala character is an image. So this research was done to identify the availability of Sinhala characters in an image. Facebook posts which were published by the public groups are taken as the domain to the research. To identify the availability of Sinhala characters in an image a Rule-Based method was proposed in this research.
Internal morphology of human cervical pedicles.

STUDY DESIGN The internal architecture of cervical spine pedicles was investigated by thin sectioning and digitization of radiographic images. OBJECTIVES To provide quantitative information on the internal dimensions and cortical shell thicknesses of the middle and lower cervical pedicles. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Although there have been a number of studies presenting data on the external dimensions of the cervical pedicle, little is known regarding its internal architecture and cortical shell thickness along the pedicle axis. METHODS Twenty-five human cervical vertebrae (C3-C7) were secured to a thin-sectioning machine to produce three 0.7-mm-thick pedicle slices along its axis. Plain radiographs of the pedicle slices were scanned and digitized to facilitate measurement of the internal dimensions. Computer software was specifically developed to determine the external dimensions (i.e., pedicle height and width) and the internal dimensions (i.e., cortical shell thicknesses of the superior, inferior, lateral, and medial walls and the cancellous core height and width) of cervical pedicles. RESULTS Superior and inferior wall cortical thicknesses of pedicle thin slices were similar, whereas the lateral wall cortical thickness was significantly smaller than the medial wall thickness. The medial cortical shell (average value range: 1.2-2.0 mm) was measured to be 1.4 to 3.6 times as thick as the lateral cortical shell (average value range: 0.4-1.1 mm). When medial and lateral cortical thicknesses were normalized for external dimensions, the combined cortical shell thickness was thinnest at C7 (average value range: 18. 6-25.6% of the external width), and this result was statistically significant when compared with other vertebral levels. CONCLUSIONS The cervical pedicle is a complex, three-dimensional structure exhibiting extensive variability in internal morphology. Characteristics of the cervical pedicle at different spinal levels must be noted before transpedicular screw fixation.
ALBidS: A Decision Support System for Strategic Bidding in Electricity Markets

This work demonstrates a system that provides decision support to players in electricity market negotiations. This contribution is provided by ALBidS (Adaptive Learning strategic Bidding System), a decision support system that includes a large number of distinct market negotiation strategies, and learns which should be used in each context in order to provide the best expected response. The learning process on the best negotiation strategies to use at each moment is developed by means of several integrated reinforcement learning algorithms. ALBidS is integrated with MASCEM (Multi-Agent Simulator of Competitive Electricity Markets), which enables the simulation of realistic market scenarios using real data.
Total small vessel disease score and risk of recurrent stroke

Objective: In patients with TIA and ischemic stroke, we validated the total small vessel disease (SVD) score by determining its prognostic value for recurrent stroke. Methods: Two independent prospective studies were conducted, one comprising predominantly Caucasian patients with TIA/ischemic stroke (Oxford Vascular Study [OXVASC]) and one predominantly Chinese patients with ischemic stroke (University of Hong Kong [HKU]). Cerebral MRI was performed and assessed for lacunes, microbleeds, white matter hyperintensities (WMH), and perivascular spaces (PVS). Predictive value of total SVD score for risk of recurrent stroke was determined and potential refinements considered. Results: In 2,002 patients with TIA/ischemic stroke (OXVASC n = 1,028, HKU n = 974, 6,924 patient-years follow-up), a higher score was associated with an increased risk of recurrent ischemic stroke (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] per unit increase: 1.32, 1.16–1.51, p < 0.0001; c statistic 0.61, 0.56–0.65, p < 0.0001) and intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (HR 1.54, 1.11–2.13, p = 0.009; c statistic 0.65, 0.54–0.76, p = 0.006). A higher score predicted recurrent stroke in SVD and non-SVD TIA/ischemic stroke subtypes (c statistic 0.67, 0.59–0.74, p < 0.0001 and 0.60, 0.55–0.65, p < 0.0001). Including burden of microbleeds and WMH and adjusting the cutoff of basal ganglia PVS potentially improved predictive power for ICH (c statistic 0.71, 0.60–0.81, phet = 0.45), but not for recurrent ischemic stroke (c statistic 0.60, 0.56–0.65, phet = 0.76) on internal validation. Conclusions: The total SVD score has predictive value for recurrent stroke after TIA/ischemic stroke. Prediction of recurrence in patients with nonlacunar events highlights the potential role of SVD in wider stroke etiology.
Stability in FEN-Hedonic Games for Single-Player Deviations

Hedonic games model how players form coalitions based on their preferences about the coalitions they can join. Lang et al.(2015) introduced FEN-hedonic games where each player partitions the other players into friends, enemies, and neutral players and ranks her friends and enemies. They then use bipolar responsive extensions to derive preferences over coalitions, and since such preferences can be incomplete, they consider possible and necessary stability for various stability notions and study the related verification and existence problems in terms of computational complexity. However, in their complexity analysis they left a number of cases open. We settle several of these open problems for stability concepts based on single-player deviations: We show that possible verification can be solved in polynomial time for Nash stability, individual stability, and contractually individual stability. Yet, necessary existence is an NP-complete problem for individual stability while possible existence is easy for contractually individual stability.
Thirty Years of Medical Surveillance in Perfluooctanoic Acid Production Workers

Objective: To report health outcomes of 30 years (1978–2007) of medical surveillance of workers engaged in a perfluooctanoic acid (PFOA) production plant. Methods: Fifty-three males workers (20 to 63 years) were submitted every year to medical examination and blood chemical chemistry tests, and serum PFOA dosage. Results: In the latest survey PFOA serum levels ranged from 0.20 to 47.04 μg/mL in currently exposed workers, and from 0.53 to 18.66 μg/mL in those formerly exposed. No clinical evidence of any specific trouble or disease has been recorded over the 30 years, and all the biochemical parameters, including liver, kidney and hormonal functions, turned out to be within the reference ranges, but a significant association of total cholesterol and uric acid with and PFOA serum level was evidenced. Conclusions: A probable interference of PFOA on intermediate metabolism deserves further investigations.
Multi-Material Soft Strain Sensors with High Gauge Factors for Proprioceptive Sensing of Soft Bending Actuators

Highly stretchable strain sensors, with embedded microchannels filled with conductive liquid, have been widely used in various applications in soft robotics for detecting different types of deformation modes, when attached to human or robot bodies. One of recent applications that draws an attention is direct integration of soft sensors with soft actuators for proprioceptive feedback. However, it is not easy to obtain a high resolution in curvature sensing when combined with bending actuators in which curvature is indirectly measured from strain sensing, since the placement of soft sensors are limited to the location where the strain sensitivity is relatively small. Therefore, we propose a new design of high gauge factor strain sensors using a multi-material structure. By alternately arranging low and high stiffness elastomers, the structure experiences amplified strain changes on each of the low-stiffness regions. The gauge factor was significantly increased as high as over three times of a conventional single material sensor. In this paper, the design and fabrication of the proposed sensor are described with an analytical model. The sensor was tested while integrated with a PneuNet bending actuator for curvature detection as an application.
Effects of Secondary Leakage Inductance on the LLC Resonant Converter—Part I: Transformer Voltage Gain and Efficiency

Minimizing the transformer magnetizing inductance is essential for the soft switching operation of the LLC resonant converter, despite the fact that it results in higher values of magnetizing current, which deteriorates the converter efficiency. Furthermore, it is a well-known practice to utilize the transformer leakage as an inductive component in the resonant tank to improve the power destiny. This paper reveals that the transformer voltage gain can be improved when the transformer leakage inductance in concentrated on the secondary side to avoid the voltage drop inflicted by the relatively large value of the magnetizing current (im), especially at light load condition. The theoretical discussion relies on the asymmetry of the EI core by placing the secondary winding in a close contact with the magnetic core and placing the primary winding in the vicinity of the air gap. Moreover, noise absorber had been utilized to control the leakage inductance value. The proposed transformer design maximizes the value of the secondary leakage inductance and minimizes the primary leakage inductance. Alongside with the theoretical discussion, experimental tests had been conducted to evaluate the proposed method using a 390V-12V, 220W LLC resonant converter.
Changing epidemiology of food-borne disease: a Minnesota perspective.

Food, like water and air, is a basic human need. Furthermore, an abundant and varied supply of food can greatly enhance the quality of life. However, beyond providing energy, nutrients, and gastronomic delight, food is a potential vehicle for pathogenic microorganisms and their toxic products. To many, the concept of food-borne disease is primarily that of the classical picture of staphylococcal intoxication: the sudden onset of severe nausea, cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea that occurs 2 to 4 hours after eating food that has been left too long at room temperature. During the first half of this century, staphylococcal intoxication was the main type of food-borne disease recognized. Over the past 15 years, the epidemiology of food-borne disease has shifted. Increasingly, food-borne disease is being attributed to a wide variety of bacteria, parasites, and viruses. Today the risk of food-borne disease depends on the type of food, its production source, how it is prepared and handled, and the consuming host's resistance to the infectious agent. As these factors change, the epidemiology of food-borne diseases also necessarily changes. The relationship between cardiovascular disease and consumption of saturated fat has led many Americans to abandon the traditional meat-and-potatoes diet that accompanied the postwar boom of the 1950s. The new American diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, and grains and deemphasizes meats and foods with a high content of fat. The concept of a diet balanced between the four basic food groups has been replaced by a diet built on a food pyramid. Public information campaigns, such as Five-a-Day for Better Health from the National Cancer Institute, promote increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Progress has been made in promoting the heart-healthy diet during the past 30 years. However, these dietary changes have also altered the epidemiology of food-borne diseases in the United States. In this review we discuss results of national surveillance of
Learn a Robust Policy in Adversarial Games via Playing with an Expert Opponent

Reinforcement learning methods such as AlphaZero have achieved super-human performance in adversarial games by training in a self-play manner. However, they generally require a large amount of computational resources to search for an (approximately) optimal policy in the joint state-action space involving both players and the environment. To accelerate the exploration process, we propose a new paradigm of "learning by playing" by considering the scenarios where expert opponents are accessible. By observing the opponent actions, the agent accelerates exploration by assigning more searching sources in these actions. To alleviate the sparse reward issue when facing the expert opponent at the beginning, we technically propose a novel method called Ladder Opponent Modeling (LOM), which builds a ladder opponent to facilitate the learning process. The agent plays with both the expert and ladder alternatively with its competence improved gradually. The online manner of the ladder opponent generates auxiliary tasks gradually, yielding a tractable improvement for the agent.
[Estimating exposure to organochlorine compounds from consuming pasteurised milk in Cartagena, Colombia].

OBJECTIVE Estimating adult residents' exposure to organochlorine compounds from drinking milk being marketed in the city of Cartagena. METHODS This was a descriptive observational study; 47 samples were taken from different production lots of brands of pasteurised milk being sold in the city of Cartagena. The milk samples' fat content was determined by gas chromatography. 596 adults were also surveyed whose dairy product consumption frequency had been investigated to estimate potential and acceptable daily intake and assess the risk of consuming organochlorines. RESULTS The people surveyed here were exposed to organochlorine compounds through consuming 12.1 mg/g/day in pasteurised milk being sold in the city of Cartagena. 100 % of the samples tested were contaminated with one of the pesticides being studied. The study population had a daily intake (IDP) of organochlorine compounds greater than that permitted by FAO/WHO guidelines. CONCLUSION It cannot be recommended that people in Cartagena do not drink milk; however, the competent authorities can be requested to require dairy-product producers to launch campaigns to improve the quality of milk from a toxicological point of view.
A Novel Dual-mode Micro-inverter for Photovoltaic AC Module Applications

Based on the combination of boost-flyback and flyback converter, a dual-mode mirco-inverter with pseudo-dc-link was proposed in this paper. This new topology operates at boost-flyback (BF) or flyback (F) mode alternatively dependent on a pair of double-line frequency complementary switches. During the BF mode, high voltage gain with low voltage stress on the power devices is obtained owing to the serial output of the boost and flyback sub-converter. Furthermore, this mode also provides a passive snubber to recycle the energy stored in the leakage inductor of transformer and clamp the turn-off voltage spike of main switch. The F mode enables the dual-mode converter to regulate the output voltage lower than the input voltage, making it possible to generate a rectified sinusoidal waveform at the dc link. The operation of the dual-mode mirco-inverter with peak current control in boundary conduction mode (BCM) is described in detail, and the mathematical expression of reference current aiming to lower total harmonic distortion (THD) is derived theoretically. Finally, a 240W prototype was implemented to validate the theoretical analysis and the benefits of the proposed topology.
Regional lung function studied with Xe133 in children with pneumonia

Pneumonia is still a common disease especially in children and old people. The virus etiology is conspicuous. Pneumococcic pneumonia is, however, nowadays perhaps as usual as before the antibiotic era [22], and the incidence of staphylococcic pneumonia is said to have risen in recent years [12]. It is well known that in pneumonia resolution is sometimes delayed and non complete. In Eaton-agent pneumonia as in virus pneumonia pulmonary dysfunction can exist for a long time after the acute stage [7, 91. In order to achieve sensitive methods of evaluation of the pulmonary function bronchospirometry, lobar spirometry and methods for investigation of regional lung function with radioactive gases have been developed. Some of these methods were recently discussed in an international symposium [21]. Experience from bronchospirometry investigation in adults indicates that regional decrease in lung function may exist in spite of normal spirometry findings [ 11. It would be of great interest to know to what extent pneumonia in childhood gives permanent impairment of regional lung function. As bronchospirometry and This study was supported by grants from the Swedish National Association against Heart and Chest Diseases. lobar spirometry are almost impossible to perform in children, methods using radioactive gases would be preferable for such studies. For that reason in a present study of pneumonia in children the regional lung function has been investigated with radioactive xenon (Xe133). The experiences from this method in childhood have been good and a preliminary report will here be presented.
FREQUENCY SPECTRA FROM CURRENT VS. MAGNETIC FLUX DENSITY MEASUREMENTS FOR MOBILE PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES

The frequency spectra of electromagnetic fields have to be determined to evaluate human exposure in accordance to ICNIRP guidelines. In the literature, comparisons with magnetic field guidelines have been performed by using the frequency distribution of the current drawn from the battery. In the present study we compared the frequency spectrum in the range 217 Hz to 2.4 kHz of the magnetic flux density measured near the surface of a mobile phone with the frequency spectrum of the supply current. By using the multiple frequency rule, recommended in the ICNIRP guidelines, we estimated the magnetic field exposure in the two cases. Similar measurements and estimations were done for an electric drill, a hair dryer, and a fluorescent desk lamp. All the devices have a basic frequency of 50 Hz, and the frequency spectra were evaluated up to 550 Hz. We also mapped the magnetic field in 3D around three mobile phones. The frequency distributions obtained from the two measurement methods are not equal. The frequency content of the current leads to an overestimation of the magnetic field exposure by a factor up to 2.2 for the mobile phone. For the drill, the hair dryer, and the fluorescent lamp, the supply current signal underestimated the exposure by a factor up to 2.3. In conclusion, an accurate exposure evaluation requires the magnetic flux density spectrum of the device to be measured directly. There was no indication that the devices studied would exceed the reference levels at the working distances normally used.