Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring Trade-Offs between Specialized Dataflow Kernels and a Reusable Overlay in a Stereo Matching Case Study

FPGAs are known to permit huge gains in performance and efficiency for suitable applications but still require reduced design efforts and shorter development cycles for wider adoption. In this work, we compare the resulting performance of two design concepts that in different ways promise such increased productivity. As common starting point, we employ a kernel-centric design approach, where computational hotspots in an application are identified and individually accelerated on FPGA. By means of a complex stereo matching application, we evaluate two fundamentally different design philosophies and approaches for implementing the required kernels on FPGAs. In the first implementation approach, we designed individually specialized data flow kernels in a spatial programming language for a Maxeler FPGA platform; in the alternative design approach, we target a vector coprocessor with large vector lengths, which is implemented as a form of programmable overlay on the application FPGAs of a Convey HC-1. We assess both approaches in terms of overall system performance, raw kernel performance, and performance relative to invested resources. After compensating for the effects of the underlying hardware platforms, the specialized dataflow kernels on the Maxeler platform are around 3× faster than kernels executing on the Convey vector coprocessor. In our concrete scenario, due to trade-offs between reconfiguration overheads and exposed parallelism, the advantage of specialized dataflow kernels is reduced to around 2.5×
1 Nonparametric Neighborhood Statistics for MRI Denoising

This paper presents a novel method for denoising MR images that relies on an optimal estimation, combining a likelihood model with an adaptive image prior. The method models images as random fields and exploits the properties of independent Rician noise to learn the higher-order statistics of image neighborhoods from corrupted input data. It uses these statistics as priors within a Bayesian denoising framework. This paper presents an information-theoretic method for characterizing neighborhood structure using nonparametric density estimation. The formulation generalizes easily to simultaneous denoising of multimodal MRI, exploiting the relationships between modalities to further enhance performance. The method, relying on the information content of input data for noise estimation and setting important parameters, does not require significant parameter tuning. Qualitative and quantitative results on real, simulated, and multimodal data, including comparisons with other approaches, demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Nonparametric Neighborhood Statistics
The Effect of Inter-personal Trust on Opportunism and Business Performance of Gem Dealers in Sri Lanka

This study attempts to explore the effect of interpersonal-trust on opportunism and business performance of gem dealers in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the study suggests three major hypothesis which was tested on primary data gathered from 100 registered gem dealers in the Ratnapura district in Sri Lanka, using structured questionnaires. The results demonstrate that inter-personal trust i.e. credibility, benevolence, ability among gem dealers have a significant negative impact on opportunism and positive significant impact on business improvements. Whereas highlighting the inverse relationship between business opportunism and performance. Furthermore, this study concludes that inter-personal trust has greater impacts on the well-being of this industry highlighting it as the main relational attribute among gem dealers interactions. Thus, inter-personal trust lowers their transaction costs in exchanges and increase the profit levels of gem dealers in Sri Lanka.
Use and Acceptance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by University Students; Developing a Model for the Sri Lankan Context

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is an umbrella term that covers all technologies in retrieving and communicating information and it has turned the world into a global village enabling the compression of time and space. This circumstance has led to a paradigm shift in higher education of Sri Lanka in an effort to capture ICTs to a large extent, as it is the foremost important method to create a technology-equipped generation as effective users of ICTs to cope with the present job market demands. However, literature reveals a lack of sufficient interest in individual use and acceptance of ICTs among Sri Lankan university students. Many researchers in other countries have studied and proposed theories and models on individual use and acceptance of technologies to facilitate predicting individual user behavior with technology over a rapid change in both technologies and their environments. Each theory or model consists of different sets of determinants and moderators exclusive to their own countries. It is therefore questioned whether these theories and models can be used in outside contexts, especially in countries like Sri Lanka. Many researchers have also found that individual cultural values have a strong contextual influence on individual use and acceptance of ICTs. Therefore, the current research aims at proposing a parsimonious and a robust model, which best describes the individual use and acceptance of ICTs among university students in Sri Lanka with the intention of promoting usage and future acceptance. The research study involved a combination of positivist and phenomenological inquiries that led to the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches. The design of the study consisted of two main phases: the exploratory study and the main study. The exploratory study was carried out to check the feasibility of the research and the main study, tested the conceptual model using structured questionnaires from 1681 of university students. Statistical analysis methods and Structural Equation Modeling were employed with SPSS version 21 with AMOS to analyze data. The model developed, ICT Use and Acceptance Model (ICTUAM), was finalized with an excellent model fit. Performance expectancy and facilitating conditions are the determinants which describe the current ICT usage behavior and the performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and current usage behavior play important roles in determining the behavior intention to future use of ICTs. Masculinity/femininity moderated the relationship between performance expectancy and current usage behavior. Power distance moderated the relationship between performance expectancy and the behavior intention to future use of ICTs. The relationship between the social influence and behavior intention to future use of ICTs was moderated by the main subject stream, masculinity/femininity, individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. Individualism/collectivism moderated the relationship between effort expectancy and behavior
Human Cytomegalovirus Persistently Infects Aortic Endothelial Cells

ABSTRACT Endothelial cells (EC) have been implicated as constituting an important cell type in the pathogenesis of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV). Microvascular and macrovascular EC exhibit different biochemical and functional properties depending on the organ of origin. Phenotypic differences between microvascular and macrovascular EC may alter the ability of these cells to support HCMV replication. In this study, we compared the replication of HCMV in primary macrovascular aortic EC (AEC) with that in brain microvascular EC (BMVEC). An examination of IE72, pp65, and gB viral antigen expression in BMVEC and AEC by immunoflourescence revealed similar frequencies of infected cells. Intracellular production of virus was 3 log units greater in BMVEC than in AEC, while equal quantities of extracellular virus were produced in both cell types. HCMV infection of BMVEC resulted in rapid cellular lysis, while the virus was nonlytic and continuously released from HCMV-infected AEC for the life span of the culture. An examination of infected cells by electron microscopy revealed the formation of abundant nucleocapsids in both AEC and BMVEC. However, significant amounts of mature viral particles were only detected in the cytoplasm of BMVEC. These observations indicate that levels of HCMV replication in EC obtained from different organs are distinct and suggest that persistently infected AEC may serve as a reservoir of virus.
The Influence of a Centrally-Procured School Food Program on Consumption and Instances of Fruits and Vegetables in School-Age Children

Background: In Canada, 70% of youth are not meeting the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables (FV) daily. School nutrition programs are one strategy for improving dietary habits in youth. Methods: A two-year pilot cluster randomized controlled trial was implemented within Southwestern Ontario to assess how a ten-week centrally-procured school food program (CPSFP) influences students’ consumption and instances of FV compared to the traditional school nutrition program (TSNP). Results: Children were 9-13 years of age; 30 schools received the CPSFP and 30 received the TSNP. Vegetable consumption did not change with the CPSFP (mean=0.0; SD=1.0) or the TSNP (mean=0.0; SD=1.0; p=0.94). Fruit consumption did not change with the CPSFP (mean=0.0; SD=1.4) and decreased by 0.1 servings (SD=1.4) with the TSNP (p=0.06). Instances of vegetables and fruit were similar between groups. Conclusions: The CPSFP resulted in no significant change in consumption or instances of FV.
Differences in Birth Weight Associated with the 2008 Beijing Olympics Air Pollution Reduction: Results from a Natural Experiment

Background Previous studies have reported decreased birth weight associated with increased air pollutant concentrations during pregnancy. However, it is not clear when during pregnancy increases in air pollution are associated with the largest differences in birth weight. Objectives Using the natural experiment of air pollution declines during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we evaluated whether having specific months of pregnancy (i.e., 1st…8th) during the 2008 Olympics period was associated with larger birth weights, compared with pregnancies during the same dates in 2007 or 2009. Methods Using n = 83,672 term births to mothers residing in four urban districts of Beijing, we estimated the difference in birth weight associated with having individual months of pregnancy during the 2008 Olympics (8 August–24 September 2008) compared with the same dates in 2007 and 2009. We also estimated the difference in birth weight associated with interquartile range (IQR) increases in mean ambient particulate matter ≤ 2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations during each pregnancy month. Results Babies whose 8th month of gestation occurred during the 2008 Olympics were, on average, 23 g larger (95% CI: 5 g, 40 g) than babies whose 8th month occurred during the same calendar dates in 2007 or 2009. IQR increases in PM2.5 (19.8 μg/m3), CO (0.3 ppm), SO2 (1.8 ppb), and NO2 (13.6 ppb) concentrations during the 8th month of pregnancy were associated with 18 g (95% CI: –32 g, –3 g), 17 g (95% CI: –28 g, –6 g), 23 g (95% CI: –36 g, –10 g), and 34 g (95% CI: –70 g, 3 g) decreases in birth weight, respectively. We did not see significant associations for months 1–7. Conclusions Short-term decreases in air pollution late in pregnancy in Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics, a normally heavily polluted city, were associated with higher birth weight. Citation Rich DQ, Liu K, Zhang J, Thurston SW, Stevens TP, Pan Y, Kane C, Weinberger B, Ohman-Strickland P, Woodruff TJ, Duan X, Assibey-Mensah V, Zhang J. 2015. Differences in birth weight associated with the 2008 Beijing Olympics air pollution reduction: results from a natural experiment. Environ Health Perspect 123:880–887; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/ehp.1408795
Contraintes d'ordre et automates d'arbres pour les preuves de terminaison. (Ordering constraints and tree automata for proving termination)

Les systemes de reecriture sont des systemes de calcul simples et lisibles dont l'expressivite est suffisante pour le codage des programmes ou la specification de processus automatiques. En exprimant les programmes ou processus sous la forme de systemes de reecriture, on dispose, en outre, d'outils de verification puissants bases sur les methodes de preuve de la reecriture. La terminaison assure l'achevement des calculs en un temps fini et elle est une premisse indispensable a d'autres methodes de preuve telle la preuve par recurrence. Classiquement, la preuve de terminaison d'un systeme de reecriture utilise la recherche d'un ordre bien fonde assurant la decroissance de chaque etape de reecriture. La recherche manuelle d'un tel ordre n'est envisageable que sur des petits systemes. C'est pourquoi l'automatisation des preuves de terminaison est un element crucial pour l'exploitation des outils de preuve de la reecriture sur des programmes ou des processus de taille reelle. Dans cette these nous presentons deux approches pour l'automatisation des preuves de terminaison des systemes de reecriture. Dans la premiere approche, la recherche de l'ordre de terminaison - une instance de l'ordre general sur les chemins (GPO) - est effectuee a l'aide d'un mecanisme de resolution de contraintes d'ordre (sur des graphes orientes) tendant a rendre la recherche efficace et automatique. La deuxieme approche est modulaire ; le systeme est divise en sous-systemes et les preuves de terminaison sont realisees independamment pour chaque sous-systeme. La terminaison du systeme complet est assuree, pour une certaine strategie d'application des sous-systemes, par un critere base sur le calcul d'une approximation de l'ensemble des formes normales en utilisant des techniques d'automates d'arbres. D'autres applications de cette approximation sont egalement presentees, parmi lesquelles la completude suffisante, le test d'atteignabilite, et la preuve de non-terminaison forte.
Contribution of Lumbar Spine BMD to Fracture Risk in Individuals With T‐Score Discordance

Fracture risk estimates are usually based on femoral neck (FN) BMD. It is unclear how to address T‐score discordance, where lumbar spine (LS) T‐score is lower than FN T‐score. The objective of this work was to examine the impact of LS BMD on fracture risk, in individuals with lower LS T‐score than FN T‐score. Participants aged 60+ years from the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study with LS and FN BMD measured at first visit, and were followed from 1989 to 2014. Five‐hundred and seventy‐three (573) of 2270 women and 131 of 1373 men had lower LS than FN T‐score by ≥0.6 standard deviation (SD) (low‐LS group based on least significant change). In low‐LS women, each 1 SD lower LS T‐score than FN was associated with a 30% increase in fracture risk (hazard ratio [HR] 1.30; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.45). For low‐LS men there was a 20% nonsignificant increase in fracture risk for each 1 SD lower LS than FN T‐score (HR 1.20; 95% CI, 0.10 to 1.67). Low‐LS women had greater absolute fracture risks than the rest of the women. This increased risk was more apparent for lower levels of FN T‐score and in older age groups. At an FN T‐score of –2, low‐LS women had a 3%, 10%, and 23% higher 5‐year absolute fracture risk than non‐low LS women in the 60 to 69 year, 70 to 79 year, and 80+ years age‐groups, respectively. Furthermore, an osteoporotic LS T‐score increased 5‐year absolute fracture risk for women with normal or osteopenic FN T‐score by 10% to 13%. Men in the low‐LS group had very few fractures; therefore, a meaningful analyses of fracture risk could not be conducted. This study shows the significant contribution of lower LS BMD to fracture risk over and above FN BMD in women. A LS BMD lower than FN BMD should be incorporated into fracture risk calculators at least for women in older age‐groups. © 2015 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Conformational properties of alpha-synuclein in its free and lipid-associated states.

alpha-Synuclein (alphaS) is a presynaptic terminal protein that is believed to play an important role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). We have used NMR spectroscopy to characterize the conformational properties of alphaS in solution as a free monomer and when bound to lipid vesicles and lipid-mimetic detergent micelles. Free wild-type alphaS is largely unfolded in solution, but exhibits a region with a preference for helical conformations that may be important in the aggregation of alphaS into fibrils. The N-terminal region of alphaS binds to synthetic lipid vesicles and detergent micelles in vitro and adopts a highly helical conformation, consistent with predictions based on sequence analysis. The C-terminal part of the protein does not associate with either vesicles or micelles, remaining free and unfolded. These results suggest that one function of alphaS may be to tether as of yet unidentified partners to lipid surfaces via interactions with its C-terminal tail.
P300 and Psychiatric Vulnerability in University Students a

Roth and Cannon (1972) reported the first study of late positive P300S to infrequent auditory stimuli. Levit et al. (1973) examined P300 in both schizophrenics and psychotic depressives, using visual and auditory stimuli, and found that the schizophrenics had significantly smaller P300 components than depressives and normal controls. Verleger and Cohen (1978) replicated these findings, and also reported habituation of P300 in schizophrenic patients. Habituation was not seen in the control subjects. Josiassen et al. (1981) have recently shown that P300 amplitude is also reduced in schizophrenic patients when somatosensory stimuli are employed. A recent study compared the response to auditory stimuli of schizophrenics and normal controls in a reaction time task and a no-task condition (Roth et al., 1980b). P300 amplitude was significantly less in schizophrenics than controls when loud (100 dB) white noise stimuli were presented in the no-task condition. This was also the case with infrequent tones in the reaction time task. Further analysis employing averages sorted by reaction time and response-synchronized averages indicated that P300 latency variability could not account for this difference (Roth et al., 1980~) . One possible source for the observed reduction in P300 amplitude in schizophrenia is a failure on the part of schizophrenics to generate trial-to-trial expectancies in a series of random stimuli, an important variable in the determination of P300 amplitude (Duncan-Johnson and Donchin, 1977). This hypothesis was examined by DuncanJohnson and colleagues, who found no evidence that schizophrenics are impaired in their ability to formulate expectancies. An overall reduction in P300 amplitude in the schizophrenic group was associated with a tendency towards slower reaction times (Duncan-Johnson et al., 1981). Evidence for a relationship between impaired attention and P300 amplitude attenuation was found in a study in which event-related potentials were recorded during the administration of the Continuous Performance Test. Attentional impairment in the acute schizophrenic patients studied was found both behaviorally and using the P300 amplitude as a cortical measure of attention (Pass et al., 1980). In an experiment where subjects were instructed to count the number of rare, target stimuli, P300 amplitude in the schizophrenic group was significantly correlated with their counting performance, providing further evidence of relationship between P300 amplitude and behavioral measures of attention (Cohen et al., 1981). Friedman et al. (1980) recorded the P300 to auditory stimuli in children of schizophrenic parents, considered to be at “high risk” for developing schizophrenia, and in the children of nonpsychiatrically disturbed parents. They used either an infrequent pitch change or stimulus omission to elicit P300, and found the amplitude of
Neonatal posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus from prematurity: pathophysiology and current treatment concepts.

OBJECT Preterm infants are at risk for perinatal complications, including germinal matrix-intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) and subsequent posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus (PHH). This review summarizes the current understanding of the epidemiology, pathophysiology, management, and outcomes of IVH and PHH in preterm infants. METHODS The MEDLINE database was systematically searched using terms related to IVH, PHH, and relevant neurosurgical procedures to identify publications in the English medical literature. To complement information from the systematic search, pertinent articles were selected from the references of articles identified in the initial search. RESULTS This review summarizes the current knowledge regarding the epidemiology and pathophysiology of IVH and PHH, primarily using evidence-based studies. Advances in obstetrics and neonatology over the past few decades have contributed to a marked improvement in the survival of preterm infants, and neurological morbidity is also starting to decrease. The incidence of IVH is declining, and the incidence of PHH will likely follow. Currently, approximately 15% of preterm infants who suffer severe IVH will require permanent CSF diversion. The clinical presentation and surgical management of symptomatic PHH with temporary ventricular reservoirs (ventricular access devices) and ventriculosubgaleal shunts and permanent ventriculoperitoneal shunts are discussed. Preterm infants who develop PHH that requires surgical treatment remain at high risk for other related neurological problems, including cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and cognitive and behavioral delay. This review highlights numerous opportunities for further study to improve the care of these children. CONCLUSIONS A better grasp of the pathophysiology of IVH is beginning to impact the incidence of IVH and PHH. Neonatologists conduct rigorous Class I and II studies to advance the outcomes of preterm infants. The need for well-designed multicenter trials is essential because of the declining incidence of IVH and PHH, variations in referral patterns, and neonatal ICU and neurosurgical management. Well-designed multicenter trials will eventually produce evidence to enable neurosurgeons to provide their smallest, most vulnerable patients with the best practices to minimize perioperative complications and permanent shunt dependence, and most importantly, optimize long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes.
ESTEEM: A Novel Framework for Qualitatively Evaluating and Visualizing Spatiotemporal Embeddings in Social Media

Analyzing and visualizing large amounts of social media communications and contrasting short-term conversation changes over time and geolocations is extremely important for commercial and government applications. Earlier approaches for large-scale text stream summarization used dynamic topic models and trending words. Instead, we rely on text embeddings – low-dimensional word representations in a continuous vector space where similar words are embedded nearby each other. This paper presents ESTEEM, 1 a novel tool for visualizing and evaluating spatiotemporal embeddings learned from streaming social media texts. Our tool allows users to monitor and analyze query words and their closest neighbors with an interactive interface. We used state-of-the-art techniques to learn embeddings and developed a visualization to represent dynamically changing relations between words in social media over time and other dimensions. This is the ﬁrst interactive visualization of streaming text representations learned from social media texts that also allows users to contrast differences across multiple dimensions of the data.