Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Minimal Surfaces in Riemannian Manifolds with Application to Shape Spaces

The aim of this master thesis is to solve the discrete version of Plateau’s problem in Riemannian manifolds. For Riemannian manifolds with additional conditions with regard to the curvature and injectivity radius differential geometry provides the existence of (classical) minimal surfaces. Geometric measure theory can be used to show the existence for Riemannian manifolds with fewer constraints. Pinkall and Polthier developed an algorithm to compute discrete minimal surfaces in an Euclidean space. This setting and algorithm were used and adapted to work in Riemannian manifolds. In the setting of shape spaces distance approximations were used, which are only valid for points close to each other. This is why a refinement step was added to the algorithm, to show that a finer triangulation achieves no better optimum of the minimized Dirichlet energy. Pinkall and Polthier showed that their algorithm works in the three-dimensional Euclidean space. This theorem also valid for the finite-dimensional Euclidean space. The convergence of the algorithm for Riemannian manifolds is not yet shown. However, the algorithm was applied to a distorted Euclidean space and the shape spaces of open and closed viscous rods and several experiments show that the algorithm converges but depends on a good selection of initial points and the initial triangulation. Eidesstattliche Erklärung Hiermit versichere ich, Christian Amrhein, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Gedanklich, inhaltlich oder wörtlich übernommenes habe ich durch Angabe von Herkunft und Text oder Anmerkung belegt bzw. kenntlich gemacht. Dies gilt in gleicher Weise für Bilder, Tabellen, Zeichnungen und Skizzen, die nicht von mir selbst erstellt wurden. Alle auf der CD beigefügten Programme sind von mir selbst programmiert worden. Münster, 27.5. 2016 Christian Amrhein
Exploring Consumers' Intention to Adopt Mobile Payment Systems in Ghana

In this paper, we examined consumers’ intention to adopt and use mobile payment method in Ghana. Data for the study was obtained from a sample of 260 respondents through online and direct survey using structured questionnaire. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyse the data through SPSS v.22 and SmartPLS v.3. Findings with regards to the determinants of mobile payment system adoption indicate that perceived security, attitude and perceived usefulness play active roles in consumers decision to adopt mobile payment method in Ghana. Also, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a significant and positive influence on consumers’ attitude towards mobile payment adoption. Further, subjective norm was found to influence perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of mobile payment adoption in Ghana. The study contributes to literature on mobile payment system from developing country context. The study proffered some recommendations.
Serum procalcitonin and C-reactive protein concentrations in dogs with degenerative mitral valve disease and infective endocarditis

This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of serum C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) concentrations in dogs with degenerative mitral valve disease (DMVD) and infective endocarditis. It also aimed to evaluate whether there is a relationship between the degree of disease and serum PCT and CRP concentrations. A total of 100 dogs with MVD were prospectively recruited into the study. According to clinical/laboratory signs and echocardiography, the dogs were divided into infective and degenerative groups. The degenerative group was also classified into four stages based on the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) guidelines (Stages A-D). Serum PCT and CRP concentrations were determined with dog-specific commercial test kits. The serum CRP (P<0.05) and PCT (P<0.001) concentrations in the infective group were significantly higher than the degenerative group. In the degenerative group, the serum CRP concentration of stage D dogs was significantly higher than the other stages (P<0.001), and the degree of disease correlated significantly positively with serum CRP concentration (r=0.531 P=0.000). In conclusion, serum CRP and PCT concentrations may aid traditional diagnostic techniques to differentiate infective and degenerative mitral valve disease. This study also demonstrated that serum CRP concentrations were elevated in Stage D dogs, and that there is a positive correlation between the degree of disease and serum CRP concentration. This can be useful in determining the severity of the inflammatory state in dogs with DMVD.
Levytska H

The article presents the results of studying the levels of amino acids in the vitreous body of rats with rhegmatogenous retinal detachment at different stages of modeling the pathology (on the 3, 5 and 7 day). In animals with modeling RRD, was observed a significant increase in the level of alanine, aspartate, glycine, glutamic acid compared with rats of conditionally intact group; maximum changes in indicators were observed on the 7th day of the study. The obtained data are explained by significant neurochemical changes of the glutamatergic system of the neural retina, which cause excitotoxicity (as a result of massive release of neuronal glutamate) and structural changes. In the study of the level of valine, histidine, tyrosine, phenylalanine and methionine, it was found that these amino acids are not involved in the pathogenesis of RRD, so their level does not change. The obtained experimental data deepen the existing pathophysiological data on the pathogenetic links of rhegmatogenous retinal detachment in the early stages of its progression, which is important for practical ophthalmology to develop effective pharmacotherapy of this disease.
Dissolution studies of synthetic soddyite and uranophane

This report concerns a study which was conducted for SKB. The conclusions and viewpoints presented in the report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily coincide with those of the client. ABSTRACT The dissolution of synthetically obtained soddyite and uranophane has been studied in solutions of low ionic strength. These are the likely final phases of the oxidative alteration pathway of uranium dioxide. The thermodynamic and kinetic dissolution properties of these phases have been determined at different bicarbonate concentrations. The solubilities determined in the experiments with soddyite correspond fairly well to the theoretical model calculated with a log K° s o = 3.9 ± 0.7. For uranophane, the best fitting was obtained for a log K° s0 = 11.7 ± 0.6. The dissolution rate in the presence of bicarbonate gave for soddyite an average value of 6.8 (±4.4) 10' 10 mol m' 2 s" 1 . For uranophane, under the same experimental conditions, the following dissolution rate equation has been derived: site Comparison of predictions and observations. Hydrogeology,
This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation.

Existing file systems for persistent memory (PM) exploit its byte-addressable non-volatile access with low latency and high bandwidth. However, they do not utilize two unique PM properties effectively. The first one is contention awareness, i . e . , a small number of threads cannot thoroughly saturate the PM bandwidth, while many concurrent accesses lead to significant PM performance degradation. The second one is NUMA awareness, i . e . , exploiting the remote PM efficiently, as accessing remote PM naively leads to significant performance degradation. We present Odinfs, a NUMA-aware scalable datapath PM file system that addresses these two challenges using a novel opportunistic delegation scheme. Under this scheme, Odinfs decouples the PM accesses from application threads with the help of background threads that access PM on behalf of the application. Because of PM access decoupling, Odinfs automatically parallelizes the access to PM across NUMA nodes in a controlled and localized manner. Our evaluation shows that Odinfs outperforms existing PM file systems up to 32.7 × on real-world workloads.
Comparison of Body Mass Index, Smoking, Vitamin E and Type of Oil Consumed between Patients Suﬀering from Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease versus Non-aﬀected Patients: A Case-Control Study

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has an increasing trend in the world and can lead to liver failure and death if left untreated. Lifestyle modiﬁcation is very important in the treatment of this disease. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the comparison of body mass index (BMI), smoking, vitamin E consumption, and type of oil consumed by patients with NAFLD with non-alcoholic patients. Methods: The present study was a retrospective case-control study that was performed on 120 patients referred to the ultrasound unit of Shohaday Ashayer Hospital in Khorramabad. The participants were divided into two groups, including case (61 people) and control (59 people). The questionnaire consisted of three parts: (1) the ﬁrst part was related to demographic information; (2) the secondpartwasrelatedtoliverultrasoundresults;(3)andthethirdpartwasrelatedtoheight,weight,BMI,weeklyvitaminEintake, dailysmokingstatus,andtypeof oilconsumed. DatawereanalyzedusingSPSS-23softwareanddescriptiveandinferentialstatistical methods. Results: Most of the participants in the study were 69 (55.8%) and 92 (76.66%) were married. The mean BMI of patients with NAFLD was signiﬁcantly higher than non-alcoholic patients (P = 0.003). There was no statistically signiﬁcant diﬀerence in daily smoking and weekly intake of vitamin E in patients with and without non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (P < 0.05). According to Fisher’s exact test, it was found that there was a statistically signiﬁcant diﬀerence in the frequency by patients with NAFLD and non-alcoholic (P = 0.014). Also, a statistically signiﬁcant diﬀerence was observed in the frequency of the type of oil consumed by patients with NAFLD (P = 0.014). Conclusions: Consumption of olive and sesame oil along with weight loss is recommended. Smoking as a risk factor, as well as the use of vitamin E to prevent and treat NAFLD, require further studies with a larger sample size.
Is Breast Cancer Prognosis Inherited? The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters

Introduction A genetic component is well established in the etiology of breast cancer. It is not well known, however, whether genetic traits also influence prognostic features of the malignant phenotype. Methods We carried out a population-based cohort study in Sweden based on the nationwide Multi-Generation Register. Among all women with breast cancer diagnosed from 1961 to 2001, 2,787 mother-daughter pairs and 831 sister pairs with breast cancer were identified; we achieved complete follow-up and classified 5-year breast cancer-specific prognosis among proband (mother or oldest sister) into tertiles as poor, intermediary, or good. We used Kaplan-Meier estimates of survival proportions and Cox models to calculate relative risks of dying from breast cancer within 5 years depending on the proband's outcome. Results The 5-year survival proportion among daughters whose mothers died within 5 years was 87% compared to 91% if the mother was alive ( p = 0.03). Among sisters, the corresponding proportions were 70% and 88%, respectively ( p = 0.001). After adjustment for potential confounders, daughters and sisters of a proband with poor prognosis had a 60% higher 5-year breast cancer mortality compared to those of a proband with good prognosis (hazard ratio [HR], 1.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.2 to 2.2; p for trend 0.002). This association was slightly stronger among sisters (HR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.0 to 3.4) than among daughters (HR, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.1 to 2.3). Conclusion Breast cancer prognosis of a woman predicts the survival in her first-degree relatives with breast cancer. Our novel findings suggest that breast cancer prognosis might be inherited.
The Impact of Monetary Policy Shocks on RMB Exchange Rate Fluctuations

： Research on the monetary and the exchange rate policy is constituted by reasonable measurement of the relation between those policies and exchange rate fluctuations. In this paper, we employ the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model and the symbolic vector autoregressive (VAR) model and combine short-term and long-term restrictions, to establish the impact of monetary policy shocks on the RMB real effective exchange rate index. We avoid both the selection problem of traditional recursive structure variable order, as well as the improper contemporaneous restriction problem of structure decomposition. Taking China’s monthly data as the object of study, we performed an empirical study and the results show that. First, the identification methods of the two VAR models provide consistent results and these are more robust than the results of recursive decomposition. Second, the impact of monetary policy shocks on the RMB real effective exchange rate index leads to both the foreign exchange rate puzzle and the overshooting puzzle. However, the period of overshooting is obviously earlier. The impact of monetary policy shocks on output plays a positive role in the short-term, but, in the long-term, it manifests as raising the level of output. The impact of monetary policy shocks does not lead to the price puzzle and the proportion of a rise in price is the same as that of monetary expansion. According to the variance decomposition on the future forecasts of the RMB real effective exchange rate index, we find that the explanatory
Automatic particle sizing from rocket motor holograms

Microscopic particles within an optical hologram reconstruction have been successfully measured using an image digitizer and a PC/AT computer. The hologram was recorded during a test burn of some solid-rocket fuel and captures a 2"x2"x2" volume of burning particles as they lift from the fuel surface during combustion. The computer processes the digitized image using feature identification algorithms and sizing in the feature's horizontal dimension, its vertical dimension and its area. The operation of the algorithms has been validated against calibration objects. Statistical tests show that about 1,300 particles from several image frames are required to obtain a representative size distribution. Overlying speckle degrades the resolution of the image and can be reduced by a variety of techniques. The performance of these speckle-reduction techniques has been measured and compared in the areas of speckle reduction, loss of resolution, and processing time. Program size and processing time have been compared for both FORTRAN and C-language versions of the processing program.
An Analysis of Machine Learning-Based Android Malware Detection Approaches

Despite the fact that Android apps are rapidly expanding throughout the mobile ecosystem, Android malware continues to emerge. Malware operations are on the rise, particularly on Android phones, it make up 72.2 percent of all smartphone sales. Credential theft, eavesdropping, and malicious advertising are just some of the ways used by hackers to attack cell phones. Many researchers have looked into Android malware detection from various perspectives and presented hypothesis and methodologies. Machine learning (ML)-based techniques have demonstrated to be effective in identifying these attacks because they can build a classifier from a set of training cases, eliminating the need for explicit signature definition in malware detection. This paper provided a detailed examination of machine-learning-based Android malware detection approaches. According to present research, machine learning and genetic algorithms are in identifying Android malware, this is a powerful and promising solution. In this quick study of Android apps, we go through the Android system architecture, security mechanisms, and malware categorization.
Real-Time Quality Assurance of Fruits and Vegetables with Artificial Intelligence

Vegetables and fruits make up a major part of the human diet and finding a good grade of its quality is now a major issue in the market. To find a grade of the vegetable or fruit will be based on some parameters like size, shape, appearance, etc. The appearance is now a deciding factor for the market and affects the consumer’s choice. So, we have designed an application that will classify fruits and grade them according to their quality with appearance as a parameter. This paper will describe the process which is involved in the application. This proposed system will use image processing to classify and grade the quality of fruits and vegetables by extracting features such as color, shape, and HOG (Histogram of Gradient) to classify the given fruit or vegetable. Image pre-processing techniques like data-augmentation and normalization along with Principle- Component Analysis (PCA), and also Deep learning (CNN) are used for getting good accuracy and for dimensional reduction. To speed up the identification and increase the usability, compared to current manual systems like a person checking every fruit and vegetable to grade which takes more time and energy, or by using embedded systems (sensors), we opted for a high-performance android application for quicker deployment.
Damping Analysis in Si Torsional Micromirrors

Micromirrors are extensively used in MEMS/NEMS based actuators and accordingly the design of superior performance mirror structures are prime requisite in MEMS/NEMS industry. Thermal and viscous damping of a dynamic vibrating micromirror are important factors degrading its performance by inducing energy dissipation. The primary sources of energy losses are viscosity and thermal conduction near the walls of the structure in the acoustic boundary layer. Hence it is necessary to accurately assess the bounds of energy dissipation owing to thermal and viscous damping. In this paper, the depths of the thermal and viscous boundary layers corresponding to thermal conduction and viscous drag at different eigen frequencies are investigated. Both the temperature and pressure distributions surrounding the vibrating micromirror are considered for the analysis. The penetration depths communicate the extent of thermal and viscous boundary layers and clearly indicate the extent of energy loss. In micromirrors, the thickness of boundary layer is a critical parameter since the dissipated energy is mainly distributed in it. The air domain surrounding the micromirror is modelled using thermoacoustics of COMSOL Multiphysics software along with the eigen frequency analysis. In the present study, the thickness of the boundary layers and quality factor are analysed for a micromirror vibrating in torsional mode. The thermal and viscous penetration depths decrease with eigen frequency and hence to develop high quality devices with low damping, the micromirror are verified to be operated at higher frequencies.
Computational Analysis of stochastic arithmetic computing and stochastic activation function

Stochastic Number Generators (SNG) plays a significant role in designing a stochastic computing system. SNGs make the stochastic system comfortable for computing in the stochastic domain. The challenges in developing the stochastic computing system are correlation and hardware area occupancy. By considering these phenomena, we have considered Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) based SNG and S-box based SNG in this work. Our contributions to this paper are stochastic computation for activation functions using the SNGs mentioned above and stochastic computation for arithmetic components in the stochastic domain. By considering the two SNG methods, the difference in the computation for accuracy has been analyzed for stochastic activation function and stochastic arithmetic computation. The better SNG method will be used as SNG for stochastic convolutional neural network design using this analysis.
Hand Teleoperation with an Exoskeleton Enhanced by Cutaneous Haptic Feedback

—In this work we investigate how sensory feedback in teleoperation of robotic hands can be enhanced by the addition of cutaneous haptic feedback to the conventional kineasthetic force feedback. Actuated gloves and hand exoskeletons convey kineast-hetic force feedback at ﬁngertips by grounding forces to the hand dorsum. These devices usually rely on compact actuators with a transmission and reduction stage in order to output the relatively high output forces required for rendering the contact forces and grasping strength. Such conﬁguration however severely limits the bandwidth of the haptic device, whereas ﬁngerpad are rich of mechano-recpetors sensitive to high frequency stimuli and fast transients. In this work we aim to develop and investigate a hand exoskeleton device capable of delivering at the same time both kineasthetic force feedback and wide bandwidth cutaneous feedback. The designed device integrates high-output force linear motors, actuating the main exoskeleton kinematics, plus compact and wearable wide-bandwidth actuators mounted in series to the last link of the exoskeleton, in contact with the ﬁngerpads. The proposed device has been developed in a prototype and experimented in preliminary grasping experiments.
Sex , drugs , and bitcoin

Publisher Rights Statement: This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Review of Financial Studies following peer review. The version of record Sean Foley, Jonathan R Karlsen, Tālis J Putniņš, Sex, Drugs, and Bitcoin: How Much Illegal Activity Is Financed through Cryptocurrencies? , The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 32, Issue 5, May 2019, Pages 1798–1853, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/hhz015 is available online at: https://academic.oup. com/rfs/article/32/5/1798/5427781
Validation of the LEOSound Cough Detection Algorithm CURRENT STATUS: POSTED

Background Cough is an important respiratory symptom being of great interest to many researchers. Up to now, most knowledge about cough has been collected through standardized questionnaires. Objective, and reliable detection of cough assessed by automated lung sound monitoring are becoming increasingly important. The aim of this study is to validate the LEOSound lung sound monitor by using previously determined and investigated COPD datasets (1,2). Methods Based on multiple recordings of 48 patients with stable COPD II-IV, we validated the cough detection algorithm of LEOSound by using a contingency table. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were used as quantitative measures. Results We found the overall accuracy to be 87.3% with sensitivity and specificity of 98.7% and 80.2%, respectively. Major reasons for midsections in descending order were throat cleaning, snoring and movement artifacts.