Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving Space-Time Code Performance in Slow Fading Channels using Reconfigurable Antennas

Space-time block codes typically only span a small number of time slots. However, error control coding spanning hundreds or thousands of symbol periods is often used with space-time coding. In this case, slow fading channels significantly degrade performance. In this letter, we show that performance can be significantly improved in slow fading conditions by using reconfigurable antennas. We propose switching the transmit antenna states during transmission so that the error control code experiences several different channel conditions over the transmission period. Hence, it can achieve higher diversity and the superior performance expected of a faster fading channel due to reconfigurable antenna state switching. If we also allow the receiver to select the reconfigurable receive antenna states based on channel energy, then an antenna state selection gain is also achieved.
Cross-Domain Dependency Parsing Using a Deep Linguistic Grammar

Pure statistical parsing systems achieves high in-domain accuracy but performs poorly out-domain. In this paper, we propose two different approaches to produce syntactic dependency structures using a large-scale hand-crafted HPSG grammar. The dependency backbone of an HPSG analysis is used to provide general linguistic insights which, when combined with state-of-the-art statistical dependency parsing models, achieves performance improvements on out-domain tests.
Why 70/30 or 80/20 Relation Between Training and Testing Sets: A Pedagogical Explanation

When learning a dependence from data, to avoid overfitting, it is important to divide the data into the training set and the testing set. We first train our model on the training set, and then we use the data from the testing set to gauge the accuracy of the resulting model. Empirical studies show that the best results are obtained if we use 20-30% of the data for testing, and the remaining 70-80% of the data for training. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for this empirical result. 1 Formulation of the Problem Training a model: a general problem. In many practical situations, we have a model for a physical phenomenon, a model that includes several unknown parameters. These parameters need to be determined from the known observations; this determination is known as training the model. Need to divide data into training set and testing set. In statistics in general, the more data points we use, the more accurate are the resulting estimates. From this viewpoint, it may seem that the best way to determine the parameters of the model is to use all the available data points in this determination. This is indeed a good idea if we are absolutely certain that our model adequately describes the corresponding phenomenon. In practice, however, we are often not absolutely sure that the current model is indeed adequate. In such situations, if we simply use all the available data to determine the parameters of the model, we often get overfitting – when the model describes all the data perfectly well without being actually adequate. For
EFFECT OF BOVINE VIRAL DIARRHEA VIRUS ON MACROPHAGES FUNCTIONS

Infection with bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is prevalent in the cattle population worldwide. An important aspect of BVDV infection is the immunosuppression which results from virus effects on the immune cells. Macrophages were recovered from normal caws, and were exposed to BVDV in vitro. Tests were carried out on the recovered macrophages to determine the effects of the virus on several functional properties. CD14 receptor expression and phagocytosis were both significantly reduced in macrophages exposed to the virus in vitro. Bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) virus is a pestivirus of the family Flaviviridae. The disease is characterized by thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, fever, hemorrhages, diarrhea and death (Baker, 1987). This virus is of particular interest in studies of virus-induced apoptosis because of the existence of closely related 'pairs' of cytopathic (cp) and non- cytopathic (ncp) biotypes (Paton, 1995). The two biotypes of such a pair differ only in one non-structural protein, NS23, which is cleaved into NS2 and NS3 in cp, but not ncp, biotypes (Meyers & Thiel, 1996). The macrophage is a primary key to the body's initial immune system response when faced with infection. If a macrophage becomes activated through various stimuli, an increase in metabolic rate, motility, and phagocytic activity occurs. CD14 is a multifunctional receptor constitutively expressed primarily on the surface of monocytes, macrophages, and neutrophils. It has a key role in host defense responses to microbial pathogens. CD14 has specificity for lipopolysaccharides (LPS) and other bacterial wall-derived components. An important aspect of BVDV infection is the immunosuppression which increases the host's susceptibility to secondary bacterial or viral infections. Fc receptor (FcR) and complement receptor (C3R) expression, phagocytosis and microbicidal activity and the production of neutrophil chemotactic factors were all significantly reduced in macrophages recovered from BVDV infected calves, compared with pre-inoculation control levels, whereas the control inoculated calves displayed significant increases in some of the functions. With macrophages exposed to the virus in vitro
Rigidity analysis of HIV-1 protease

We present a rigidity analysis on a large number of X-ray crystal structures of the enzyme HIV-1 protease using the 'pebble game' algorithm of the software FIRST. We find that although the rigidity profile remains similar across a comprehensive set of high resolution structures, the profile changes significantly in the presence of an inhibitor. Our study shows that the action of the inhibitors is to restrict the flexibility of the β-hairpin flaps which allow access to the active site. The results are discussed in the context of full molecular dynamics simulations as well as data from NMR experiments.
Detecting the duration of initial transient in steady state simulation of arbitrary performance measures

The issue of the initial transient phase in steady state simulation has been widely discussed in simulation literature. Many methods have been proposed for deciding the duration of this phase of simulation, to determine a valid truncation point of the transient portion of output data. However, practically all these methods can only be used in simulations aimed at estimation of mean values. In this paper, we show that analyses of performance measures which do not represent mean values require different solutions, as the rate of convergence to steady state is different for mean values than, for example, for quantiles. We describe and present additional results for a new method of determining the duration of initial transient phase which can be applied in analysis of steady state quantiles and probability distributions. The method appears robust and applicable in analysis of arbitrary performance measures.
Utility of various functional and anatomic imaging modalities for detection of ectopic adrenocorticotropin-secreting tumors.

CONTEXT Because ectopic ACTH-secreting (EAS) tumors are often occult, improved imaging is needed. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to evaluate the utility of [(111)In-DTPA-d-Phe]pentetreotide scintigraphy [octreotide (OCT)] imaging at 6 mCi [low OCT (LOCT)] and 18 mCi [high OCT (HOCT)], [(18)F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-positron emission tomography (PET) and [(18)F]l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (F-DOPA)-PET scans, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). DESIGN AND SETTING The study was a prospective evaluation at a clinical research center. PATIENTS Forty-one subjects participated, 30 (17 female) with resected EAS tumors and 11 (three female) with occult EAS, based on inferior petrosal sinus sampling results and imaging studies. INTERVENTION INTERVENTION included CT and MRI of neck, chest, abdomen, LOCT (with or without HOCT) and FDG- or F-DOPA-PET without CT every 6-12 months. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Tumor identification was the main outcome measure. RESULTS Most recent results were analyzed. Eighteen patients had tumor resected on the first visit; otherwise, surgery occurred 33 +/- 25 (9-99) months later. Tumor size was 1.9 +/- 1.7 (0.8-8.0) cm; 83% were intrathoracic. CT, MRI, LOCT, HOCT, FDG-PET, and F-DOPA-PET had sensitivities per patient of 93% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 79-98%], 90% (95% CI = 74-96%), 57% (95% CI = 39-73%), 50% (95% CI = 25-75%), 64% (95% CI = 35-85%), and 55% (95% CI = 28-79%) and positive predictive values (PPV) per lesion of 66, 74, 79, 89, 53, and 100%, respectively. LOCT and PET detected only lesions seen by CT/MRI; abnormal LOCT or F-DOPA-PET improved PPV of CT/MRI. By modality, the fraction of patients with one or more false-positive findings was 50% by CT, 31% by MRI, 18% by L/HOCT, and 18% by FDG-PET. Eight occult EAS patients had 64 +/- 58 (9-198) months follow-up; others had none. CONCLUSIONS High sensitivity and PPV suggest thoracic CT/MRI plus LOCT scans for initial imaging, with lesion confirmation by two modalities.
Factors related to persistent fatigue following completion of breast cancer treatment.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To verify the predictive capacity of the stress-process theory to emeanplain persistent fatigue following completion of breast cancer treatments; to verify the relationship between interleukin-1b and fatigue. DESIGN Correlational. SETTING Tertiary medical center in Quebec City, Canada. SAMPLE A systematic sample of 103 women in remission from breast cancer was recruited. The mean age was 54 years. Participants with a depressive mood, insomnia, or stage IV cancer were emeancluded. METHODS Participants were met during their follow-up appointment after the end of radiation therapy. Questionnaires on fatigue, stress variables, and other confounding variables were completed by telephone interview. Blood samples also were collected to measure the serum level of interleukin-1b. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Fatigue, several variables from the stress-process theory, pain, menopausal symptoms, and demographic and medical variables. FINDINGS Fatigue was related theoretically and coherently to many stress-process variables. By controlling for pain, the final regression model included cancer stressors and passive and active coping as predictors, which accounted for 41% of the variance in fatigue. No relationship was found between fatigue and interleukin-1b. CONCLUSIONS The results supported the relevance of the stress-process theory for emeanplaining cancer-related fatigue. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Nursing interventions based on this theoretical framework could be developed. In addition, further clinical research that tests the efficacy of these psycho-educative interventions in preventing persistent fatigue and improving the quality of life of women with breast cancer is recommended.
Interventional treatment of renal angiomyolipoma: immediate results and clinical and radiological follow-up of 4.5 years

Background Renal angiomyolipoma is rare, but many of these patients may have an acute debut with severe bleeding. These patients need urgent treatment with interventional embolization as an attractive option. Purpose To investigate the technical and clinical effect of this treatment and to evaluate long-term clinical outcomes with clinical control and radiological imaging. Material and Methods Eight patients with angiomyolipoma were treated with embolization. Five patients were treated acutely. Five patients were followed-up for mean 4.5 years with clinical and radiological examinations. Results The renal angiomyolipoma decreased significantly from mean 7.2 cm to 2.9 cm after embolization (p = 0.04). Cortical infarctions of about one-third of the circumference of the embolized kidneys could be detected on follow-up examinations, but all patients had normal total kidney function. The bleeding was primarily stopped in all patients, however, in one patient bleeding from a lumbar artery was supplementary embolized within 24 h. In another case the interventional procedure ended up in embolization of the whole kidney as it was impossible to embolize all the feeding arteries selectively. One patient had a nephrectomy one month after embolization because of infection and re-bleeding and one patient after 2.5 years because of tumor size >4 cm. The technical success was 7/8 (88%) and clinical success was 6/8 patients (75%). Conclusion Selective embolization of renal angiomyolipoma is a minimally invasive and safe procedure with few complications. It is a nephron sparing alternative to renal resection. The reduction in tumor size after embolization is significant and long-lasting.
User simulation for spoken dialogue systems: learning and evaluation

We propose the “advanced” n-grams as a new technique for simulating user behaviour in spoken dialogue systems, and we compare it with two methods used in our prior work, i.e. linear feature combination and “normal” n-grams. All methods operate on the intention level and can incorporate speech recognition and understanding errors. In the linear feature combination model user actions (lists of 〈 speech act, task 〉 pairs) are selected, based on features of the current dialogue state which encodes the whole history of the dialogue. The user simulation based on “normal” n-grams treats a dialogue as a sequence of lists of 〈 speech act, task 〉 pairs. Here the length of the history considered is restricted by the order of the n-gram. The “advanced” n-grams are a variation of the normal ngrams, where user actions are conditioned not only on speech acts and tasks but also on the current status of the tasks, i.e. whether the information needed by the application (in our case flight booking) has been provided and confirmed by the user. This captures elements of goal-directed user behaviour. All models were trained and evaluated on the COMMUNICATOR corpus, to which we added annotations for user actions and dialogue context. We then evaluate how closely the synthetic responses resemble the real user responses by comparing the user response generated by each user simulation model in a given dialogue context (taken from the annotated corpus) with the actual user response. We propose the expected accuracy, expected precision, and expected recall evaluation metrics as opposed to standard precision and recall used in prior work. We also discuss why they are more appropriate metrics for evaluating user simulation models compared to their standard counterparts. The advanced n-grams produce higher scores than the normal n-grams for small values of n, which proves their strength when little amount of data is available to train larger ngrams. The linear model produces the best expected accuracy but with respect to expected precision and expected recall it is outperformed by the large n-grams even though it is trained using more information. As a task-based evaluation, we also run each of the user simulation models against a system policy trained on the same corpus. Here the linear feature combination model outperforms the other methods and the advanced n-grams outperform the normal ngrams for all values of n, which again shows their potential. We also calculate the perplexity of the different user models.
Intermittent Hypoxia in Childhood: The Harmful Consequences Versus Potential Benefits of Therapeutic Uses

Intermittent hypoxia (IH) often occurs in early infancy in both preterm and term infants and especially at 36–44 weeks postmenstrual age. These episodes of IH could result from sleep-disordered breathing or may be temporally unrelated to apnea or bradycardia events. There are numerous reports indicating adverse effects of IH on development, behavior, academic achievement, and cognition in children with sleep apnea syndrome. It remains uncertain about the exact causative relationship between the neurocognitive and behavioral morbidities and IH and/or its associated sleep fragmentation. On the other hand, well-controlled and moderate IH conditioning/training has been used in sick children for treating their various forms of bronchial asthma, allergic dermatoses, autoimmune thyroiditis, cerebral palsy, and obesity. This review article provides an updated and impartial analysis on the currently available evidence in supporting either side of the seemingly contradictory scenarios. We wish to stimulate a comprehensive understanding of such a complex physiological phenomenon as intermittent hypoxia, which may be accompanied by other confounding factors (e.g., hypercapnia, polycythemia), in order to prevent or reduce its harmful consequences, while maximizing its potential utility as an effective therapeutic tool in pediatric patients.
Mesenteric blood flow is related to disease activity and risk of relapse in ulcerative colitis: a prospective follow up study

BACKGROUND The diagnostic significance of increased splanchnic blood flow in ulcerative colitis is unclear. This prospective study was therefore undertaken to define the role of Doppler sonography in the assessment of disease activity and in the prediction of early relapse. SUBJECTS/METHODS Splanchnic flowmetry was performed in 76 patients with ulcerative colitis (47 with active disease and 29 in remission), six with infectious colitis, and 13 healthy controls during fasting and 30 minutes after ingestion of a standardised meal. Twenty seven of the patients with ulcerative colitis and all patients with infectious colitis were investigated during the active state as well as in clinical remission and followed up for six months. Flow velocity and pulsatility index (PI) of the superior (SMA) and inferior (IMA) mesenteric arteries and the portal vein were related to clinical (Truelove index), laboratory (C-reactive protein), and endoscopic (Sutherland index) parameters of disease activity. RESULTS The mean flow velocity of the IMA correlated closest with clinical activity (Truelove, r = 0.41, p<0.005), the PI with C-reactive protein (r = 0.30, p<0.05), and endoscopic activity (r = 0.45, p<0.001). All patients in remission after six months (14/14) or with infectious colitis (6/6) showed an increase in PI of the IMA compared with the initial measurement during active disease (mean increase for ulcerative colitis +36% and for infectious colitis +77%). In contrast, most patients with later relapse or surgery (11/13) had decreased PI during initial remission (mean decrease −12%). The positive predictive value of this index for maintenance of remission was 0.77. Flow variables of the SMA and portal vein displayed weaker correlations. CONCLUSIONS Flow measurements in the IMA are closely related to clinical and endoscopic disease activity in patients with ulcerative colitis. Repeated measurement of the PI allows estimation of the risk of recurrence.
Diagnostic Accuracy of 18F-FDG PET in Restaging Patients with Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma and Elevated Calcitonin Levels

Medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) is a rare endocrine tumor arising from the C-cells of the thyroid gland. Calcitonin is the principal serum tumor marker. A rising calcitonin level after total thyroidectomy for localized disease generally indicates residual, recurrent, or metastatic disease. The role of 18F-FDG PET in MTC remains somewhat unclear. We reviewed our own experience with 18F-FDG PET in postthyroidectomy MTC patients with elevated calcitonin. Methods: From our database, we identified patients with suspected residual, recurrent, or metastatic MTC and elevated calcitonin who had been referred for 18F-FDG PET between January 2000 and October 2005. 18F-FDG PET findings were classified as positive or negative on the basis of visual interpretation of the scan. Standardized uptake values (SUVs) were also calculated. The 18F-FDG PET findings were verified by histopathologic examination, when available, or other imaging studies and clinical follow-up. Any negative 18F-FDG PET result was considered false-negative. Results: Twenty-eight patients underwent a total of 38 18F-FDG PET studies. Calcitonin levels ranged from 106 to 541,000 pg/mL (median, 7,260 pg/mL). There were 23 true-positive, 1 false-positive, and 14 false-negative 18F-FDG PET scans, yielding an overall sensitivity of 62%. There was no true-positive finding when calcitonin levels were below 509 pg/mL (n = 5). Using an arbitrary cutoff of 1,000 pg/mL, we found that the sensitivity in scans with calcitonin levels greater than 1,000 pg/mL increased to 78% (21/27; 95% confidence interval, 58%–91%). The mean SUV of all lesions with 18F-FDG uptake was 5.3 ± 3.2 (range, 2.0–15.9). Among the 14 patients with false-negative 18F-FDG PET findings, 8 had concurrent anatomic imaging studies and only 2 of these had positive findings. Conclusion: 18F-FDG PET can detect residual, recurrent, or metastatic MTC with a reasonable sensitivity of 78% when the calcitonin level is above 1,000 pg/mL but appears of limited use if the calcitonin level is below 500 pg/mL.
Friendship

List of Illustrations List of Boxes Acknowledgments Introduction: The Adaptive Significance of Friendship 1. An Outline of Friendship 2. Friendships across Cultures 3. Friendship and Kinship 4. Sex, Romance, and Friendship 5. Friendship: Childhood to Adulthood 6. The Development of Friendships 7. Friendship, Culture, and Ecology 8. Playing with Friends Conclusion Appendix A: Ethnographic Data and Coding Appendix B: Mathematical Models for Chapter 8 Appendix C: D-Statistics for Studies Cited Notes References Index
Reach‐scale river metabolism across contrasting sub‐catchment geologies: Effect of light and hydrology

We investigated the seasonal dynamics of in‐stream metabolism at the reach scale (∼ 150 m) of headwaters across contrasting geological sub‐catchments: clay, Greensand, and Chalk of the upper River Avon (UK). Benthic metabolic activity was quantified by aquatic eddy co‐variance while water column activity was assessed by bottle incubations. Seasonal dynamics across reaches were specific for the three types of geologies. During the spring, all reaches were net autotrophic, with rates of up to 290 mmol C m−2 d−1 in the clay reach. During the remaining seasons, the clay and Greensand reaches were net heterotrophic, with peak oxygen consumption of 206 mmol m−2 d−1 during the autumn, while the Chalk reach was net heterotrophic only in winter. Overall, the water column alone still contributed to ∼ 25% of the annual respiration and primary production in all reaches. Net ecosystem metabolism (NEM) across seasons and reaches followed a general linear relationship with increasing stream light availability. Sub‐catchment specific NEM proved to be linearly related to the local hydrological connectivity, quantified as the ratio between base flow and stream discharge, and expressed on a timescale of 9 d on average. This timescale apparently represents the average period of hydrological imprint for carbon turnover within the reaches. Combining a general light response and sub‐catchment specific base flow ratio provided a robust functional relationship for predicting NEM at the reach scale. The novel approach proposed in this study can help facilitate spatial and temporal upscaling of riverine metabolism that may be applicable to a broader spectrum of catchments.