Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Full-diversity high-rate space-time block-coded systems using estimated channel state information for symbol detection

In this paper, the frame-error-rate (FER) performance of full-diversity high-rate space-time block-coded (STBC) system is presented for quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) digital modulation technique, which is using the numeric-variable-forgetting-factor (NVFF) least-squares (LS) algorithm based channel estimator. The STBC transmission data-rates with two-transmitter antennas and with four-transmitter antennas are achieved by maximizing the coding gain and by minimizing the peak-to-minimum-power-ratio while using the selective power scaling of the information symbols, which also guarantees full-diversity in case of the two-transmitter antennas. The imperfect channel estimation leads to degradation in the FER performance of the low complexity maximum likelihood decoding algorithms, though the optimum power scaling factor is incorporated along with the constellation rotation scheme. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate that the FER performance of high-rate STBC system under idealistic conditions is quite different from its performance under realistic wireless environment due to the channel estimation errors. Therefore, the tracking performance of the pilot channel estimator is found to play significant role in the overall performance evaluation of the proposed wireless systems under slowly time-varying channels also in case of the general M-ary phase-shift keying (M-PSK) constellations. Key words: Space-time block-code, coding gain, peak-to-minimum-power-ratio, numeric-variable-forgetting-factor, variable-forgetting-factor, least-squares algorithm.
THE EFFECTS OF JOB-FOCUSED AND EMPLOYEE-FOCUSED EMOTIONAL LABOR ON BURNOUT IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY IN TURKEY

The purpose of this research is to examine two dimension s of emotional labor (jobfocused and employee focused emotional labor) as the predictors of burnout in the hospitality industry. More specifically , the study investigated whether employee-focused emotional labor contributed uniquely to the prediction of burnout beyond the job -focused emotional labor. The data were collected from 236 hospitality management students in a southern university in Turkey. Employee -focused emotional labor contributed uniquely to the prediction only for emotional exhaustion dimension of burnout beyond the jobfocused emotional labor. Deep acting was significantly related to emotional exhaustion. Contrary to previous study findings , employee-focused emotional labor dimension of surface acting was not related to any burnout dimensions. The study findings suggest essential recommendations for researchers and industry managers.
Viral Causes of Hearing Loss: A Review for Hearing Health Professionals

A number of viral infections can cause hearing loss. Hearing loss induced by these viruses can be congenital or acquired, unilateral or bilateral. Certain viral infections can directly damage inner ear structures, others can induce inflammatory responses which then cause this damage, and still others can increase susceptibility or bacterial or fungal infection, leading to hearing loss. Typically, virus-induced hearing loss is sensorineural, although conductive and mixed hearing losses can be seen following infection with certain viruses. Occasionally, recovery of hearing after these infections can occur spontaneously. Most importantly, some of these viral infections can be prevented or treated. For many of these viruses, guidelines for their treatment or prevention have recently been revised. In this review, we outline many of the viruses that cause hearing loss, their epidemiology, course, prevention, and treatment.
Growth in East Asia: What We Can and What We Cannot Infer from it

This paper examines the different arguments raised by the studies that addressed the East Asian growth experience. The original arguments presented in this paper are all on the negative side, highlighting problems associated with some of the possible explanations for the East Asian miracle. The paper concentrates mainly on four dimensions of the debate about the East Asian growth experience: (i) The nature of economic growth intensive or extensive? ; (ii) The role of public policy and of selective interventions; (iii) The role of high investment rates and a strong export orientation as possible engines of growth; and (iv) The importance of the initial conditions and their relevance for policy.
'Super-Chandrasekhar' Type Ia Supernovae at nebular epochs

We present a first systematic comparison of superluminous Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) at late epochs, including previously unpublished photometric and spectroscopic observations of SN 2007if, SN 2009dc and SNF20080723-012. Photometrically, the objects of our sample show a diverse late-time behaviour, some of them fading quite rapidly after a light-curve break at �150–200d. The latter is likely the result of flux redistribution into the infrared, possibly caused by dust formation, rather than a true bolometric effect. Nebular spectra of superluminous SNe Ia are characterised by weak or absent [Feiii] emission, pointing at a low ejecta ionisation state as a result of high densities. To constrain the ejecta and 56 Ni masses of superluminous SNe Ia, we compare the observed bolometric light curve of SN 2009dc with synthetic model light curves, focusing on the radioactive tail after �60d. Models with enough 56 Ni to explain the light-curve peak by radioactive decay, and at the same time sufficient mass to keep the ejecta velocities low, fail to reproduce the observed light-curve tail of SN 2009dc because of too much -ray trapping. We instead propose a model with �1 M⊙ of 56 Ni and �2 M⊙ of ejecta, which may be interpreted as the explosion of a Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf (WD) enshrouded by 0.6–0.7 M⊙ of C/O-rich material, as it could result from a merger of two massive C/O WDs. This model reproduces the late light curve of SN 2009dc well. A flux deficit at peak may be compensated by light from the interaction of the ejecta with the surrounding material.
The Impact of Instructor Immediacy and Presence for Online Student Affective Learning , Cognition , and Motivation

This study sought to examine instructor immediacy and presence in an online learning environment in relation to student affective learning, cognition, and motivation. It found a statistically significant positive relationship between instructor immediacy and presence. It also found that the linear combination of instructor immediacy and presence is a statistically significant predictor of student affective learning, cognition, and motivation. However, it did not find instructor immediacy to be a significant individual predictor of the aforementioned variables, whereas it did find instructor presence to be a significant individual predictor. The study also showed that students in synchronous online courses reported significantly higher instructor immediacy and presence. Implications for researchers and practitioners of online instruction are discussed at the conclusion of the paper.
The Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from China

This paper employs a new database, which contains the market and accounting data from more than 1000 Chinese listed companies up to the year 2000, to document the characteristics of these firms in terms of capital structure. As in other countries, leverage in Chinese firms increases with firm size, non-debt tax shields and fixed assets, and decreases with profitability and correlates with industries. We also find that ownership structure affects leverage. Different from those in other countries, leverage in Chinese firms increases with volatility and firms tend to have much lower long-term debt. The static tradeoff model rather than pecking order hypothesis seems better in explaining the features of capital structure for Chinese listed companies.
Multi-Wafer Virtual Probe: Minimum-cost variation characterization by exploring wafer-to-wafer correlation

In this paper, we propose a new technique, referred to as Multi-Wafer Virtual Probe (MVP) to efficiently model wafer-level spatial variations for nanoscale integrated circuits. Towards this goal, a novel Bayesian inference is derived to extract a shared model template to explore the wafer-to-wafer correlation information within the same lot. In addition, a robust regression algorithm is proposed to automatically detect and remove outliers (i.e., abnormal measurement data with large error) so that they do not bias the modeling results. The proposed MVP method is extensively tested for silicon measurement data collected from 200 wafers at an advanced technology node. Our experimental results demonstrate that MVP offers superior accuracy over other traditional approaches such as VP [7] and EM [8], if a limited number of measurement data are available.
Functional characterization of minicolumnar patterns in the somatosensory cortex

Joannellyn Chiu Functional Characterization of Minicolumnar Patterns in the Somatosensory Cortex (Under the direction of Mark Tommerdahl, PhD) In the somatosensory cortex, minicolumns have previously been shown to not only be cortical structures, but to be functional entities as well. However, research of their functional role in cortical information processing has been limited. The main focus of the research in this manuscript was to assess and quantify the information processing role of the minicolumn in the evoked cortical response. More specifically, the evoked minicolumnar spatial pattern in SI in a number of stimulus conditions is evaluated. Differences in evoked minicolumnar spatial patterns were examined by evaluation of the change in the stimulus parameters, such as stimulus site location, amplitude, and frequency, needed to evoke a just noticeable difference in the evoked minicolumnar spatial pattern. Through the use of OIS imaging techniques, OIS images for both in vitro and in vivo assays were collected and analyzed. Data analyses revealed that evoked minicolumnar spatial patterns in SI and the sensorimotor cortical slice do contain information that can be correlated to stimulus conditions, and these evoked minicolumnar patterns are time-dependent, stimulus specific, and reproducible.
Discovering inherent event taxonomies from social media collections

Events are becoming very popular as a tool to organize and access large media collections. An unsolved problem however, is how to define event models. Most part of the approaches so far proposed in the literature are based on a-priori knowledge, and translate into hierarchical data structures or taxonomies a more or less intuitive definition of what a given type of event is. The association of media and event models is then a consequent process, in which one tries to learn the distinctive characteristics of media associated to a certain event or sub-event. In this paper, we attempt to reverse this paradigm, inferring from a set of media collections belonging to the same event class the underlying taxonomy in an unconstrained way. As a result we obtain a hierarchy of natural clusters, largely shared by the different collections, which capture the essence of the event itself. Although it is not possible to compare the proposed approach with state-of-the-art method based on a-priori event structures, experimental results demonstrate that this approach may become an effective support for discovering and defining event models and managing event-related data collections.
Intermediate-Depth Earthquakes in a Region of Continental Convergence: South Island, New Zealand

It is rare to find earthquakes with depths greater than 30 km in continent–continent collision zones because the mantle lithosphere is usually too hot to enable brittle failure. However, a handful of small, intermediate-depth earthquakes (30–97 km) have been recorded in the continental collision region in central South Island, New Zealand. The earthquakes are not associated with subduction but all lie within or on the margins of thickened crust or uppermost mantle seismic high-velocity anomalies. The largest of the earthquakes has M_L 4.0 corresponding to a rupture radius of between 100 and 800 m, providing bounds on the upper limit to the rupture length over which brittle failure is taking place in the deep brittle–plastic transition zone. The earthquake sources may be controlled by large shear strain gradients associated with viscous deformation processes in addition to depressed geotherms.
The performance of adaptive frequency allocation in an environment of non-cooperative interference

WLAN technology is likely to be a part of future wireless broadband communication systems. As the wireless unlicensed radio traffic increases, the need for good solutions to co-existence problems caused by interference becomes apparent. In this paper the performance of a hypothetical WLAN operating at 17 GHz, using decentralized dynamic channel allocation, is assessed in regard to its susceptibility to external interference. Three different interference cases are studied. The first case is narrowband static interference. The second case is wideband interference, similar to the interference caused by a spread spectrum system. The third case is agile interference caused by a frequency hopping system. In all cases the WLAN and the interferers are located in the same geographical location. The results suggest that the chosen channel allocation algorithm, adaptive frequency allocation, provides excellent channel plans within seconds from start-up as long as the interference is static. It is however not, as it is defined here, able to perform well when the interfering devices use frequency hopping technology.
A Simple Alkaline Method for Decellularizing Human Amniotic Membrane for Cell Culture

Human amniotic membrane is a standard substratum used to culture limbal epithelial stem cells for transplantation to patients with limbal stem cell deficiency. Various methods were developed to decellularize amniotic membrane, because denuded membrane is poorly immunogenic and better supports repopulation by dissociated limbal epithelial cells. Amniotic membrane denuding usually involves treatment with EDTA and/or proteolytic enzymes; in many cases additional mechanical scraping is required. Although ensuring limbal cell proliferation, these methods are not standardized, require relatively long treatment times and can result in membrane damage. We propose to use 0.5 M NaOH to reliably remove amniotic cells from the membrane. This method was used before to lyse cells for DNA isolation and radioactivity counting. Gently rubbing a cotton swab soaked in NaOH over the epithelial side of amniotic membrane leads to nearly complete and easy removal of adherent cells in less than a minute. The denuded membrane is subsequently washed in a neutral buffer. Cell removal was more thorough and uniform than with EDTA, or EDTA plus mechanical scraping with an electric toothbrush, or n-heptanol plus EDTA treatment. NaOH-denuded amniotic membrane did not show any perforations compared with mechanical or thermolysin denuding, and showed excellent preservation of immunoreactivity for major basement membrane components including laminin α2, γ1-γ3 chains, α1/α2 and α6 type IV collagen chains, fibronectin, nidogen-2, and perlecan. Sodium hydroxide treatment was efficient with fresh or cryopreserved (10% dimethyl sulfoxide or 50% glycerol) amniotic membrane. The latter method is a common way of membrane storage for subsequent grafting in the European Union. NaOH-denuded amniotic membrane supported growth of human limbal epithelial cells, immortalized corneal epithelial cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells. This simple, fast and reliable method can be used to standardize decellularized amniotic membrane preparations for expansion of limbal stem cells in vitro before transplantation to patients.
Absence of SPARC in murine lens epithelium leads to increased deposition of laminin-1 in lens capsule.

PURPOSE To investigate the role of SPARC in the regulation of the expression and deposition of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins in the lens capsule. METHODS Wild-type (SP+/+) and SPARC-null (SP-/-) mice of embryonic day (E)14 to 3 months of age were examined. Transcript levels of lens basement membrane (BM) components were analyzed by semiquantitative RT-PCR with mRNA from lens epithelia. Expression of ECM proteins in lens capsule and lens epithelium was analyzed by immunohistochemistry and Western blot analysis. Cell attachment was assessed by lens epithelial explant culture. Coimmunoprecipitation was performed to identify intracellular protein interactions. RESULTS From postnatal day 5 to 3 months of age, SPARC-null lens capsules exhibited higher levels of laminin-1 deposition relative to their wild-type counterparts, as revealed by immunohistochemistry and immunoblot analysis. An uneven and aggregated distribution of laminin-1 protein was apparent in the anterior region of SPARC-null lens capsules. SPARC and laminin-1 were expressed abundantly in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of lens epithelial cells. Coimmunoprecipitation identified that SPARC associates with laminin-1 before laminin secretion. Furthermore, increased laminin-1 in lens capsule promoted the attachment of lens epithelial explants in culture. CONCLUSIONS SPARC affects the secretion and deposition of laminin-1 protein in lens epithelial cells. Because abnormal deposition of laminin-1 in the lens BM could influence lens epithelial cell adhesion and fiber cell differentiation, the authors propose that SPARC is important to lens homeostasis through its regulation of lens BM matrix organization.
Learning Default Concepts

Classical concepts, based on necessary and suf-cient deening conditions, cannot classify logically insuucient object descriptions. Many reasoning systems avoid this limitation by using \default concepts" to classify incompletely described objects. This paper addresses the task of learning such default concepts from observational data. We rst model the underlying performance task | classifying incomplete examples | as a probabilistic process that passes random test examples through a \blocker" that can hide object attributes from the classiier. We then address the task of learning accurate default concepts from random training examples. After surveying the learning techniques that have been proposed for this task in the machine learning and knowledge representation literatures, and investigating their relative merits , we present a more data-eecient learning technique, developed from well-known statistical principles. Finally, we extend Valiant's pac-learning framework to this context and obtain a number of useful learnability results.
Cross-Lingual Word Embeddings for Low-Resource Language Modeling

Most languages have no established writing system and minimal written records. However, textual data is essential for natural language processing, and particularly important for training language models to support speech recognition. Even in cases where text data is missing, there are some languages for which bilingual lexicons are available, since creating lexicons is a fundamental task of documentary linguistics. We investigate the use of such lexicons to improve language models when textual training data is limited to as few as a thousand sentences. The method involves learning cross-lingual word embeddings as a preliminary step in training monolingual language models. Results across a number of languages show that language models are improved by this pre-training. Application to Yongning Na, a threatened language, highlights challenges in deploying the approach in real low-resource environments.
Invited paper: Using OpenCL to evaluate the efficiency of CPUS, GPUS and FPGAS for information filtering

The FPGA can be a tremendously efficient computational fabric for many applications. In particular, the performance to power ratios of FPGA make them attractive solutions to solve the problem of data centers that are constrained largely by power and cooling costs. However, the complexity of the FPGA design flow requires the programmer to understand cycle-accurate details of how data is moved and transformed through the fabric. In this paper, we explore techniques that allow programmers to efficiently use FPGAs at a level of abstraction that is closer to traditional software-centric approaches by using the emerging parallel language, OpenCL. Although the field of high level synthesis has evolved greatly in the last few decades, several fundamental parts were missing from the complete software abstraction of the FPGA. These include standard and portable methods of describing HW/SW codesign, memory hierarchy, data movement and control of parallelism. We believe that OpenCL addresses all of these issues and allows for highly efficient description of FPGA designs with a higher level of abstraction. We demonstrate this premise by examining the performance of a document filtering algorithm, implemented in OpenCL and automatically compiled to a Stratix IV 530 FPGA. We show that our implementation achieves 5.5× and 5.25× better performance per watt ratios than GPU and CPU implementations, respectively.
Fundamental Study of Robot Behavior that Encourages Human to Tidy up Table

In this study, we investigate the influence of a robot's behavior that motivates human tidying up. Using this scenario, robot can accomplish tidying up tasks effectively through human-robot cooperation (HRC). We developed a system that can tidy up a table through HRC. To validate what behavior effectively encourage human to tidy up, we conducted a preliminary experiment with 8 male-participants, aged 21-23. This paper describes its elementary results.
Impact of Nonlinear  $C_{bc}$ on HBT Doherty Power Amplifiers

Theoretically, the load modulation of carrier amplifiers in Doherty power amplifiers (PAs) achieves a 3-dB higher gain and a higher power-added efficiency (PAE) at a 3-dB back-off power due to the two times larger load impedance (2Ropt), compared to those at the peak power. In this paper, we analyze the impact of nonlinear Cbc on the gain behavior of heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT) that shows nearly identical gain and a lower PAE with 2Ropt. In the environment, the gain distribution of carrier and peaking amplifiers is explained for the linear operation of the Doherty PA with the imperfect load modulation. We also explore harmonic controls for the Doherty PA using class-F matching network to enhance efficiency at a given back-off power and propose a method using a second-harmonic short circuit at the input of the carrier amplifier to compensate for the signal distortion caused by nonlinear Cbc. To validate the efficiency improvement while achieving high linearity, a Doherty PA is fabricated and tested using a long-term evolution signal having a 10-MHz bandwidth and a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) 7.5-dB peak-to-average power ratio. The proposed Doherty PA achieves a PAE of 45% and an adjacent channel leakage ratio of -34 dBc at an average output power of 29 dBm. The total consumed power of the proposed PA at this output power represents a reduction by 4.5% and 29%, respectively, to that of a conventional class-F-type Doherty and a class-AB PA.