Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New precoding for intersymbol interference cancellation using nonmaximally decimated multirate filterbanks with ideal FIR equalizers

In this paper, we propose a new precoding method for intersymbol interference (ISI) cancellation by using non-maximally decimated multirate filterbanks. Unlike the existing preceding methods, such as the TH and trellis precodings, the new preceding (i) may be independent of the ISI channel; (ii) is linear and does not have to implement any modulo operation; (iii) gives the ideal FIR equalization at the receiver for any FIR ISI channel including spectral-null channels; (iv) expands the transmission bandwidth in a minimum amount. The precoding is built on non-maximally decimated multirate filterbanks. Based on multirate filterbank theory, we present a necessary and sufficient condition on an FIR ISI transfer function in terms of its zero set such that there is a linear FIR N/spl times/M precoder so that an ideal FIR equalizer exists, where the integers K and N are arbitrarily fixed. The condition is easy to check. As a consequence of the condition, for any given FIR ISI transfer function (not identically 0), there always exist such linear FIR precoders. Moreover, for almost all given FIR ISI transfer functions, there exist linear FIR precoders with size N/spl times/(N-1), i,e. , the bandwidth is expanded by 1/N. In addition to the conditions on the ISI transfer functions, a method for the design of the linear FIR precoders and the ideal FIR equalizers is also given. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the theory.
Are the cardiac effects of anabolic steroid abuse in strength athletes reversible?

Objective: To investigate the reversibility of adverse cardiovascular effects after chronic abuse of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) in athletes. Methods: Doppler echocardiography and cycle ergometry including measurements of blood pressure at rest and during exercise were undertaken in 32 bodybuilders or powerlifters, including 15 athletes who had not been taking AAS for at least 12 months (ex-users) and 17 currently abusing AAS (users), as well as in 15 anabolic-free weightlifters. Results: Systolic blood pressure was higher in users (mean (SD) 140 (10) mm Hg) than in ex-users (130 (5) mm Hg) (p < 0.05) or weightlifters (125 (10) mm Hg; p < 0.001). Left ventricular muscle mass related to fat-free body mass and the ratio of mean left ventricular wall thickness to internal diameter were not significantly higher in users (3.32 (0.48) g/kg and 42.1 (4.4)%) than in ex-users (3.16 (0.53) g/kg and 40.3 (3.8)%), but were lower in weightlifters (2.43 (0.26) g/kg and 36.5 (4.0)%; p < 0.001). Left ventricular wall thickness related to fat-free body mass was also lower in weightlifters, but did not differ between users and ex-users. Left ventricular wall thickness was correlated with a point score estimating AAS abuse in users (r = 0.49, p < 0.05). In all groups, systolic left ventricular function was within the normal range. The maximum late transmitral Doppler flow velocity (Amax) was higher in users (61 (12) cm/s) and ex-users (60 (12) cm/s) than in weightlifters (50 (9) cm/s; p < 0.05 and p = 0.054). Conclusions: Several years after discontinuation of anabolic steroid abuse, strength athletes still show a slight concentric left ventricular hypertrophy in comparison with AAS-free strength athletes.
A Theoretical Investigation into the Relative Accuracy of Management and Analyst Earnings Forecasts

Over the past several years many researchers have empirically examined the issue of whether or not managerial earnings forecasts are more accurate than those prepared by security analysts. One result commonly found is that managerial forecasts which are released prior to analyst forecasts are at least as, if not more accurate than the posterior analyst forecasts. On the surface this seems paradoxical since analysts who release their forecasts after managerial forecast announcements are made have just as much, if not more, information with which to make a forecast than does the manager. The purpose of this paper is to provide one possible explanation for this paradox. As shown in the analysis here, analysts may be reluctant to revise their forecasts upon the receipt of new information because of the negative signal such a revision provides concerning the accuracy of their prior information. As a result, the amount of information held by analysts relative to that held by management will not be fully reflected in measures of forecast accuracy.
Where the Road Ends, Yaws Begins? The Cost-effectiveness of Eradication versus More Roads

Introduction A disabling and disfiguring disease that “begins where the road ends”, yaws is targeted by WHO for eradication by the year 2020. The global campaign is not yet financed. To evaluate yaws eradication within the context of the post-2015 development agenda, we perform a somewhat allegorical cost-effectiveness analysis of eradication, comparing it to a counterfactual in which we simply wait for more roads (the end of poverty). Methods We use evidence from four yaws eradication pilot sites and other mass treatment campaigns to set benchmarks for the cost of eradication in 12 known endemic countries. We construct a compartmental model of long-term health effects to 2050. Conservatively, we attribute zero cost to the counterfactual and allow for gradual exit of the susceptible (at risk) population by road (poverty reduction). We report mean, 5th and 95th centile estimates to reflect uncertainty about costs and effects. Results Our benchmark for the economic cost of yaws eradication is uncertain but not high –US$ 362 (75–1073) million in 12 countries. Eradication would cost US$ 26 (4.2–78) for each year of life lived without disability or disfigurement due to yaws, or US$ 324 (47–936) per disability-adjusted life year (DALY). Excluding drugs, existing staff and assets, the financial cost benchmark is US$ 213 (74–522) million. The real cost of waiting for more roads (poverty reduction) would be 13 (7.3–20) million years of life affected by early-stage yaws and 2.3 (1.1–4.2) million years of life affected by late-stage yaws. Discussion Endemic countries need financing to begin implementing and adapting global strategy to local conditions. Donations of drugs and diagnostics could reduce cost to the public sector and catalyze financing. Resources may be harnessed from the extractive industries. Yaws eradication should be seen as complementary to universal health coverage and shared prosperity on the post-2015 development agenda.
Usefulness of clinical and NT-proBNP monitoring for prognostic guidance in destabilized heart failure outpatients.

AIMS To study the relative prognostic value of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) monitoring in addition to clinical disease severity scores (CDSSs) in outpatients with destabilized heart failure (HF). METHODS AND RESULTS Seventy-one outpatients with recently destabilized HF were recruited. At baseline, and at all following visits, a CDSS based on Framingham criteria was obtained, and NT-proBNP levels were measured in a blind fashion. CDSS did not correlate with NT-proBNP levels at any time (P > 0.1), although their relative changes correlated during follow-up (P < 0.001). Forty patients (56%) had clinical events (cardiovascular death and/or HF hospitalization) within 1 year of follow-up. Changes in CDSS from baseline were not predictive of subsequent events (P > 0.1 for all visits), whereas changes in NT-proBNP levels were predictive at several time points: week 2 (P = 0.005), week 3 (P = 0.037), week 4 (P = 0.015), and 6 months (P = 0.026). A change in NT-proBNP levels at follow-up week 2 (%) added independent prognostic information (P < 0.001, HR 0.982, 95% CI 0.972-0.992) to baseline CDSS (P = 0.002, HR 2.05, 95% CI 1.290-3.266), age (P = 0.007, HR 1.034, 95% CI 1.009-1.059), and left ventricular ejection fraction (P = 0.013, HR 0.942, 95% CI 0.898-0.987). CONCLUSION Serial monitoring for per cent change in NT-proBNP concentrations offers superior prognostic information to clinical assessment among outpatients with recent destabilized HF.
Self-perceived health status following aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage: a cohort study

Objective The objective of the study was to assess the long-term self-reported health status and quality of life (QoL) of patients following an aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (ASAH) using a self-completed questionnaire booklet. Design A two-cohort study. Setting A regional tertiary neurosurgical centre. Participants 2 cohorts of patients with ASAH treated between 1998 and 2008 and followed up at approximately 1 year. Interventions Routine care. Primary and secondary outcomes A range of standardised scales included: AKC Short Sentences Test, the Barthel Index, the Self-Report Dysexecutive Questionnaire, the Everyday Memory Questionnaire, Stroke Symptom Checklist, Wimbledon Self-Report Scale, Modified Rankin Score (MRS) and a new Stroke-QoL. The data from summated scales were fit to the Rasch measurement model to validate the summed score. Results 214 patients (48%) returned the questionnaires; the majority (76%) had a World Federation of Neurosurgeons grade of 1 or 2. The most frequent aneurysm type was that of the anterior communicating artery (28%) with approximately 90% of aneurysms of the anterior circulation. Of those previously in full or part-time employment, 48.9% were unemployed at follow-up. All summated scales satisfied the Rasch measurement model requirements, such that their summed scores were a sufficient statistic. Given this, one-third of patients were noted to have a significant mood disorder and 25% had significant dysexecutive function. Patients with an MRS of 3, 4 or 5 had significantly worse scores on most outcome measures, but a significant minority of those with a score of zero had failed to return to work and displayed significant mood disorder. Conclusions A range of self-reported cognitive and physical deficits have been highlighted in a cohort of patients with ASAH. While the MRS has been shown to provide a reasonable indication of outcome, in routine clinical follow-up it requires supplementation by instruments assessing dysexecutive function, memory and mood.
On the Benefits of Early Filtering of Botnet Unwanted Traffic

Unwanted traffic has become a worsening problem for the availability and reliability of the Internet. Today most unwanted traffic can be attributed to botnets, which can generate massive unwanted traffic to the victim using a huge number of bots. Although there exist techniques to filter and discard the unwanted packets at the destinations, these packets are still allowed to traverse the backbone of the Internet to cause severe traffic burdens and waste bandwidth resource of the Internet. In this paper, we propose a novel approach called Dynamic Early Filtering of Internet Traffic (DEFT). DEFT encodes unwanted traffic filtering rules as routing information using the flow specification (Flow-Spec) NLRI field in BGP Update messages, so that BGP routers not only can incorporate the filtering rules into their routing decision, but can also forward the rules to their neighboring routers, in order to reach routers that are closer to the sources and achieve early filtering of the offending traffic. We implement a prototype based on the Quagga routing software, and use the Deterlab testbed to conduct various experiments to evaluate the performance of DEFT on different degrees of attacking source distribution and different degrees of filtering rule dissemination. The experimental results show that with small overhead DEFT can effectively reduce the average transmission latency and increase the average throughput of legitimate traffic. Keywords—Unwanted Traffic, DDoS Attacks, Botnet, Early Filtering, Availability.
Laminin Alters Fyn Regulatory Mechanisms and Promotes Oligodendrocyte Development

Mutations in LAMA2, the gene for the extracellular matrix protein laminin-α2, cause a severe muscular dystrophy termed congenital muscular dystrophy type-1A (MDC1A). MDC1A patients have accompanying CNS neural dysplasias and white matter abnormalities for which the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Here, we report that in laminin-deficient mice, oligodendrocyte development was delayed such that oligodendrocyte progenitors accumulated inappropriately in adult brains. Conversely, laminin substrates were found to promote the transition of oligodendrocyte progenitors to newly formed oligodendrocytes. Laminin-enhanced differentiation was Src family kinase-dependent and resulted in the activation of the Src family kinase Fyn. In laminin-deficient brains, however, increased Fyn repression was accompanied by elevated levels of the Src family kinase negative regulatory proteins, Csk (C-terminal Src kinase), and its transmembrane adaptor, Cbp (Csk-binding protein). These findings indicate that laminin deficiencies delay oligodendrocyte maturation by causing dysregulation of signaling pathways critical for oligodendrocyte development, and suggest that a normal role for CNS laminin is to promote the development of oligodendrocyte progenitors into myelin-forming oligodendrocytes via modulation of Fyn regulatory molecules.
Performance Analysis and Improvements of TCP Downstream in an Heterogeneous Network

In an infrastructure network based on IEEE 802.11a/b/g wireless LAN, heterogeneous hosts such as desktop PCs and PDAs can be connected to it. We measured a performance of data transmission between these heterogeneous hosts. When a PDA as a mobile host is used for downloading data from its stationary server, i.e., a desktop PC, a PC and a PDA acts as a fast sender and a slow receiver, respectively, due to substantial differences in their computational capabilities. Our experimental results show that the transmission time during downstream is slower than that during upstream by 20% at maximum. To mitigate this, we present two distinct approaches. First, by increasing the size of a receive buffer for a PDA the congestion window size of TCP becomes more stable. Second, a pre-determined delay between packets to be transmitted at the sender should be given. From the performance point of view a method of buffer sizing is preferred rather than that of adjusting the inter-packet delay. However, such a delay reduces the number of erroneous packets remarkably.
Yang-Mills Action from Open Superstring Field Theory

We calculate the effective action for nonabelian gauge bosons up to quartic order using WZW-like open superstring field theory. After including level zero and level one contributions, we obtain with 75% accuracy the Yang-Mills quartic term. We then prove that the complete effective action reproduces the exact Yang-Mills quartic term by analytically performing a summation over the intermediate massive states.
In Vitro Antimicrobial and Modulatory Activity of the Natural Products Silymarin and Silibinin

Silymarin is a standardized extract from the dried seeds of the milk thistle (Silybum marianum L. Gaertn.) clinically used as an antihepatotoxic agent. The aim of this study was to investigate the antibacterial and antifungal activity of silymarin and its major constituent (silibinin) against different microbial strains and their modulatory effect on drugs utilized in clinical practice. Silymarin demonstrated antimicrobial activity of little significance against the bacterial strains tested, with MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) values of 512 µg/mL. Meanwhile, silibinin showed significant activity against Escherichia coli with a MIC of 64 µg/mL. The results for the antifungal activity of silymarin and silibinin demonstrated a MIC of 1024 µg/mL for all strains. Silymarin and silibinin appear to have promising potential, showing synergistic properties when combined with antibacterial drugs, which should prompt further studies along this line.
Motivations and critical success factors of social entrepreneurship initiatives : a case study

Within the last three decades, social entrepreneurship has emerged as a relevant field of practice and research. By using management skills and market-based methods to address social problems, social entrepreneurship shows a high economical and social potential and has been the target of increasing attention. Despite its growing popularity, academic research in this area is still disperse and fragmented, far from being consensual. This case study seeks to fill a gap in the existing literature and its purpose is to identify which main motivations and critical success factors are associated with social entrepreneurship initiatives. Obtained results identify five key motivations, which include (1) achievement orientation, (2) personal fulfillment, (3) contribute to a better society, (4) closeness to a social problem and (5) focus towards financial sustainability. Additionally, five critical success factors were also identified: (1) good acceptance of the concept by the public, (2) motivation and commitment of employees, (3) social entrepreneur’s leadership skills, (4) training and development of employees and (5) collaboration with private sector organizations.
Living with a robot companion: empirical study on the interaction with an artificial health advisor

The EU project SERA (Social Engagement with Robots and Agents) provided the unique opportunity to collect real field data of people interacting with a robot companion in their homes. In the course of three iterations, altogether six elderly participants took part. Following a multi-methodological approach, the continuous quantitative and qualitative description of user behavior on a very fine-grained level gave us insights into when and how people interacted with the robot companion. Post-trial semi-structured interviews explored how the users perceived the companion and revealed their attitudes. Based on this large data set, conclusions can be drawn on whether people show signs of bonding and how their relation to the robot develops over time. Results indicate large inter-individual differences with regard to interaction behavior and attitudes. Implications for research on companions are discussed.
The Determinants of Short Selling: Evidence from the Hong Kong Equity Market

While most financial regulators agree that short sellers have an important role to play in ensuring an efficiently functioning market, it is interesting to note that many did not hesitate to ban short selling during the recent financial crisis. This apparent contradiction most likely stems from a lack of understanding about what motivates short trading. In this paper, we focus on the determinants of short selling during ‘normal’ trading in the Hong Kong stock market. We find that dividend payments, company fundamentals, risk, option trading, the interest rate spread and past returns and short selling are all significant determinants of short selling.
Utility of the Enzyme-Linked Immunospot Interferon-γ–Release Assay to Predict the Risk of Cytomegalovirus Infection in Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Recipients

The ability to distinguish allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (allo-HCT) recipients at risk for cytomegalovirus (CMV) reactivation from those who are not is central for optimal CMV management strategies. Interferon γ (IFN-γ) produced by CMV-challenged T cells may serve as an immune marker differentiating these 2 populations. We prospectively monitored 63 CMV-seropositive allo-HCT recipients with a CMV-specific enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay and for CMV infection from the period before transplantation to day 100 after transplantation. Assay results above certain thresholds (50 spots per 250 000 cells for immediate early 1 or 100 spots per 250 000 cells for phosphoprotein 65) identified patients who were protected against CMV infection as long as they had no graft-versus-host disease and/or were not receiving systemic corticosteroids. Based on the multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression model, the only significant factor for preventing CMV reactivation was a CMV-specific ELISPOT response above the determined thresholds (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.21; 95% confidence interval, .05–.97; P = .046). Use of this assay as an additional tool for managing allo-HCT recipients at risk for CMV reactivation needs further validation in future studies. Application of this new approach may reduce the duration and intensity of CMV monitoring and the duration of prophylaxis or treatment with antiviral agents in those who have achieved CMV-specific immune reconstitution.
Changes in Import Pricing Behaviour: Evidence for Germany

Since changes in import prices feed into consumer prices and thus might affect monetary policy decisions, policymakers need to establish whether or not German importers’ long-run pricing behaviour has changed. Of particular interest are any shifts in the importance of cost pass-through and pricing-to-market for import pricing in Germany that may have ocurred since the 1990s. We analyse pricing in single equations for 11 product categories because the factors influencing the pricing behaviour, eg competitive pressure,may well have developed differently on the individual product markets. The Saikkonen (1991) approach is applied to test the import price levels for changes in the impact of their determinants. After aggregating the findings for the individual product categories, we find that, on the whole, pricing-to-market has increased, whereas cost pass-through via foreign costs and exchange rates is lower, but not via commodity prices.
Survival-enhancing learning in the Manhattan hotel industry

In this study, we examine how experience at the level of the organization, the population, and the related group affects the failure of Manhattan hotels. We find organizational experience has a U-shaped effect on failure; that organizations enjoy reduced failure as a function of population experience before their founding, but not after; and that related organizations provide experience that lowers failure, but it matters whether their experience is local or non-local, and if it was acquired before or after the relationship was established. These results indicate both the difficulty of applying different types of experience to reduce the risk of organizational failure, and the relevance of experience for the evolution of organizational populations.
HZ08 Reverse P-Glycoprotein Mediated Multidrug Resistance In Vitro and In Vivo

Background Multidrug efflux transporter P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is highly expressed on membrane of tumor cells and is implicated in resistance to tumor chemotherapy. HZ08 is synthesized and studied in order to find a novel P-gp inhibitor. Methods MDCK-MDR1 monolayer transport, calcein-AM P-gp inhibition and P-gp ATPase assays were used to confirm the P-gp inhibition capability of HZ08. Furthermore, KB-WT and KB-VCR cells were used to evaluate the P-gp inhibitory activity of HZ08 both in vitro and in vivo. Results Results showed that HZ08 was more potent than verapamil in MDCK-MDR1 monolayer transportation model. Meanwhile, P-gp ATPase assay and calcein-AM P-gp inhibition assay confirmed that HZ08 inhibited P-gp ATPase with a calcein-AM IC50 of 2.44±0. 31μM. In addition, significantly greater in vitro multidrug resistance reversing effects were observed when vincristine or paclitaxel was used in combination with 10μM HZ08 compared with 10μM verapamil. Moreover, HZ08 could significantly enhance the sensitivity of vincristine with a similar effect like verapamil in both KB-WT and KB-VCR tumor xenograft models. Conclusions The novel structure HZ08 could be a potent P-gp inhibitor.