Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial power divider/combiner in D-band

Five-element spatial power divider/combiners have been realized at 150 GHz. Holography is applied to couple the field pattern of an in-line rectangular horn antenna array to a pseudoplane wave. The hologram is realized as periodic phase grating. The transformation of the pseudoplane wave to a Gaussian beam is performed by phase modulation with a dual-offset reflector on the one hand, and a system of Fresnel lenses on the other hand. Both setups have been extensively examined. The analysis has been enhanced by a vector near-field measurement system. The comparison of the simulated and measured efficiencies, as well as field distributions shows good agreement.
Appraising Hospital Performance by Using the JCHAO/CMS Quality Measures in Southern Italy

Objectives The main objective of the present study was to estimate the uptake to quality indicators that reflect the current evidence-based recommendations and guidelines. Methods A retrospective review of medical records of patients admitted to two hospitals in the South of Italy was conducted. For the purposes of the analysis, a sets of quality indicators has been used from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Four areas of care were selected: acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF), pneumonia (PN), and surgical care improvement project (SCIP). Frequency or median was calculated, as appropriate, for each indicator. A composite score was calculated to estimate the overall performance for each area of care. Results A total of 1772 medical records were reviewed. The adherence rates showed a wide-ranging variability among the selected indicators. The use of aspirin and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) for AMI, the use of ACEI or ARB for HF, the use of appropriate thromboembolism prophylaxis and appropriate hair removal for surgical patients almost approached optimal adherence. At the other extreme, rates regarding adherence to smoking-cessation counseling in AMI and HF patients, discharge instructions in HF patients, and influenza and pneumococcal vaccination in pneumonia patients were noticeably intangible. Overall, the recommended processes of care among eligible patients were provided in 70% for AMI, in 32.4% for HF, in 46.4% for PN, and in 46% for SCIP. Conclusions The results show that there is still substantial work that lies ahead on the way to improve the uptake to evidence-based processes of care. Improvement initiatives should be focused more on domains of healthcare than on specific conditions, especially on the area of preventive care.
Stable systolic inequalities and cohomology products

Multiplicative relations in the cohomology ring of a manifold impose constraints upon its stable systoles. Given a compact Riemannian manifold (X, g), its real homology H*(X, ℝ) is naturally endowed with the stable norm. Briefly, if h ∈ Hk (X, ℝ), then the stable norm of h is the infimum of the Riemannian k‐volumes of real cycles representing h. The stable k‐systole is the minimum of the stable norm over nonzero elements in the lattice of integral classes in Hk (X, ℝ). Relying on results from the geometry of numbers due to W. Banaszczyk, and extending work by M. Gromov and J. Hebda, we prove metric‐independent inequalities for products of stable systoles, where the product can be as long as the real cup length of X. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Anaplastic Astrocytoma Tumor Biopsy Samples Shc / Extracellular Signal-regulated Kinase Pathway in Focal Adhesion Kinase Enhances Signaling through the Updated Version

Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) is a nonreceptor tyrosine kinase that on activation generates signals that can modulate crucial cell functions, including cell proliferation, migration, and survival. In vitro, overexpression of FAK has been shown to promote cell proliferation by signaling through the Ras/mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade in several cell types. We have shown previously that overexpression of exogenous FAK lacking alternative splicing in malignant astrocytoma clones injected intracerebrally into SCID mouse brains promotes tumor cell proliferation. Here, we show that in anaplastic astrocytoma biopsy samples, FAK is expressed as an unspliced variant and migrates with a faster mobility similar to that observed in embryonic brain. Compared with nonneoplastic adult brain biopsies, the levels of FAK protein are elevated as are its levels of activation as assessed by autophosphorylation and overall tyrosine phosphorylation. The activity of Src kinase in these tumors is also elevated, as well as the activity of Src kinase associated with FAK; the latter may result in enhanced Src kinase phosphorylation of FAK. Phosphorylated Shc is associated with FAK in the anaplastic astrocytoma biopsy samples and in astrocytoma cells overexpressing FAK in vitro but not in nonneoplastic brain biopsy samples. Elevated extracellular signal-regulated kinase-2 activation and elevated expression of cyclins D and E are also found in anaplastic astrocytoma biopsy samples. These data provide evidence that the increased FAK activity in these tumors contributes to phosphorylation of Shc and likely to the promotion of Ras activity, extracellular signalregulated kinase-2 activation, and cell proliferation in vivo.
A clinical and electrophysiological study of the effects of 4-aminopyridine on upper limb impairment in multiple sclerosis

Introduction: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a leading cause of disability in Australian adults. Recent decades have seen great advances in disease-modifying therapies for some forms of MS but options for symptomatic therapy remain limited and, in most cases, unsupported by randomized clinical trial evidence. Upper limb dysfunction, visual impairment and fatigue are common and disabling MS symptoms which lack proven symptomatic therapies. Modified-release 4-aminopyridine (fampridine-MR) is licensed in Australia for the symptomatic treatment of walking disability in patients with MS. Its potential for use in other neurological domains, its mode of action, and the reasons for widely variable responses in treated patients, remain unknown. Various clinical and electrophysiological measures can be used to objectively evaluate patients with MS. These include a collection of functional tests of upper limb strength, dexterity and sensation, most of which are seldom conducted as part of routine clinical evaluation. Objective electrophysiological evaluation of Central Nervous System (CNS) conduction can be performed using evoked potential (EP) testing and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). The effect of fampridine-MR on areas of disability other than walking and how this might be reflected by changes in CNS conduction has not been previously fully investigated in the context of blinded randomized controlled trials. As a precursor to the original data, this thesis includes a comprehensive literature review of the diagnosis, pathophysiology and clinical features of MS; currently available disease-modifying and symptomatic treatments; objective clinical and electrophysiological tests used to evaluate of CNS conduction and MS symptoms, and the role of fampridine and related drugs in the treatment of MS symptoms. The original research presented within this thesis will test the following hypotheses: 1. Fampridine-MR treatment is associated with improvements in upper limb impairment, vision and fatigue in patients with multiple sclerosis. 2. Objective electrophysiological measures differ between patients on and off treatment with fampridine, and can be used to predict clinical response. Methods: These hypotheses were tested in two substudies. Study 1 was a small pilot study in patients taking fampridine-MR for walking disability; study 2 was a larger, randomized double-blind placebocontrolled trial in treatment-naïve patients with upper limb impairment. Clinical and
Optimisation in ‘Self-modelling’ Complex Adaptive Systems

When a dynamical system with multiple point attractors is released from an arbitrary initial condition it will relax into a configuration that locally resolves the constraints or opposing forces between interdependent state variables. However, when there are many conflicting interdependencies between variables, finding a configuration that globally optimises these constraints by this method is unlikely, or may take many attempts. Here we show that a simple distributed mechanism can incrementally alter a dynamical system such that it finds lower energy configurations, more reliably and more quickly. Specifically, when Hebbian learning is applied to the connections of a simple dynamical system undergoing repeated relaxation, the system will develop an associative memory that amplifies a subset of its own attractor states. This modifies the dynamics of the system such that its ability to find configurations that minimise total system energy, and globally resolve conflicts between interdependent variables, is enhanced. Moreover, we show that the system is not merely ‘recalling’ low energy states that have been previously visited but ‘predicting’ their location by generalising over local attractor states that have already been visited. This ‘self-modelling’ framework, i.e. a system that augments its behaviour with an associative memory of its own attractors, helps us better-understand the conditions under which a simple locally-mediated mechanism of self-organisation can promote significantly enhanced global resolution of conflicts between the components of a complex adaptive system. We illustrate this process in random and modular network constraint problems equivalent to graph colouring and distributed task allocation problems.
Digital technologies in early childhood education – a frame analysis of preservice teachers’ perceptions

ABSTRACT Research on early childhood teachers’ perceptions of technology integration has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the unique pedagogical characteristics of early childhood education. This qualitative study contributes to resolving this need by scrutinizing preservice teachers’ perceptions of technology usage through the frames of education, socialization, and care, which form a harmonious whole referred to as the EDUCARE approach. The findings suggest that an individual preservice teacher can be for or against technology usage depending on the frame they reflect on technology integration through. Children’s ages and participants’ beliefs about the children’s access to technology at home were the most significant factors behind the variation in dynamics between and within the frames. The implications for future research are also discussed.
Nanoparticle Transport from Mouse Vagina to Adjacent Lymph Nodes

To test the feasibility of localized intravaginal therapy directed to neighboring lymph nodes, the transport of quantum dots across the vaginal wall was investigated. Quantum dots instilled into the mouse vagina were transported across the vaginal mucosa into draining lymph nodes, but not into distant nodes. Most of the particles were transported to the lumbar nodes; far fewer were transported to the inguinal nodes. A low level of transport was evident at 4 hr after intravaginal instillation, and transport peaked at about 36 hr after instillation. Transport was greatly enhanced by prior vaginal instillation of Nonoxynol-9. Hundreds of micrograms of nanoparticles/kg tissue (ppb) were found in the lumbar lymph nodes at 36 hr post-instillation. Our results imply that targeted transport of microbicides or immunogens from the vagina to local lymph organs is feasible. They also offer an in vivo model for assessing the toxicity of compounds intended for intravaginal use.
Social Class as Culture

Social class reflects more than the material conditions of people’s lives. Objective resources (e.g., income) shape cultural practices and behaviors that signal social class. These signals create cultural identities among upper- and lower-class individuals—identities that are rooted in subjective perceptions of social-class rank vis-à-vis others. Empirical studies find that perceptions of social-class rank influence patterns of contextual versus dispositional cognition and other- versus self-oriented affect and behavior that are consistent with objective resource-based measures of social class. Our theoretical conceptualization emphasizes the utility of measuring and manipulating perceptions of social-class rank to better understand how social class influences thought and action across diverse social domains.
Wind Resource Mapping Using Landscape Roughness and Spatial Interpolation Methods

Energy saving, reduction of greenhouse gasses and increased use of renewables are key policies to achieve the European 2020 targets. In particular, distributed renewable energy sources, integrated with spatial planning, require novel methods to optimise supply and demand. In contrast with large scale wind turbines, small and medium wind turbines (SMWTs) have a less extensive impact on the use of space and the power system, nevertheless, a significant spatial footprint is still present and the need for good spatial planning is a necessity. To optimise the location of SMWTs, detailed knowledge of the spatial distribution of the average wind speed is essential, hence, in this article, wind measurements and roughness maps were used to create a reliable annual mean wind speed map of Flanders at 10 m above the Earth’s surface. Via roughness transformation, the surface wind speed measurements were converted into meso- and macroscale wind data. The data were further processed by using seven different spatial interpolation methods in order to develop regional wind resource maps. Based on statistical analysis, it was found that the transformation into mesoscale wind, in combination with Simple Kriging, was the most adequate method to create reliable maps for decision-making on optimal production sites for SMWTs in Flanders (Belgium).
The Impact of Divergent and Convergent Tasks on Iranian EFL Students’ Reading Comprehension Success

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of divergent and convergent tasks on intermediate EFL students' reading comprehension success. The participants of this study involved sixty male and female EFL learners who were enrolled in the intermediate level at Kish English Institute in Yasuj. To make them homogeneous in terms of their general English knowledge, they were asked to take part in an English proficiency test. Having been homogenized through an OPT test, sixty students were selected and randomly divided into a control and two experimental groups. Then, a pretest was run, and participants' reading comprehension was assessed. For the treatment, during eight sessions, the participants in the experimental groups were instructed on convergent and divergent tasks. The control group, on the other hand, received a traditional reading instruction. Finally, as the last step of data collection, all participants of the experimental and control groups took part in a post-test of reading comprehension. After applying statistical analyses, significant differences were observed among EFL learners’ performances, and those who had divergent tasks could improve their reading comprehension better than the other two groups.
Fault Ride-Through Capability Improvement of DFIG-Based Wind Turbine by Employing a Voltage-Compensation-Type Active SFCL

Based on the considerations in creating a smart grid roadmap, an integrated application of renewable energy sources and superconducting power devices may bring more positive effects. This paper suggests a voltage-compensation-type active superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) to enhance the fault ride-through capability of doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) for wind power generation. Since the active SFCL has higher controllability and flexibility than a common resistive- or inductive-type SFCL, its application may give better results. Related theory derivation, cost evaluation, and simulation analysis are conducted, and a comparison between the active SFCL and an inductive SFCL is performed. From the results, the active SFCL can limit the faulty currents flowing through the DFIG's stator and rotor windings and compensate the generator terminal voltage. The inductive SFCL may not evacuate the surplus active power during the grid fault; however, the active SFCL can smooth the DFIG's power fluctuation, and the stability of the wind power system can be well strengthened.
Finding top-k profitable products

The importance of dominance and skyline analysis has been well recognized in multi-criteria decision making applications. Most previous studies focus on how to help customers find a set of “best” possible products from a pool of given products. In this paper, we identify an interesting problem, finding top-k profitable products, which has not been studied before. Given a set of products in the existing market, we want to find a set of k “best” possible products such that these new products are not dominated by the products in the existing market. In this problem, we need to set the prices of these products such that the total profit is maximized. We refer such products as top-k profitable products. A straightforward solution is to enumerate all possible subsets of size k and find the subset which gives the greatest profit. However, there are an exponential number of possible subsets. In this paper, we propose solutions to find the top-k profitable products efficiently. An extensive performance study using both synthetic and real datasets is reported to verify its effectiveness and efficiency.
Personality and Social Framing in Privacy Decision-Making: A Study on Cookie Acceptance

Despite their best intentions, people struggle with the realities of privacy protection and will often sacrifice privacy for convenience in their online activities. Individuals show systematic, personality dependent differences in their privacy decision making, which makes it interesting for those who seek to design ‘nudges’ designed to manipulate privacy behaviors. We explore such effects in a cookie decision task. Two hundred and ninety participants were given an incidental website review task that masked the true aim of the study. At the task outset, they were asked whether they wanted to accept a cookie in a message that either contained a social framing ‘nudge’ (they were told that either a majority or a minority of users like themselves had accepted the cookie) or contained no information about social norms (control). At the end of the task, participants were asked to complete a range of personality assessments (impulsivity, risk-taking, willingness to self-disclose and sociability). We found social framing to be an effective behavioral nudge, reducing cookie acceptance in the minority social norm condition. Further, we found personality effects in that those scoring highly on risk-taking and impulsivity were significantly more likely to accept the cookie. Finally, we found that the application of a social nudge could attenuate the personality effects of impulsivity and risk-taking. We explore the implications for those working in the privacy-by-design space.
Engineering Amyloid-Like Assemblies from Unstructured Peptides via Site-Specific Lipid Conjugation

Aggregation of amyloid beta (Aβ) into oligomers and fibrils is believed to play an important role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). To gain further insight into the principles of aggregation, we have investigated the induction of β-sheet secondary conformation from disordered native peptide sequences through lipidation, in 1–2% hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). Several parameters, such as type and number of lipid chains, peptide sequence, peptide length and net charge, were explored keeping the ratio peptide/HFIP constant. The resulting lipoconjugates were characterized by several physico-chemical techniques: Circular Dichroism (CD), Attenuated Total Reflection InfraRed (ATR-IR), Thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence, Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy and Electron Microscopy (EM). Our data demonstrate the generation of β-sheet aggregates from numerous unstructured peptides under physiological pH, independent of the amino acid sequence. The amphiphilicity pattern and hydrophobicity of the scaffold were found to be key factors for their assembly into amyloid-like structures.
A duality between proof systems for cyclic term graphs

This paper presents a proof-theoretic observation about two kinds of proof systems for bisimilarity between cyclic term graphs. First we consider proof systems for demonstrating that μ term specifications of cyclic term graphs have the same tree unwinding. We establish a close connection between adaptations for μ terms over a general first-order signature of the coinductive axiomatisation of recursive type equivalence by Brandt and Henglein (Brandt and Henglein 1998) and of a proof system by Ariola and Klop (Ariola and Klop 1995) for consistency checking. We show that there exists a simple duality by mirroring between derivations in the former system and formalised consistency checks, which are called ‘consistency unfoldings', in the latter. This result sheds additional light on the axiomatisation of Brandt and Henglein: it provides an alternative soundness proof for the adaptation considered here. We then outline an analogous duality result that holds for a pair of similar proof systems for proving that equational specifications of cyclic term graphs are bisimilar.
Evaluating Context Uniication for Semantic Underspeciication

Context uniication has been proposed as a powerful formalism for the uniform and underspeciied treatment of scope ambiguities and parallelism. We develop an algorithm for context uniication that alleviates the enormous computational and overgeneration problems of earlier algorithms. It is incomplete for full context uniication, but nds all linguistically relevant solutions. We apply an implementation of the new algorithm to evaluate context uniication as a tool for semantic analysis.
Do Anomalies Exist Ex Ante?

The anomalies literature in capital markets research in finance and accounting is based (almost) exclusively on average realized returns. In contrast, we construct accounting-based expected returns for dollar neutral long-short trading strategies formed on a wide array of anomaly variables, including book-to-market, size, composite issuance, net stock issues, abnormal investment, asset growth, investment-to-assets, accruals, earnings surprises, failure probability, return on assets, and short-term prior returns. Our findings are striking. Except for the value and the size premiums, the cost of equity estimates differ drastically from the average realized returns.