Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Joint Model Order Selection and Parameter Estimation of Chirps With Harmonic Components

We consider the problem of jointly determining the number of harmonic components of a fundamental linear chirp, and estimating its parameters (i.e., its initial frequency and frequency rate), given time samples of the observed signal. Common model order criteria select the number of harmonics based on the maximum likelihood estimator. We develop exact and approximated maximum likelihood estimators of these parameters. To avoid an exhaustive search in the initial frequency-frequency rate space involved by those estimators, we propose an alternative low-complexity two-step estimation method. The first step separates the signal to its harmonic components. Then, in the second step, the parameters of interest are estimated using least squares method given the phases of the harmonic components. The method is compared to the exact and approximated maximum likelihood estimators and to the well-known high-order ambiguity function based method. Numerical simulations and real data examples demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity method can successfully replace the maximum likelihood estimator in the model order criteria at moderate to high signal-to-noise ratio. Since the estimates obtained by the proposed method achieve the Cramer-Rao lower bound at these signal to noise ratios.
Orchestration of “Presto” and “Largo” Synchrony in Up-Down Activity of Cortical Networks

It has been demonstrated using single-cell and multiunit electrophysiology in layer III entorhinal cortex and disinhibited hippocampal CA3 slices that the balancing of the up-down activity is characterized by both GABAA and GABAB mechanisms. Here we report novel results obtained using multi-electrode array (60 electrodes) simultaneous recordings from reverberating postnatal neocortical networks containing 19.2 ± 1.4% GABAergic neurons, typical of intact tissue. We observed that in each spontaneous active-state the total number of spikes in identified clusters of excitatory and inhibitory neurons is almost equal, thus suggesting a balanced average activity. Interestingly, in the active-state, the early phase is sustained by only 10% of the total spikes and the firing rate follows a sigmoidal regenerative mode up to peak at 35 ms with the number of excitatory spikes greater than inhibitory, therefore indicating an early unbalance. Concentration-response pharmacology of up- and down-state lifetimes in clusters of excitatory (n = 1067) and inhibitory (n = 305) cells suggests that, besides the GABAA and GABAB mechanisms, others such as GAT-1-mediated uptake, Ih, INaP and IM ion channel activity, robustly govern both up- and down-activity. Some drugs resulted to affect up- and/or down-states with different IC50s, providing evidence that various mechanisms are involved. These results should reinforce not only the role of synchrony in CNS networks, but also the recognized analogies between the Hodgkin–Huxley action potential and the population bursts as basic mechanisms for originating membrane excitability and CNS network synchronization, respectively.
Modeling and Capacity of Polarized MIMO Channels

In this work the modeling and capacity of a dual polarized (DP) MIMO channel is addressed. The modeling includes channel parameters such as receive and transmit correlation, channel cross-polarization discrimination (XPD), and antenna parameters such as polarization state, polarization parallelity and coupling. The capacity of the DP MIMO channel is evaluated and compared to the capacity of a single polarized (SP) MIMO system. The SP MIMO system with spatially separated antenna sensors has the advantage that it also offers array gain and will therefore during idealized conditions outperform the DP MIMO system. However, in this work it is found that this advantage often is reduced and sometimes even lost when channel and antenna imperfections such as, e.g., correlation, channel XPD, and polarization mismatch are introduced. The main conclusion is that DP antennas might not always yield the best MIMO performance, but instead offer compact antenna solutions for mobile devices and robust performance that is more insensitive to the aforementioned imperfections.
Relationship between Customer Satisfaction and Mobile Banking Adoption in Pakistan

Mobile banking has marked itself as an emerging technology adopted by banks around the globe. The purpose of this research is to identify the key factors of mobile technology adoption which influence customer satisfaction in Pakistan. Questionnaires are used to conduct data collection and then analyzed using statistical techniques: regression analysis, correlation and factor analysis. The findings show that customer's concerns about security, authenticity and reliability of the technology are of significance. The results imply that firms should focus upon IT application, innovative services, security, customer trust and risk as these are the key indicators of technology adoption.
Wind wave tank for experimental investigation of momentum and enthalpy transfer from the ocean surface at high wind speed

Thermodynamic analysis and numerical modeling of hurricane intensity has shown that its is controlled by the enthalpy transfer from the ocean surface and by drag. Direct measurements of drag, evaporation, and sensible heat transfer are not easily performed on the high seas. Therefore, a wind wave tank has been constructed in which a few aspects of a tropical storm are simulated. The air velocity inside the annular tank is comparable to that of hurricane. However, the three dimensionality of the tank obscures the quantitative comparison between experiments and actual conditions over the surface of the ocean at high wind speeds. The design of the wind wave tank and the initial experiments create a foundation for future and more comprehensive experimental programs. This thesis focuses mainly on the design and engineering of the tank, and on the fluid mechanics of the rotational flow in the tank. It also provides preliminary experimental data on the drag at high wind speeds obtained by using spindown experiments.
Automatic Image Annotation using Weakly Labelled Web Data

In this work, we propose and describe a method for local- izing and annotating objects in images for the Scalable Concept Image Annotation challenge at ImageCLEF 2015. The unique feature of our proposed method is in its almost exclusive reliance on a single modality { visual data { for annotating images. Additionally, we do not utilize any of the provided training data, but instead create our own similarly-sized training set. By exploiting the latest research in deep learning and com- puter vision, we are able to test the applicability of these techniques to a problem of extremely noisy learning. We are able to obtain state-of-the- art results on an inherently multi-modal problem thereby demonstrating that computer vision can also be a primary classication modality in- stead of relying primarily on text to determine context prior to image annotation.
Adapting information bottleneck method for automatic construction of domain-oriented sentiment lexicon

Domain-oriented sentiment lexicons are widely used for fine-grained sentiment analysis on reviews; therefore, the automatic construction of domain-oriented sentiment lexicon is a fundamental and important task for sentiment analysis research. Most of existing construction approaches take only the kind of relationships between words into account, which makes them have a lot of room for improvement. This paper proposes an adapted information bottleneck method for the construction of domain-oriented sentiment lexicon. This approach can naturally make full use of the mutual reinforcement between documents and words by fusing three kinds of relationships either from words to documents or from words to words; either homogeneous or heterogeneous; either within-domain or cross-domain. The experimental results demonstrate that proposed method could dramatically improve the accuracy of the baseline approach on the construction of out-of-domain sentiment lexicon.
Evaluation of the accuracy of manual and automatic scoring of a single airflow channel in patients with a high probability of obstructive sleep apnea

Summary Background ApneaLink™ (AL) is a single-channel type-4 device that measures airflow. A limited number of studies have assessed AL’s usefulness in diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) using automated scoring alone. This study was conducted to assess the sensitivity and specificity of AL in a selected group of people with clinical suspicion of OSA, using both automatic and manual scoring and comparing the results with those obtained for polysomnography (PSG). Material/Methods Simultaneous overnight recordings of in-laboratory PSG and AL were performed for 95 patients (mean age 46.3±12.6 yr) with a high clinical suspicion of OSA. PSG was scored manually according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) guidelines. AL data were analyzed automatically using a manufacturer-provided computerized algorithm. Manual scoring of the AL flow signal followed the AASM guidelines for reduction in flow. Results The mean apnea hypopneas index (AHI) for PSG was 34.1±32.4/hr. The AL Auto-AHI was 20.1±25.2/h, and the AL Manual-AHI was 39.5±30.4/h. The Pearson correlation coefficients were r=0.883 between PSG-AHI and AL Auto-AHI, and r=0.966 between PSG-AHI and AL Manual-AHI. At AHIs of 5, 10, 15, and 30, the AL Auto sensitivity/specificity was 0.79/0.68, 0.70/0.89, 0.64/0.94 and 0.63/0.98, and the AL Manual sensitivity/specificity was 1.00/0.43, 1.00/0.56, 0.98/0.58 and 1.00/0.80. Conclusions Combining auto and manual scoring of data (automatic scoring followed by manual scoring) recorded by single-channel ApneaLink™ provides good diagnostic agreement with conventional PSG recordings.
Resolving the Stellar Populations in a z=4 Lensed Galaxy

We present deep near-infrared Keck Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC) imaging of a recently discovered z = 4.04 galaxy. This is lensed by the rich foreground cluster Abell 2390 (z ≈ 0.23) into highly magnified arcs 3''-5'' in length. Our H and K′ band NIRC imaging allows us to map the Balmer+4000 Å break amplitude. In combination with high-quality archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFPC2 data, we can spatially resolve stellar populations along the arcs. The WFPC2 images clearly reveal several bright knots, which correspond to sites of active star formation. However, there are considerable portions of the arcs that are significantly redder, consistent with being observed ≳100 Myr after star formation has ceased. Keck Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (LRIS) long-slit spectroscopy along the arcs reveals that the Lyα emission is spatially offset by ≈1'' from the rest-UV continuum regions. We show that this line emission is most probably powered by star formation in neighboring H II regions and that the z = 4 system is unlikely to be an active galactic nucleus.
Clinical and laboratory features of fatal rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease associated with juvenile dermatomyositis.

OBJECTIVE Rapidly progressive interstitial lung disease (RP-ILD) is a rare but potentially fatal complication of JDM. The aim of this study was to establish markers for the prediction and early diagnosis of RP-ILD associated with JDM. METHODS The clinical records of 54 patients with JDM were retrospectively reviewed: 10 had RP-ILD (7 died, 3 survived), 19 had chronic ILD and 24 were without ILD. Routine tests included a high-resolution CT (HRCT) scan of the chest and measurement of serum levels of creatine phosphokinase, ferritin and Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6). Anti-melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 (MDA5) antibodies and IL-18 levels were measured by ELISA. RESULTS No differences were found in the ratio of juvenile clinically amyopathic DM between the three groups. Initial chest HRCT scan findings were variable and could not distinguish between RP-ILD and chronic ILD. Anti-MDA5 antibodies were positive in all 8 patients with RP-ILD and 10 of 14 with chronic ILD, but none of the patients without ILD. Serum levels of anti-MDA5 antibody, ferritin, KL-6 and IL-18 were significantly higher in the RP-ILD group than in the chronic ILD and non-ILD groups. Serum levels of IL-18 positively correlated with serum KL-6 (R = 0.66, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION High serum levels of IL-18, KL-6, ferritin and anti-MDA5 antibodies (e.g. >200 units by ELISA) are associated with RP-ILD. These can be used as an indication for early intensive treatment. Both alveolar macrophages and autoimmunity to MDA5 are possibly involved in the development of RP-ILD associated with JDM.
Diagnostic accuracy of transient elastography (FibroScan) in detection of esophageal varices in patients with cirrhosis: A meta-analysis

AIM To investigate the diagnostic accuracy of FibroScan (FS) in detecting esophageal varices (EV) in cirrhotic patients. METHODS Through a systemic literature search of multiple databases, we reviewed 15 studies using endoscopy as a reference standard, with the data necessary to calculate pooled sensitivity (SEN) and specificity (SPE), positive and negative LR, diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and area under receiver operating characteristics (AUROC). The quality of the studies was rated by the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy studies-2 tool. Clinical utility of FS for EV was evaluated by a Fagan plot. Heterogeneity was explored using meta-regression and subgroup analysis. All statistical analyses were conducted via Stata12.0, MetaDisc1.4 and RevMan5. RESULTS In 15 studies (n = 2697), FS detected the presence of EV with the summary sensitivities of 84% (95%CI: 81.0%-86.0%), specificities of 62% (95%CI: 58.0%- 66.0%), a positive LR of 2.3 (95%CI: 1.81-2.94), a negative LR of 0.26 (95%CI: 0.19-0.35), a DOR of 9.33 (95%CI: 5.84-14.92) and an AUROC of 0.8262. FS diagnosed the presence of large EV with the pooled SEN of 0.78 (95%CI: 75.0%-81.0%), SPE of 0.76 (95%CI: 73.0%-78.0%), a positive and negative LR of 3.03 (95%CI: 2.38-3.86) and 0.30 (95%CI: 0.23-0.39) respectively, a summary diagnostic OR of 10.69 (95%CI: 6.81-16.78), and an AUROC of 0.8321. A meta-regression and subgroup analysis indicated different etiology could serve as a potential source of heterogeneity in the diagnosis of the presence of EV group. A Deek’s funnel plot suggested a low probability for publication bias. CONCLUSION Using FS to measure liver stiffness cannot provide high accuracy for the size of EV due to the various cutoff and different etiologies. These limitations preclude widespread use in clinical practice at this time; therefore, the results should be interpreted cautiously given its SEN and SPE.
Two semantic features make all the difference in Parsing accuracy

The paper describes experiments on a Hindi dependency treebank to systematically investigate crucial learning issues which crop up in building a robust Hindi parser. We do this by training two data-driven dependency parsers on the treebank. We test out various conjectures through these experiments. The results obtained either validate or make us to reframe the conjectures posed. The whole process helps in systematically isolating information crucial for parsing. Many interesting facts, such as how certain intuitive features fail to increase the performance of the parsers, what kind of linguistic phenomena are difficult to learn, how minimal semantics can help in identifying some core relations, etc. accrue from these experiments. The final performance obtained for parsing Hindi is encouraging, the best labeled attachment and unlabelled attachment scores are 69.64% and 88.67% respectively on a Treebank as small as 1200 sentences.
Armadillo: An Open Source C++ Linear Algebra Library for Fast Prototyping and Computationally Intensive Experiments

In this report we provide an overview of the open source Armadillo C++ linear algebra library (matrix maths). The library aims to have a good balance between speed and ease of use, and is useful if C++ is the language of choice (due to speed and/or integration capabilities), rather than another language like Matlab or Octave. In particular, Armadillo can be used for fast prototyping and computationally intensive experiments, while at the same time allowing for relatively painless transition of research code into production environments. It is distributed under a license that is applicable in both open source and proprietary software development contexts. The library supports integer, floating point and complex numbers, as well as a subset of trigonometric and statistics functions. Various matrix decompositions are provided through optional integration with LAPACK, or one its high-performance drop-in replacements, such as MKL from Intel or ACML from AMD. A delayed evaluation approach is employed (during compile time) to combine several operations into one and reduce (or eliminate) the need for temporaries. This is accomplished through C++ template meta-programming. Performance comparisons suggest that the library is considerably faster than Matlab and Octave, as well as previous C++ libraries such as IT++ and Newmat. This report reflects a subset of the functionality present in Armadillo 0.9. 92.
Half-duplex or full-duplex relaying: A capacity analysis under self-interference

In this paper multi-antenna half-duplex and full-duplex relaying are compared from the perspective of achievable rates. Full-duplexing operation requires additional resources at the relay such as antennas and RF chains for self-interference cancellation. Using a practical model for the residual self-interference, full-duplex achievable rates and degrees of freedom are computed for the cases for which the relay has the same number of antennas or the same number of RF chains as in the half-duplex case, and compared with their half-duplex counterparts. It is shown that power scaling at the relay is necessary to maximize the degrees of freedom in the full-duplex mode.
Dual task performance of working memory and postural control in major depressive disorder.

OBJECTIVE Previous studies with patients diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) revealed deficits in working memory and executive functions. In the present study we investigated whether patients with MDD have the ability to allocate cognitive resources in dual task performance of a highly challenging cognitive task (working memory) and a task that is seemingly automatic in nature (postural control). METHOD Fifteen young (18-35 years old) patients with MDD and 24 healthy age-matched controls performed a working memory task and two postural control tasks (standing on a stable or on a moving platform) both separately (single task) and concurrently (dual task). RESULTS Postural stability under single task conditions was similar in the two groups, and in line with earlier studies, MDD patients recalled fewer working memory items than controls. To equate working memory challenges for patients and controls, task difficulty (number of items presented) in dual task was individually adjusted such that accuracy of working memory performance was similar for the two groups under single task conditions. Patients showed greater postural instability in dual task performance on the stable platform, and more importantly when posture task difficulty increased (moving platform) they showed deficits in both working memory accuracy and postural stability compared with healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS We interpret our results as evidence for executive control deficits in MDD patients that affect their task coordination. In multitasking, these deficits affect not only cognitive but also sensorimotor task performance.
Assessment of the Knowledge of the Decimal Number System Exhibited by Students with Down Syndrome

This paper presents an assessment of the understanding of the decimal numeral system in students with Down Syndrome (DS). We followed a methodology based on a descriptive case study involving six students with DS. We used a framework of four constructs (counting, grouping, partitioning and numerical relationships) and five levels of thinking for each one. The results of this study indicate the variability of the six students in the five levels and in their mastery of the constructs. The grouping construct, which is essential to a proper development of the others, proved complex for the students. In general, we found that these students have a better procedural than conceptual understanding. However, the skills displayed by two of the students in the study group are encouraging with a view to advancing the number knowledge of these individuals.
Chinese returnees' conceptions of positive career outcomes after graduating from Australian universities – quantitative findings

This paper reports the quantitative findings of a study on conceptions of positive career outcomes held by Chinese students who returned home to work after gaining higher education qualifications in Australia. The study explores what positive career outcomes mean to Chinese returnees, the actual positive career outcomes Chinese returnees have experienced and contributing factors to the positive career outcomes achieved. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods are used and here the analysis of the quantitative findings is presented. The survey data show that Chinese returnees assign greater importance to ‘soft outcomes’ relating to personal and life fulfilment than ‘hard outcomes’ such as employment results. Also, the discrepancy between the returnees’ ideal and actual outcomes is greater in the soft outcomes than the hard outcomes. Statistical analysis indicates three emergent, distinct groups of conceptions of positive career outcomes. The qualitative findings will be presented separately.
Discovering distinctive action parts for action recognition

Recent methods based on mid-level visual concepts have shown promising capability in human action recognition field. Automatically discovering semantic entities such as parts for an action class remains challenging. In this paper, we focus on discovering distinctive action parts for recognition of human actions by learning and selecting a small number of discriminative part detectors directly from training videos. We initially train a large collection of candidate Exemplar-LDA detectors from clusters obtained by clustering spatiotemporal patches in whitened space. A novel Coverage-Entropy curve is proposed as a means of measuring the representative and discriminative capabilities of part detectors, and used to select a set of compact and meaningful detectors out of the vast candidates. By integrating these mined detectors into “bag of parts” representation, our approach demonstrates state-of-the-art performance on the UCF50 dataset.
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Expands Ocular Dominance Columns in Visual Cortex in Monocularly Deprived and Nondeprived Kittens But Does Not in Adult Cats

Segregation and stabilization of thalamocortical afferents to eye-specific patches, so-called "ocular dominance (OD) columns," in visual cortex are hypothesized to be based on activity-dependent competition for trophic factors such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) between afferents representing the two eyes during the critical period of postnatal development. To test this hypothesis we observed effects of an intracortical infusion of BDNF on OD columns in monocularly deprived kittens and also compared effects between normal kittens and adult cats. BDNF had a hypertrophic action on afferents irrespective of visual inputs so that it desegregated OD columns in the visual cortex of deprived and normal kittens, but this action was not seen in the adults, substantiating its hypothesized trophic role in plasticity of OD columns in the developing visual cortex.