Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experiments of VoIP using WiMAX system and fading simulator with two-path models for aeronautical scenarios

In this paper, we study the performance of VoIP over WiMAX systems. We assume a two-path model for airport surface communications and experiment by using a multipath fading simulator. We evaluate the R-factor when the mobile speed and delay time are changed. We use an R-factor of 80 which is defined in ED-136 as a threshold where VoIP can be used for air traffic control (ATC). When the delay time is 0 -20ns i.e., the horizontal distance is over 40m and if the mobile speed is under 50 km/h, the R-factor is over 80. On the other hand, in takeoff and landing scenarios when the mobile speed is over 300 km/h, it is difficult to keep the quality of VoIP and some improvements in the receiver are needed.
Consumer demand for alcoholic beverages and tobacco in Lesotho: A double-hurdle approach

In this paper, we estimate income elasticities and investigate the determinants of alcohol and tobacco consumption in Lesotho using a Double-Hurdle model on the 2002/03 Lesotho HBS data. The results reveal that both alcohol and tobacco are income inelastic with estimated elasticities of 0.6553 and 0.3561, respectively. Given this, therefore, we argue that differentiated tax hikes, with a relatively higher rate on tobacco, can be more eÂ¤ective both as a consumption deterrent and revenue increasing policy, without much compromise on employment and poverty. Further, we fiÂ…nd evidence that alcoholic beverages and tobacco are complementaries, suggesting the need for a more holistic social policy aimed at curbing consumption of these two goods.
High performance AXI-4.0 based interconnect for extensible smart memory cubes

The recent technological breakthrough represented by the Hybrid Memory Cube is on its way to improve bandwidth, power consumption, and density. This is while heterogeneous 3D integration has provided another opportunity for revisiting near memory computation to fill the gap between the processors and memories even further. In this paper, we take the first step towards a “Smart Memory Cube (SMC)”, a fully backward compatible and modular extension to the standard HMC, supporting near memory computation on its Logic Base (LoB), through a high performance interconnect designed for this purpose. The main feature of SMC is the high bandwidth, low latency, and AXI-4.0 compatible interconnect, designed to serve the huge bandwidth demand by HMC's serial links, and to provide extra bandwidth to a processor-in-memory (PIM) embedded in the Logic Base (LoB). Our results obtained from cycle accurate simulation demonstrate that this interconnect can easily meet the demands of current and future projections of HMC (Up to 87GB/s READ bandwidth with 4 serial links and 16 memory vaults, and 175GB/s with 8 serial links and 32 memory vaults, for injected random traffic). Moreover, the interference between the PIM traffic and the main links was found to be negligible with execution time increase of less than 5%, and average memory access time increase of less than 15% when 56GB/s bandwidth is requested by the main links and 15GB/s bandwidth is delivered to the PIM port. Moreover, preliminary logic synthesis with Synopsys Design Compiler confirms that our interconnect is implementable and realistic.
Elusive AGN in the XMM-Newton bright serendipitous survey

Context. Optical follow-up of X-ray selected sources finds a significant fraction of “optically dull” sources characterized by optical spectra without obvious signature of AGN activity. In many cases, however, the presence of an AGN is inferred from other diagnostics (e.g. the X-ray properties). Understanding and accounting for this “elusiveness” is mandatory for a reliable study of the AGN physical and statistical properties. Aims. We investigate here the nature of all the sources (35 in total) in the XMM-Newton bright serendipitous survey (which is 86% optically identified) showing an optical spectrum dominated by the light from the host galaxy with no evidence (or little evidence) for the presence of an AGN. Methods. We use the X-ray spectral analysis to assess the presence of an AGN in these sources and to characterize its properties. Results. We detect AGN activity in 33 out of 35 sources. The remaining 2 sources are the ones with the lowest X-ray luminosity in the sample (L[2−10 keV] 10 44 erg s −1 ). This problem affects mostly absorbed AGN (∼40% of type 2 AGN in the survey are elusive) but also a significant fraction of unabsorbed AGN (8%). Conclusions. We find that the simplest explanations of why these 33 (or most of them) AGNs are elusive are two: at low X-ray luminosities ( 10 44 erg s −1 ) it is due to the optical absorption (in the Compton-thin regime, i.e. NH < 10 24 cm −2 ). Alternative hypotheses, like the presence of Compton-thick sources, BL Lac objects or “non-standard” AGN (e.g. with αOX < 1 or with weak/absorbed Narrow Line Region) are not supported by the data although we cannot exclude the presence in the sample of a few sources of these types.
Exploration of the impact of organisational context on a workplace safety and health intervention

ABSTRACT The Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) was designed to increase workers’ safety and health using supervisor/leadership training. SHIP was implemented and evaluated in a cluster randomized controlled trial with 20 supervisors and 292 construction crew members representing a high-risk industry. The intervention had three components: (1) computer-based training to teach supervisors ways to better support worker safety and work-life challenges; (2) supervisor behavioural self-monitoring to facilitate transfer of training to practice; and (3) team-based discussions with supervisors and work crew members to identify challenges and opportunities for improvement with 30, 60, and 90 day follow-up check-in meetings. Main effects for the intervention on perceptions of family supportive supervisor behaviors, team effectiveness, and work-life effectiveness were not found, suggesting that the pre-intervention context could help explain the lack of intervention effects. We found that the intervention was more beneficial for work crew members who had poorer pre-intervention perceptions of their supervisor (lower leader-member exchange) and lower perceived team cohesion, suggesting the important impact of the organisational context on intervention effects. We argue that perhaps these work crews were more ready for change and improvements in functioning than were the crews that were already functioning well.
The Circe approach to the systematic analysis of NL requirements

This paper presents Circe, an environment for the analysis of natural language requirements. Circe is presented in terms of its architecture, based on a transformational paradigm. Details are given for the various transformation steps, including (i) a novel technique for parsing natural language requirements, and (ii) an expert system based on modular agents, embodying intensional knowledge about software systems in general. Some of the features of the environment are shown by means of an example. Various stages of requirements analysis are covered, from initial sketches to pseudo-code and UML models.
Evaluation of SAMe-TT2R2 risk score for predicting the quality of anticoagulation control in a real-world cohort of patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation on vitamin-K antagonists.

AIMS Clinicians need to get better at identifying patients who would have poor quality of anticoagulation control with vitamin-K antagonists (VKAs). We assessed the predictive ability of SAMe-TT2R2 score, recently conceived for the prior purpose, and examined its relationship with major bleeding, thromboembolic (TE) complications, and death. METHODS AND RESULTS Retrospectively, 911 consecutive patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) started on VKAs within 8 months were studied. The percentage of international normalized ratios in therapeutic range (PINRR) at different levels was used as a metric of anticoagulation quality. We also tested the SAMe-TT2R2 predictability for major bleeding, TE complications, and death throughout 10 ± 3 months. The PINRR decreased from 62% at zero point to 53% at ≥4 points of SAMe-TT2R2. 82.1% of patients who achieved PINRR ≥ 70% had 0 or 1 point of SAMe-TT2R2. SAMe-TT2R2 performed significantly better at PINRR 70% than at 65 and 60% (c-statistic = 0.60 vs. c-statistic = 0.56). The calibration of SAMe-TT2R2 was excellent (Hosmer-Lemeshow test P-values ≥ 0.6). SAMe-TT2R2 showed significant association with the composite outcome of major bleeding, TE complications, and death [n = 98; hazard ratio (HR) = 1.32; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08-1.60]; the c-statistic was 0.57 (95% CI: 0.51-0.62) and P = 0.03. As individual outcomes, SAMe-TT2R2 was significantly associated with death (n = 60; HR = 1.3; 95% CI: 1.03-1.69), but not with either major bleeding (n = 30; HR = 1.2; 95% CI: 0.85-1.76) or TE complications (n = 15; HR = 1.01; 95% CI: 0.58-1.77). CONCLUSION Among NVAF patients, SAMe-TT2R2 could represent a useful clinical tool to identify patients who would have poor quality of anticoagulation control with VKAs. SAMe-TT2R2 successfully predicts the composite outcome of major bleeding, TE complications, and death.
On Modularity of Social Network Communities: The Spectral Characterization

The term of social network communities refers to groups of individuals within which social interactions are intense and between which they are weak. A social network community mining problem (SNCMP) can be stated as the problem of finding all such communities from a given social network. A wide variety of applications can be formulated into SNCMPs, ranging from Web intelligence to social intelligence. So far, many algorithms addressing the SNCMP have been developed; most of them are either optimization or heuristic based methods. Different from all existing work, this paper explores the notion of a social network community and its intrinsic properties, drawing on the dynamics of a stochastic model naturally introduced. In particular, it uncovers an interesting connection between the hierarchical community structure of a network and the metastability of a Markov process constructed upon it. A lot of critical topological information regarding to communities hidden in networks can be inferred from the derived spectral signatures of such networks, without actually clustering them with any particular algorithms. Based upon the above connection, we can obtain a framework for characterizing and analyzing social network communities.
Heavy-Traffic Limits for the G / H ∗ 2 / n / m Queue Ward Whitt

We establish heavy-traffic stochastic-process limits for queue-length, waiting-time and overflow stochastic processes in a class of G/GI/n/m queueing models with n servers and m extra waiting spaces. We let the arrival process be general, only requiring that it satisfy a functional central limit theorem. To capture the impact of the service-time distribution beyond its mean within a Markovian framework, we consider a special class of servicetime distributions, denoted by H ∗ 2 , which are mixtures of an exponential distribution with probability p and a unit point mass at 0 with probability 1− p. These service-time distributions exhibit relatively high variability, having squared coefficients of variation greater than or equal to one. As in Halfin and Whitt (1981, Heavy-traffic limits for queues with many exponential servers, Oper. Res. 29 567–588), Puhalskii and Reiman (2000, The multiclass GI/PH/N queue in the Halfin-Whitt regime. Adv. Appl. Probab. 32 564–595), and Garnett, Mandelbaum, and Reiman (2002. Designing a call center with impatient customers. Manufacturing Service Oper. Management, 4 208–227), we consider a sequence of queueing models indexed by the number of servers, n, and let n tend to infinity along with the traffic intensities n so that √ n 1− n → for − < < . To treat finite waiting rooms, we let mn/ √ n → for 0< ≤ . With the special H ∗ 2 service-time distribution, the limit processes are one-dimensional Markov processes, behaving like diffusion processes with different drift and diffusion functions in two different regions, above and below zero. We also establish a limit for the G/M/n/m+M model, having exponential customer abandonments.
Rhizosphere bacterial carbon turnover is higher in nucleic acids than membrane lipids: implications for understanding soil carbon cycling

Using a pulse chase 13CO2 plant labeling experiment we compared the flow of plant carbon into macromolecular fractions of rhizosphere soil microorganisms. Time dependent 13C dilution patterns in microbial cellular fractions were used to calculate their turnover time. The turnover times of microbial biomolecules were found to vary: microbial RNA (19 h) and DNA (30 h) turned over fastest followed by chloroform fumigation extraction-derived soluble cell lysis products (14 days), while phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) had the slowest turnover (42 days). PLFA/NLFA 13C analyses suggest that both mutualistic arbuscular mycorrhizal and saprophytic fungi are dominant in initial plant carbon uptake. In contrast, high initial 13C enrichment in RNA hints at bacterial importance in initial C uptake due to the dominance of bacterial derived RNA in total extracts of soil RNA. To explain this discrepancy, we observed low renewal rate of bacterial lipids, which may therefore bias lipid fatty acid based interpretations of the role of bacteria in soil microbial food webs. Based on our findings, we question current assumptions regarding plant-microbe carbon flux and suggest that the rhizosphere bacterial contribution to plant assimilate uptake could be higher. This highlights the need for more detailed quantitative investigations with nucleic acid biomarkers to further validate these findings.
The need for epididymovasostomy at vasectomy reversal plateaus in older vasectomies: a study of 1229 cases

Vasectomy reversal involves either vasovasostomy (VV) or epididymovasostomy (EV), and rates of epididymal obstruction and EV increase with time after vasectomy. However, as older vasectomies may not require EV for successful reversal, we hypothesized that sperm production falls after vasectomy and can protect the system from epididymal blowout. Our objective was to define how the need for EV at reversal changes with time after vasectomy through a retrospective review of consecutive reversals performed by three surgeons over a 10‐year period. Vasovasotomy was performed with Silber score 1–3 vasal fluid. EVs were performed with Silber score 4 (sperm fragments; creamy fluid) or 5 (sperm absence) fluid. Reversal procedure type was correlated with vasectomy and patient age. Post‐operative patency rates, total spermatozoa and motile sperm counts in younger (<15 years) and older (>15 years) vasectomies were assessed. Simple descriptive statistics determined outcome relevance. Among 1229 patients, 406 had either unilateral (n = 252) or bilateral EV's (n = 154) constituting 33% (406/1229) of reversals. Mean patient age was 41.4±7 years (range 22–72). Median vasectomy interval was 10 years (range 1–38). Overall sperm patency rate after reversal was 84%. The rate of unilateral (EV/VV) or bilateral EV increased linearly in vasectomy intervals of 1–22 years at 3% per year, but plateaued at 72% in vasectomy intervals of 24–38 years. Sperm counts were maintained with increasing time after vasectomy, but motile sperm counts decreased significantly (p < 0.001). Pregnancy, secondary azoospermia, varicocoele and sperm granuloma were not assessed. In conclusion, and contrary to conventional thinking, the need for EV at reversal increases with time after vasectomy, but this relationship is not linear. EV rates plateau 22 years after vasectomy, suggesting that protective mechanisms ameliorate epididymal ‘blowout’. Upon reversal, sperm output is maintained with time after vasectomy, but motile sperm counts decrease linearly, suggesting epididymal dysfunction influences semen quality after reversal.
Slow recovery of the magnetisation after a sub-picosecond heat pulse

The response of a magnetic spin system to pulsed laser heating on time scales in the picosecond regime is investigated using an atomic level classical spin Hamiltonian, the dynamics of which are based on the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. It is found that the ferro- to paramagnetic phase transition can occur in less than one picosecond, in agreement with published experimental data. Calculating the spin temperature via the internal energy of the spin system we find that the system does not necessarily fully demagnetize even for spin temperatures above the Curie temperature. Our findings suggest that the spin system is far from thermal equilibrium so that the concept of a spin temperature has to be questioned on the time scale of picoseconds. Most importantly, the time for recovery of the magnetization can vary by orders of magnitude depending on the magnetic state after heating, a prediction which is verified by supporting pump-probe experiments.
Latent-model robustness in structural measurement error models

We present methods for diagnosing the effects of model misspecification of the true-predictor distribution in structural measurement error models. We first formulate latent-model robustness theoretically. Then we provide practical techniques for examining the adequacy of an assumed latent predictor model. The methods are illustrated via analytical examples, application to simulated data and with data from a study of coronary heart disease. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.
Evidence for a predominant proinflammatory conjunctival cytokine response in individuals with trachoma

Immune responses to Chlamydia trachomatis infection in trachoma do not protect against reinfection or the development of scarring and blindness. In addition, the immunoregulatory contribution of cytokines to the development of conjunctival histopathology or protection is undefined. In this study, conjunctival cytokine mRNA transcripts were compared among subgroups of chlamydia infection status and ocular disease presentations of 50 individuals from an area where trachoma is endemic. There was a significant association of elevated interleukin (IL)-1beta, transforming growth factor beta1, and tumor necrosis factor alpha transcripts with infection, follicular inflammation, and scarring. Both gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) and IL-2 transcripts were significantly associated with infection; slightly elevated IL-2 levels were found in inflammatory disease. High IFN-gamma transcript levels were present with follicles and inflammatory disease and to a lesser extent with inflammatory scarring. The role of IFN-gamma in protection from infection or disease was not apparent from this study, since transcripts were frequently present in both chlamydial infection and disease. IL-12 (p40) transcripts were elevated in adults and children in association with follicular inflammation but not with scarring. IL-4, IL-5, and IL-10 transcripts were not detected in any samples. In conclusion, C. trachomatis infection stimulates local cytokines which favor a strong cell-mediated and proinflammatory response in both the early and later manifestations of trachoma. In addition, cytokine transcript levels that were associated with disease but no infection were characteristically lower overall than when chlamydia was present.
Linear Precoding with Resource Allocation for MIMO Relay Channels

This paper considers a half-duplex relay channel with a single source, relay, and destination, where each node has multiple antennas and the relay operates in decode-and-forward (DF) mode. The additional degrees of freedoms introduced by the MIMO channels entail increased complexity in comparison with the single antenna case. We propose a new transmission strategy for the relay channel that is able to take advantage of the MIMO gains while employing practical techniques that help reduce complexity. In the proposed scheme, the source splits its message in two parts and sends them to the destination, one part directly and the other with help from the relay. For such a transmission strategy, we formulate the problem of obtaining the rate-maximizing linear precoding matrices with time, power, and spatial stream allocation and transform the problem into a convex form. We also propose a suboptimal algorithm that provides simplifying expressions to solve the resulting problem with far less computational complexity. The numerical results show that the achievable rate of our scheme is greater than the DF rate in certain scenarios, as well as that of other practical existing strategies. In addition, the rate obtained by the suboptimal method approximates the optimal rate extremely well in all considered scenarios.
Considering Both Health-Promoting and Illness-Related Factors in Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life After Myocardial Infarction

The present study addresses factors that contributed to explaining the variance in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) one year after myocardial infarction, considering both illness-related and health-promoting factors. The aim was to elucidate the influence of depression, fatigue, optimism and sense of coherence on HRQOL. The sample consisted of 95 persons who had been treated for myocardial infarction. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were performed. The results showed that depression, fatigue, optimism and sense of coherence variables were all correlated with both the physical and the mental dimensions of HRQOL. In two multiple regression analyses where the physical component score (PCS) and the mental component score (MCS) were the criterion variables, fatigue contributed to the explained variance in the PCS (p< 0.001), and both depression (p< 0.01) and fatigue (p< 0.01) contributed to explained the variance in the MCS, after controlling for age and gender. To conclude, fatigue was the most significant variable associated with HRQOL, which was interpreted as having the following clinical implication: When a person suffers from post-myocardial infarction fatigue, this must be addressed first. Clearly, it is time to take the problems of patients who suffer from post-myocardial infarction fatigue seriously. It is of vital importance to develop and evaluate fatigue relief strategies in cardiovascular nursing and to test them in interventional studies. This does not exclude investing in health-promoting factors, e.g. sense of coherence, in coronary care interventions. Intervention strategies focusing on both illness-related and salutogentic factors may be optimal. This is a question for further research.
Magic Observations of Very High Energy Γ-rays from Hess J1813-178

Recently, the HESS collaboration has reported the detection of γ-ray emission above a few hundred GeV from eight new sources located close to the Galactic Plane. The source HESS J1813-178 has sparked particular interest, as subsequent radio observations imply an association with SNR G12.82-0.02. Triggered by the detection in VHE γ-rays, a positionally coincident source has also been found in INTEGRAL and ASCA data. In this Letter we present MAGIC observations of HESS J1813-178, resulting in the detection of a differential γ-ray flux consistent with a hard-slope power law, described as dN γ /(dAdtdE) = (3.3 ± 0.5) × 10 −12 (E/TeV) −2.1±0.2 cm −2 s −1 TeV −1. We briefly discuss the observational technique used, the procedure implemented for the data analysis, and put this detection in the perspective of multifrequency observations.