Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bounds on the MMSE of “bad” LDPC codes at rates above capacity

We present bounds on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) of LDPC codes at rates above capacity. One potential application for MMSE estimation involves cooperative communication. A relay following a compress-and-forward (CF) strategy could first compute an estimate of the transmitted codeword, to reduce the level of noise in the retransmitted signal. Our first bound is based on an analysis of the LDPC belief-propagation decoder. A second bound relies on the relationship between the mutual information and the MMSE, which was discovered by Guo et al. . We compute our bounds for ldquobadrdquo LDPC codes (requiring SNRs that are far above the Shannon limit, for reliable communications to be possible) and show that such codes substantially outperform ldquogoodrdquo codes. This advantage of ldquobadrdquo codes implies an interesting degree of freedom in the design of codes for cooperative communications.
The Parker propagator for spherical solar modulation

An analytical solution for the Green's function of the fundamental transport equation of cosmic rays, i.e. of the Parker equation, is presented. The solution is valid for an arbitrary power-law dependence of the coefficient of spatial diffusion on both the configuration and the momentum space coordinate, and it generalizes earlier more limited solutions. The flexibility with respect to the momentum dependence allows for a study of dif- ferent turbulence models. Here, three of such models, namely a slab turbulence with Alfvwaves, an isotropic turbulence with fast magnetosonic waves and one consisting of a mixture of slab Alfv´ en and isotropic fast magnetosonic waves are con- sidered. After the determination of the transport parameters for these turbulence models, the analytical solution for the Parker propagator is applied to the problem of heliospheric modulation of anomalous as well as galactic cosmic rays.
The association between atopy and factors influencing folate metabolism: is low folate status causally related to the development of atopy?

BACKGROUND Deficiency of folate has been associated with several disorders characterized by enhanced activation of the cellular immune system (non-allergic th1 type immune response). Whether folate status is also associated with atopic disease (allergic th2 type immune response) is unknown. We aimed at examining the association between atopy and markers of impaired folate metabolism, i.e. MTHFR(C677T) genotype, plasma total homocysteine, and dietary intakes of methionine, folates, and vitamins B12, B6, and B2. METHODS Cross-sectional population-based study of 1,671 male and female residents of Copenhagen County, Denmark, aged 30-60 years participating in a health examination during 1999-2001. Atopy was defined as positive levels of specific IgE against a panel of inhalant allergens. MTHFR(C677T) genotype was determined by PCR followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses. Total homocysteine was measured by fluorescent polarization immunoassay. Dietary vitamin intakes were estimated from a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. RESULTS The prevalence of atopy was associated with MTHFR(C677T) genotype. TT individuals had a significantly higher risk of atopy compared with CC/CT individuals [odds ratio 1.76, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.19-2.60]. Additionally, gene-diet interaction effects were identified. Dietary markers were negatively associated with risk of atopy in persons with the TT genotype. Total homocysteine was not related to atopy (odds ratio per 5 mumol/l = 1.12, 95% CI 0.98-1.29). CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that an impaired folate metabolism may be causally related to the development of atopy.
A REVIEW ON SPICE OF LIFE CURCUMA LONGA (TURMERIC)

Curcumin obtained by solvent extraction of turmeric i.e., the ground rhizomes of Curcuma longa L. belonging to family Zingiberaceae and most useful herbal medicinal plant. Extensive research within the last half a century has proven that most of these activities, associated with turmeric are due to curcumin. Curcumin has been shown to exhibit various diseases such as anti- inflammatory, anti-oxidant, antifungal. Antimicrobial, antiulcer, anticancer and hepatoprotective activities and thus has a potential against various malignant diseases, diabetes, allergies, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases. These effects are mediated through the regulation of various transcription factors, growth factors, inflammatory cytokines, protein kinase and other enzymes remarkably non-toxic. The purpose of this review is to provide a brief summary of the current knowledge of the effects of curcumin. Curcumin exhibits great promise as a therapeutic agent, and is currently in human clinical trials for a variety of conditions. Since multi targeted therapy is more effective than the mono targeted therapy, curcumin has promising scope in the future research.
Estimators for Stochastic “Unification-Based” Grammars

Log-linear models provide a statistically sound framework for Stochastic "Unification-Based" Grammars (SUBGs) and stochastic versions of other kinds of grammars. We describe two computationally-tractable ways of estimating the parameters of such grammars from a training corpus of syntactic analyses, and apply these to estimate a stochastic version of Lexical-Functional Grammar.
Cluster Mass Functions in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds: Fading and Size-of-Sample Effects

The properties of ∼939 star clusters in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were determined from ground-based CCD images in UBVR passbands. The areal coverage was extensive, corresponding to 11.0 kpc2 in the LMC and 8.3 kpc2 in the SMC. After corrections for reddening, the colors and magnitudes of the clusters were converted to ages and masses, and the resulting mass distributions were searched for the effects of fading, evaporation, and size-of-sample bias. The data show a clear signature of cluster fading below the detection threshold. The initial cluster mass function (ICMF) was determined by fitting the mass and age distributions with cluster population models. These models suggest a new method to determine the ICMF that is nearly independent of fading or disruption and is based on the slope of a correlation between age and the maximum cluster mass in equally spaced intervals of log age. For a nearly uniform star formation rate, this correlation has a slope equal to 1/(α - 1) for an ICMF of dn(M)/dM ∝ M-α. We determine that α is between 2 and 2.4 for the LMC and SMC using this method plus another method in which models are fitted to the mass distribution integrated over age and to the age distribution integrated over mass. The maximum mass method also suggests that the cluster formation rate in the LMC age gap between 3 and 13 Gyr is about a factor of 10 below that in the period from 0.1 to 1 Gyr. The oldest clusters correspond in age and mass to halo globular clusters in the Milky Way. They do not fit the trends for lower mass clusters but appear to be a separate population that either had a very high star formation rate and became depleted by evaporation or formed with only high masses.
Developing Landmark-Based Pedestrian-Navigation Systems

Pedestrian-navigation services enable people to retrieve precise instructions to reach a specific location. However, the development of mobile spatial-information technologies for pedestrians is still at the beginning and faces several difficulties. As the spatial behavior of people on foot differs in many ways from the driver's performance, common concepts for car-navigation services are not suitable for pedestrian navigation. Particularly, the usage of landmarks is vitally important in human navigation. This contribution points out the main requirements for pedestrian-navigation technologies and presents an approach to identify pedestrian flows and to imply landmark information into navigation services for pedestrians
Relationship Among Team Temporal Leadership, Competency, Followership, and Performance in Taiwanese Pharmaceutical Industry Leaders and Employees

The relationship between team temporal leadership and performance has attracted the attention of both academics and practitioners. Theories and studies of team temporal leadership have generally focused on Western teams, and there is a noticeable dearth of empirical verifications focusing on Taiwanese sales marketing teams and the relationship between team temporal leadership and performance in Taiwanese pharmaceutical companies. However, Taiwan has a unique pharmaceutical sales marketing model involving diversified competency, apprenticeship, teamwork, and time management. Thus, this study examined the relationship among team temporal leadership, competency, followership, and performance using linear structured equation modeling. Results from the 360 leader–employee dyads of the sales marketing team revealed that team temporal leadership, competency, and followership are positively related to performance and that team temporal leadership is positively related to competency and followership. According to the results of the research, suggestions for future-related studies are proposed.
A comparison of the effects of the hypocholesteremic agents, cholestyramine and candicidin, on the induction of intestinal tumors in rats by azoxymethane.

Summary The effects of the ingestion of cholestyramine (2% in Purina rat chow) and candicidin (0.04%) on intestinal carcinogenesis by azoxymethane was studied in male Sprague-Dawley rats. Groups of 20 animals were given 8 mg of azoxymethane per kg per week for 25 weeks when the study was terminated. Although each drug affects lipid metabolism differently, they increased the number of intestinal tumors over those of controls to the same degree, from an average of 5 to 7.5 tumors per rat. There were no tumors in animals not injected with azoxymethane. The cholestyramine-treated group of rats developed significantly more tumors in the large intestine than did the other groups, whereas candicidin-fed rats had the greatest number of tumors in the distal small intestine. The feces of the cholestyramine-fed animals contained more total bile acids and a greater percentage of secondary bile acids than in normal animals. In the candicidin-treated group, the feces had increased amounts of cholesterol and its metabolites and also a greater degree of cholesterol degradation. These results suggest that bile acids have a greater promoting effect on tumorigenesis in the large intestine, whereas the effect of cholesterol and/or its degradation products is greater in the distal small intestine. These findings support the concept that the carcinogenic process may vary in the different segments of the intestinal tract.
Women's Relational Orientation and Relationship Formation

WOMEN’S RELATIONAL ORIENTATION AND RELATIONSHIP FORMATION Lisa Do Couto University of Guelph, 2014 Advisor: Dr. Karl Hennig Recent research suggests that women’s relational orientation is a multidimensional construct with both adaptive and maladaptive facets (Hennig, 2012). Historically, researchers have emphasised the negative outcomes of women’s relational orientation, limiting knowledge on positive outcomes. The purpose of the current study is to examine positive outcomes of women’s relational orientation, in particular social competence and relational satisfaction. In a university setting, previously unacquainted female participants completed a dyadic interaction task and were then asked to evaluate the quality of the interaction. The results reveal distinct patterns of interactions related to the various facets of women’s relational orientation. This study will increase the current understanding of the adaptive and maladaptive facets of women’s relational orientation and its effects on relationship formation.
Moral Hazard and Efficiency in General Equilibrium with Anonymous Trading

A 'folk theorem' originating, among others, in the work of Stiglitz maintains that competitive equilibria are always or 'generically' inefficient (unless contracts directly specify consumption levels as in Prescott and Townsend, thus bypassing trading in anonymous markets). This paper critically reevaluates these claims in the context of a general equilibrium economy with moral hazard. We first formalize this folk theorem. Firms offer contracts to workers who choose an effort level that is private information and that affects worker productivity. To clarify the importance of trading in anonymous markets, we introduce a monitoring partition such that employment contracts can specify expenditures over subsets in the partition, but cannot regulate how this expenditure is subdivided among the commodities within a subset. We say that preferences are nonseparable (or more accurately, not weakly separable) when the marginal rate of substitution across commodities within a subset in the partition depends on the effort level, and that preferences are weakly separable when there exists no such subset. We prove that the equilibrium is always inefficient when a competitive equilibrium allocation involves less than full insurance and preferences are nonseparable. This result appears to support the conclusion of the above mentioned folk theorem. Nevertheless, our main result highlights its limitations. Most common-used preference structures do not satisfy the nonseparability condition. We show that when preferences are weakly separable, competitive equilibria with moral hazard are constrained optimal, in the sense that a social planner who can monitor all consumption levels cannot improve over competitive allocations. Moreover, we establish e-optimality when there are only small deviations from weak separability. These results suggest that considerable care is necessary in invoking the folk theorem about the inefficiency of competitive equilibria with private information.
A Framework for Managing Consistency of Evolving UML Models

As the standard for object-oriented analysis and design, the UML (Unified Modeling Language) metamodel, as well as contemporary CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) tools, must provide adequate and integrated support for all essential aspects of software evolution. This includes version control, traceability, impact analysis, change propagation, inconsistency management, and model refactorings. This chapter focuses on the latter two aspects, and shows how tool support for these aspects can be provided. First, we extend the UML metamodel with support for versioning. Second, we make a classification of the possible inconsistencies of UML design models. Finally, we use the formalism of description logics, a decidable fragment of first-order predicate logic, to express logic rules that can detect and resolve IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This chapter appears in the book, Software Evolution with UML and XML edited by Hongji Yang. © 2005, Idea Group Inc. 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com ITB10919
Numerical Analysis of Pulsatile Blood Flow in a Stented Human Coronary Artery with a Flow Divider

Shear stress is known to play a central role in restenosis formation and is sensitive to stent geometry. Local flow alterations created by a different stents without and with flow divider were studied to compare the hemodynamic effects of Stent design properties on restenosis in stented human coronary artery. Blood pressure and shear stress values were computed in three different sites, including stented arterial segment, pre-stent and post-stent regions using computational fluid dynamics. Blood flow was assumed as pulsatile, incompressible and Newtonian flow. Rigid boundary conditions were assumed for all models. The governing Navier-Stokes equations were solved using commercial software package (Fluent V6.0.12). Stents are assumed with real structure and modeled using the commercial software package (Gambit, V2.0). The arterial wall shear stress distribution was investigated in three major regions and critical sites were located. It is concluded that the wall shear stress between stent struts was sensitive to strut spacing, profile of strut, number of struts and curvature. Our 3D computational fluid dynamics modeling demonstrate that with increasing the angle between two sides of the stent strut the percentage of intrastrut area that exposed to critical value of WSS decreases. By application of a flow divider, the wall shear stress in stented segment increases markedly and so is the pressure gradient in stented segment. Flow divider influences the blood flow pattern in proximal of stented segment. In this section, the WSS increases with application of the flow divider. The results for different diameters of flow divider show that optimum diameter for flow divider is D/3.
A view from infinity of the uniform infinite planar quadrangulation

We introduce a new construction of the Uniform Infinite Planar Quadrangulation (UIPQ). Our approach is based on an extension of the Cori-Vauquelin-Schaeffer mapping in the context of infinite trees, in the spirit of previous work. However, we release the positivity constraint on the labels of trees which was imposed in these references, so that our construction is technically much simpler. This approach allows us to prove the conjectures of Krikun pertaining to the "geometry at infinity" of the UIPQ, and to derive new results about the UIPQ, among which a fine study of infinite geodesics.
Infill-Dependent 3-D-Printed Material Based on NinjaFlex Filament for Antenna Applications

This letter presents one of the first examples of the exploitation of 3-D printing in the fabrication of microwave components and antennas. Additive manufacturing represents an enabling technology for a wide range of electronic devices, thanks to its inherent features of fast prototyping, the reasonable accuracy, fully 3-D topologies, and the low fabrication cost. A novel 3-D printable flexible filament, based on NinjaFlex, has been adopted for manufacturing the substrate of a 3-D printed patch antenna. NinjaFlex is a recently introduced material with extraordinary features in terms of mechanical strain, flexibility, and printability. Initially, the electrical properties of this material are investigated at 2.4 GHz using the ring resonator technique. The capability of selectively changing the dielectric constant by modifying the printed material density by fine-tuning printing infill percentage is verified experimentally. Subsequently, a square patch antenna is prototyped through 3-D printing and measured to validate the manufacturing technology. Finally, exploiting mechanical flexibility properties of NinjaFlex, the antenna is tested under different bending conditions.
Hosting a Tent City: Student Engagement and Homelessness

In response to increasing homelessness in our city, Seattle Pacific University invited a homeless encampment (Tent City) to reside on our university campus for three months. This provided an opportunity to engage students on issues of poverty and inequality. Building from a service-learning model, we devised course work around homelessness and applied research. Students took a two-quarter course sequence to become knowledgeable about homelessness and sociological research methods in order to collect field observations and conduct interviews with Tent City residents. Based on student reflections, stereotypes about homelessness were challenged and social distance between students and people who were homeless was reduced. Student exposure to homelessness through faculty-guided research is an effective tool in developing a sociological imagination and an important step in fostering agents of social change.
Age-Related Differences in Neuromagnetic Brain Activity Underlying Concurrent Sound Perception

Deficits in parsing concurrent auditory events are believed to contribute to older adults' difficulties in understanding speech in adverse listening conditions (e.g., cocktail party). To explore the level at which aging impairs sound segregation, we measured auditory evoked fields (AEFs) using magnetoencephalography while young, middle-aged, and older adults were presented with complex sounds that either had all of their harmonics in tune or had the third harmonic mistuned by 4 or 16% of its original value. During the recording, participants were asked to ignore the stimuli and watch a muted subtitled movie of their choice. For each participant, the AEFs were modeled with a pair of dipoles in the superior temporal plane, and the effects of age and mistuning were examined on the amplitude and latency of the resulting source waveforms. Mistuned stimuli generated an early positivity (60–100 ms), an object-related negativity (ORN) (140–180 ms) that overlapped the N1 and P2 waves, and a positive displacement that peaked at ∼230 ms (P230) after sound onset. The early mistuning-related enhancement was similar in all three age groups, whereas the subsequent modulations (ORN and P230) were reduced in older adults. These age differences in auditory cortical activity were associated with a reduced likelihood of hearing two sounds as a function of mistuning. The results reveal that inharmonicity is rapidly and automatically registered in all three age groups but that the perception of concurrent sounds declines with age.
Large-scale topology and the default mode network in the mouse connectome

Significance Noninvasive brain imaging holds great promise for expanding our capabilities of treating human neurologic and psychiatric disorders. However, key limitations exist in human-only studies, and the ability to use animal models would greatly advance our understanding of human brain function. Mice offer sophisticated genetic and molecular methodology, but correlating these data to functional brain imaging in the mouse brain has remained a major hurdle. This study is the first, to our knowledge, to use whole-brain functional imaging to show large-scale functional architecture with structural correlates in the mouse. Perhaps more important is the finding of conservation in brain topology and default network among rodents and primates, thereby clearing the way for a bridge measurement between human and mouse models. Noninvasive functional imaging holds great promise for serving as a translational bridge between human and animal models of various neurological and psychiatric disorders. However, despite a depth of knowledge of the cellular and molecular underpinnings of atypical processes in mouse models, little is known about the large-scale functional architecture measured by functional brain imaging, limiting translation to human conditions. Here, we provide a robust processing pipeline to generate high-resolution, whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity MRI (rs-fcMRI) images in the mouse. Using a mesoscale structural connectome (i.e., an anterograde tracer mapping of axonal projections across the mouse CNS), we show that rs-fcMRI in the mouse has strong structural underpinnings, validating our procedures. We next directly show that large-scale network properties previously identified in primates are present in rodents, although they differ in several ways. Last, we examine the existence of the so-called default mode network (DMN)—a distributed functional brain system identified in primates as being highly important for social cognition and overall brain function and atypically functionally connected across a multitude of disorders. We show the presence of a potential DMN in the mouse brain both structurally and functionally. Together, these studies confirm the presence of basic network properties and functional networks of high translational importance in structural and functional systems in the mouse brain. This work clears the way for an important bridge measurement between human and rodent models, enabling us to make stronger conclusions about how regionally specific cellular and molecular manipulations in mice relate back to humans.