Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A fully digital background calibration of timing skew in undersampling TI-ADC

This paper proposes a fully digital calibration of timing mismatch for undersampling Time Interleaved Analog-to-Digital Converter (TI-ADC) employed in Software Defined Radio (SDR) receivers. The proposed calibration scheme employs an ideal differentiator filter, a Hilbert transform filter and a scaling factor to compute the derivative of the input in any Nyquist Band (NB). The efficiency of the proposed technique is shown using a four-channel undersampling 60 dB SNR TI-ADC clocked at 2.7 GHz. Monte Carlo simulations show SNDR and SFDR improvements of respectively, 18 dB and 21 dB over the first three NBs.
Risk of selecting de novo drug-resistance mutations during structured treatment interruptions in patients with chronic HIV infection.

BACKGROUND Structured treatment interruption (STI) may allow viral replication in the presence of decreased plasma drug levels, with risk of selection of resistance mutations. METHODS For patients recruited for an STI study, genotypic resistance testing was performed at baseline (before receipt of any treatment), immediately before the STI, and 2 weeks after each interuption of therapy. RESULTS During 20 (18%) of 112 STI cycles (95% CI, 11%-26%), resistance mutations were selected; 6% of the mutations were de novo (i.e., not detected before the start of STI), and 12% were archived mutations (i.e., mutations already detected before the STI). Overall, resistance mutations during STI were selected in 9 (26%) of 35 patients; 5 (14%) of the mutations were de novo, and 4 (12%) were archived mutations. Mutations conferring resistance to nonnucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) were selected in 3 (23%) of 13 patients receiving NNRTI-based regimens (all mutations were de novo). Mutations conferring resistance to lamivudine were selected in 9 (50%) of 18 patients receiving lamivudine-containing regimens (4 [22%] were de novo, and 5 [28%] were archived mutations). Mutations conferring resistance to nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), excluding the M184V mutation, were selected in 2 (6%) of 35 recipients of NRTIs (1 [3%] of these mutations was de novo, and 1 [3%] was an archived mutation. Finally, mutations conferring resistance to protease inhibitors were selected in none of the 22 patients receiving protease inhibitors. In most cases, de novo and archived mutations were selected during the first STI cycle, and their number did not increase during successive cycles. Plasma viral load decreased to undetectable levels in all the patients when the earlier drug regimen was reintroduced. CONCLUSIONS Genotypic mutations are selected during STI in a high proportion of patients (especially in patients receiving NNRTIs or lamivudine). Approximately one-half of selected mutations were archived mutations. Patients who had archived mutations did not have a higher risk of accumulating new mutations than did patients who were infected with wild-type virus before the STI.
Sample Assignment for Ensuring Sensing Quality and Balancing Energy in Wireless Sensor Networks

The quality of an environmental monitoring application can often be measured by the number of samples collected per unit time. This is to guarantee the reconstruction of the monitored signal. For applications that use wireless sensors for untethered monitoring at rural areas, the challenge is to satisfy the sensing quality while maintaining a long-running operation. Due to the spatial locality of the monitored signal and the oftentimes dense deployment of sensors, the samples taken by a set of nearby sensors can be regarded as equivalent. The problem is how to assign the sampling workload to this set of sensors and maintain a long-running operation. This requires taking account of the energy required to sample as well as to transmit and relay the data to the sink. Previous works on energy-aware routing are not applicable due to the added complexity of sampling assignment. In this paper, we formulate this problem as an optimization problem and present the optimal solution. We compare our algorithm with two commonly used sampling workload assignment algorithms for balancing energy consumption through PowerTOSSIM. The results show that our algorithm can achieve as much as a 25 percent improvement in the residual energy of the critical node, which is the node with the lowest residual energy among all nodes.
Non‐isothermal plasticity model for cyclic behaviour of soils

On the one hand, it has been observed that liquefaction‐induced shear deformation of soils accumulates in a cycle‐by‐cycle pattern. On the other hand, it is known that heating could induce plastic hardening. This study deals with the constitutive modelling of the effect that heat may have on the cyclic mechanical properties of cohesive soils, a relatively new area of interest in soil mechanics. In this paper, after a presentation of the thermo‐mechanical framework, a non‐isothermal plasticity cyclic model formulation is presented and discussed. The model calibration is described based on data from laboratory sample tests. It includes numerical simulations of triaxial shear tests at various constant temperatures. Then, the model predictions are compared with experimental results and discussed in the final section. Both drained and undrained loading conditions are considered. The proposed constitutive model shows good ability to capture the characteristic features of behaviour. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Are Gauge Symmetry Transformations Observable?

In a recent paper in this journal, Kosso ([2000]) discussed the observational status of continuous symmetries of physics. While we are in broad agreement with his approach, we disagree with his analysis. In the discussion of the status of gauge symmetry, a set of examples offered by 't Hooft ([1980]) has influenced several philosophers, including Kosso; in all cases the interpretation of the examples is mistaken. In this paper, we present our preferred approach to the empirical significance of symmetries, re-analysing the cases of gauge symmetry and general covariance. 1. Direct and indirect empirical significance2. Global and local continuous symmetries3. Gauge symmetry 3.1 Local gauge symmetry 3.1. 1 Discussion of the first claim 3.1. 2 Discussion of the second claim 3.2 Global gauge symmetry4. Space-time symmetries5. Direct and indirect empirical significance again6. Conclusion Direct and indirect empirical significance Global and local continuous symmetries Gauge symmetry 3.1 Local gauge symmetry 3.1. 1 Discussion of the first claim 3.1. 2 Discussion of the second claim 3.2 Global gauge symmetry 3.1 Local gauge symmetry 3.1. 1 Discussion of the first claim 3.1. 2 Discussion of the second claim 3.1. 1 Discussion of the first claim 3.1. 2 Discussion of the second claim 3.2 Global gauge symmetry Space-time symmetries Direct and indirect empirical significance again Conclusion
Substrate orientation dependence on the solid phase epitaxial growth rate of Ge

The solid phase epitaxial growth process has been studied at 330 °C by transmission electron microscopy for Ge wafers polished at 10°–15° increments from the [001] to [011] orientations. The velocity showed a strong dependence on substrate orientation with the [001] direction displaying a velocity 16 times greater than the [111] direction. A lattice kinetic Monte Carlo model was used to simulate solid phase epitaxial growth (SPEG) rates at different orientations, and simulations compared well with experimental results. Cross sectional transmission electron microscopy and plan view transmission electron microscopy revealed stacking fault and twin defect formation in the [111] orientation where all other orientations showed only hairpin dislocations. The twin defects formed from Ge SPEG were comparatively less dense than what has previously been reported for Si, which gave rise to higher normalized velocities and a constant [111] SPEG velocity for Ge.
A multifaceted analysis of viperid snake venoms by two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis: An approach to understanding venom proteomics

The complexity of Viperid venoms has long been appreciated by investigators in the fields of toxinology and medicine. However, it is only recently that the depth of that complexity has become somewhat quantitatively and qualitatively appreciated. With the resurgence of two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis (2‐DE) and the advances in mass spectrometry virtually all venom components can be visualized and identified given sufficient effort and resources. Here we present the use of 2‐DE for examining venom complexity as well as demonstrating interesting approaches to selectively delineate subpopulations of venom proteins based on particular characteristics of the proteins such as antibody cross‐reactivity or enzymatic activities. 2‐DE comparisons between venoms from different species of the same genus (Bothrops) of snake clearly demonstrated both the similarity as well as the apparent diversity among these venoms. Using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry we were able to identify regions of the two‐dimensional gels from each venom in which certain classes of proteins were found. 2‐DE was also used to compare venoms from Crotalus atrox and Bothrops jararaca. For these venoms a variety of staining/detection protocols was utilized to compare and contrast the venoms. Specifically, we used various stains to visualize subpopulations of the venom proteomes of these snakes, including Coomassie, Silver, Sypro Ruby and Pro‐Q‐Emerald. Using specific antibodies in Western blot analyses of 2‐DE of the venoms we have examined subpopulations of proteins in these venoms including the serine proteinase proteome, the metalloproteinase proteome, and the phospholipases A2 proteome. A functional assessment of the gelatinolytic activity of these venoms was also performed by zymography. These approaches have given rise to a more thorough understanding of venom complexity and the toxins comprising these venoms and provide insights to investigators who wish to focus on these venom subpopulations of proteins in future studies.
Mirage: a model for latency in communication

Mirage is an abstract model for the design and analysis of high speed wide area network (WAN) protocols. It examines the effects of latency on communication, and indicates that information separation is the distinguishing characteristic of gigabit WANs. Existing protocols will exhibit performance failures due to an inability to accommodate imprecision in the remote state. The name Mirage denotes the difficulty with latent communication, namely nodes never really "see" each other precisely; rather, they work with (and around) the mirages which high speed and fixed latency conjure before them. This dissertation describes the Mirage abstract model as an extended finite state machine that accommodates imprecision through the use of multiple simultaneous states and state space volume transformations. We introduce guarded messages, to accommodate nondeterministic data streams, and communicability, the upper bound on communication, given fixed latency and state predictability. Mirage demonstrates how excess bandwidth can be used to accommodate latency, and shows the bounds on latency constrained communication. Supplemental discussions included consider Mirage as an extension of Shannon's communication theory, and compare it to physics analogs. Mirage was applied to the Network Time Protocol (NTP), to demonstrate its use and exemplify its abstract components. We show the equivalence between variation in state space imprecision and variation in transmission latency. Several 'optional' components of the NTP specification are shown to be required, and layering is violated in permitting sender anticipation. To show the model's advantages, Mirage was applied to processor-memory interaction as a protocol, calling the result $\mu$-Net (MicroNet). Using anticipation, we develop a novel interface which achieves a hit rate equivalent to that of a 50K byte cache, using 400 bytes of storage. $\mu$-Net complements conventional cache techniques, especially where communication latency is the limiting factor in code execution, and where excess communication bandwidth is available. Dynamic traces measured the latency accommodation possible by the various implementation versions.
Incentives for Privacy Tradeoff in Community Sensing

Community sensing, fusing information from populations of privately-held sensors, presents a great opportunity to create efficient and cost-effective sensing applications. Yet, reasonable privacy concerns often limit the access to such data streams. How should systems valuate and negotiate access to private information, for example in return for monetary incentives? How should they optimally choose the participants from a large population of strategic users with privacy concerns, and compensate them for information shared? In this paper, we address these questions and present a novel mechanism, SeqTGreedy, for budgeted recruitment of participants in community sensing. We first show that privacy tradeoffs in community sensing can be cast as an adaptive submodular optimization problem. We then design a budget feasible, incentive compatible (truthful) mechanism for adaptive submodular maximization, which achieves near-optimal utility for a large class of sensing applications. This mechanism is general, and of independent interest. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in a case study of air quality monitoring, using data collected from the Mechanical Turk platform. Compared to the state of the art, our approach achieves up to 30% reduction in cost in order to achieve a desired level of utility.
Detection of Anoplophora glabripennis (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) Larvae in Different Host Trees and Tissues by Automated Analyses of Sound-Impulse Frequency and Temporal Patterns

Abstract Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), an invasive pest quarantined in the United States, is difficult to detect because the larvae feed unseen inside trees. Acoustic technology has potential for reducing costs and hazards of tree inspection, but development of practical methods for acoustic detection requires the solution of technical problems involving transmission of resonant frequencies in wood and high background noise levels in the urban environments where most infestations have occurred. A study was conducted to characterize sounds from larvae of different ages in cambium, sapwood, and heartwood of bolts from three host tree species. Larval sounds in all of the tested trees and tissues consisted primarily of trains of brief, 3–10-ms impulses. There were no major differences in the spectral or temporal pattern characteristics of signals produced by larvae of different ages in each tissue, but larval sounds in sapwood often had fewer spectral peaks than sounds in cambium and heartwood. A large fraction, but not all background sounds could be discriminated from larval sounds by automated spectral analyses. In 3-min recordings from infested bolts, trains containing impulses in patterns called bursts occurred frequently, featuring 7–49 impulses separated by small intervals. Bursts were rarely detected in uninfested bolts. The occurrence of bursts was found to predict infestations more accurately than previously used automated spectral analyses alone. Bursts and other features of sounds that are identifiable by automated techniques may ultimately lead to improved pest detection applications and new insight into pest behavior.
Multiverse recommendation: n-dimensional tensor factorization for context-aware collaborative filtering

Context has been recognized as an important factor to consider in personalized Recommender Systems. However, most model-based Collaborative Filtering approaches such as Matrix Factorization do not provide a straightforward way of integrating context information into the model. In this work, we introduce a Collaborative Filtering method based on Tensor Factorization, a generalization of Matrix Factorization that allows for a flexible and generic integration of contextual information by modeling the data as a User-Item-Context N-dimensional tensor instead of the traditional 2D User-Item matrix. In the proposed model, called Multiverse Recommendation, different types of context are considered as additional dimensions in the representation of the data as a tensor. The factorization of this tensor leads to a compact model of the data which can be used to provide context-aware recommendations. We provide an algorithm to address the N-dimensional factorization, and show that the Multiverse Recommendation improves upon non-contextual Matrix Factorization up to 30% in terms of the Mean Absolute Error (MAE). We also compare to two state-of-the-art context-aware methods and show that Tensor Factorization consistently outperforms them both in semi-synthetic and real-world data - improvements range from 2.5% to more than 12% depending on the data. Noticeably, our approach outperforms other methods by a wider margin whenever more contextual information is available.
Clinical and Histopathological Aspects of Soft Palate Tumors

A retrospective analysis included the patients seen at the Head and Neck Surgery clinic of the Institution. Results: From the 43 patients, 10 of them presented malignant tumors (23%) and 33 presented benign tumors (77%). Among all of the tumors, 26 were papillomas (60.5%); 9 were squamous cell carcinomas (21%); 4 were hemangiomas (9.3%); 2 were pleomorphic adenomas (4.6%); 1 was adenocarcinoma (2.3%) and 1 was lipoma (2.3%). Conclusion: It was noticed that epithelial tumors are the most frequent in both malignant and benign groups, what is related to the predominant epithelial tissue in soft palate.
Parameter Estimation and Error Reduction for OFDM-Based WLANs

We consider parameter estimation and error reduction for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based high-speed wireless local area networks (WLANs). We devise or select algorithms that can provide benefit to the overall system performance and can be efficiently implemented in real-time. In particular, first, we give a channel model which is especially useful for assessing the channel parameter estimation methods devised for OFDM-based WLANs. Second, we provide a sequential method for the estimation of carrier frequency offset (CFO), symbol timing, and channel response by exploiting the structure of the packet preamble specified by the IEEE 802.11a standard. Finally, to correct the residue CFO induced phase error using the pilot tones, we consider maximum-likelihood phase tracking and least-squares phase fitting approaches; to improve the channel estimation accuracy using the decoded data, we present a semiblind channel estimation method; to mitigate the sampling clock induced time delay error, we provide a sampling clock synchronization approach that obviates the need of an automatic frequency control clock recovery circuit. The overall system performance of using our algorithms is demonstrated via several numerical examples.
Intubation through the LMA-Supreme™: A Pilot Study of Two Techniques in a Manikin

The LMA-Supreme™ is a single-use disposable laryngeal mask that combines features of several laryngeal mask air-ways in one device. The primary aim of our study was to compare ease of use and operator preference for fibreoptic-aided intubation through the LMA-Supreme™ using an Aintree Intubating Catheter™ or Arndt Airway Exchange Catheter Set. Twenty participants experienced in fibreoptic-aided intubation performed a total of 40 intubations on an AirSim™ airway manikin through a #4 LMA-Supreme™. Intubation using the Arndt Airway Exchange Catheter Set was easier than with the Aintree Intubating Catheter™. Half of the participants preferred Aintree Intubating Catheter™-assisted intubation, citing fewer steps and faster performance as the reasons. All 20 (100%) Arndt Airway Exchange Catheter Set-assisted intubations and 18120 (90%) of Aintree Intubating Catheter™-assisted intubations were successful. Aintree Intubating Catheter™ and Arndt Airway Exchange Catheter Set-assisted intubations can be performed quickly, successfully and with minimal difficulty through the LMA-Supreme™ by experienced operators. While the Arndt Airway Exchange Catheter may be easier, the Aintree Intubating Catheter™ is faster.
Effect of trimetazidine treatment on the transient outward potassium current of the left ventricular myocytes of rats with streptozotocin-induced type 1 diabetes mellitus

Cardiovascular complications are a leading cause of mortality in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM). The present study was designed to investigate the effects of trimetazidine (TMZ), an anti-angina drug, on transient outward potassium current (Ito) remodeling in ventricular myocytes and the plasma contents of free fatty acid (FFA) and glucose in DM. Sprague-Dawley rats, 8 weeks old and weighing 200-250 g, were randomly divided into three groups of 20 animals each. The control group was injected with vehicle (1 mM citrate buffer), the DM group was injected with 65 mg/kg streptozotocin (STZ) for induction of type 1 DM, and the DM+TMZ group was injected with the same dose of STZ followed by a 4-week treatment with TMZ (60 mg·kg−1·day−1). All animals were then euthanized and their hearts excised and subjected to electrophysiological measurements or gene expression analyses. TMZ exposure significantly reversed the increased plasma FFA level in diabetic rats, but failed to change the plasma glucose level. The amplitude of Ito was significantly decreased in left ventricular myocytes from diabetic rats relative to control animals (6.25 ± 1.45 vs 20.72 ± 2.93 pA/pF at +40 mV). The DM-associated Ito reduction was attenuated by TMZ. Moreover, TMZ treatment reversed the increased expression of the channel-forming alpha subunit Kv1.4 and the decreased expression of Kv4.2 and Kv4.3 in diabetic rat hearts. These data demonstrate that TMZ can normalize, or partially normalize, the increased plasma FFA content, the reduced Ito of ventricular myocytes, and the altered expression Kv1.4, Kv4.2, and Kv4.3 in type 1 DM.
Point of View

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Interaction of H2@C60 and Nitroxide through Conformationally Constrained Peptide Bridges

We synthesized two molecular systems, in which an endofullerene C60, incarcerating one hydrogen molecule (H2@C60) and a nitroxide radical are connected by a folded 310‐helical peptide. The difference between the two molecules is the direction of the peptide orientation. The nuclear spin relaxation rates and the para → ortho conversion rate of the incarcerated hydrogen molecule were determined by 1H NMR spectroscopy. The experimental results were analyzed using DFT‐optimized molecular models. The relaxation rates and the conversion rates of the two peptides fall in the expected distance range. One of the two peptides is particularly rigid and thus ideal to keep the H2@C60/nitroxide separation, r, as large and controlled as possible, which results in particularly low relaxation and conversion rates. Despite the very similar optimized distance, however, the rates measured with the other peptide are considerably higher and thus are compatible with a shorter effective distance. The results strengthen the outcome of previous investigations that while the para → ortho conversion rates satisfactorily obey the Wigner's theory, the nuclear spin relaxation rates are in excellent agreement with the Solomon–Bloembergen equation predicting a 1/r6 dependence.