Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subspace Quantization Based Combining for Limited Feedback Block-Diagonalization

Spatial multiplexing of multiple users in a multi-antenna broadcast system, i.e., multi-user MIMO, is a promising technique for improving the spectral efficiency of cellular networks. Still, practical implementations struggle with the difficulty of obtaining sufficiently accurate channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), due to restrictions on the capacity of the CSI feedback links from the users. Without accurate CSIT, residual multi-user interference diminishes the potential performance gain of multi-user MIMO, challenging its value for practical realizations. In this work we show that the CSI feedback overhead can be significantly reduced if the number of spatially multiplexed data streams per user is less than the number of receive antennas, and the antenna outputs are appropriately combined. We propose an interference-unaware antenna combining algorithm that minimizes the CSI quantization error, which has the effect of minimizing multi-user interference at the price of reducing the received signal power. We mathematically analyze the performance of the proposed algorithm, substantiating its value for limited feedback systems. Numerical simulations confirm the potential of the proposed algorithm in comparison to a traditional technique that maximizes the received signal power.
Kidney prevention recipes for your office practice.

Renal replacement therapy by hemodialysis, peri- toneal dialysis, or renal transplantation prolongs survival in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) and, in most cases, provides a good quality of life. In all rich coun- tries, new dialysis patients outnumber those who die, and the group of patients on renal replacement therapy is growing. The provision of adequate treatment to all is ab- sorbing a large proportion of the health care budget and is being looked at with concern by policymakers. Since rationing of dialysis or deciding that some patients can- not be treated is out of the question, clinicians should be looking for ways to prevent the need for dialysis in as many patients as possible. an important correlation between urinary protein ex- cretion and rate of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) de- cline in patients with diabetic (5) and nondiabetic chronic nephropathy (6). The role of proteinuria as a strong, in- dependent predictor of ESRD has been also recently documented in a mass screening setting (7). By screen- ing more than 100,000 healthy individuals in 1983 in Okinawa, Japan, and following them for up to 17 years, a positive relationship was found between baseline pro- teinuria (by dipstick urine test) and the risk of developing ESRD. Even a slight increase in proteinuria was an inde- pendent risk factor for ESRD. Moreover, the predictive value of the protein excretion rate was independent of the baseline GFR levels (abstract; Iseki K et al, JA m Soc Nephrol 14:194A, 2003). Whenever proteinuria is decreased, progression to ESRD is reduced (8, 9-11). Results of the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) study (8) established that a reduction of proteinuria was associated with a decrease in the rate of decline in GFR, and that the protection of renal function achieved by lowering blood pressure was dependent on the extent of initial proteinuria. The role of proteinuria as a promoter of progression, and its impact on renal outcome, was also explored by the Ramipril Efficacy in Nephropathy (REIN) study (11). This study was designed to assess the hypothesis that ACE inhibition could be superior to other antihyperten- sive drugs in reducing proteinuria, limiting the decline in GFR, and preventing ESRD in patients with chronic nephropathies. In this study, patients were randomly as- signed to receive ramipril or conventional antihyperten- sive therapy to maintain diastolic blood pressure at 90 mm Hg or less. A prestratification strategy recognized 2 levels of proteinuria (stratum 1: >1 and <3 g/24 hours; stratum 2: ≥3 g/24 h). The study showed that while blood pres- sure control was similar in the 2 treatment groups, ACE inhibitor therapy decreased the progression to ESRD by 50% (11, 12). Patients who had more proteinuria to start with benefited more from blood pressure-lowering treatment than those who had less proteinuria. A meta- analysis (abstract; Jafar TH et al, JA mSoc Nephrol
Violations of war: testing the meaning-making model among Vietnam veterans.

OBJECTIVE Posttrauma adjustment theories postulate that intense stressors violate people's beliefs about the world and perceived ability to achieve valued goals. Failure to make meaning from traumatic events exacerbates negative adjustment (e.g., PTSD), whereas success facilitates positive adjustment (e.g., stress-related growth). The current study aimed to test this model of direct and indirect effects among a sample of veterans. METHOD Vietnam veterans (N = 130) completed assessment measures in an online survey format. Participants were largely male (91%) and Caucasian (93%) with a mean age of 61 years. RESULTS Results supported basic model tenets, linking military stress severity to violations of beliefs and goals. In the final model, only goal violations carried indirect effects of severity on PTSD symptoms. Presence of and search for meaning carried a portion of the indirect effects between goal violations and both PTSD and stress-related growth. CONCLUSION Findings suggest that traumatic stress may disrupt people's goals and meaning-making may center on these disruptions.
Information Overload Among Professionals in Thailand

Based on previous studies a theoretical model of the effects of personal factors (personality traits and socio-demographic variables) on an individual’s perception of information overload is formulated. Using data collected by questionnaire from a sample of 594 individuals employed in organizations in Thailand the model is tested and a parsimonious model is developed using structural equation modeling techniques. The results are interpreted and theoretical and practical conclusions are drawn. Four personality traits (imagination, reserve, complexity, and emotionality) are found to have significant effects on perceptions of overload and based on their significant correlations with the other personal factors four profiles are developed for individuals at risk of experiencing perceptions of overload in their work environment.
Efficient multicast stream authentication for the fully adversarial network model

We consider the stream authentication problem when an adversary has the ability to drop, reorder or inject data packets in the network. We propose a coding approach for multicast stream authentication using the list-decoding property of Reed-Solomon codes. We divide the data to be authenticated into a stream of packets and associate a single signature for every λn packets where λ and n are predesignated parameters. Our scheme, which is also joinable at the boundary of any n-packet block, can be viewed as an extension of Lysyanskaya, Tamassia and Triandopoulos's technique in which λ = 1. We show that by choosing λ and n appropriately, our scheme outperforms theirs in both signature and verification time. Our approach relies on signature dispersion as SAIDA and eSAIDA. Assuming that we use RSA for signing and MD5 for hashing, we give an approximation of the proportion of extra packets per block which could be processed via our technique with respect to the previous scheme. As example when we process λ = 1000 blocks of 20000 64-byte-packets, the gain of our scheme with respect to Lysyanskaya et al.'s is about 30 %.
The Implementation of Strategic Information Systems Planning Methodologies

Strategic information systems planning (SISP) is the process of deciding the objectives for organizational computing and identifying potential computer applications which the organization should implement. This article gives a thorough definition of SISP and then illustrates it with three methodologies.A survey of 80 organizations examined the problems faced by information systems managers when they attempt to implement such a methodology. The subjects' overall satisfaction with the methodology, its resource requirements, process, output, and final execution were not particularly high. The tow problems rated most severe were the difficulty in securing top management commitment for implementing the plan and the need for substantial further analysis in order to carry out the plan.The survey also investigated some potential cause of the problems. Survey results suggest that the SISP methodologies may often produce satisfactory plans but that organizations lack the management commitment and control mechanisms to ensure that they follow the plans.
Control of Host Cell Phosphorylation by Legionella Pneumophila

Phosphorylation is one of the most frequent modifications in intracellular signaling and is implicated in many processes ranging from transcriptional control to signal transduction in innate immunity. Many pathogens modulate host cell phosphorylation pathways to promote growth and establish an infectious disease. The intracellular pathogen Legionella pneumophila targets and exploits the host phosphorylation system throughout the infection cycle as part of its strategy to establish an environment beneficial for replication. Key to this manipulation is the L. pneumophila Icm/Dot type IV secretion system, which translocates bacterial proteins into the host cytosol that can act directly on phosphorylation cascades. This review will focus on the different stages of L. pneumophila infection, in which host kinases and phosphatases contribute to infection of the host cell and promote intracellular survival of the pathogen. This includes the involvement of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinases during phagocytosis as well as the role of phosphoinositide metabolism during the establishment of the replication vacuole. Furthermore, L. pneumophila infection modulates the NF-κB and mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways, two signaling pathways that are central to the host innate immune response and involved in regulation of host cell survival. Therefore, L. pneumophila infection manipulates host cell signal transduction by phosphorylation at multiple levels.
Pyrosequencing Analysis Reveals Changes in Intestinal Microbiota of Healthy Adults Who Received a Daily Dose of Immunomodulatory Probiotic Strains

The colon microbiota plays a crucial role in human gastrointestinal health. Current attempts to manipulate the colon microbiota composition are aimed at finding remedies for various diseases. We have recently described the immunomodulatory effects of three probiotic strains (Lactobacillus rhamnosus CNCM I-4036, Lactobacillus paracasei CNCM I-4034, and Bifidobacterium breve CNCM I-4035). The goal of the present study was to analyze the compositions of the fecal microbiota of healthy adults who received one of these strains using high-throughput 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing. Bacteroides was the most abundant genus in the groups that received L. rhamnosus CNCM I-4036 or L. paracasei CNCM I-4034. The Shannon indices were significantly increased in these two groups. Our results also revealed a significant increase in the Lactobacillus genus after the intervention with L. rhamnosus CNCM I-4036. The initially different colon microbiota became homogeneous in the subjects who received L. rhamnosus CNCM I-4036. While some orders that were initially present disappeared after the administration of L. rhamnosus CNCM I-4036, other orders, such as Sphingobacteriales, Nitrospirales, Desulfobacterales, Thiotrichales, and Synergistetes, were detected after the intervention. In summary, our results show that the intake of these three bacterial strains induced changes in the colon microbiota.
The High-School Profiling Attack: How Online Privacy Laws Can Actually Increase Minors' Risk

Lawmakers, children's advocacy groups and mod- ern society at large recognize the importance of protecting the Internet privacy of minors (under 18 years of age). Online Social Networks, in particular, take precautions to prevent third parties from using their services to discover and profile min ors. These precautions include banning young children from joining, not listing minors when searching for users by high school or city, and displaying only minimal information in registered minors' public profiles, no matter how they configure their privacy settings. In this paper we show how an attacker, with modest crawl- ing and computational resources, and employing simple data mining heuristics, can circumvent these precautions and create extensive profiles of tens of thousands of minors in a targete d geographical area. In particular, using Facebook and for a given target high school, we construct an attack that finds most of t he students in the school, and for each discovered student infers a profile that includes significantly more information than i s available in a registered minor's public profile. An attacke r could use such profiles for many nefarious purposes, includi ng selling the profiles to data brokers, large-scale automated spear- phishing attacks on minors, as well as physical safety attacks such as stalking, kidnapping and arranging meetings for sexual abuse. Ironically, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a law designed to protect the privacy of children, indirectly facilitates the attack. In order to bypass restr ictions put in place due to the COPPA law, some children lie about their ages when registering, which not only increases the exposure for themselves but also for their non-lying friends. Our analysis strongly suggests there would be significantly less privacy leakage in a world without the COPPA law. I. I NTRODUCTION
Reduced Efficacy of Natural Selection on Codon Usage Bias in Selfing Arabidopsis and Capsella Species

Population genetic theory predicts that the efficacy of natural selection in a self-fertilizing species should be lower than its outcrossing relatives because of the reduction in the effective population size (Ne) in the former brought about by inbreeding. However, previous analyses comparing Arabidopsis thaliana (selfer) with A. lyrata (outcrosser) have not found conclusive support for this prediction. In this study, we addressed this issue by examining silent site polymorphisms (synonymous and intronic), which are expected to be informative about changes in Ne. Two comparisons were made: A. thaliana versus A. lyrata and Capsella rubella (selfer) versus C. grandiflora (outcrosser). Extensive polymorphism data sets were obtained by compiling published data from the literature and by sequencing 354 exon loci in C. rubella and 89 additional loci in C. grandiflora. To extract information from the data effectively for studying these questions, we extended two recently developed models in order to investigate detailed selective differences between synonymous codons, mutational biases, and biased gene conversion (BGC), taking into account the effects of recent changes in population size. We found evidence that selection on synonymous codons is significantly weaker in the selfers compared with the outcrossers and that this difference cannot be fully accounted for by mutational biases or BGC.
Elimination of impulsive disturbances from stereo audio recordings

This paper presents a new approach to elimination of impulsive disturbances from stereo audio recordings. The proposed solution is based on vector autoregressive modeling of audio signals. On-line tracking of signal model parameters is performed using the stability-preserving Whittle-Wiggins-Robinson algorithm with exponential data weighting. Detection of noise pulses and model-based interpolation of the irrevocably distorted samples is realized using an adaptive, variable-order Kalman filter. The proposed approach is evaluated on a set of clean audio signals contaminated with real click waveforms extracted from silent parts of old gramophone recordings.
Biphenyl Dioxygenase from an Arctic Isolate Is Not Cold Adapted

ABSTRACT Biphenyl dioxygenase from the psychrotolerant bacterium Pseudomonas sp. strain Cam-1 (BPDOCam-1) was purified and found to have an apparent \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(k_{cat}\) \end{document} for biphenyl of 1.1 ± 0.1 s−1 (mean ± standard deviation) at 4°C. In contrast, BPDOLB400 from the mesophile Burkholderia xenovorans LB400 had no detectable activity at this temperature. At 57°C, the half-life of the BPDOCam-1 oxygenase was less than half that of the BPDOLB400 oxygenase. Nevertheless, BPDOCam-1 appears to be a typical Pseudomonas pseudoalcaligenes KF707-type dioxygenase.
Chinese Hypernym-Hyponym Extraction from User Generated Categories

Hypernym-hyponym (“is-a”) relations are key components in taxonomies, object hierarchies and knowledge graphs. While there is abundant research on is-a relation extraction in English, it still remains a challenge to identify such relations from Chinese knowledge sources accurately due to the flexibility of language expression. In this paper, we introduce a weakly supervised framework to extract Chinese is-a relations from user generated categories. It employs piecewise linear projection models trained on a Chinese taxonomy and an iterative learning algorithm to update models incrementally. A pattern-based relation selection method is proposed to prevent “semantic drift” in the learning process using bi-criteria optimization. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
Identification of differentially expressed genes in salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma cells associated with metastasis

Introduction Salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma (SACC) is a frequent type of salivary gland cancer which is characterized by slow growth but high incidence of distant metastasis. We aimed to identify therapeutic targets which are associated with metastasis of SACC. Material and methods Total RNA was isolated from a low metastatic SACC cell line (ACC-2) and a highly metastatic SACC cell line (ACC-M), which was screened from ACC-2 by combination of in vivo selection and cloning in vitro. Then the total RNA was subjected to microarray analysis. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened from ACC-M compared with ACC-2, followed by Gene Ontology function and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis. Function annotation for DEGs also was performed. A protein-protein interaction network (PPI) was constructed for DEGs. Results A total of 1128 DEGs were identified from ACC-M cells compared with ACC-2 cells. Both up- and down-regulated DEGs were enriched in different functions in biological process (BP), cellular component (CC) and molecular function (MF). Additionally, down-regulated DEGs were mainly enriched in “Apoptosis” and “Cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction” pathways which involved IFN-α1, NTRK1 and TGF-β1. In the PPI network, PIK3CA, PTPN11 and PIK3R1 had a number of nodes greater than 10. Conclusions Transforming growth factor β1 might play a pivotal role during lung metastasis of SACC and be selected as a candidate target for treatment of metastatic SACC. IFNA1, NTRK1 and PIK3CA were also associated with tumor metastasis.
Evolution of the concept of androgen-sensitive bladder cancer

Abstract This reviews describes the concept of androgen-dependent growth of bladder cancer and the role of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on chromosome 8q24 as a common carcinogenetic pathway for the development of concomitant prostate and bladder cancer. Recent genome-wide association studies have identified high-risk SNPs on chromosome 8q24 that have been linked with increased susceptibility for bladder and prostate cancer and alterations in the androgen receptor (AR) pathway. Muscle-invasive bladder cancers overexpress the AR, whereas in locally advanced or lymph-node positive stages loss of AR expression has been found. The prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA) gene possesses an androgen-responsive element (ARE) in its promoter region. Heterozymous and homozygous carriers of the SNP rs22940008 in the first exon of the PSCA gene are at increased risk for invasive bladder cancers. They exhibit significantly lower PSCA messenger RNA expression than patients with the wild-type genotype. Loss of the AR responsivity of the PSCA promoter may be a result of an altered affinity of the AR to the ARE mediated by the rs2294008 SNP or reduced expression of AR coactivators. Thereafter, induction of an androgen-independent mechanism, i.e. the insulin-like growth factor binding protein-2 signalling pathway – a key event in the development of hormone-independent prostate cancer – may increase tumour aggressiveness and metastatic potential of invasive bladder cancer cells. Loss of PSCA expression may represent an important step for androgen-independent growth, linked with the presence of the rs2294008 SNP. Determination of the AR status in cystectomy specimens offers new therapeutic approaches in locally advanced bladder cancer.
Time scale modeling for consensus in sparse directed networks with time-varying topologies

The paper considers the consensus problem in large networks represented by time-varying directed graphs. A practical way of dealing with large-scale networks is to reduce their dimension by collapsing the states of nodes belonging to densely and intensively connected clusters into aggregate variables. It will be shown that under suitable conditions, the states of the agents in each cluster converge fast toward a local agreement. Local agreements correspond to aggregate variables which slowly converge to consensus. Existing results concerning the time-scale separation in large networks focus on fixed and undirected graphs. The aim of this work is to extend these results to the more general case of time-varying directed topologies. It is noteworthy that in the fixed and undirected graph case the average of the states in each cluster is time-invariant when neglecting the interactions between clusters. Therefore, they are good candidates for the aggregate variables. This is no longer possible here. Instead, we find suitable time-varying weights to compute the aggregate variables as time-invariant weighted averages of the states in each cluster. This allows to deal with the more challenging time-varying directed graph case. We end up with a singularly perturbed system which is analyzed by using the tools of two time-scales averaging which seem appropriate to this system.
A Model-Driven Development Framework for Non-Functional Aspects in Service Oriented Architecture

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is an emerging style of software architectures to reuse and integrate existing systems for designing new applications. Each application is designed in an implementation independent manner using two major abstract concepts: services and connections between services. In SOA, non-functional aspects (e.g., security and fault tolerance) of services and connections should be described separately from their functional aspects (i.e., business logic) because different applications use services and connections in different non-functional contexts. This paper proposes a model-driven development (MDD) framework for non-functional aspects in SOA. The proposed MDD framework consists of (1) a Unified Modeling Language (UML) profile to model non-functional aspects in SOA, and (2) an MDD tool that transforms a UML model defined with the proposed profile to application code. Empirical evaluation results show that the proposed MDD framework improves the reusability and maintainability of service-oriented applications by hiding low-level implementation technologies in SOA.