Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploiting Prior Information in Block-Sparse Signals

We study the problem of recovering a block-sparse signal from under-sampled observations. The non-zero values of such signals appear in few blocks, and their recovery is often accomplished using an <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1,2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> optimization problem. In applications such as DNA micro-arrays, some extra information about the distribution of non-zero blocks is available; i.e., the number of non-zero blocks in certain subsets of the blocks is known. A typical way to consider the extra information in recovery procedures is to solve a weighted <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1,2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> problem. In this paper, we consider a block-sparse model which is accompanied with a partitioning of the blocks; besides the overall block-sparsity level of the signal, we assume to know the block-sparsity of each subset in the partition. Our goal in this work is to minimize the number of required linear measurements for perfect recovery of the signal by tuning the weights of a weighted <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1,2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> problem. For this goal, we apply tools from conic integral geometry and derive closed-form expressions for the optimal weights. We show through precise analysis and simulations that the weighted <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1,2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> problem with optimal weights significantly outperforms the regular <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ell _{1,2}$</tex-math></inline-formula> problem. We further show that the optimal weights are robust against the inaccuracies of prior information.
The power of touch.

Find loads of the the power of touch book catalogues in this site as the choice of you visiting this page. You can also join to the website book library that will show you numerous books from any types. Literature, science, politics, and many more catalogues are presented to offer you the best book to find. The book that really makes you feels satisfied. Or that's the book that will save you from your job deadline.
Foot pain: is current or past shoewear a factor?

OBJECTIVE Foot pain is common, yet few studies have examined the condition in relationship to shoewear. In this cross-sectional study of men and women from the population-based Framingham Study, the association between foot pain and type of shoewear was examined. METHODS Data were collected on 3,378 members of the Framingham Study who completed the foot examination in 2002-2008. Foot pain (both generalized and at specific locations) was measured by the response to the question "On most days, do you have pain, aching or stiffness in either foot? " Shoewear was recorded for the present time and 5 past age categories, by the subject's choice of the appropriate shoe from a list. The responses were categorized into 3 groups (good, average, or poor shoes). Sex-specific multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine the effect of shoewear (average shoes were the referent group) on generalized and location-specific foot pain, adjusting for age and weight. RESULTS In women, compared with average shoes, those who wore good shoes in the past were 67% less likely to report hindfoot pain (P = 0.02), after adjusting for age and weight. In men, there was no association between foot pain, at any location, and shoewear, possibly due to the fact that <2% wore bad shoe types, making it difficult to see any relationship. CONCLUSION Even after taking age and weight into account, past shoewear use in women remained associated with hindfoot pain. Future studies should address specific support and structural features of shoewear.
Variable Time-Delay Estimation for Anesthesia Control During Intensive Care

The presence of artifacts plays a crucial role in automatic sedation systems and may introduce variable time delays (TDs) in the closed-loop-control structures. This paper presents a successful procedure to estimate the varying TD of the bispectral index (BIS) monitor used in closed-loop control during intensive care. The TD estimation (TDE) is based on the cross-correlation analysis technique and the method is validated with real measured signals of propofol and BIS. Extended prediction self-adaptive control is used in combination with a Smith predictor to reduce the computational burden imposed by the variable TD. The conclusion is that an online TDE of the BIS monitor improves the performance of the closed-loop system for reference tracking, disturbance rejection, and overall stability.
iTurk: Turning Passive Haptics into Active Haptics by Making Users Reconfigure Props in Virtual Reality

We present a system that complements virtual reality experiences with passive props, yet still allows modifying the virtual world at runtime. The main contribution of our system is that it does not require any actuators; instead, our system employs the user to reconfigure and actuate otherwise passive props. We demonstrate a foldable prop that users reconfigure to represent a suitcase, a fuse cabinet, a railing, and a seat. A second prop, suspended from a long pendulum, not only stands in for inanimate objects, but also for objects that move and demonstrate proactive behavior, such as a group of flying droids that physically attack the user. Our approach conveys a sense of a living, animate world, when in reality the user is the only animate entity present in the system, complemented with only one or two physical props. In our study, participants rated their experience as more enjoyable and realistic than a corresponding no-haptics condition.
Towards a Unified Natural Language Inference Framework to Evaluate Sentence Representations

We present a large scale unified natural language inference (NLI) dataset for providing insight into how well sentence representations capture distinct types of reasoning. We generate a large-scale NLI dataset by recasting 11 existing datasets from 7 different semantic tasks. We use our dataset of approximately half a million context-hypothesis pairs to test how well sentence encoders capture distinct semantic phenomena that are necessary for general language understanding. Some phenomena that we consider are event factuality, named entity recognition, figurative language, gendered anaphora resolution, and sentiment analysis, extending prior work that included semantic roles and frame semantic parsing. Our dataset will be available at this https URL, to grow over time as additional resources are recast.
Trastuzumab cardiotoxicity: from clinical trials to experimental studies

Epidermal growth factor receptor‐2 (HER‐2) is overexpressed in 20 to 25% of human breast cancers, which is associated with aggressive tumour growth and poor prognosis. Trastuzumab (Herceptin®) is a humanized monoclonal antibody directed against HER‐2, the first highly selective form of therapy targeting HER‐2 overexpressing tumours. Although initial trials indicated high efficacy and a favourable safety profile of the drug, the first large, randomized trial prompted a retrospective analysis of cardiac dysfunction in earlier trials utilizing trastuzumab. There has been ongoing debate on the cardiac safety of trastuzumab ever since, initiating numerous clinical and preclinical investigations to better understand the background of trastuzumab cardiotoxicity and evaluate its effects on patient morbidity. Here, we have given a comprehensive overview of our current knowledge on the cardiotoxicity of trastuzumab, primarily focusing on data from clinical trials and highlighting the main molecular mechanisms proposed.
Genetics of common variable immunodeficiency: role of transmembrane activator and calcium modulator and cyclophilin ligand interactor

Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is the most common clinically manifested primary immunodeficiency, which represents a heterogeneous group of hypogammaglobulinemias of largely unknown molecular defects. The hallmark of the disease is the elevated susceptibility to recurrent infections of respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, mainly due to encapsulated bacteria while a significant proportion of patients with CVID develop autoimmune and lymphoproliferative complications. The primary cause of CVID is still not known. However, a number of distinct genetic defects including in inducible co‐stimulator (ICOS), B‐cell‐activating factor receptor (BAFFR) and transmembrane activator and calcium modulator and cyclophilin ligand interactor (TACI) have been identified in a minority of patients with CVID. Mutations in tumour necrosis factor receptor superfamily (TNFRSF) member, TACI, are more frequently found to be associated to the disease in about 10% of patients with CVID, but may require additional immunologic defects for complete expression of the phenotype, as unaffected heterozygotes have also been described. Clinically, patients with TACI mutations could present with the complete spectrum of complications seen in CVID. Recent animal studies have provided substantial information on TACI signalling, yet it still offers an outstanding opportunity for further exploration of the aetiology, as a large part of it remains poorly understood. In this review, we aim at giving an insight into the genetics underlying the CVID and particularly at outlining the role of TACI and its relative contribution to the development of CVID‐like phenotypes in human.
An Improved Facet-Based TSM for Electromagnetic Scattering From Ocean Surface

An improved facet-based model derived from a two-scale model (TSM) is proposed to evaluate the scattering strength of an electrically large ocean surface. In this model, a slope cutoff probability distribution function is introduced into geometrical optics to deal with the specular scattering of an individual facet. This modification allows us to approximate the rough surface with a large facet size without disrupting the accuracy of scattering evaluation. In addition, considering the sensitivity of the classical TSM to the cutoff wavenumber, the cutoff-invariant TSM is used into the facet-based model. Finally, our numerical results show that the facet-based model can obtain the comparable accuracy with the statistical models regardless of facet size and cutoff wavenumber. Due to the advantages of simplicity and efficiency, this model is of high applicable value for the synthetic aperture radar imaging.
Single image super resolution by adaptive K-means clustering

In recent days imaging systems have seen considerable extended usage due to their ease of use and reasonable price. However, they have weaknesses lies in image resolution. In order to increase the quality of the images, due to the technical limitations and costs of hardware parts, software techniques like the super-resolution is used, which means increasing the density of pixels in the image. The super-resolution is broken down into two categories; super-resolution using a single image and super-resolution using multiple images. In this paper, a method for increasing image quality, based on the Dong method has been proposed. In the proposed method, which is based on only one image, tries to improve the quality of image, based on the Dong method and optimizing it using a compatible selection of a vocabulary, which is based on the concept of inherent sparseness of images and appropriate adjustment statements. In this method, we have tried to present the best clustering procedure with the highest precision for selection of patches. The proposed method has been applied on different pictures from different databases. The results have been compared by using SSIM and PSNR metrics. The simulations results show that the proposed method outperforms the currently available methods.
Endothelial lipase-384A/C polymorphism is associated with acute coronary syndrome and lipid status in elderly Uygur patients in Xinjiang.

OBJECTIVE To explore the relationship between the endothelial lipase (EL) gene promoter -384A/C polymorphism and acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and lipid status in elderly Uygur patients in Xinjiang. METHODS The polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method was used to detect the EL gene promoter -384A/C genotype in 341 cases of elderly patients with ACS and 380 healthy subjects. RESULTS In an elderly Chinese Han population, the EL-384A/C genotype and allele frequency distribution were significantly different between the ACS group and the control group (p<0.05); the frequency of the CC genotype in the ACS group was significantly higher than that in the control group (p<0.05). After adjusting for gender, age, diabetes, hypertension, smoking, hyperlipidemia, and other cardiovascular risk factors, the difference remains statistically significant (p<0.05). In the ACS group, C allele carriers had significantly higher serum triglycerides, total cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations compared to AA genotypes (all p<0.05). CONCLUSION EL-384A/C polymorphism was significantly associated with the ACS and lipids profile in an elderly Uygur population in Xinjiang.
Ischemic Stroke in Young Adults of Northern China: Characteristics and Risk Factors for Recurrence

Background: Young adults accounted for 10-14% of ischemic stroke patients. The risk factors may differ in this population from elder patients. In addition, the factors associated with stroke recurrence in this population have not been well investigated. Objective: The study aimed to investigate the characteristics and risk factors associated with recurrence of ischemic stroke in young adults. Methods: Clinical data of 1,395 patients of age 18-45 years who were treated between 2008 and 2014 in 3 centers located in northern China was reviewed. The first onset of stroke was taken as the initial events and recurrent stroke as the end point events. The end point events, age, gender, duration after first onset of stroke, history of disease, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score at admission, Trial of Org 10172 in Acute Stroke Treatment classifications of the cause of stroke and adherence to medication were recorded. These factors were analyzed and compared between recurrence and non-recurrence group. Information about recurrent stroke was collected through clinical (readmission to hospital with ischemic stroke) or telephone follow-up survey. Logistic regression was used to analyze the risk factors of recurrence. Results: The most common causes of stroke were large vessel atherosclerosis and small vessel occlusion, followed by cardioembolism. NIHSS score at admission (OR 1.088; 95% CI 1.028-1.152; p = 0.004) were associated with recurrence. Conclusions: Vascular disease, especially premature atherosclerosis, is the major risk factor for ischemic stroke in the young adult population of northern China. Timely screening of the cause of stroke with severe NIHSS score needs further attention.
Activated Carbon, Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene: Materials and Composites for Advanced Water Purification

To ensure the availability of clean water for humans into the future, efficient and cost-effective water purification technology will be required. The rapidly decreasing quality of water and the growing global demand for this scarce resource has driven the pursuit of high-performance purification materials, particularly for application as point-of-use devices. This review will introduce the main types of natural and artificial contaminants that are present in water and the challenges associated with their effective removal. The efficiency and performance of recently developed materials for water purification, with a focus on activated carbon, carbon nanotubes and graphene will be discussed. The recent advances in water purification using these materials is reviewed and their applicability as point-of-use water purification systems discussed.
Evidence for a Decline in Northern Quebec (Nunavik) Belugas

Systematic aerial line-transect surveys of beluga whales, Delphinapterus leucas , were conducted in James Bay, eastern Hudson Bay, and Ungava Bay from 14 August to 3 September 2001. An estimated 7901 (SE= 1744) and 1155 (SE = 507) belugas were present at the surface in the offshore areas of James Bay and Hudson Bay, respectively. An additional 39 animals were observed in estuaries during the coastal survey, resulting in an index estimate of 1194 (SE = 507) in eastern Hudson Bay. No belugas were observed in Ungava Bay. Observations from systematic surveys conducted in 1993 and 2001 were analyzed using both line-transect and strip-transect methods to allow comparisons with the strip-transect survey conducted in 1985. A population model incorporating harvest information and fitted to aerial survey data indicates that the number of belugas in eastern Hudson Bay has declined by almost half because of high harvest levels. Subsistence harvest levels must be reduced significantly if this population is to recover.
Prevalence of Inter-Tree Competition and Its Role in Shaping the Community Structure of a Natural Mongolian Scots Pine ( Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica ) Forest

Inter-tree competition is considered one of the most important ecological processes of forest development. However, its importance in structuring the spatial patterns of plant communities remains controversial. We collected observational data from two plots in a natural Mongolian Scots pine forest to study the contribution of competition to tree growth, mortality, and size inequality. We used the nearest neighbour method to determine the presence of competition, and unmarked and marked spatial point pattern analyses to test the density-dependent mortality effects and the spatial autocorrelation of tree size. We identified significant positive correlations between tree canopy diameter and nearest neighbour distance in both plots, which were more evident in the denser plot. The pair correlation functions of both plots indicated regular distribution patterns of living trees, and trees living in more crowded environments were more likely to die. However, the mark differentiation characteristics showed weak evidence of a negative spatial autocorrelation in tree size, particularly in the high-density plot. The high mortality rate of suppressed trees and weak asymmetric competition may have accounted for the lack of dissimilarity in tree size. This study showed that inter-tree competition is an important determinant of the development of Mongolian Scots pine forests.
Evaluation of thermal stability and damping behavior of electrical insulator waste reinforced thermoset polymer composite

This paper deals with the influence of inorganic electrical insulator waste filler on the properties of glass fiber reinforced epoxy composite. The electrical insulator waste fillers were uniformly mixed in the resin through ultrasonication technique. Composites were made up with different percentages of filler (0, 5, 10, 20 wt%) and 20 wt% glass fiber using the hand lay-up method. Physical, mechanical, water absorption, thermal, and dynamic mechanical properties were studied. The experimental results indicate an increase in water absorption and density of composites with increased electrical insulator waste filler in the polymer matrix. Furthermore, the filler addition reduces the tensile strength and increases the flexural strength to 402 MPa at 20% addition. The thermogravimetric analysis reveals that the incorporation of electrical insulator waste filler increases the thermal stability considerably. Dynamic property reveals the damping property of the materials, in which the incorporation of 20% filler leads to higher storage modulus. Particle dispersion and failure mode were analyzed using scanning electron microscope. This work highlights the possibility for reprocessing electrical insulator waste as low-cost reinforcement in polymer composites.
Will IL28B polymorphism remain relevant in the era of direct‐acting antiviral agents for hepatitis C virus?

W e have now entered a new era in hepatitis C virus (HCV) therapeutics. Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies directly inhibit specific steps in the HCV viral life cycle, with targets including the HCV NS3 protease, the NS5B polymerase, and the NS5A phosphoprotein, as well as host cell proteins involved in HCV replication (e.g., cyclophilin inhibitors). All have potent antiviral effects in vitro. Unfortunately, monotherapy is associated with the rapid selection of resistant HCV variants and virological breakthrough. Therefore, the clinical efficacy of the firstgeneration DAAs will be reliant on combination with a pegylated interferon (pegIFN) and ribavirin (RBV) backbone. The first agents are the NS3 inhibitors boceprevir (BOC) and telaprevir (TVR), both recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The relevance of IL28B polymorphism to DAA treatment regimens is not yet clear. The key questions for the field relate to IL28B genotype as a predictor of on-treatment virological response rates, overall sustained virological response (SVR) rates, the emergence of antiviral resistance, and necessary treatment duration in the context of first-generation triple therapy regimens, as well as future interferon-free regimens. Treatment-Naive Patients
Online content: who is willing to pay and for what?

Many newspapers are struggling to convert their online news into profitable products, and one of the means to this end is to charge fees for using online news services. At the same time, however, consumers have not been willing to pay for online news services. According to recent findings, consumers do not choose between online news and printed newspapers, but they use both types of news media simultaneously. In this study, we identify four consumer segments, based on their multiplatform media use patterns, and assess whether these segments differ in their levels of willingness to pay for online content. Our empirical work indicates that the consumer segments, which use interactive or entertainment content in the online news services are more willing to pay for online content compared to those who only seek news in both media. Also, implications with respect to customer value and online content development are discussed.
Wireless passive separated LC temperature sensor based on high-temperature co-fired ceramic operating up to 1500 °C

This paper presents a wireless passive resonant temperature sensor based on high-temperature co-fired ceramic (HTCC) and platinum conductive metal, which has a new structure that separates inductors and capacitors, allowing the sensor’s maximum operating temperature to reach 1500 °C. In the temperature range of 43 °C–1500 °C, the resonant frequency of the sensor is extracted and the fitting curve between the frequency and temperature is obtained to demarcate the sensor. The average sensitivity of the sensor can be calculated as 6.7562 kHz °C−1 over the entire test temperature range. In addition, it was found that the maximum relative error of the sensor was only 0.24% via a repeatability experiment, and the hysteresis of the sensor mentioned in this paper is significantly reduced. Moreover, the signal intensity of the sensor mentioned in this paper and the traditional LC sensor are compared in experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed sensor has strong signal readability and meets the requirements of high-temperature testing.