Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ultra-wideband multilayer six-port junction with common phase error cancellation

A wide bandwidth and very well balanced six-port junction is reported. It makes use of recent theoretical results which show that six-port networks are extremely tolerant to common phase errors of some of its building blocks. This property can be advantageously used to implement an improved six-port juction made up of four hybrids and a 90° phase shifter. This architecture allows to completely cancel the phase errors of the hybrids yielding a total phase imbalance of the sixport junction that is below ±2.5° in the UWB band (from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz), clearly outperforming previously reported results. Its key element is a novel multisection slot-coupled phase shifter with equalized phase velocities that shows a phase shift of 90 ± 2.5° in the whole operation bandwidth.
Minimal residual disease monitoring in multiple myeloma.

Traditionally, response to treatment in multiple myeloma has been measured by the serum or urinary paraprotein and the percentage of plasma cells in the bone marrow. The use of allogeneic and autologous transplantation has increased the complete response rate and overall survival in patients with myeloma, and in order to assess the effects of such treatments accurately more sensitive methods for assessing residual disease have been introduced. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to describe the available techniques to assess response, monitor residual disease and predict relapse in myeloma. The traditional techniques of paraprotein measurement using electrophoresis and immunofixation are compared with more sensitive approaches involving the polymerase chain reaction for detecting rearrangements of the immunoglobulin heavy-chain region and flow cytometry for detecting malignant plasma cells. Emphasis is placed on the advantages and disadvantages of each method and its utility in the clinical setting.
Cognitive Enhancement: Ethical and Policy Implications in International Perspectives

There is a growing literature in neuroethics dealing with cognitive neuro-enhancement for healthy adults. However, discussions on this topic tend to focus on abstract theoretical positions while concrete policy proposals and detailed models are scarce. Furthermore, discussions appear to rely solely on data from the US or UK, while international perspectives are mostly non-existent. This volume fills this gap and addresses issues on cognitive enhancement comprehensively in three important ways: 1) it examines the conceptual implications stemming from competing points of view about the nature and goals of enhancement; 2) it addresses the ethical, social, and legal implications of neuroenhancement from an international and global perspective including contributions from scholars in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America; and 3) it discusses and analyzes concrete legal issues and policy options tailored to specific contexts.
The Strength of Coaching Efficacy Between Certified and Noncertified Singapore Coaches

The purpose of the present study was to examine the coaching efficacy of certified and uncertified Singapore coaches. Specifically, this study examined whether coaches differed on coaching efficacy dimensions of motivation, game strategy, technique, and character building. Gender differences in coaching efficacy were also examined. Participants were 169 male and 66 female youth coaches of diverse sports in Singapore. Coaches were administered the Coaching Efficacy Scale (CES: Feltz, Chase, Moritz, & Sullivan, 1999) and a demographic information questionnaire. The factor structure of the CES was examined and a reasonable fit of the data to the four factors was found. The most significant differences between certified and uncertified coaches were in the higher game strategy and technique efficacy of certified coaches. The only gender difference found was a weak effect for game strategy efficacy. Male coaches had slightly higher strategy efficacy than female coaches.
Comparison of the potential rate of population increase of brown and green color morphs of Sitobion avenae (Homoptera: Aphididae) on barley infected and uninfected with Barley yellow dwarf virus

Life tables of brown and green color morphs of the English grain aphid, Sitobion avenae (Fabricius) reared on barley under laboratory conditions at 20 ± 1°C, 65% ± 5% relative humidity and a photoperiod of 16 : 8 h (L : D) were compared. The plants were either: (i) infected with the Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV); (ii) not infected with virus but previously infested with aphids; or (iii) healthy barley plants, which were not previously infested with aphids. Generally, both color morphs of S. avenae performed significantly better when fed on BYDV‐infected plants than on plants that were virus free but had either not been or had been previously infested with aphids. Furthermore, when fed on BYDV‐infected plants, green S. avenae developed significantly faster and had a significantly shorter reproductive period than the brown color morph. There were no significant differences in this respect between the two color morphs of S. avenae when they were reared on virus‐free plants that either had been or not been previously infested with aphids. These results indicate that barley infected with BYDV is a more favorable host plant than uninfected barley for both the color morphs of S. avenae tested, particularly the green color morph.
Giant Hidroacanthoma Simplex Mimicking Bowen's Disease

Hidroacanthoma simplex is a benign tumor of the skin, macroscopically resembling seborrheic keratosis or Bowen's disease and histologically mimicking clonal-type seborrheic keratosis. We observed a plaque of 70 × 50 mm on the right flank part. From clinical appearance, we suspected Bowen's disease; however, based on immunohistochemical findings, we made a diagnosis of hidroacanthoma simplex.
Hydrogen Peroxide Generation by the Pepper Extracellular Peroxidase CaPO2 Activates Local and Systemic Cell Death and Defense Response to Bacterial Pathogens1[W][OA]

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are responsible for mediating cellular defense responses in plants. Controversy has existed over the origin of ROS in plant defense. We have isolated a novel extracellular peroxidase gene, CaPO2, from pepper (Capsicum annuum). Local or systemic expression of CaPO2 is induced in pepper by avirulent Xanthomonas campestris pv vesicatoria (Xcv) infection. We examined the function of the CaPO2 gene in plant defense using the virus-induced gene silencing technique and gain-of-function transgenic plants. CaPO2-silenced pepper plants were highly susceptible to Xcv infection. Virus-induced gene silencing of the CaPO2 gene also compromised hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) accumulation and hypersensitive cell death in leaves, both locally and systemically, during avirulent Xcv infection. In contrast, overexpression of CaPO2 in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) conferred enhanced disease resistance accompanied by cell death, H2O2 accumulation, and PR gene induction. In CaPO2-overexpression Arabidopsis leaves infected by Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato, H2O2 generation was sensitive to potassium cyanide (a peroxidase inhibitor) but insensitive to diphenylene iodonium (an NADPH oxidase inhibitor), suggesting that H2O2 generation depends on peroxidase in Arabidopsis. Together, these results indicate that the CaPO2 peroxidase is involved in ROS generation, both locally and systemically, to activate cell death and PR gene induction during the defense response to pathogen invasion.
Birth weight and perinatal mortality. A comparison of the United States and Norway.

OBJECTIVE To compare perinatal mortality in the United States and Norway, using a new analytic approach based on relative birth weight. DESIGN Comparison of linked birth and perinatal death records for US and Norwegian births from 1986 through 1987, the most recently available 2-year period. SETTING Norway and the United States. PARTICIPANTS A total of 7,445,914 US births and 105,084 Norwegian births. INTERVENTIONS None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Perinatal weight-specific mortality after adjustment for each country's own mean birth weight. RESULTS The higher rate of perinatal death in the United States compared with Norway is due to an excess of preterm deliveries in the United States. Low-weight, preterm births comprise 2.9% of US births compared with 2.1% of Norwegian births. If the United States could eliminate this slight excess of preterm delivery, perinatal mortality in the United States would decrease to the level in Norway. Unexpectedly, the survival of newborns at any given birth weight is virtually the same in the United States and Norway when newborns' birth weights are considered relative to their own nation's mean weight. CONCLUSIONS Low rates of perinatal mortality in the Scandinavian countries have usually been attributed to the heavier weights of their newborns. Higher mortality among US infants is in fact due entirely to a small excess of preterm deliveries. The lighter weights of US newborns at term appear not to affect perinatal survival. Furthermore, the apparent survival advantage of low-weight US newborns (used by policymakers as evidence of superior US intensive neonatal care) may be at least partly an artifact. When weight-specific mortality rates are adjusted to relative birth weight, low-weight newborns have the same survival in Norway as in the United States. The prevention of excess mortality among US infants depends on the prevention of preterm births, not on changes in mean birth weight.
The Relationship between Coping Styles and Hardiness among Students

Introduction: Hardiness is a personality characteristic which facilitates effective coping with stress and prevents from mental and physical problems. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of hardiness trait on the use of coping styles. Methods: The population of the study included students at Payam-noor University of Golpaygan. Using a cluster sampling procedure, 8 humanities classes and 8 basic sciences classes were selected and 280 students from these classes participated in the study. The participants completed Ahvaz Hardiness Inventory and Young People Coping Style Scale. The data were analyzed through t-test, ANOVA and stepwise regression analysis. Results: The results showed no difference between boys and girls and humanities and basic sciences students in terms of the level of hardiness. Results of F test showed no significant difference between three coping styles in groups of basic sciences and humanities, but in refer- to - others strategy and non-efficient coping style, women had a higher average than men. A significant relationship was observed between hardiness and the problem-solving and refer to others coping strategies (P<0.001). Results of stepwise regression analysis showed that coping styles of problem solving and non-efficient coping predicted respectively 44 and 47 percent of the variance in hardiness. In other words, the relationship between hardiness and coping styles is influenced only by coping style of problem-solving and non-efficient coping strategies. Conclusion: The results of the research suggest that hardiness creates the inner attitude that will affect confronting of people with life problems and makes people to view mental stress realistically and open-mindedly. In this regard, developing educational and remedial programs at universities can be very helpful.
The pupil as a possible premonitor of drowsiness

Prediction of drowsiness based on an objective measure is demanded in machine and vehicle operations in which human errors may cause fatal accidents. Currently we focused on the pupil of the eye which is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, and easily observable non-invasively from the outside of the body. We employed uneventful driving simulation to induce drowsiness of human subjects, and an anti-saccade task to evaluate their cognitive and motor performance. First we confirmed that pupil diameter fluctuates with large amplitude at low frequencies when the subject is aware of his/her drowsiness as reported previously. During this period, the latency of anti-saccade initiation was elongated and varied. We then found that prior to this fluctuation, pupil diameter decreases gradually in most subjects, and they were not aware of sleepiness during this period. We conclude that this monotonic gradual miosis can be a reliable premonitor of drowsiness.
The Effect of Race-Ratio Composition on the Frequency of Organizational Communication

Kanter's (1977a) tokenism hypothesis predicts that as minority and majority social types within a group reach numerical parity, interactional isolation between the two groups will diminish. In an exploratory manner, it was hypothesized that increasing minority representation in a group would also affect the group's total frequency of interaction. This prediction was tested with a sample of 96 supervisory cadre varying in the relative proportions of black and white members. Interaction was operationalized in terms of interpersonal, organizational and interorganizational communication frequency. Multivariate analysis, which controlled for organizational size and complexity as well as background supervisory characteristics, indicated only partial support for the hypothesis. Increasing race-ratio composition was positively associated' only with organizational-level communication frequency. The implications of these results forfuture research strategems as well as for possible extension of Kanter's hypothesis to group-level analysis are presented.
Likelihood ratio tests in linear mixed models with one variance component

Summary. We consider the problem of testing null hypotheses that include restrictions on the variance component in a linear mixed model with one variance component and we derive the finite sample and asymptotic distribution of the likelihood ratio test and the restricted likelihood ratio test. The spectral representations of the likelihood ratio test and the restricted likelihood ratio test statistics are used as the basis of efficient simulation algorithms of their null distributions. The large sample χ2 mixture approximations using the usual asymptotic theory for a null hypothesis on the boundary of the parameter space have been shown to be poor in simulation studies. Our asymptotic calculations explain these empirical results. The theory of Self and Liang applies only to linear mixed models for which the data vector can be partitioned into a large number of independent and identically distributed subvectors. One‐way analysis of variance and penalized splines models illustrate the results.
Distribution of fetal bovine serum fibronectin and endogenous rat cell fibronectin in extracellular matrix

Normal rat kidney cells were cultured in medium supplemented with normal fetal bovine serum (FBS) or FBS depleted of fibronectin. The cell surface fibronectin of these cultures was visualized by indirect immunofluorescence using species-specific antisera for either rat fibronectin or bovine fibronectin. Anti-rat-fibronectin revealed fibrillar structures on the cells grown in either normal medium or fibronectin-depleted medium. Anti-bovine fibronectin revealed similar fibrillar networks, but only on the cells grown in medium containing bovine fibronectin. Staining in each case was abolished by absorption with the homologous antigen. It appears that exogenous fibronectin was incorporated into the same structures as endogenous fibronectin. This finding suggests that circulating fibronectin may serve as a building block for the assembly of extracellular matrix, possibly by cells which are incapable of synthesizing it.
The effect of insulin hypoglycaemia on serum gastrin and gastric acid in normal subjects and patients with duodenal ulcer

Serum gastrin was measured by radio‐immuno‐assay in normal subjects and in patients with duodenal ulcer during insulin hypoglycaemia with and without concomitant aspiration of gastric acid. Insulin hypoglycaemia alone caused a rise in serum gastrin from 8.0 to 45.0 pg. per ml. in patients with duodenal ulcer, which was significantly greater than the rise from 13.0 to 29.0 pg. per ml. in normal subjects. During gastric aspiration serum‐gastrin levels remained elevated for longer periods. The maximum increase of serum gastrin after insulin during gastric aspiration provided an almost complete discrimination between patients with duodenal ulcer and normal subjects. This discrimination between the groups was complete when serum gastrin was measured during insulin hypoglycaemia combined with intragastric neutralization of acid. The timing of the peak serum gastrin and the lowest blood‐glucose coincided, but the peak acid output occurred 15–30 minutes later. Serum gastrin was inversely correlated with blood‐glucose. Blood‐glucose decreased to significantly lower levels in unaspirated than in aspirated subjects.
Potent Phagocytic Activity Discriminates Metastatic and Primary Human Malignant Melanomas: A Key Role of Ezrin

Features of phagocytosis have been observed in human tumors, but the phagocytic apparatus of tumor cells and the mechanism(s) underlying this phenomenon have yet to be defined. To address the phenomenon of phagocytosis, its underlying mechanism(s), and its possible role in tumor biology, we used human melanoma cells as a prototypic model. Our results showed that a process of phagocytosis of apoptotic cells occurs in vivo in human melanoma. This finding was consistent with evidence that human melanoma cells in vitro express all of the known lysosomal and phagocytic markers on their cytoplasmic vesicles and that a process of phagocytosis occurs in these vesicles. However, exclusively human melanoma cells deriving from metastatic lesions possess an efficient phagocytic machinery responsible for a macrophage-like activity against latex beads, yeast, and apoptotic cells of different origins, which was comparable to that of human primary macrophages. Moreover, the actin-binding protein ezrin was expressed on phagocytic vacuoles of melanoma cells and of cells deriving from a human adenocarcinoma; both treatment with cytochalasin B and specific inhibition of ezrin synthesis strongly affected the phagocytic activity of melanoma cells. This suggests that the association with the actin cytoskeleton is a crucial requirement for the development of this phenomenon. Hence our data provide evidence for a potent phagocytic activity exerted by metastatic melanoma cells possibly involved in determining the level of aggressiveness of human melanoma. This suggests that the assessment of phagocytic activity may be exploited as a new tool to evaluate the malignancy of human melanoma. Moreover, our data suggest that gene therapy or drug treatments aimed at inhibiting actin assembly to the phagosomal membranes may be proposed as a new strategy for the control of tumor aggressiveness.
Comparison of IPC and USPC classification systems in patent prior art searches

Patent classification systems are used to help scrutinize patent applications for possible violations of the novelty and non-obviousness/inventive steps of a patentability test. There are several different patent classification systems in use today, each with a different underlying philosophy and approach. We compare the two most widely-used patent classification systems -- the IPC and USPC -- and examine their ability to help re-rank patents based on similarity. We observed a significant improvement in MAP, Recall@100, and nDCG when using these systems to re-rank our retrieved document set, demonstrating their overall utility in patent searches.
The Effects of Time Pressure and Experience on Nurses' Risk Assessment Decisions: A Signal Detection Analysis

Background: Time pressure and, occasionally, suboptimal assessment decisions are features of nursing in acute care. Objectives: To explore the effect of generic and specialist clinical experience on the ability to detect the need to take action in acute care and the impact of time pressure on nurses' decision-making performance. Methods: Experienced acute care registered nurses (n = 241) were presented with 50 vignettes of real clinical risk assessments. Each vignette contained seven information cues. In response to these vignettes, nurses had to decide whether to intervene or not. The 26 vignettes were time limited and mixed randomly into the 50 cases. Signal detection analysis was used to establish nurses' performance, personal decision thresholds (&bgr;), and their abilities (d&vprime;) to distinguish a signal of clinical risk from the clinical noise of noncontributory information. Results: Nurses had significantly lower d&vprime; and were significantly less likely to indicate intervening under time pressure. For ability-but not threshold-there was a significant interaction of time pressure and years of experience in acute care. With no time pressure, d&vprime; increased in line with years of experience. Under time pressure, there was no effect. Discussion: Time pressure reduced nurses' ability to detect the need and the tendency to report intervening. Thus, there were more failures to report appropriate intervention under time pressure, and the positive effects of clinical experience were negated under time pressure. More and larger scale research on the effect on clinical outcomes of time pressured nursing choices is required.
Long-Term Arrhythmia-Free Survival in Patients With Severe Left Ventricular Dysfunction and No Inducible Ventricular Tachycardia After Myocardial Infarction

Background— A negative electrophysiology study (EPS) may delineate a subgroup of patients with severely impaired left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) whose care can be safely managed long-term without an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. Methods and Results— Consecutive patients treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention for ST-segment–elevation myocardial infarction underwent early (median 4 days) LVEF assessment. Patients with LVEF ⩽40% underwent EPS. A prophylactic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator was implanted for a positive (inducible monomorphic ventricular tachycardia) but not a negative (no inducible ventricular tachycardia or inducible ventricular fibrillation/flutter) EPS result. Patients who would have become eligible for a late primary prevention implantable cardioverter-defibrillator with LVEF ⩽30% or ⩽35% with New York Heart Association class II/III heart failure were included and analyzed according to EPS result. Patients with LVEF >40%, ineligible for EPS, were followed up as control subjects (n=1286). The primary end point was survival free of death or arrhythmia (resuscitated cardiac arrest or sustained ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation). EPS performed in 128 patients with LVEF ⩽30% or with LVEF ⩽35% and heart failure was negative in 63% (n=80) and positive in 37% (n=48). Implantable-cardioverter defibrillators were implanted in <0.1%, 4%, and 90% of control, EPS-negative, and EPS-positive patients, respectively. The distribution of time to death or arrhythmia was comparable in control patients and EPS-negative patients with LVEF ⩽30% or with LVEF ⩽35% and heart failure (P=0.738), who both differed significantly from EPS-positive patients (P<0.001). At 3 years, 91.8±3.2%, 93.4±1.0%, and 62.7±7.5% of control, EPS-negative, and EPS-positive patients were free of death or arrhythmia, respectively. Conclusions— Revascularized patients with ST-segment–elevation myocardial infarction with severely impaired left ventricular function but no inducible ventricular tachycardia have a favorable long-term prognosis without the protection of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.