Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two-Phase Multiuser Scheduling for Multiantenna Downlinks Exploiting Reduced Finite-Rate Feedback

This paper considers a multiantenna system with an M -antenna base station and K single antenna users, employing zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) and a finite-rate feedback strategy. We study scheduling to select KS users for transmit beamforming. To reduce the feedback requirement, we propose a two-phase scheduling scheme that exploits quantized channel direction information (CDI) from only a small subset of the overall users, as well as a 1-bit signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) indicator feedback per user. In the proposed scheme, we introduce a newly defined expression for evaluating SINR that extends the existing SINR approximation for KS = M to a more general case with arbitrary KS ¿ M. Asymptotic analysis reveals that the proposed two-phase scheduling is asymptotically optimal for large user numbers. Through numerical simulations, we also show that the proposed scheme requires less feedback than conventional schemes, whereas the resulting sum rate loss due to the reduced feedback is negligible. Moreover, we find that the choice of KS < M, instead of a full-multiplexing case with KS = M, for scheduling may achieve a better tradeoff between performance and feedback requirement in systems where fewer bits are utilized for feeding back CDI.
Action of Maleic Hydrazide on Dormancy, Cell Division, and Cell Expansion.

Maleic hydrazide (MH) can inhibit cell division in dormant lettuce seeds in which cell division occurs in the absence of growth by cell expansion. Concentrations of MH that inhibit normal growth of wheat seedlings by 85 to 90% have no effect on the growth of wheat from irradiated grain, which grows without any cell division. Thus MH affects mitosis in a system where gibberellic acid (GA) does not, and (MH has no effect on cell expansion in a system where GA is active. When wheat is treated with a combination of MH and GA, the two chemicals apparently act independently on growth, All these findings suggest that the effect of MH on seedling growth can be largely or entirely attributed to an inhibition of cell division and not to any appreciable effont on cell expansion. MH and GA do not appear to give specific interactions on lettuce seed gerraination, thereby providing further evidence against the theory that MH and GA affect growth through common mechanisms. A number of similarities between effects of MH and of ionizing radiation are discussed, including the capacity to permit gerraination and limited seedling growth of wheat without cell division. (auth)
To Be or Not to Be a Mother: Exploring the Notion of Motherhood among University Students

We explored the notion of motherhood among female university students. Unstructured individual interviews were conducted with seven final-year female students at the University of the Witwatersrand. The data were analysed and various themes were categorised into manageable units. The findings suggest that many female students are ambivalent about motherhood and becoming mothers, with preferences for being career mothers set against preferences for establishing a career first. This conflict was further evident in sentiments of motherhood as being natural and obligatory.
Domain knowledge and feature representation

Identifying covert internal brain by their expression in neural images, particularly from magnetic resonance imaging, is a popular, powerful, and important area of research whose ultimate expression is known now as “brain reading. ” The nature of the imaging data is challenging however, in that they typically have two orders of magnitude more features than observations. We propose that it is many ways useful to apply prior knowledge of brain organization - both physical and mental. We note that sparsity offers quantitative leverage, and that this, itself, may provide insight into the nature of human cognition.
Validating the German Version of the Quality of Relationship Inventory: Confirming the Three-Factor Structure and Report of Psychometric Properties

Research on psychosocial influences such as relationship characteristics has received increased attention in the clinical as well as social-psychological field. Several studies demonstrated that the quality of relationships, in particular with respect to the perceived support within intimate relationships, profoundly affects individuals' mental and physical health. There is, however, a limited choice of valid and internationally known assessments of relationship quality in Germany. We report the validation of the German version of the Quality of Relationships Inventory (QRI). First, we evaluated its factor structure in a representative German sample of 1.494 participants by means of confirmatory factor analysis. Our findings support the previously proposed three-factor structure. Second, importance and satisfaction with different relationship domains (family/children and relationship/sexuality) were linked with the QRI scales, demonstrating high construct validity. Finally, we report sex and age differences regarding the perceived relationship support, conflict and depth in our German sample. In conclusion, the QRI is a reliable and valid measurement to assess social support in romantic relationships in the German population.
After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism

"One of the most comprehensive and intelligent postmodern critics of art and literature, Huyssen collects here a series of his essays on pomo. " Village Voice Literary Supplement. ". his work remains alert to the problematic relationship obtaining between marxisms and poststructuralisms. " American Literary History. ". challenging and astute. " World Literature Today"Huyssen s level-headed account of this controversial constellation of critical voices brings welcome clarification to today s murky haze of cultural discussion and proves definitively that commentary from the tradition of the German Left has an indispensable role to play in contemporary criticism. " The German Quarterly. ". we will certainly have, after reading this book, a deeper understanding of the forces that have led up to the present and of the possibilities still open to us. " Critical Texts. ". a rich, multifaceted study. " The Year s Work in English StudiesHuyssen argues that postmodernism cannot be regarded as a radical break with the past, as it is deeply indebted to that other trend within the culture of modernity the historical avant-garde. "
Tilt Table Practice Improved Ventilation in a Patient with Prolonged Artificial Ventilation Support in Intensive Care Unit

Patients who are on prolonged ventilator support in critical care unit present wide variety of complications, which range from reduction in oxygen uptake to various musculoskeletal impairments. Early mobilization and rehabilitation are encouraged to manage these complications effectively. Use of tilt table to motivate early mobilization in the intensive care unit for ventilator practices is not a usual practice. However, this new technique has attracted involvements of clinicians and therapists for its therapeutic benefits to the patient. Herein we describe a case of a seventy eight-year-old male patient who suffered Motor car accident, and was on ventilator support in intensive care unit for more than one month. He underwent treatment using a tilt table protocol with other routine treatment, which benefited him based on clinical as well as physiological variables. For practitioners in intensive care units, this report may offer perceptivity into the alternate practice of early mobilization using tilt table, and for investigators it may promote interest for further studies.
Behavioral and attitudinal outcomes of psychological contract violation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the interactive effects of psychological contract violation (PCV) and leader member exchange (LMX) on workplace behaviors and attitudes. Another purpose of this research was to contribute to the existing literature pertaining to PCV and organizational cynicism in the context of managerial employees working in India. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 237 managerial-level employees and 156 of their immediate supervisors of seven organizations in India. A questionnaire comprising 36 items pertaining to the study constructs was administered. The reliability of the instrument was verified through item analyses. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to establish the instrument’s construct validity. Study hypotheses were tested and competing models were compared using structural equation modeling (SEM) procedures. Findings – All scales were found to have acceptable reliability estimates. A CFA established that the manifest variab.
Gaze-enhanced user interface design

The eyes are a rich source of information for gathering context in our everyday lives. Using eye-gaze information as a form of input can enable a computer system to gain more contextual information about the user's task, which in turn can be leveraged to design interfaces which are more intuitive and intelligent. With the increasing accuracy and decreasing cost of eye gaze tracking systems it will soon be practical for able-bodied users to use gaze as a form of input in addition to keyboard and mouse. Our research explores how gaze information can be effectively used as an augmented input in addition to traditional input devices. We present several novel prototypes that explore the use of gaze as an augmented input to perform everyday computing tasks. In particular we explore the use of gaze for pointing and selection, scrolling, application switching and password entry. We present the results of user experiments which compare the gaze-augmented interaction techniques with traditional mechanisms and show that the resulting interaction is either comparable to or an improvement over existing input methods. These results show that it is indeed possible to devise novel interaction techniques that use gaze as a form of input while minimizing false activations and without overloading the visual channel. We also discuss some of the problems and challenges of using gaze information as a form of input and propose solutions which, as discovered over the course of the research, can be used to mitigate these issues.
Bone Morphogenetic Protein 15 in the Pro-Mature Complex Form Enhances Bovine Oocyte Developmental Competence

Developmental competence of in vitro matured (IVM) oocytes needs to be improved and this can potentially be achieved by adding recombinant bone morphogenetic protein 15 (BMP15) or growth differentiation factor (GDF9) to IVM. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of a purified pro-mature complex form of recombinant human BMP15 versus the commercially available bioactive forms of BMP15 and GDF9 (both isolated mature regions) during IVM on bovine embryo development and metabolic activity. Bovine cumulus oocyte complexes (COCs) were matured in vitro in control medium or treated with 100 ng/ml pro-mature BMP15, mature BMP15 or mature GDF9 +/− FSH. Metabolic measures of glucose uptake and lactate production from COCs and autofluorescence of NAD(P)H, FAD and GSH were measured in oocytes after IVM. Following in vitro fertilisation and embryo culture, day 8 blastocysts were stained for cell numbers. COCs matured in medium +/− FSH containing pro-mature BMP15 displayed significantly improved blastocyst development (57.7±3.9%, 43.5±4.2%) compared to controls (43.3±2.4%, 28.9±3.7%) and to mature GDF9+FSH (36.1±3.0%). The mature form of BMP15 produced intermediate levels of blastocyst development; not significantly different to control or pro-mature BMP15 levels. Pro-mature BMP15 increased intra-oocyte NAD(P)H, and reduced glutathione (GSH) levels were increased by both forms of BMP15 in the absence of FSH. Exogenous BMP15 in its pro-mature form during IVM provides a functional source of oocyte-secreted factors to improve bovine blastocyst development. This form of BMP15 may prove useful for improving cattle and human artificial reproductive technologies.
Assessing family caregiver's mental health using a statistically derived cut-off score for the Zarit Burden Interview

Decades of research have confirmed that being a family caregiver is a stressful role. However, the point at which these stressors constitute a real risk for decreased mental health has not been established. The purpose of the present study was to determine a statistically valid cut-off score for the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) in order to identify family caregivers at risk for depression and in need of further assessment and intervention. The ZBI and the Geriatric Depression Scale or the CES-D were administered to three different populations of family caregivers of older adults: stroke caregivers (n = 80), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) caregivers (n = 48), and general disability caregivers (n = 70). Using three different statistical methods, a ZBI cut-off score was determined. Next, contingency analysis was used to compare depression scale scores and ZBI cut-offs for the three groups of caregivers. Findings suggest that a cut-off score ranging from 24–26 has significant predictive validity for identifying caregivers at risk for depression. A ZBI cut-off of 24 correctly identified 72% of caregivers with probable depression. The validity of ZBI cut-offs scores warrants further confirmation with larger samples. Valid cut-off scores would enable health care providers to assess family caregivers at risk and provide necessary interventions to improve their quality of life in this important role.
A family of dissimilarity measures between nodes generalizing both the shortest-path and the commute-time distances

This work introduces a new family of link-based dissimilarity measures between nodes of a weighted directed graph. This measure, called the randomized shortest-path (RSP) dissimilarity, depends on a parameter θ and has the interesting property of reducing, on one end, to the standard shortest-path distance when θ is large and, on the other end, to the commute-time (or resistance) distance when θ is small (near zero). Intuitively, it corresponds to the expected cost incurred by a random walker in order to reach a destination node from a starting node while maintaining a constant entropy (related to θ) spread in the graph. The parameter θ is therefore biasing gradually the simple random walk on the graph towards the shortest-path policy. By adopting a statistical physics approach and computing a sum over all the possible paths (discrete path integral), it is shown that the RSP dissimilarity from every node to a particular node of interest can be computed efficiently by solving two linear systems of n equations, where n is the number of nodes. On the other hand, the dissimilarity between every couple of nodes is obtained by inverting an n x n matrix. The proposed measure can be used for various graph mining tasks such as computing betweenness centrality, finding dense communities, etc, as shown in the experimental section.
Psychosocial Functioning of Children Living with a Brain-Injured Parent

Supervisory Committee Dr. Catherine A. Mateer, Department of Psychology Supervisor Dr. Mauricio Garcia-Barrera, Department of Psychology Departmental Member Dr. James Tanaka, Department of Psychology Departmental Member Dr. Susan Tasker, Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies Outside Member Historically, there has been limited empirical study of children whose parents have suffered an acquired brain injury. This is despite the fact that both clinical opinion and qualitative study suggest that these children may represent a population at risk for a variety of emotional and behavioural problems. The current study set out to evaluate the overall psychosocial functioning of a small subset of children whose parents had suffered an acquired brain injury (TBI, stroke) and who were in the more chronic phase of recovery (average time post-injury = 3.3 years). Factors that have been proposed to impact child psychosocial functioning in this population were assessed including the neurobehavioral profile of the parent with an injury, parental depression, and the child’s report of the parental relationship. In all, ten children (average age = 13 years) from seven families with parental ABI were evaluated both on a comprehensive measure of child psychosocial functioning (BASC-2) and a series of qualitative measures. As compared to a normative sample, results of quantitative analyses suggest a group of children not experiencing general clinical distress. In fact, statistical analyses suggest resiliency in the current sample as compared to normative data. At the individual level, two of the children in the sample evidenced behaviour that warrants further clinical evaluation, though this finding may be on par with the base rates of clinical distress seen in the general population. Qualitative analyses provide a richer understanding of the experiences of these children and their families and suggest avenues for further empirical evaluation. Results are presented in the context of other studies to date. Recommendations for clinicians and researchers based on current findings are provided.
Foamy Virus Bet Proteins Function as Novel Inhibitors of the APOBEC3 Family of Innate Antiretroviral Defense Factors

ABSTRACT Foamy viruses are a family of complex retroviruses that establish common, productive infections in a wide range of nonhuman primates. In contrast, humans appear nonpermissive for foamy virus replication, although zoonotic infections do occur. Here we have analyzed the ability of primate and mouse APOBEC3G proteins to inhibit the infectivity of primate foamy virus (PFV) virions produced in their presence. We demonstrate that several APOBEC3 proteins can potently inhibit the infectivity of a PFV-based viral vector. This inhibition correlated with the packaging of inhibitory APOBEC3 proteins into PFV virions, due to a specific PFV Gag/APOBEC3 interaction, and resulted in the G to A hypermutation of PFV reverse transcripts. While inhibition of PFV virion infectivity by primate APOBEC3 proteins was largely relieved by coexpression of the PFV Bet protein, a cytoplasmic auxiliary protein of previously uncertain function, Bet failed to relieve inhibition caused by murine APOBEC3. PFV Bet bound to human, but not mouse, APOBEC3 proteins in coexpressing cells, and this binding correlated with the specific inhibition of their incorporation into PFV virions. Of note, both PFV Bet and a second Bet protein, derived from an African green monkey foamy virus, rescued the infectivity of Vif-deficient human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) virions produced in the presence of African green monkey APOBEC3G and blocked the incorporation of this host factor into HIV-1 virion particles. However, neither foamy virus Bet protein reduced APOBEC3 protein expression levels in virion producer cells. While these data identify the foamy virus Bet protein as a functional ortholog of the HIV-1 Vif auxiliary protein, they also indicate that Vif and Bet block APOBEC3 protein function by distinct mechanisms.
Feature extraction and connectionist classification of SODAR echograms

Sonic detection and ranging (SODAR) systems are efficient and economical tool to probe the lower planetary boundary layer on a continuous basis. The lower atmospheric patterns (each depicting a different atmospheric condition) recorded by this system can prove to be extremely useful if classified and interpreted correctly. The manual identification of these SODAR patterns is a laborious task and requires considerable expertise. A connectionist system has already been developed by the authors to automate the process to some extent. In this letter, we enhance its generalization of performance, by incorporating feature extraction using the fast Fourier transform. The results are compared with that in earlier work to demonstrate its effectiveness.
A Comparative Study on the Efficacy of Some Artemisinin Combination Therapies on Plasmodium berghei in Swiss Albino Mice

This study evaluated and compared the efficacy of five brands of Artemisinin Combination Therapies (ACTs); Dihydroartemisinin plus Piperaquine, Artesunate plus Amodiaquine, Artesunate plus Sulphadoxine/Pyrimethamine, Artemether plus lumefantrine and Artesunate plus mefloquine combinations in vivo in P.berghei infected swiss albino mice. The experimental animals were pre-screened to rule out infection. All drugs were administered as clinical doses for the curative test and the Mean Percentage Parasitemia level assessed daily for seven days and on day 60. The results showed that all the drugs were effective with artesunate plus amodiaquine combination being the most efficacious followed by dihydroartemisinin plus piperaquine and artesunate plus sulphadoxine plus pyrimethamine combinations followed by artesunate plus mefloquine combination and artemether plus lumefantrine combination which was the least efficacious. Results on day 60 showed increasing parasitemia levels in mice which received Artemether plus lumefantrine and Artesunate plus mefloquine combinations which is indicative of recrudescence. The results of this study showed that the ACT’s used in the experiment were all efficacious. The possible development of resistance to some of the drugs was shown by the increasing parasitemia levels following treatment with artesunate plus lumefantrine and artesunate plus mefloquine combinations on day 60.
Benchmarking the NEWUOA on the BBOB-2009 function testbed

The NEWUOA which belongs to the class of Derivative-Free optimization algorithms is benchmarked on the BBOB-2009 noisefree testbed. A multistart strategy is applied with a maximum number of function evaluations of up to 10^5 times the search space dimension resulting in the algorithm solving 11 functions in 20-D. The results of the algorithm using the recommended number of interpolation points for the underlying model and the full model are shown and discussed.
Distribution and Localization of Calmodulin-Binding Proteins in Bull Spermatozoa1

Abstract Previous studies from our laboratory have shown that a decrease in the calmodulin binding properties of a few sperm proteins occurs during the capacitation process, an effect associated with a decrease in intracellular calmodulin concentrations. Using biotinylated-calmodulin nitrocellulose overlay assay on protein extracts of subcellular fractions of bull spermatozoa, one of these proteins (p32) is detected in the flagellar-enriched fractions, whereas p30 is found in the fraction enriched with sperm heads. This latter calmodulin binding protein, p30, appears to be associated with the perinuclear theca. None of these binding proteins was solubilized by nonionic detergents. Sodium dodecyl sulfate was effective solubilizing p32, whereas p30 was extracted only in conditions reported to isolate the perinuclear theca. Cellular localization of calmodulin binding proteins was also achieved by incubating spermatozoa fixed on slides with biotinylated calmodulin and revealed in a further step by fluorescein-conjugated streptavidin. Using this procedure, it was found that calmodulin binds to the sub- and postacrosomal areas of the sperm head along with the midpiece in the presence of Ca2+. Only a sharp band of fluorescence at the subacrosomal area was observed when this procedure was performed in the absence of Ca2+ in the presence of EGTA. The pattern of cellular calmodulin binding was highly decreased when spermatozoa were incubated under capacitating conditions, in the presence of heparin, in agreement with the published effect of capacitation on calmodulin binding proteins.