Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GMD-Based Erasure-and-Error Decoding of Lifted MRD Code for Network Error Correction

The Lifted MRD (Maximum Rank Distance) code was introduced by Silva et al. to correct link errors and erasures for network coding systems. It achieves the generalized asymptotic Singleton bound for network error correction codes, and was shown to be equivalent to the Koetter-Kschischang code. However, in wireless network coding, undetected link errors that occur early in the network may accumulate and propagate beyond the decoding capability of the Lifted MRD code at the destination node. In this paper, we address this problem by a few strategies: detect and track possible error packets as erasure packets as they propagate through the network, reverse the error propagation process at the destination node by exploiting knowledge of the erasure packet positions, and double the MRD decoding capability by using erasure-and-error decoding. Algorithms to implement the above strategies are designed for low network overhead and low computational complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the reliability of network coding over unreliable wireless links.
Capsaicin affects brain function in a model of hepatic encephalopathy associated with fulminant hepatic failure in mice

Background and purpose: Hepatic encephalopathy is a neuropsychiatric syndrome caused by liver failure. In view of the effects of cannabinoids in a thioacetamide‐induced model of hepatic encephalopathy and liver disease and the beneficial effect of capsaicin (a TRPV1 agonist) in liver disease, we assumed that capsaicin may also affect hepatic encephalopathy.
Interpersonal Distance Regulates Functional Grouping Tendencies of Agents in Team Sports

Abstract The authors examined whether, similar to collective agent behaviors in complex, biological systems (e.g., schools of fish and colonies of ants), performers in team sports displayed functional coordination tendencies, based on local interaction rules during performance. To investigate this issue, they used videogrammetry and digitizing procedures to observe interpersonal interactions in common 4 versus 2 + 2 subphases of the team sport of rugby union, involving 16 participants aged between 16 and 17 years of age. They observed pattern-forming dynamics in attacking subunits (n = 4 players) attempting to penetrate 2 defensive lines (n = 2 players in each). Data showed that within each attacking subunit, the 4 players displayed emergent functional grouping tendencies that differed between the 2 defensive lines. Results confirmed that grouping tendencies in attacking subunits of team games are sensitive to different task constraints, such as relative positioning to nearest defenders. It was concluded that running correlations were particularly useful for measuring the level of interpersonal coordination in functional grouping tendencies within attacking subunits.
An Efficient, Interface-Preserving Level Set Redistancing Algorithm and Its Application to Interfacial Incompressible Fluid Flow

In Sussman, Smereka, and Osher [ J. Comp. Phys., 94 (1994), pp. 146--159], a numerical scheme was presented for computing incompressible air--water flows using the level set method. Crucial to the above method was a new iteration method for maintaining the level set function as the signed distance from the zero level set. In this paper we implement a "constraint" along with higher order difference schemes in order to make the iteration method more accurate and efficient. Accuracy is measured in terms of the new computed signed distance function and the original level set function having the same zero level set. We apply our redistancing scheme to incompressible flows with noticeably better resolved results at reduced cost. We validate our results with experiment and theory. We show that our "distance level set scheme" with the added constraint competes well with available interface tracking schemes for basic advection of an interface. We perform basic accuracy checks and more stringent tests involving complicated interfacial structures. As with all level set schemes, our method is easy to implement.
High-speed photoconductive switch based on low-temperature GaAs transferred on SiO/sub 2/-Si substrate

In this letter, we report high-speed photoconductive switches based on low-temperature (LT) grown GaAs on Si substrate. Epitaxially grown LT GaAs was separated from its substrate, transferred on an SiO/sub 2/-coated Si substrate and integrated with a transmission line. The 10/spl times/20-/spl mu/m/sup 2/ switches exhibit high breakdown voltage and low dark currents (<10/sup -7/ A at 100 V). The photoresponse at 810 nm shows electrical transients with /spl sim/0.55-ps full-width at half-maximum and /spl sim/0.37-ps decay time, both independent on the bias voltage up to the tested limit of 120 V. The photoresponse amplitude increases up to /spl sim/0.7 V with increased bias and the signal bandwith is /spl sim/500 GHz. The freestanding LT GaAs switches are best suited for ultrafast optoelectronic testing since they can be placed at virtually any point on the test circuit.
Modern Methods in the History of Medicine

New approaches are explored for historians, by 19 eminent writers, in 21 chapters of timely information. The historiography of ideas in medicine, as one aspect, notes that the historian of science is concerned with the thoughts that refer to facts and theories, be they true or not; whereas the scientist is concerned with facts and theories, asking whether they are true or not. Most of the methods and techniques described have been introduced into the history of medicine recently. The investigation of disease, the rise of automation, statistical methods, diagrams, maps, oral history, practical history, and copying machines are considered. Aims to complement and supplement more traditional methods are discussed, besides possible directions as an academic discipline. Enhanced accuracy and the production of good history, while assisting in creating a more precise form, are objectives. Clarity of expression in this carefully assembled volume is only one of its virtues, besides valuable notes and references and a useful index. The prominent avenues of research in oncogenic virology are outlined in the collected papers which comprise this book. In attempting to discover what controls the expression of viral information in transformed cells, the small DNA viruses, polyoma and SV40 are the major research tools. The picture which emerges at present is that the entire viral DNA genome is integrated into the cell chromosome, that only part of the genome is transcribed as viral-specific RNA (so-called "early" functions), and that the transcribed viral RNA is found as large pieces perhaps containing some cellular transcripts in the cell nucleus and smaller pieces in the cytoplasm. It would be desirable to use viral DNA to make viral proteins in vitro, and a group at Cold Spring Harbor have started in this direction. SV40 DNA has been used as a template in a protein-synthesizing system and, although the product does not correspond to the capsid protein of SV40, new proteins are apparently made. Another problem which has occupied workers concerned with the biology of RNA tumor viruses, is that the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) is capable of transforming cells, but not of replicating into complete virus without a "helper" virus. One strain of RSV, which appeared to be independent of "helper" virus, has now been shown by several groups to require a helper genetic material indigenous to certain chick cells. Another exciting observation is that strains of avian tumor viruses capable of transforming cells in vitro …
Breed Distribution and Clinical Characteristics of B Cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in Dogs

Background B‐cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B‐CLL) is the most common hematopoietic malignancy in humans in the developed world and the primary risk factor is genetic. Dogs also develop B‐CLL, but there is no systematic description of the disease in dogs. Understanding the epidemiology of B‐CLL in dogs may help practitioners recognize the disease and position the dog as a model for future genetic studies. Objectives To describe B‐CLL presentation in dogs, its clinicopathologic findings, and breed predisposition. Animals Four hundred and ninety‐one dogs with B‐CLL and 5,673 control dogs with suspicion of a lymphoproliferative disorder (LPD). Methods Retrospective cross‐sectional study of dogs for which samples were submitted to the Colorado State University Clinical Immunology Laboratory for immunophenotyping between 2010 and 2014. To assess breed predilection, dogs with B‐CLL were compared to those with suspicion of other LPDs using logistic regression. Results The median age was 11 years with no sex predilection. Half of the dogs presented with peripheral lymphadenopathy or splenomegaly and 26% had anemia. Eleven small‐breed dogs had significantly increased odds of B‐CLL. In addition, English Bulldogs had an increased risk and a unique presentation: these dogs were diagnosed at a median of 6 years and expressed lower class II MHC and CD25. Conclusions B‐cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia is overrepresented in small‐breed dogs. Future genetic studies of these breeds may identify genetic risk factors. The unique presentation of English Bulldogs provides evidence of multiple forms of this disease. Additional studies are necessary to determine whether presenting signs are associated with survival.
Psychosocial Links Between Internet Use and Mental Health in Later Life: A Systematic Review of Quantitative and Qualitative Evidence

Research on the role of information and communication technology (ICT) use for active aging is limited. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate the link between Internet use and mental health among older adults. The review was conducted based on searches in 9 electronic databases (2002-2014). A meta-synthesis approach was applied, examining quantitative (18) and qualitative (14) studies. The findings from the synthesis of quantitative statistical data indicate an overall positive association between Internet use and mental health and its psychosocial covariates in later life. The psychosocial links between Internet use and mental health identified from the qualitative data were (a) enhanced interpersonal interaction at individual level, (b) increased access to resources within the community, and (c) empowered social inclusion at society level. The results highlight the multi-level psychosocial links between Internet use and mental health, which may be applied in initiatives targeting healthy aging in various settings.
Contour-based learning for object detection

We present a novel categorical object detection scheme that uses only local contour-based features. A two-stage, partially supervised learning architecture is proposed: a rudimentary detector is learned from a very small set of segmented images and applied to a larger training set of un-segmented images; the second stage bootstraps these detections to learn an improved classifier while explicitly training against clutter. The detectors are learned with a boosting algorithm which creates a location-sensitive classifier using a discriminative set of features from a randomly chosen dictionary of contour fragments. We present results that are very competitive with other state-of-the-art object detection schemes and show robustness to object articulations, clutter, and occlusion. Our major contributions are the application of boosted local contour-based features for object detection in a partially supervised learning framework, and an efficient new boosting procedure for simultaneously selecting features and estimating per-feature parameters.
De Novo Neurogenesis in Adult Hypothalamus as a Compensatory Mechanism to Regulate Energy Balance

The ability to develop counter-regulatory mechanisms to maintain energy balance in response to environmental and physiologic insults is essential for survival, but the mechanisms underlying these compensatory regulations are poorly understood. Agouti-related peptide (AGRP) and Neuropeptide Y are potent orexigens and are coexpressed in neurons in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus. Acute ablation of these neurons leads to severe anorexia and weight loss, whereas progressive degeneration of these neurons has minimal impact on food intake and body weight, suggesting that compensatory mechanisms are developed to maintain orexigenic drive. In this study, we show that cell proliferation is increased in the hypothalamus of adult mutant animals in which AgRP neurons undergo progressive neurodegeneration due to deletion of mitochondrial transcription factor A, and that a subset of these newly generated cells differentiate into AgRP neurons along with other resident neuronal subtypes. Furthermore, some of the newly generated cells are capable of responding to leptin, and a central blockade of cell proliferation in adult animals results in decreases in food intake and body adiposity in mutant but not in control animals. Our study indicates that neurons important for energy homeostasis can be regenerated in adult feeding centers under neurodegenerative conditions. It further suggests that de novo neurogenesis might serve as a compensatory mechanism contributing to the plastic control of energy balance in response to environmental and physiologic insults.
Price Stickiness and Inflation

A recent model of firms’ pricing behaviour by Laurence Ball and Gregory Mankiw has novel implications for the effect of relative price shocks on inflation. This paper examines these implications and establishes the importance of expected inflation for this story. We derive the model relationship between expected inflation, the economy-wide distribution of industry price changes and actual inflation, and show that both Australian and US industry-price data strongly support this derived relationship. The inflationary impact of relative price shocks depends strongly on expected inflation. When expected inflation is high, a rise in the economy-wide dispersion of shocks is inflationary in the short-run. By contrast, when expected inflation is low, a rise in the dispersion of shocks has minimal impact on inflation. Economy-wide relative price shocks, like terms of trade shocks, are an unavoidable feature of the economic landscape. Their disruptive effect on inflation is minimal, however, when average inflation, and therefore average expected inflation, is kept low.
Innovation sources of large and small technology-based firms

Prior research studies have concluded that the innovative output of small and medium sized firms (SMEs) exceeds that of larger firms. One of the critical ingredients of innovation is the source of the idea or inspiration for the innovation. The purpose of this study was to compare the relative importance of 14 different sources of product and process innovation as reported by 235 professional R&D workers in large and small technology-based firms. While overall there was agreement on the importance of a number of sources, R&D professionals in SMEs valued customers, coworkers, marketing, and journals more highly, while professionals in large firms valued suppliers more highly. Implications of these results, in light of the previous research studies on innovation, are addressed.
Constraint Integration for Efficient Multiview Pose Estimation with Self-Occlusions

Automatic initialization and tracking of human pose is an important task in visual surveillance. We present a part-based approach that incorporates a variety of constraints in a unified framework. These constraints include the kinematic constraints between parts that are physically connected to each other, the occlusion of one part by another, and the high correlation between the appearance of certain parts, such as the arms. The location probability distribution of each part is determined by evaluating appropriate likelihood measures. The graphical (nontree) structure representing the interdependencies between parts is utilized to "connect" such part distributions via nonparametric belief propagation. Methods are also developed to perform this optimization efficiently in the large space of pose configurations.
Silent Killers of the Night: An Exploration of Psychological Health and Suicidality among Female Street Sex Workers

This article examines factors that relate to psychological health (as measured by the World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument) as well as suicide attempts among female street sex workers (FSSWs) in Hong Kong. On average, our sampled FSSWs scored significantly lower on the psychological health domain in comparison to the general Hong Kong female population. Factors associated with the working environment in the sex industry were significantly associated with poor psychological health and suicidality. Greater attention is needed to examine the physical and emotional harm intrinsic to certain occupations and the role of financial needs in the experience of psychological stress.
Cell Type–Specific Thalamic Innervation in a Column of Rat Vibrissal Cortex

This is the concluding article in a series of 3 studies that investigate the anatomical determinants of thalamocortical (TC) input to excitatory neurons in a cortical column of rat primary somatosensory cortex (S1). We used viral synaptophysin-enhanced green fluorescent protein expression in thalamic neurons and reconstructions of biocytin-labeled cortical neurons in TC slices to quantify the number and distribution of boutons from the ventral posterior medial (VPM) and posteromedial (POm) nuclei potentially innervating dendritic arbors of excitatory neurons located in layers (L)2–6 of a cortical column in rat somatosensory cortex. We found that 1) all types of excitatory neurons potentially receive substantial TC input (90–580 boutons per neuron); 2) pyramidal neurons in L3–L6 receive dual TC input from both VPM and POm that is potentially of equal magnitude for thick-tufted L5 pyramidal neurons (ca. 300 boutons each from VPM and POm); 3) L3, L4, and L5 pyramidal neurons have multiple (2–4) subcellular TC innervation domains that match the dendritic compartments of pyramidal cells; and 4) a subtype of thick-tufted L5 pyramidal neurons has an additional VPM innervation domain in L4. The multiple subcellular TC innervation domains of L5 pyramidal neurons may partly explain their specific action potential patterns observed in vivo. We conclude that the substantial potential TC innervation of all excitatory neuron types in a cortical column constitutes an anatomical basis for the initial near-simultaneous representation of a sensory stimulus in different neuron types.
Weighting imputation for categorical data

This article aims to propose the Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) approach to impute missing group membership and sampling weights in inferring the accuracy of population parameters of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models with categorical questionnaires. Survey data with missing group memberships, for example, gender, age, or ethnicity, are very familiar. However, the group memberships of examinees are critical for calculating the stratum sampling weights. Asparouhov (2005), Tsai and Yang (2008), and Yang and Tsai (2008) have described that appropriate imputation can further improve the precision of CFA model estimations. Questionnaires with categorical responses are not well established yet. In this study, a Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to compare the LVQ method with the other three existing methods (e.g., listwise-deletion, weighting-class adjustment, non-weighted). Four experimental factors, such as missing data rates, sampling sizes, disproportionate sampling, and different populations, were used to examine the performance of these four methods. The results showed that the LVQ method outperformed the other three methods in terms of accuracy of parameters of CFA model with binary or 5-category responses. The conclusion and discussion sections of this article provide for some practical guidelines.
Automatic Text Categorization and Its Application to Text Retrieval

We develop an automatic text categorization approach and investigate its application to text retrieval. The categorization approach is derived from a combination of a learning paradigm known as instance-based learning and an advanced document retrieval technique known as retrieval feedback. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our categorization approach using two real-world document collections from the MEDLINE database. Next, we investigate the application of automatic categorization to text retrieval. Our experiments clearly indicate that automatic categorization improves the retrieval performance compared with no categorization. We also demonstrate that the retrieval performance using automatic categorization achieves the same retrieval quality as the performance using manual categorization. Furthermore, detailed analysis of the retrieval performance on each individual test query is provided.
Adaptive radar detection of distributed targets under conic constraints

In this paper we deal with the problem of adaptive detection of mismatched mainlobe targets and/or sidelobe interfering signals that are distributed in range. More precisely, in order to improve the robustness of the decision rule in presence of mainlobe targets we investigate the impact of modeling the actual useful signal as a vector belonging to a proper cone with axis the nominal steering vector; similarly, in order to improve the rejection capabilities of the decision rule in presence of sidelobe targets we study the effects of replacing the usual noise only hypothesis with a noise plus interferers hypothesis where interferers belong to the complement of a cone with axis the nominal steering vector. Mixed solutions are also studied. At the design stage we adopt the GLRT principle to derive CFAR detectors under the assumption that training data are available and the noise vectors share one and the same Gaussian distribution (with unknown covariance matrix). The performance assessment, conducted also in comparison to other approaches, proves the effectiveness of the proposed strategies.
A study of the osmotic behavior of the human erythrocyte.

Despite many previous studies of the osmotic properties of erythrocytes, unequivocal answers have not been given to two important questions: 1) Is the erythrocyte in osmotic equilibrium with its normal surrounding fluid? 2) When the osmotic properties of the surrounding fluid are varied, does the erythrocyte gain or lose water to the extent necessary to remain in osmotic equilibrium with the new surroundings-that is, does the erythrocyte behave as a perfect osmometer over a wide range? Previous work related to these questions has been of two general types: measurements of changes of volume of the erythrocytes as the osmotic concentration of the extracellular phase was altered; and measurements of one or more of the colligative properties of the solutions involved. The present study is of the latter type. The osmotic behavior of the normal human erythrocyte has been investigated over a wide range of concentrations by a cryoscopic method and a method for measuring the melting point of microscopic samples. The results give affirmative answers to both of the above questions and illustrate some of the difficulties which may be expected in studies of osmotic properties of any tissues.