Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fully wireless implementation of distributed beamforming on a software-defined radio platform

We describe the key ideas behind our implementation of distributed beamforming on a GNU-radio based software-defined radio platform. Distributed beamforming is a cooperative transmission scheme whereby a number of nodes in a wireless network organize themselves into a virtual antenna array and focus their transmission in the direction of the intended receiver, potentially achieving orders of magnitude improvements in energy efficiency. This technique has been extensively studied over the past decade and its practical feasibility has been demonstrated in multiple experimental prototypes. Our contributions in the work reported in this paper are three-fold: (a) the first ever all-wireless implementation of distributed beamforming without any secondary wired channels for clock distribution or channel feedback, (b) a novel digital baseband approach to synchronization of high frequency RF signals that requires no hardware mod-ifications, and (c) an implementation of distributed beam-forming on a standard, open platform that allows easy reuse and extension. We describe the design of our system in de-tail present some initial results and discuss future directions for this work.
Improved Satellite Retrieval of Tropospheric NO2 Column Density via Updating of Air Mass Factor (AMF), Part I: Case Study of Southern China

Improving air quality and reducing human exposure to unhealthy levels of airborne chemicals are important global missions, particularly in China. Satellite remote sensing offers a powerful tool to examine regional trends in NO2, thus providing a direct measure of key parameters that strongly affect surface air quality. To accurately resolve spatial gradients in NO2 concentration using satellite observations and thus understand local and regional aspects of air quality, a priori input data at sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolution to account for pixel-to-pixel variability in the characteristics of the land and atmosphere are required. In this paper, we adapt the Berkeley High Resolution product (BEHR v3.0A, v3.0B and v3.0C) and meteorological outputs from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to describe column NO2 in southern China. The BEHR approach is particularly useful for places with large spatial variabilities and terrain height differences such as China. We retrieved tropospheric NO2 vertical column density (TVCD) within part of southern China, for four seasons of 2015, based upon satellite datasets from Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). Retrieval results are validated by comparing with MAX-DOAS tropospheric column measurements conducted in Guangzhou. BEHR retrieval algorithms are more consistent with MAX-DOAS measurements than OMI-NASA retrieval, opening new windows into research questions that require high spatial resolution, for example retrieving NO2 vertical column and ground pollutant concentration in China and other countries.
UTP-Dependent and -Independent Pathways of mRNA Turnover in Trypanosoma brucei Mitochondria

ABSTRACT Although primary transcripts are polycistronic in the mitochondria of Trypanosoma brucei, steady-state levels of mature, monocistronic RNAs change throughout the parasitic life cycle. This indicates that steady-state RNA abundance is controlled by posttranscriptional mechanisms involving differential RNA stability. In this study, in organello pulse-chase labeling experiments were used to analyze the stability of different T. brucei mitochondrial RNA populations. In this system, total RNA and rRNA are stable for many hours. In contrast, mRNAs can be degraded by two biochemically distinct turnover pathways. The first pathway results in the rapid degradation of mRNA (half-life [t 1/2] of 11 to 18 min) and is dependent upon the presence of an mRNA poly(A) tail. Remarkably, this pathway also requires the addition of UTP and therefore is termed UTP dependent. The second pathway results in slow turnover of mitochondrial mRNA (t 1/2 of ∼3 h) and is not dependent upon the presence of an mRNA poly(A) tail or the addition of exogenous UTP. In summary, these results demonstrate the presence of a novel, UTP-dependent degradation pathway for T. bruceimitochondrial mRNAs and reveal an unprecedented role for both UTP and mRNA polyadenylation in T. brucei mitochondrial gene expression.
Fault Analysis and Test Generation for Programmable Logic Arrays (PLA's)

Programmable logic arrays (PLA's) are the logic implementation vehicle for many applications. Due to their regular structure, one is able to model and analyze many more of the likely physical faults than the conventional stuck faults considered for random combinational logic implementations. We investigate shorts between the lines and crosspoint defects (spurious absence or presence), as well as stuck faults in a PLA. It is shown that a complete crosspoint test set also detects most of all faults analyzed. The crosspoint-oriented test set is compact, easy to generate, and technology-invariant. For the test generation, the regularity of the PLA structure is utilized for ease of computation and for test set optimality. Groups of crosspoint defects are sensitized simultaneously. For each such fault group, a test configuration which contains the totality of the tests for the faults under consideration is efficiently generated. When the configuration is empty, there exists no test that detects the particular group of faults. A covering set of tests is then selected from the configuration. Our test generation method (TPLA) uses two basic and effective heuristics; they are the initial word ordering for processing and the use of look-ahead merit function whenever there is a free choice of values in a test input variables.
Affine Adaptation of Local Image Features Using the Hessian Matrix

Local feature detectors that make use of derivative based saliency functions to locate points of interest typically require adaptation processes after initial detection in order to achieve scale and affine covariance. Affine adaptation methods have previously been proposed that make use of the second moment matrix to iteratively estimate the affine shape of local image regions. This paper shows that it is possible to use the Hessian matrix to estimate local affine shape in a similar fashion to the second moment matrix. The Hessian matrix requires significantly less computation effort to compute than the second moment matrix, allowing more efficient affine adaptation. It may also be more convenient to use the Hessian matrix, for example, when the Determinant of Hessian detector is used. Experimental evaluation shows that the Hessian matrix is very effective in increasing the efficiency of blob detectors such as the Determinant of Hessian detector, but less effective in combination with the Harris corner detector.
Video-Quality Estimation Based on Reduced-Reference Model Employing Activity-Difference

This paper presents a Reduced-reference based video-quality estimation method suitable for individual end-user quality monitoring of IPTV services. With the proposed method, the activity values for individual given-size pixel blocks of an original video are transmitted to end-user terminals. At the end-user terminals, the video quality of a received video is estimated on the basis of the activity-difference between the original video and the received video. Psychovisual weightings and video-quality score adjustments for fatal degradations are applied to improve estimation accuracy. In addition, low-bit-rate transmission is achieved by using temporal sub-sampling and by transmitting only the lower six bits of each activity value. The proposed method achieves accurate video quality estimation using only low-bit-rate original video information (15kbps for SDTV). The correlation coefficient between actual subjective video quality and estimated quality is 0.901 with 15kbps side information. The proposed method does not need computationally demanding spatial and gain-and-offset registrations. Therefore, it is suitable for real-time video-quality monitoring in IPTV services.
Class Ridden or Meritocratic? An Economic Analysis of Recent Changes in Britain

In a meritocratic society an individual's economic success is determined by their ability, not by their parents' socio-economic status. We assess whether meritocracy has increased in both the British education system and labour market. The richness of our longitudinal data enables us to look at the complex inter-relationship between social class, ability, education and labour market outcomes. In Britain the production of human capital (cognitive ability and education) has become less meritocratic and more influenced by social background. Whilst cognitive ability is an important determinant of labour market success, there is only mild support for an increase in its importance.
Alterations in ZENK and glucagon RNA transcript expression during increased ocular growth in chickens

Purpose To examine in detail the time-course of changes in Zif268, Egr-1, NGFI-A, and Krox-24 (ZENK) and pre-proglucagon (PPG) RNA transcript levels in the chick retina during periods of increased ocular growth induced by form-deprivation and negative-lens wear. To further elucidate the role of ZENK in the modulation of ocular growth, we investigated the effect of intravitreal injections of the muscarinic antagonist atropine and the dopamine agonist 2-amino-6,7-dihydroxy-1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene hydrobromide (ADTN), both of which block the development of experimental myopia, on the expression of ZENK in eyes fitted with negative-lenses. Methods Myopia was induced by fitting translucent diffusers or −10D polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) lenses over one eye of the chicken. At times from 1 h to 10 days after fitting of the diffusers or negative lenses, retinal RNA transcript levels of the selected genes were determined by semi-quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT–PCR). For the pharmacology experiments, −10D lenses were fitted over the left eye of chicks for a period of 1h. Intravitreal injections of atropine (10 μl–25 mM), ADTN (10 μl–10 mM), or a vehicle solution were made immediately before fitting of the lenses. Results ZENK RNA transcript levels were rapidly and persistently down-regulated following the attachment of the optical devices over the eye. With a delay relative to ZENK, PPG transcript levels were also down-regulated. Induced changes in gene expression were similar for both form-deprivation and negative-lens wear. When atropine or ADTN were administered immediately before lens attachment, the rapid down-regulation in ZENK RNA transcript levels normally seen following 1 h of negative-lens wear was not seen, and ZENK transcript levels rose above those values seen in control eyes. However, injection of atropine or ADTN into untreated eyes had no effect on ZENK transcript levels. Conclusions Both form-deprivation and negative-lens wear modulated the retinal expression of ZENK and PPG RNA transcripts, with a similar time-course and strength of response. The ability of the tested drugs to prevent the down-regulation of ZENK in both lens-induced myopia (LIM) and form-deprivation myopia (FDM) suggests that atropine and ADTN act directly and rapidly on retinal circuits to enhance sensitivity early in the signaling process. These findings suggest that very similar molecular pathways are involved in the changes in eye growth in response to form-deprivation and negative lenses at 1 h after the fitting of optical devices. Received: January 22, 2010 Accepted: April 6, 2010
Significant Biologically Mediated CO
 2
 Uptake in the Pacific Arctic During the Late Open Water Season

Shifting baselines in the Arctic atmosphere‐sea ice‐ocean system have significant potential to alter biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem dynamics. In particular, the impact of increased open water duration on lower trophic level productivity and biological CO2 sequestration is poorly understood. Using high‐resolution observations of surface seawater dissolved O2/Ar and pCO2 collected in the Pacific Arctic in October 2011 and 2012, we evaluate spatial variability in biological metabolic status (autotrophy vs heterotrophy) as constrained by O2/Ar saturation (ΔO2/Ar) as well as the relationship between net biological production and the sea‐air gradient of pCO2 (ΔpCO2). We find a robust relationship between ΔpCO2 and ΔO2/Ar (correlation coefficient of −0.74 and −0.61 for 2011 and 2012, respectively), which suggests that biological production in the late open water season is an important determinant of the air‐sea CO2 gradient at a timeframe of maximal ocean uptake for CO2 in this region. Patchiness in biological production as indicated by ΔO2/Ar suggests spatially variable nutrient supply mechanisms supporting late season growth amidst a generally strongly stratified and nutrient‐limited condition. Plain Language Summary The Arctic is experiencing rapid change. One of the most notable changes is an increase in the length of time coastal areas of the Arctic are ice‐free in summer, which may affect the growth patterns of microscopic marine plants at the bottom of the food chain in Arctic ecosystems. We investigate how the growth at the base of the food chain is responding to these sea ice changes in the late, “open water” period. To track growth, we measure the oxygen content of the surface ocean, which constrains the balance of growth and loss as marine plants photosynthesize and then are consumed and decomposed. We also relate the spatial patterns of net growth to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas dissolved in the surface ocean to evaluate the potential impact of biological activity on the uptake of this important greenhouse gas into the surface ocean. We find a surprising relationship between growth and areas of CO2 uptake by the ocean. This finding is important because it suggests that the biological community facilitates carbon dioxide uptake during a timeframe when previously growth would be inhibited by ice cover.
Bootstrapping parsers via syntactic projection across parallel texts

Broad coverage, high quality parsers are available for only a handful of languages. A prerequisite for developing broad coverage parsers for more languages is the annotation of text with the desired linguistic representations (also known as “treebanking”). However, syntactic annotation is a labor intensive and time-consuming process, and it is difficult to find linguistically annotated text in sufficient quantities. In this article, we explore using parallel text to help solving the problem of creating syntactic annotation in more languages. The central idea is to annotate the English side of a parallel corpus, project the analysis to the second language, and then train a stochastic analyzer on the resulting noisy annotations. We discuss our background assumptions, describe an initial study on the “projectability” of syntactic relations, and then present two experiments in which stochastic parsers are developed with minimal human intervention via projection from English.
Rollback-free value prediction with approximate loads

This paper demonstrates how to utilize the inherent error resilience of a wide range of applications to mitigate the memory wall — the discrepancy between core and memory speed. We define a new microarchitecturally-triggered approximation technique called rollback-free value prediction. This technique predicts the value of safe-to-approximate loads when they miss in the cache without tracking mispredictions or requiring costly recovery from misspeculations. This technique mitigates the memory wall by allowing the core to continue computation without stalling for long-latency memory accesses. Our detailed study of the quality trade-offs shows that with a modern out-of-order processor, average 8% (up to 19%) performance improvement is possible with 0.8% (up to 1.8%) average quality loss on an approximable subset of SPEC CPU 2000/2006.
Financial Attention

This paper investigates investor attention using novel panel data on daily online logins for a large sample of retirement accounts. We find support for selective attention to portfolio information. Account logins fall by 9.5% after market declines. Investors also pay less attention when the VIX volatility index is high. The level of attention and the attention/return correlation are strongly related to investor demographics (gender, age) and financial condition (wealth, holdings). Using a new statistical decomposition, we also show how aggregate and individual household trading are related to investor attention.
Design and development of a smart storytelling toy

Because computers generally make children passive listeners, new technological devices need to support children's storytelling activities. This article introduces the StoryTech, a smart toy that includes a virtual space comprised of computer-based graphics and characters as well as a real space that involves stuffed animals, background cards and a receiver panel. When children put real objects on the receiver panel, the computer displays related backgrounds and characters. Through this flexible context, children are expected to tell a story about what they see on the screen. The aim of this article is to present the development period of the StoryTech and to provide design principles for smart toy technologies based on the usability study. The article focuses on attributes of new technology and the significance of supporting storytelling activities to find the best combination of and moderation between real and virtual spaces.
Temporal Dissociation between Hand Shaping and Grip Force Scaling in the Anterior Intraparietal Area

In humans, both clinical and functional imaging studies have evidenced the critical role played by the posterior parietal cortex, and particularly by the anterior intraparietal area (AIP), in skilled hand movements. However, the exact contribution of AIP to precision grasping remains debated. Here we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to induce virtual lesions of the left and/or right AIP in subjects performing a grip-lift task with either hand. We found that, during movement preparation, a virtual lesion of AIP had distinct consequences on precision grasping of either hand depending on its time of occurrence: TMS applied 270–220 ms before the fingers contacted the manipulandum altered specifically the hand shaping, whereas lesions induced 170–120 ms before contact time only affected the grip force scaling. The lateralization of these two processes in AIP is also strikingly different: whereas a bilateral lesion of AIP was necessary to impair hand shaping, only a unilateral lesion of the left AIP altered the grip force scaling in either hand. The present study shows that, during movement preparation, AIP is responsible for processing two distinct, temporally dissociated, precision grasping parameters, regardless of the hand in use. This indicates that the contribution of AIP to hand movements is “effector- independent,” a finding that may explain the invariance of grasping movements performed with either hand.
Growth hormone co-treatment in IVF/ICSI cycles in poor responders

Abstract To estimate the efficacy of growth hormone (GH) co-treatment within an antagonist protocol in IVF/ICSI cycles in poor responders. A prospective observational study involving 50 patients underwent a standard antagonist protocol with or without GH co-treatment. GH was administered by a daily subcutaneous injection of 1,33 mg (equivalent to 4 IU) starting from day 1 of ovarian stimulation until the day of 10,000 human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) triggering . Concentrations of GH, insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) and IGF binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) in serum and follicular fluid were the subject matter of analysis. The GH co-treatment significantly lowered the effective dose of gonadotropins, duration of stimulation, IGFBP-3 level in serum and follicular fluid on the day of oocyte retrieval. The total number of oocytes as well as the number of metaphase II stage (MII) oocytes, two pronucleus (2 pn) zygotes, good-quality transferred embryos was significantly higher in the GH + group. Pregnancy was achieved in patients GH + group only. Positive correlation was found between IGF-I level in follicular fluid, dynamics of IGFBP-3 level changes during stimulation protocol and the number of good-quality transferred embryos in the GH + group. GH administration in IVF/ICSI cycles for poor responders raises ovarian sensitivity to the gonadotropin exogenous influence, increasing number of high-quality embryos and the probability of pregnancy.
Microevolution of Candida albicans Strains during Catheter-Related Candidemia

ABSTRACT We examined microevolution in a series of Candida albicans strains isolated from patients with catheter-related candidemia. Sixty-one isolates (29 from blood, 18 from catheters, 10 from urine, and 4 from other sites) were obtained from 15 patients who were admitted to the same hospital over a 3-year period. Isolates were analyzed by using Southern hybridization with the C1 fragment of Ca3 as a probe (C1 fingerprinting) and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). PFGE typing consisted of electrophoretic karyotyping (EK) and restriction endonuclease analysis of genomic DNA (REAG) by using SfiI (REAG-S) and BssHII (REAG-B). When catheter isolates were compared with blood isolates from the same patient, catheter isolates from 5 of 14 patients (36%) exhibited minor band differences (microevolution) relative to blood isolates in either C1 fingerprinting (n = 4), REAG-S (n = 3), or REAG-B (n = 5) profiles, although they had identical EK patterns. However, the other sequential isolates from each patient, which had identical EK patterns, showed the same REAG and C1 fingerprinting patterns. Both fingerprinting methods revealed that two distinct genotypes were shared by isolates from seven patients in a neonatal intensive care unit, suggesting two nosocomial clusters. Except for two catheter isolates from the index patients of each cluster, no consecutive isolates collected from each of the two clusters showed any microevolution during the 2- or 7-month cluster periods. The findings suggest that in catheter-related candidemia, some C. albicans strains undergo microevolution during catheter colonization.
[Chronic bilateral subdural hematomas].

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Are chronic bilateral subdural hematomas different from unilateral forms in terms of delay of diagnosis, clinical presentation and post-operative recovery or recurrence? METHODS Etiological, clinical, and radiological aspects and management outcome of bilateral chronic subdural hematomas consecutively managed from 1990 to 1995 were retrospectively analyzed and compared with unilateral forms managed in the same neurosurgical unit during the same period of time. RESULTS There were 236 cases. Bilateral subdural hematomas occurred in 41 patients (17.4%). A good outcome was obtained in 97.5% of the cases and morbidity was 14.6%. The differences significantly observed between unilateral and bilateral subdural hematomas were duration of the prediagnostic period, pneumatoceles and recurrence rates (12%). Recurrences were all observed during the first postoperative month and treated with the same initial standardized procedure. The rate of infection or epileptic seizures was low. CONCLUSIONS There are few limited differences between uni- and bilateral chronic subdural hematomas. In the latter, a possible correlation between the duration of prediagnostic period and an increased rate of recurrence could be explained by poorer cerebral reexpansion. The overall prognosis of bilateral hematomas is comparable with that observed in unilateral forms. A simple and routinely used burr hole procedure either under local or general anesthesia associated with closed drainage is a safe surgical procedure for either bilateral or unilateral forms and can be performed in all the cases including recurrences. Systematic antiepileptic drugs or antibiotherapy are unnecessary in the medical management of chronic subdural hematomas. One late delayed postoperative clinical control seems to be sufficient.