Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modal sequencing and dynamic emission properties of an 8-h Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope observation of pulsar B1822−09

The research presented here examines an 8-h observation of pulsar B1822−09, taken by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. B1822−09 has been known to exhibit two stable emission modes, the B-mode, where the precursor (PC) ‘turns-on’, and the Q-mode, which is defined by interpulse (IP) emission. The results of our analysis, of this extremely long observation, have shown that B1822−09 exhibits at least three other emission behaviours that have not been seen before in other similar pulsars or in other observations of B1822−09. These three behaviours can be described as Q-mode emission with PC emission, B-mode emission with IP emission and instances where both the PC and IP are ‘on’ when transitioning from one mode to the other. The pulse structure has been found to be more complex than previously thought. The main pulse (MP) has an inner cone/core triple (T) configuration together with a central sightline traverse. The IP is a 15°-wide region that along with the MP originate from an open dipolar field. The PC emission comes from a still unknown source. We argue that the PC emission arises within the same region as the MP, but likely comes from higher in the magnetosphere. The Q-mode has a very clear fluctuation that occurs in both the MP and IP at 46.6-P1 which is associated with drifting subpulses. Furthermore, we have found that the B-mode, which has previously never shown any detectable modulations at this radio frequency, has a very weak feature at 70-P1. Coincidently we find the ratio of the B-mode ‘P3’ of 70-P1 to its Q-mode counterpart of 46.6-P1 is very nearly 3/2, which seems to imply a carousel of three MP ‘sparks’ in the Q-mode and two sparks in the B-mode. The circulation times of the two modes have been found to be virtually equal at 140-P1, which allows for this interpretation of the fluctuation features as ‘sparks’. Overall, our analyses strongly suggest that mode changes allow information transfer between the two magnetic polar regions and contribute to global magnetospheric changes.
Experimental Evidence of Time-Delay Concealment in a DFB Laser With Dual-Chaotic Optical Injections

The experimental evidence and characterization of time-delay concealment in a semiconductor laser (SL) with dual-chaotic optical injections (DCOIs) are reported. Autocorrelation function and permutation entropy are employed to extract the time-delay signature (TDS). Our experimental results show that both TDSs associated with the dynamics of master lasers or only one of the two TDSs can be concealed in the SL with DCOI, depending on the choices of the injection ratio and frequency detuning of the two injection lights. The experiments are in good agreement with the simulations. Furthermore, the possibility to use the chaotic signal with no obvious TDS generated by the SL with DCOI for high-speed random number generation is experimentally demonstrated.
Study of Broadband Cryogenic DC-Contact RF MEMS Switches

A dielectric-free DC-contact RF microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switch is designed and tested at room temperature and cryogenic temperatures. The switch demonstrates a 1-¿ contact resistance and 2 fF up-state capacitance at room temperature, with an insertion-loss less than 0.4 dB up to 50 GHz and less than 0.9 dB up to 75 GHz. The isolation is better than 24 dB up to 50 GHz and 18 dB up to 75 GHz at room temperature. At a cryogenic temperature of 1.6 K, the switch has an insertion loss less than 0.6 dB with isolation better than 24 dB up to 50 GHz. The effects of cryogenic temperatures on deformation of the cantilever beam, actuation voltage, and RF performance have been noted. The theoretical and experimental results of the switch performance are presented and compared.
Educational Upgrading and Returns to Skills in Latin America: Evidence from a Supply-Demand Framework, 1990-2010

It has been argued that a factor behind the decline in income inequality in Latin America in the 2000s was the educational upgrading of its labor force. Between 1990 and 2010, the proportion of the labor force in the region with at least secondary education increased from 40 to 60 percent. Concurrently, returns to secondary education completion fell throughout the past two decades, while the 2000s saw a reversal in the increase in the returns to tertiary education experienced in the 1990s. This paper studies the evolution of wage differentials and the trends in the supply of workers by educational level for 16 Latin American countries between 1990 and 2000. The analysis estimates the relative contribution of supply and demand factors behind recent trends in skill premia for tertiary and secondary educated workers. Supply-side factors seem to have limited explanatory power relative to demand-side factors, and are only relevant to explain part of the fall in wage premia for high-school graduates. Although there is significant heterogeneity in individual country experiences, on average the trend reversal in labor demand in the 2000s can be partially attributed to the recent boom in commodity prices that could favor the unskilled (non-tertiary educated) workforce, although employment patterns by sector suggest that other within-sector forces are also at play, such as technological diffusion or skill mismatches that may reduce the labor productivity of highly-educated workers.
Identity Authentication over Noisy Channels

Identity authentication is the process of verifying users’ validity. Unlike classical key-based authentications, which are built on noiseless channels, this paper introduces a general analysis and design framework for identity authentication over noisy channels. Specifically, the authentication scenarios of single time and multiple times are investigated. For each scenario, the lower bound on the opponent’s success probability is derived, and it is smaller than the classical identity authentication’s. In addition, it can remain the same, even if the secret key is reused. Remarkably, the Cartesian authentication code proves to be helpful for hiding the secret key to maximize the secrecy performance. Finally, we show a potential application of this authentication technique.
Acupoint catgut embedding therapy with moxibustion reduces the risk of diabetes in obese women

Background: Obesity is a major health problem worldwide for which conventional therapy efficacy is limited. Traditional Chinese medicine, particularly body acupoint stimulation, provides an alternative, effective, and safe therapy for this medical challenge. The present study was designed to compare the effects of distinct methods to stimulate the same set of acupoints, on anthropometric and biochemical parameters in obese women. Materials and Methods: Ninety-nine obese women were randomly assigned to six groups of treatment: Acupuncture with moxibustion, long needle acupuncture with moxibustion, electroacupuncture (EA), EA with moxibustion, embedded catgut with moxibustion (CGM) and sham acupuncture as control. Obesity-related parameters, including body weight, body mass index (BMI), waist and hip circumferences, waist/hip ratio, biochemical parameters (triglycerides, cholesterol, glucose, insulin) and homeostasis model of assessment - insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) index, were determined before and after each treatment. Results: Body weight and BMI were significantly reduced in response to all treatments. Interestingly, acupoint catgut embedding therapy combined with moxibustion was the only treatment that produced a significant reduction in body weight (3.1 ± 0.2 kg, P < 0.001), BMI (1.3 ± 0.1 kg/m2, P < 0.001), insulin (3.5 ± 0.8 mcU/ml, P < 0.1) and HOMA-IR (1.4 ± 0.2 units, P < 0.01) in comparison with sham group. Furthermore, this treatment was able to bring back obese women to a state of insulin sensitivity, indicating that acupoint catgut embedding therapy combined with moxibustion could be useful as a complementary therapy to reduce the risk of diabetes associated to obesity in women. Conclusion: Overall, our results confirmed the effectiveness of acupoints stimulation to assist in the control of body weight in women. They also highlighted the more favorable effects of embedded catgut-moxibustion combination that may be due to the extended and consistent stimulation of acupoints.
Diffusion-weighted MR imaging in early diagnosis and prognosis of hypoglycemia.

SUMMARY We describe 2 cases of diffusion-weighted (DW) MR imaging in hypoglycemic coma. One patient, with diffuse cortical lesions, had a poor outcome, but the other, with transient white matter abnormalities, made a complete recovery. The distinctive patterns of DW MR imaging abnormalities in hypoglycemic patients should be recognized and may be a predictor of clinical outcome.
Ultrasound Doppler estimates of femoral artery blood flow during dynamic knee extensor exercise in humans.

Ultrasound Doppler has been used to measure arterial inflow to a human limb during intermittent static contractions. The technique, however, has neither been thoroughly validated nor used during dynamic exercise. In this study, the inherent problems of the technique have been addressed, and the accuracy was improved by storing the velocity tracings continuously and calculating the flow in relation to the muscle contraction-relaxation phases. The femoral arterial diameter measurements were reproducible with a mean coefficient of variation within the subjects of 1.2 +/- 0.2%. The diameter was the same whether the probe was fixed or repositioned at rest (10.8 +/- 0.2 mm) or measured during dynamic exercise. The blood velocity was sampled over the width of the diameter and the parabolic velocity profile, since sampling in the center resulted in an overestimation by 22.6 +/- 9.1% (P < 0.02). The femoral arterial Doppler blood flow increased linearly (r = 0.997, P < 0.001) with increasing load [Doppler blood flow = 0.080 . load (W) + 1.446 l/min] and was correlated positively with simultaneous thermodilution venous outflow measurements (r = 0.996, P < 0.001). The two techniques were linearly related (Doppler = thermodilution . 0.985 + 0.071 l/min; r = 0.996, P < 0.001), with a coefficient of variation of approximately 6% for both methods.
Prevalence of reported sleep disturbances in a general adult population and their relationship to obstructive airways diseases.

In order to determine the prevalence of reported sleep disturbances in a general adult population and the relationship of these complaints to age, gender and coexistent obstructive airways disease, 2,187 subjects in the Tucson Epidemiologic Study of Obstructive Airways Disease were surveyed in 1985 regarding their sleep symptoms. At least one symptom of disturbed sleep was present in 41.4 percent of all subjects. Women generally reported a significantly higher prevalence of both disorders of initiating and maintaining sleep (DIMS) and nightmares (NM)(p less than .001). Before age 64 years, the prevalence of complaints of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) among men and women were similar. However, the frequency of EDS was significantly higher in men than women after age 64 years. Prevalence of at least one sleep symptom and DIMS increased with advancing age. The prevalence of nightmares appeared to be age-related only among women, who displayed a declining prevalence with advancing age. EDS increased only after age 64 years. There was a significant relationship between DIMS and EDS with coexistent chronic bronchitis, concomitant asthma and chronic bronchitis, and emphysema, but not asthma as a solitary diagnosis. Nightmares were reported with much greater frequency among subjects with asthma, asthma and chronic bronchitis, and emphysema but not in subjects with chronic bronchitis alone. The presence of coexistent asthma and chronic bronchitis was associated with particularly high prevalence of complaints of DIMS, EDS and nightmares. We conclude that, in the general adult population, sleep disorder symptoms increase with age and usually are greater in women. Furthermore, there is an increased prevalence of sleep symptoms among adults with chronic airways obstructive disease, especially those with coexistent asthma and chronic bronchitis.
Kernelized Rényi distance for speaker recognition

Speaker recognition systems classify a test signal as a speaker or an imposter by evaluating a matching score between input and reference signals. We propose a new information theoretic approach for computation of the matching score using the Rényi entropy. The proposed entropic distance, the Kernelized Rényi distance (KRD), is formulated in a non-parametric way and the resulting measure is efficiently evaluated in a parallelized fashion on a graphical processor. The distance is then adapted as a scoring function and its performance compared with other popular scoring approaches in a speaker identification and speaker verification framework.
JFLEG: A Fluency Corpus and Benchmark for Grammatical Error Correction

We present a new parallel corpus, JHU FLuency-Extended GUG corpus (JFLEG) for developing and evaluating grammatical error correction (GEC). Unlike other corpora, it represents a broad range of language proficiency levels and uses holistic fluency edits to not only correct grammatical errors but also make the original text more native sounding. We describe the types of corrections made and benchmark four leading GEC systems on this corpus, identifying specific areas in which they do well and how they can improve. JFLEG fulfills the need for a new gold standard to properly assess the current state of GEC.
Analysis of Safety from a Human Clinical Trial with Pterostilbene

Objectives. The purpose of this trial was to evaluate the safety of long-term pterostilbene administration in humans. Methodology. The trial was a prospective, randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled intervention trial enrolling patients with hypercholesterolemia (defined as a baseline total cholesterol ≥200 mg/dL and/or baseline low-density lipoprotein cholesterol ≥100 mg/dL). Eighty subjects were divided equally into one of four groups: (1) pterostilbene 125 mg twice daily, (2) pterostilbene 50 mg twice daily, (3) pterostilbene 50 mg + grape extract (GE) 100 mg twice daily, and (4) matching placebo twice daily for 6–8 weeks. Safety markers included biochemical and subjective measures. Linear mixed models were used to estimate primary safety measure treatment effects. Results. The majority of patients completed the trial (91.3%). The average age was 54 years. The majority of patients were females (71%) and Caucasians (70%). There were no adverse drug reactions (ADRs) on hepatic, renal, or glucose markers based on biochemical analysis. There were no statistically significant self-reported or major ADRs. Conclusion. Pterostilbene is generally safe for use in humans up to 250 mg/day.
Further evidence for the presence of a neutron star in 4U 2206+54. INTEGRAL and VLA observations

The majority of High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs) behave as X-ray pulsars, revealing that they contain a magne- tised neutron star. Among the four HMXBs not showing pulsations, and that do not show the characteristics of accreting bl ack holes, there is the unusual HMXB 4U 2206+54. Here we present contemporaneous high-energy and radio observations of this system conducted with INTEGRALand the VLA in order to unveil its nature. The high-energy spectra show clear indications of the presence of an absorption feature at∼32 keV. This is the third high-energy observatory which reveals marginal evidence of this feature, giving strong support to the existence of a cyc lotron resonance scattering feature, which implies a magnetic field of 3.6×10 12 G. On the other hand, the source is not detected at centimetre radio wavelengths with a 3σ upper limit of 0.039 mJy. The expected radio emission for an accreting black hole in the low/hard state, inferred from X-ray flux measurements, would be at least 60 times greater than the measured upper limit. Both results firmly indicate that, in spite of the absence of pul sations, 4U 2206+54 hosts a magnetic accreting neutron star, the first one not t o be observed as an X-ray pulsar.
Combination Across Domains: An MEG Investigation into the Relationship between Mathematical, Pictorial, and Linguistic Processing

Debates surrounding the evolution of language often hinge upon its relationship to cognition more generally and many investigations have attempted to demark the boundary between the two. Though results from these studies suggest that language may recruit domain-general mechanisms during certain types of complex processing, the domain-generality of basic combinatorial mechanisms that lie at the core of linguistic processing is still unknown. Our previous work (Bemis and Pylkkänen, 2011, 2012) used magnetoencephalography to isolate neural activity associated with the simple composition of an adjective and a noun (“red boat”) and found increased activity during this processing localized to the left anterior temporal lobe (lATL), ventro-medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and left angular gyrus (lAG). The present study explores the domain-generality of these effects and their associated combinatorial mechanisms through two parallel non-linguistic combinatorial tasks designed to be as minimal and natural as the linguistic paradigm. In the first task, we used pictures of colored shapes to elicit combinatorial conceptual processing similar to that evoked by the linguistic expressions and find increased activity again localized to the vmPFC during combinatorial processing. This result suggests that a domain-general semantic combinatorial mechanism operates during basic linguistic composition, and that activity generated by its processing localizes to the vmPFC. In the second task, we recorded neural activity as subjects performed simple addition between two small numerals. Consistent with a wide array of recent results, we find no effects related to basic addition that coincide with our linguistic effects and instead find increased activity localized to the intraparietal sulcus. This result suggests that the scope of the previously identified linguistic effects is restricted to compositional operations and does not extend generally to all tasks that are merely similar in form.
Rat Endocrine Pancreatic Development in Relation to Two Homeobox Gene Products (Pdx-1 and Nkx 6.1)

We studied the distribution of the homeodomain proteins Pdx-1 and Nkx 6.1 in the developing rat pancreas. During early development, nuclear staining for both Pdx-1 and Nkx 6.1 occurred in most epithelial cells of the pancreatic anlage. Subsequently, Nkx 6.1 became more β-cell-restricted, and Pdx-1 also occurred in other islet cell types and in the duodenal epithelium. During early pancreatic development, cells co-storing insulin and glucagon were regularly detected. The vast majority of these did not possess nuclear staining for either Pdx-1 or Nkx 6.1. Subsequently, cells storing insulin only appeared. Such cells displayed strongly Pdx-1- and Nkx 6.1-positive nuclei. Therefore, Nkx 6.1, like Pdx-1, may be an important factor in pancreatic development and in mature insulin cell function.
Design, simulation and fabrication of a hollow core ARROW waveguide in glass substrate for optofluidic applications

The antiresonant reflecting optical waveguide (ARROW) with hollow core and liquid core are one of the most promising technologies in Lab-on-a-Chips and optofluidic research. Motivated by this, in this paper we present the design, simulation and fabrication processes of hollow core ARROW built in Corning glass substrates and utilizing Si3N4/SiO2 PECVD antiresonant reflecting multilayer films on the channel wall. Details about the TMM/FDM methodology developed for the simple and fast design of ARROW waveguides built with multilayer dielectric thin films deposited over rounded microchannels in glass substrates are exhibited. The preliminary results confirm the light confinement in the hollow core region of the fabricated waveguide structure but further experiment are needed to fully characterize the devices.
Total talar extrusion: a case report.

UNLABELLED Total talar extrusion is an extremely rare injury that occurs after a high-energy trauma. There are few reported cases in literature and there is no consensus as to the appropriate treatment of the extruded talus. Historically, the treatment options for open total talar dislocation have been limited to talectomy and fusion or reimplantation after thorough debridement. We report a case of an open dislocation of the talus with total talar extrusion. Immediate surgical debridement, reduction, and external fixation were performed under antibiotic coverage. Antibiotic-impregnated polymethylmethacrylate beads were implanted and the wound underwent a second debridement and delayed primary closure at 48 hours post injury. The patient remained in an external fixator for 6 weeks. She was subsequently placed in a cast and remained non-weight bearing for an additional 6 weeks. Her wound healed uneventfully and she was permitted to begin progressive weight bearing at 12 weeks. The patient did not develop an infection or avascular necrosis. Literature cites infection and avascular necrosis as the main complications associated with a talar extrusion. Good open fracture protocol can reduce the risk of infection. Reduction of the extruded talus is preferable to preserve function and maintain normal hindfoot anatomy. Talectomy should be reserved as a salvage procedure. LEVEL OF CLINICAL EVIDENCE 4.
Mo Piu minority language: data base, first steps and first experiments

This paper is a first contribution about the Mo Piu language and culture. This ethnic minority is settled in the mountains of the North Vietnam. This culture being not documented at all at the international level, its language is said ‘under-resourced’ in the point of view of the automatic processing. After a cultural, social and economical presentation of this minority, the paper focusses on the results of the first field ground undertaken in june 2009, and especially on the data basis, and the first experiments on the Mo Piu speech (method and preliminary results). The study in progression is concerning the domain of human recognition of melodic segments in order to try to find out 1° if this language is tonal or not 2° and if so, what are the tonal units.
Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments : First Results from TALIS Summary in English Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments : First Results from the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey Conditions for effective learning

OECD’s Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) provides the first internationally comparative perspective on the conditions of teaching and learning. With a focus on lower secondary education in both the public and private sectors, TALIS examines important aspects of professional development; teacher beliefs, attitudes and practices; teacher appraisal and feedback; and school leadership in the 23 participating countries. 1