Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experience: Rethinking RRC State Machine Optimization in Light of Recent Advancements

Broadband mobile networks utilize a radio resource control (RRC) state machine to allocate scarce radio resources. Current implementations introduce high latencies and cross-layer degradation. Recently, the RRC enhancements, continuous packet connectivity (CPC) and the enhanced forward access channel (Enhanced FACH), have emerged in UMTS. We study the availability and performance of these enhancements on a network serving a market with a population in the millions. Our experience in the wild shows these enhancements offer significant reductions in latency, mobile device energy consumption, and improved end user experience. We develop new over-the-air measurements that resolve existing limitations in measuring RRC parameters. We find CPC provides significant benefits with minimal resource costs, prompting us to rethink past optimization strategies. We examine the cross-layer performance of CPC and Enhanced FACH, concluding that CPC provides reductions in mobile device energy consumption for many applications. While the performance increase of HS-FACH is substantial, cross-layer performance is limited by the legacy uplink random access channel (RACH), and we conclude full support of Enhanced FACH is necessary to benefit most applications. Given that UMTS growth will exceed LTE for several more years and the greater worldwide deployment of UMTS, our quantitative results should be of great interest to network operators adding capacity to these networks. Finally, these results provide new insights for application developers wishing to optimize performance with these RRC enhancements.
Observational Studies of Early-Type Overcontact Binaries: TU Muscae

We present new spectroscopic and photometric data on the early-type overcontact binary TU Muscae. The analysis of the spectroscopic data shows that the line of sight to the system crosses three kinematically sharp and well-separated interstellar reddening sources and that the stars rotate synchronously. We present new radial velocities that are in good agreement with earlier optical velocities and, thus, do not confirm the systematically smaller velocities obtained from IUE spectra. The optical velocities are analyzed simultaneously with the photometric data to derive accurate absolute dimensions for the binary components. The results show that TU Mus consists of an O7.5 primary with M1 = 23.5 ± 0.8 M⊙ and R1 = 7.48 ± 0.08 R⊙ and an O9.5 secondary with M2 = 15.3 ± 0.4 M⊙ and R2 = 6.15 ± 0.07 R⊙ in an overcontact configuration, and that the orbital period has remained constant over the three decades covered by the observations. These results might imply that the mass transfer seen in late-type overcontact binaries does not occur in their early-type counterparts.
Pulmonary administration of gentamicin during liquid ventilation in a newborn lamb lung injury model.

OBJECTIVES Newborns with pulmonary infection frequently present with acute lung injury leading to ventilation/perfusion abnormalities in which intravenous delivery of antibiotics to the lung can be suboptimal. Tidal liquid ventilation (TLV) has been shown to be an effective means for delivering drugs directly to the pulmonary system. The objective of this study was to compare, with lung injury, antibiotic delivery achieved by conventional techniques (gas ventilation and intravenous gentamicin) with that using pulmonary administration of drug (PAD) during TLV. METHODS Twelve newborn lambs with an acid lung injury were randomized to receive gentamicin either intravenously during gas ventilation or via PAD during TLV using LiquiVent (Alliance Pharmaceutical Corporation, San Diego, CA, and Hoechst-Marion Roussel, Bridgewater, NJ) perfluorochemical. Gentamicin (5 mg/kg) was administered over 1 minute, and serum levels were obtained at 15-minute intervals. Arterial blood gases and pulmonary mechanics were measured. Ventilation efficiency index and arterial/alveolar oxygen ratio were calculated. Lung-tissue gentamicin levels were measured 4 hours after administration and corrected to dry weight. RESULTS Serum gentamicin levels were similar in both groups. Lung gentamicin levels (micrograms/g) were significantly higher for TLV. Also, TLV resulted in significantly more of the total delivered dose in the lung after 4 hours. Ventilation efficiency index and arterial/alveolar oxygen ratios were significantly higher for TLV. CONCLUSIONS In this lung injury model, both methods achieved equivalent serum gentamicin levels with higher lung levels using PAD during TLV. This study suggests that TLV may provide an effective vehicle for gentamicin delivery in infants with severe pulmonary infection and ventilation/perfusion abnormalities.
Converging voice, video and data in WLAN with QoS support

Providing quality of service (QoS) for converging traffic in wireless local area network (WLAN) is still a major issue for the researchers and industries. Due to the limited bandwidth and exposure to unpredictable interferences in a wireless environment, efficient management and optimization of the access protocols are essential to provide acceptable QoS for real-time traffic and fairness to best-effort traffic. In this paper, we investigate the throughput and delay performance of the legacy IEEE 802.11 and the 802.11e when carrying converging data in WLAN. We evaluate our recently proposed protocol known as wireless token network protocol (WTN) and show that WTN successfully increases performance of converging traffic in WLAN by, first, decreasing the size of the frames and subframes of the MAC header, and second, by implementing centralized polling to reduce collisions of packets.
A short-term supplementation of pregnant women before delivery does not improve significantly the vitamin E status of neonates--low efficiency of the vitamin E placental transfer.

Little is known about lipid-soluble vitamin placental transfer. We supplemented ten pregnant women ranging in age from 26 to 38 years with vitamin E at a daily dose of 1 g dl-alpha-tocopherol acetate for 3 days before delivery. All pregnancies ranged from 37 to 39 weeks of gestation at the time of the study. Maternal blood was first drawn during the week preceding supplementation and then just before the delivery by hysterotomy. Neonatal blood was from cord at birth. Supplementation dramatically increased the plasma and red blood cell vitamin E of the mothers. This was true whatever the expression of the vitamin E content, i.e., plasma lipid-normalized or non-normalized vitamin E, and red blood cell vitamin E related to volume of packed cells or to membrane-phospholipid phosphorus. In contrast, the plasma vitamin E content was very low in neonates (3.51 +/- 0.38 mg/L) and did not significantly differ from that reported in a previous paper, where plasma was drawn from fetal cord blood of pregnant non-supplemented women belonging to the same geographical population (Cachia et al., Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 1995; 173: 42-51). This strongly suggests that the transfer of vitamin E through the placental barrier is very low. That the plasma lipid-normalized levels of mothers before supplementation and of neonates did not significantly differ also suggests that the paucity of lipids in the circulating blood of neonates is the cause of the restricted amount of plasma vitamin E. Therefore, the low level of vitamin E in neonates may result from both low maternal placental transfer and neonatal lipid transport peculiarities.
Cross‐Talk among Noradrenaline, Adenosine and Protein Kinase C in the Mechanisms of Ischemic Preconditioning in Rabbits

Summary: To date, there are two pathways discussed as a mechanism of ischemic preconditioning. Activation of protein kinase C by ischemic preconditioning increases adenosine release. The increased adenosine further activates protein kinase C through adenosine A1 receptors, and activated protein kinase C induces an infarct size‐reducing effect through the opening of KATP channels (pathway I). Meanwhile, activation of the &agr;1b‐adrenoceptor through increased interstitial noradrenaline by ischemic preconditioning is also associated with the ischemic preconditioning effect. However, the exact pathway of this is unknown, although it is postulated that protein kinase C and adenosine are cross‐talking. Myocardial interstitial noradrenaline levels were measured in Japanese white rabbits using a microdialysis technique. Ischemic preconditioning was elicited by a single episode of 5 min ischemia and 5 min reperfusion. The infarct size was measured in rabbits subjected to 30 min ischemia and 48 h reperfusion. An increase in interstitial noradrenaline by ischemic preconditioning was not inhibited by an adenosine A1 receptor blocker (1,3‐dipropyl‐8‐cyclopentylxanthine), but was inhibited by an adenosine A2 receptor blocker (3,7‐dimethyl‐1‐(2‐ propynyl) xanthine) or protein kinase C inhibitors (staurosporine and polymyxin B). Interstitial noradrenaline was increased by an adenosine A2 receptor agonist (CGS21680) and the increase was inhibited by a protein kinase C inhibitor. The infarct size‐reducing effect of ischemic preconditioning was inhibited by a selective &agr;1b‐adrenoceptor blocker (chloroethylclonidine) or a protein kinase C inhibitor, and that of tyramine, an inducer of noradrenaline, was inhibited by protein kinase C inhibitor. This suggests the presence of pathway II, indicating ischemic preconditioning→ activation of protein kinase C → adenosine release → pre‐synaptic adenosine A2 receptors→ activation of protein kinase C in sympathetic nerve→ noradrenaline &agr;1b‐adrenoceptor→ activation of protein kinase C in myocytes→ infarct size‐reducing effect. In addition, the ischemic preconditioning effect on infarct size was not inhibited by 1,3‐dipropyl‐8‐cyclopentylxanthine, but was inhibited by 3,7‐dimethyl‐1‐(2‐propynyl) xanthine or chloroethylclonidine, suggesting the greater importance of pathway II compared with pathway I. Thus, pathway II plays an important role in the pathogenesis of the infarct size‐reducing effect in ischemic preconditioning.
Three‐dimensional flow dynamics around deflectors

Many river rehabilitation projects to enhance the aquatic habitat focus on the creation of pool and riffle habitat by the implementation of flow deflectors, with various degrees of successes and failures. A more comprehensive understanding of the complex three‐dimensional flow dynamics that induces scour around instream structures is required for a more effective design. The objective of this study is to examine the three‐dimensional mean and turbulent flow characteristics around paired flow deflectors for various types of deflector design in a laboratory flume. Three deflector angles (45°, 90° and 135°) and two deflector heights (with flow under and over the deflector height) were tested over a smooth (plexiglas) bed and a sand bed. Three‐dimensional velocity measurements were taken with an acoustic Doppler velocimeter at several planform positions at two heights above the bed. Results show that the 90° deflectors create the most important disturbance in the mean flow field, in turbulence intensity and bed shear stress. There is, however, a marked difference in the spatial distribution of the mean and turbulent parameters over a mobile bed and over a smooth, fixed bed. This stresses the importance of understanding the feedback between bed topography and flow dynamics and limits the applicability of conclusions drawn from plane bed experiments to natural rivers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Using aspectC to improve the modularity of path-specific customization in operating system code

Layered architecture in operating system code is often compromised by execution path-specific customizations such as prefetching, page replacement and scheduling strategies. Path-specific customizations are difficult to modularize in a layered architecture because they involve dynamic context passing and layer violations. Effectively they are vertically integrated slices through the layers. An initial experiment using an aspect-oriented programming language to refactor prefetching in the FreeBSD operating system kernal shows significant benefits, including easy (un)pluggability of prefetching modes, independent development of prefetching modes, and overall improved comprehensibility.
Prandial Insulin Dosing Using the Carbohydrate Counting Technique in Hospitalized Patients With Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To compare a modified fixed meal dosing strategy to flexible meal dosing in hospitalized patients with type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Patients (N = 126) with refractory hyperglycemia or requiring at least 20 units of insulin per day were randomly assigned to fixed meal dosing (including withholding the dose if less than half of the meal tray was consumed) or flexible meal dosing based upon carbohydrate intake. The inpatient diabetes management team made all treatment adjustments. Outcomes included day 3 mean glucose, 72-h glucose trend analysis, hypoglycemia (<3.9 mmol/L), and inpatient diabetes treatment satisfaction. RESULTS The mean glucose on day 3 was 9.5 and 8.8 mmol/L in the fixed and flexible meal groups, respectively (P = 0.26). The frequency of hypoglycemia was 23 and 39% overall in the fixed and flexible meal groups (P = 0.08), with half of events occurring in the morning. There was a wide range of carbohydrate intake (median 51 g/meal, 10–90% range 26–72 g on day 3). The fixed dose group required significantly more prandial insulin overall and more correction insulin over time. There was no difference in composite treatment satisfaction or dosing miscalculations between groups. CONCLUSIONS A fixed meal dosing strategy provided similar glucose control as flexible meal dosing, when managed by an inpatient diabetes treatment team. However, a larger sample size would be needed to definitively evaluate a treatment effect of flexible meal dosing in the hospital. Further study is needed to improve the delivery of bolus insulin in hospitalized patients.
Sensitization of Isolated Canine Coronary Arteries to Calcium Ions after Exposure to Cholesterol

The abundance of membrane cholesterol is an important determinant of the functional properties of biomembranes. To determine whether arterial smooth muscle acquires altered contractile properties in a high cholesterol environment, isolated canine coronary arteries were exposed to cholesterol in stable aqueous solution. Cholesterol, 10−12 to 10−10 M, was an efficacious vasoconstrictor, as maximum contractions equaled those obtained with 15 mM KC1. Antiadrenergic interventions, including chemical sympathectomy in vivo with 6-hydroxydopamine and α-nβ adrenergic blockade with phentolamine and L-propranolol (both 10−6 M), did not significantly attenuate the contractions. However, responses to cholesterol were abolished completely by (±)-verapamil (10−6 M). Cholesterol in picomolar concentration enhanced the constrictor effects of CaCli and KC1, both in the presence and absence of a- and /J-adrenergic blockade. Increases in tone in response to graded elevations in the CaCl2 concentration (0-2 mM) were augmented up to 1.5-fold by 10−12 M cholesterol (P< 0.01). Results indicate that cholesterol sensitizes isolated coronary arteries to external Ca2+ by a nonadrenergic mechanism. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that acquisition of membrane cholesterol may alter the contractile properties of coronary arterial smooth muscle, a phenomenon that could play a role in the pathophysiology of atherosclerotic heart disease. Ore Ret 45: 479-486, 1979
Dietary Carotenoids Increase Yellow Nonpigment Coloration of Female Convict Cichlids (Amantitlania nigrofasciata)

The carotenoid trade-off hypothesis states that diet-derived carotenoids are traded off among competing physiological demands, but this statement is rarely tested in ornamented females. In this study, reverse sexually dimorphic convict cichlids (Amantitlania nigrofasciata) were fed diets containing carotenoid supplementation at three biologically relevant levels for 12 wk. This treatment was followed by spectral, microscopic, and chemical analysis to determine how females allocated the pigments to tissues and how those decisions affected their ventral patch coloration. Yellow coloration of the integument increased with carotenoids in the diet, as did carotenoids deposited in ovaries, but diet did not change carotenoid allocation to skin. The results of this study suggest that females have the ability to modulate their expression of yellow coloration via an alternative coloration strategy. Gonadosomatic index and tank environment were also related to ventral patch color, supporting previous behavioral work highlighting the importance of social selection in reinforcing signal honesty.
Mindfulness-based Intervention for Perinatal Grief Education and Reduction among Poor Women in Chhattisgarh, India: a Pilot Study.

INTRODUCTION Stillbirth is a significant public health problem in low-to-middle-income countries and results in perinatal grief, often with negative psychosocial impact. In low-resource settings, such as Chhattisgarh, India, where needs are high, it is imperative to utilize low-cost, effective interventions. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an empirically sound intervention that has been utilized for a broad range of physical and mental health problems, and is adaptable to specific populations. The main objective of this pilot study was to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of a shortened, culturally adapted mindfulness-based intervention to address complex grief after stillbirth. METHODS We used an observational, pre-post-6-week post study design. The study instrument was made up of descriptive demographic questions and validated scales and was administered as a structured interview due to low literacy rates. We used a community participatory approach to culturally adapt the five-week mindfulness-based intervention and delivered it through two trained local nurses. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses explored study outcomes as well as acceptability and feasibility of the intervention. RESULTS 29 women with a history of stillbirth enrolled, completed the pretest and began the intervention; 26 completed the five-week intervention and post-test (89.7%), and 23 completed the six-week follow-up assessment (88.5%). Pretest results included elevated psychological symptoms and high levels of perinatal grief, including the active grief, difficulty coping, and despair subscales. General linear modeling repeated measures was used to explore posttest and six-week follow up changes from baseline, controlling for significantly correlated demographic variables. These longitudinal results included significant reduction in psychological symptoms; four of the five facets of mindfulness changed in the desired direction, two significantly; as well as significant reduction in overall perinatal grief and on each of the three subscales. DISCUSSION The shortened, culturally adapted, mindfulness-based intervention pilot study was well received and had very low attrition. We also found significant reductions of perinatal grief and mental health symptoms over time, as well as a high degree of practice of mindfulness skills by participants. This study not only sheds light on the tremendous mental health needs among rural women of various castes who have experienced stillbirth in Chhattisgarh, it also points to a promising effective intervention with potential to be taken to scale for wider delivery.
Effects of atmospheric modeling errors on determinations of baseline vectors from very long baseline interferometry

We have performed a series of special very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) experiments that involve a significant fraction of group delay measurements made at very low elevation angles. Twenty-two such low-elevation experiments, each ∼26 hours in duration, were performed over a period of ∼2.5 years using VLBI antennas at the Goldstone complex in California and at Westford, Massachusetts. The purpose of these experiments was to expose and study errors in the formula for the elevation angle dependence of the atmospheric propagation delay, called the “mapping function. ” Errors in this formula are a principal source of error in estimates of vertical coordinate of site position and make a significant contribution to the error in estimates of baseline length for transcontinental and longer baselines. For the low-elevation experiments, estimates of baseline length had a root-mean-square (RMS) residual about the mean value of 7 mm, or about 1.7 parts per billion for this 3900-km baseline. This scatter is about 20% greater than that calculated by propagating the random measurement noise through a Kaiman filter, which includes the noise contributions of the atmospheres and hydrogen maser “clocks” as well. We used specialized statistical tests to determine the contribution of mapping function errors to the estimates of vertical coordinate of site position and found this contribution to be less than 19 mm RMS. This value is roughly consistent with the observed larger-than-predicted scatter of the estimates of baseline length. We further found that for the 1–2 month spacing of our experiments, the mapping function errors do not exhibit a coherent annual signature but appear to be random in the long term.
Exposure to nuclear antigens contributes to the induction of humoral autoimmunity during tumour necrosis factor alpha blockade

Objective: Type I interferons and apoptotic particles contribute to antinuclear autoimmunity in experimental models. This study assessed whether similar mechanisms contribute to break peripheral B-cell tolerance in humans by studying the induction of antinuclear antibodies by tumour necrosis factor blockade in spondyloarthritis. Methods: 40 spondyloarthritis patients treated with infliximab or etanercept and 20 renal cell carcinoma patients treated with sorafenib were studied. Serum antinucleosome IgM and nucleosomes were measured by ELISA. Type I interferon serum activity was measured using a functional reporter cell assay. Synovial apoptosis was assessed by terminal transferase nick end-labelling (TUNEL) assay and anti-active caspase-3 immunostaining. Complement was measured by nephelometry. Results: Despite a similar clinical improvement and reduction of synovial inflammation, antinucleosome IgM were induced by infliximab but not etanercept. This induction did not correlate with type I interferon activity, which was transiently downmodulated by infliximab but persistently upregulated by etanercept. In contrast, antinucleosome IgM levels did correlate with serum nucleosome levels, which were significantly upregulated by infliximab but not by etanercept treatment. This increase in serum nucleosome levels was not directly related to massive cell death, but rather to a decrease of complement 3 and 4 serum levels during infliximab treatment. Conclusion: Infliximab and etanercept have a differential effect on both type I interferon activity and nucleosome levels. Only elevated serum nucleosomes relate to the induction of antinucleosome antibodies after infliximab treatment.