Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blind Space-time Receivers for CDMA Communications 1

This chapter reviews space-time processing methods for CDMA mobile radio applications with emphasis on blind signal detection. We begin with a motivation for the use of blind space-time processing in CDMA. Next, we develop channel and signal models useful for blind processing. We follow this by considering rst space-time single user receivers (ST-RAKE) and then review some basic theory of blind ST-RAKE algorithms. The important problem of multi-user detection (MUD) is considered next which leads to a novel technique allowing the estimation of the minimum-mean-square error linear MUD. To appear in Spread-spectrum: Developments for the new millenium, Kluwer Acad. Publishers, sept. 1998 . This research was supported in part by ARPA. Support is provided by a DSO fellowship for B. C. Ng.
Plasma aldosterone levels during hospitalization are predictive of survival post-myocardial infarction.

AIMS Plasma aldosterone levels have been shown to be associated with adverse clinical outcomes after ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). We investigated whether aldosterone levels in patients presenting with STEMI or non-STEMI, are predictive of mortality during prolonged follow-up. METHODS AND RESULTS Aldosterone levels were assayed in plasma taken from 583 patients within 24-96 h following acute myocardial infarction (MI). The median plasma aldosterone level was 108 pmol/L and all values were below the upper limit of the normal range (800 pmol/L) except for five patients (0.9%). Aldosterone tertile was significantly associated with increasing plasma levels of NTproBNP (N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide), BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide), epinephrine, and endothelin-1 (P <or= 0.010), but not ANP (atrial natriuretic peptide). Patients in the lowest aldosterone tertile had a significantly better survival, over 5 years' follow-up, than those in the upper two tertiles (P = 0.0023). Multivariable analysis showed that aldosterone was a significant predictor of survival following adjustment for established predictors (tertile 1 vs. tertile 3; hazard ratio = 2.19, P = 0.018). Patients with above-median levels of both NTproBNP and aldosterone had significantly greater mortality than the remaining patients (above-median 39.8%, other patients >or=25.3% mortality, P >or= 0.026). CONCLUSION Plasma aldosterone levels post-MI are independent predictors of survival and hospitalization for heart failure over a 5-year-follow-up period.
Exercise Training Could Improve the Cognitive Function in the Elderly

Increasing the lifespan of a population is often a marker of a country’s success. With the percentage of the population over 65 year of age increasing, maintaining the health and independence of this population is an ongoing concern. Advancing age is associated with an increasing in cognitive function that affects quality of life ultimately. Understanding potential adverse effects of aging on brain blood flow and cognitive ability may help to determine effective strategies to mitigate these effects on the aging population. Exercise may be one strategy to delay cognitive decline. Regular exercise has been found to improve cognitive ability, and this occurs through beneficial adaptations in vascular physiology and improved neurovascular coupling. In this review we mainly highlight the potential mechanisms of how the exercises regulate age-associated variables especially cognitive dysfunction.
Evaluation of Antibiotic Susceptibility of Gram-Positive Anaerobic Cocci Isolated from Cancer Patients of the N. N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center

In total, 81 nonduplicate gram-positive anaerobic cocci (GPAC) were involved in this study. The GPAC were isolated from samples collected from cancer patients between 2004 and 2014. Species identification was carried out by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). The majority of isolates were identified as Finegoldia magna (47%) and Peptoniphilus harei (28%). The susceptibility of six species of GPAC was determined for eight antibiotics according to E-test methodology. Furthermore, all isolates were susceptible to imipenem, vancomycin, and linezolid. Susceptibility to penicillin G, amoxicillin/clavulanate, metronidazole, ciprofloxacin, and levofloxacin varied for different species. One Finegoldia magna isolate was multidrug-resistant (i.e., parallel resistance to five antimicrobial agents, including metronidazole, was observed). Two Parvimonas micra isolates were highly resistant to metronidazole (MIC 256 μg/mL) but were sensitive to other tested antibiotics.
Trade Unionism in Africa as a Factor in Nation Building / LE SYNDICALISME EN AFRIQUE, BATISSEUR D'ETATS

The role of the trade unions in helping to build free and democratic societies in the newly emerging nations of Africa has not, perhaps, received all the attention it deserves. The fact that the present heads of government in Guinea, the Congo and, most recently, Tanganyika are former trade union leaders has, no doubt, had a passing mention in the press; but this is surely symptomatic of a tendency worthy of closer study. The general lack of knowledge of the African trade union movement is, of course, not surprising. It is something very new a mere stripling in comparison with, for example, such hoary veterans as the British trade union movement with its two centuries of history behind it. Yet in its relatively brief twenty-five years or so of existence, and especially in the last five years, it has passed through such kaleidoscopic and sometimes lightning changes as to baffle completely the ordinary outsider and even at times to take very much by surprise those most closely in touch with it. In the beginning a foreign importation, it has been continuously subject to a variety of conflicting pressures, both internal and external to the African continent, and in most countries is only just beginning to formulate any clear ideas on the aims, structure and methods of operation which really correspond to the needs and aspirations of the African workers themselves.
The successful internship : personal, professional, and civic development in experiential learning

THE SUCCESSFUL INTERNSHIP: PERSONAL, PROFESSIONAL, AND CIVIC DEVELOPMENT, 3e, offers you more than just a resource for how to find a position or how to interview; it addresses the concerns, emotions, needs, and unique personal challenges that are the essence of an internship or field experience and focuses on the internship as a vehicle for your development as a civic professional. The authors describe in detail the path of change you'll find yourself embarking on and the challenges you'll face along the way. The book's five-stage model of the internship process--anticipation, disillusionment, confrontation, competence, and culmination--places the material in a meaningful framework that lends structure to your understanding of the work you'll be doing.
Tag-Weighted Topic Model For Large-scale Semi-Structured Documents

To date, there have been massive Semi-Structured Documents (SSDs) during the evolution of the Internet. These SSDs contain both unstructured features (e.g., plain text) and metadata (e.g., tags). Most previous works focused on modeling the unstructured text, and recently, some other methods have been proposed to model the unstructured text with specific tags. To build a general model for SSDs remains an important problem in terms of both model fitness and efficiency. We propose a novel method to model the SSDs by a so-called Tag-Weighted Topic Model (TWTM). TWTM is a framework that leverages both the tags and words information, not only to learn the document-topic and topic-word distributions, but also to infer the tag-topic distributions for text mining tasks. We present an efficient variational inference method with an EM algorithm for estimating the model parameters. Meanwhile, we propose three large-scale solutions for our model under the MapReduce distributed computing platform for modeling large-scale SSDs. The experimental results show the effectiveness, efficiency and the robustness by comparing our model with the state-of-the-art methods in document modeling, tags prediction and text classification. We also show the performance of the three distributed solutions in terms of time and accuracy on document modeling.
Dynamic Models of Car Ownership a the Household Level

This article reports on a study of panel data on car ownership at the household level, with the goal of describing the level of persistence over time in car ownership, covering a period from 1992 to 2001. The models used estimate separate car ownership models for households with one adult (single males and single females) and households with two adults (couples). The authors describe these models, and present their estimation results, including estimates of average levels of state dependence and elasticities with respect to income and car cost. The descriptive analysis of the change in car ownership shows strong persistence over time. For example, only 24% of couples with zero or one car changed car ownership status over the ten year period. Of these 24%, only one change into or out of car ownership was typically observed for each household. Change in income appears to have very limited impact on car ownership levels in the short run. In addition, state dependence indicates that car ownership only adjusts slowly over time to policy changes; thus, it is difficult to use policy instruments to reduce car ownership in the short run.
RPM-1 Uses Both Ubiquitin Ligase and Phosphatase-Based Mechanisms to Regulate DLK-1 during Neuronal Development

The Pam/Highwire/RPM-1 (PHR) proteins are key regulators of neuronal development that function in axon extension and guidance, termination of axon outgrowth, and synapse formation. Outside of development, the PHR proteins also regulate axon regeneration and Wallerian degeneration. The PHR proteins function in part by acting as ubiquitin ligases that degrade the Dual Leucine zipper-bearing Kinase (DLK). Here, we show that the Caenorhabditis elegans PHR protein, Regulator of Presynaptic Morphology 1 (RPM-1), also utilizes a phosphatase-based mechanism to regulate DLK-1. Using mass spectrometry, we identified Protein Phosphatase Magnesium/Manganese dependent 2 (PPM-2) as a novel RPM-1 binding protein. Genetic, transgenic, and biochemical studies indicated that PPM-2 functions coordinately with the ubiquitin ligase activity of RPM-1 and the F-box protein FSN-1 to negatively regulate DLK-1. PPM-2 acts on S874 of DLK-1, a residue implicated in regulation of DLK-1 binding to a short, inhibitory isoform of DLK-1 (DLK-1S). Our study demonstrates that PHR proteins function through both phosphatase and ubiquitin ligase mechanisms to inhibit DLK. Thus, PHR proteins are potentially more accurate and sensitive regulators of DLK than originally thought. Our results also highlight an important and expanding role for the PP2C phosphatase family in neuronal development.
Region‐dependent and stage‐specific effects of stress, environmental enrichment, and antidepressant treatment on hippocampal neurogenesis

Chronic stress and depression are associated with decreased levels of hippocampal neurogenesis. On the other hand, antidepressants as well as environmental enrichment may rely in part on their pro‐neurogenic effects to improve cognition and mood. Because a functional heterogeneity has been consistently reported along the septo‐temporal axis of the hippocampus, regional changes in neurogenesis could differentially contribute to these effects and affect distinct hippocampal functions. Mapping these regional changes could therefore provide a better understanding of the function of newborn neurons. While some studies report region‐specific effects of stress and antidepressants on neurogenesis, it is unclear whether these changes affect distinct populations of newborn neurons according to their developmental stage in a region‐specific manner. By using endogenous markers and BrdU labeling we quantified the regional changes in cell proliferation and survival as well as in the number of neuronal progenitors and immature neurons following unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS), environmental enrichment (EE) and chronic fluoxetine (20 mg/kg/day) treatment along the septo‐temporal axis of the hippocampus. EE promoted cell proliferation and survival of 4‐week‐old newborn cells as well as increased the number and proportion of post‐mitotic immature neurons specifically within the septal hippocampus. By contrast, UCMS uniformly decreased cell proliferation, survival and immature newborn neurons but differentially affected progenitor cells with a decrease restricted to the temporal regions of the hippocampus. Whereas fluoxetine treatment in control mice affected proliferation and survival specifically in the temporal hippocampus, it reversed most of the UCMS‐induced alterations all along the septo‐temporal axis. These results highlight that different factors known for exerting a mood improving effect differentially regulate neurogenesis along the septo‐temporal axis of the hippocampus. Such region and stage specific effects may correlate to distinct functional properties of newborn neurons along the septo‐temporal axis of the hippocampus which may contribute differently to the pathophysiology of affective disorders. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Study on AR4JA code in deep space fading channel

Because of good systematicness of its parity check matrix, linear relationship between the minimum distance and code length, and inheritance of punching property of ARA(accumulate repeat accumulate) code, AR4JA (accumulate-repeat-4-jagged-accumulate) code is thought to be the most suitable error correction channel code for deep space reliable communication in the future. Given that the accurate channel model of deep communication environment is lacked, in the paper, the absorption, reflection or other uncertain effects of different kinds of particles in aerospace were described with Rician fading model. Then the performance of AR4JA code in deep space Rician fading channel with BP algorithm and Min-Sum algorithm were studied in the paper. Simulation results show that in Rician fading channel, compared with BP algorithm, Min-Sum algorithm declines decoding complexity with few gain loss, which is beneficial to realize miniaturization of deep space communication receiver. Through further analysis, relationship of iteration times of Min-Sum algorithm and SNR is also given for the better use of decoding AR4JA codes by Min-Sum algorithm.
Ammonia as a Tracer of Chemical Equilibrium in the T7.5 Dwarf Gliese 570D

We present the first analysis of an optical to mid-infrared spectrum of the T7.5 dwarf Gliese 570D with model atmospheres, synthetic spectra, and brown dwarf evolution sequences. We obtain precise values for the basic parameters of Gl 570D: Teff = 800-820 K, log g (cm s-2) = 5.09-5.23, and log = -5.525 to -5.551. The Spitzer Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) spectrum shows prominent features of ammonia (NH3) that can only be fitted by reducing the abundance of NH3 by about 1 order of magnitude from the value obtained with chemical-equilibrium models. We model departures from chemical equilibrium in the atmosphere of Gl 570D by considering the kinetics of nitrogen and carbon chemistry in the presence of vertical mixing. The resulting model spectrum reproduces the data very well.
International Bailouts, Moral Hazard, and Conditionality

The large international bailouts of the 1990s have been criticized for different reasons, in particular for generating moral hazard at the expense of the global taxpayer. We argue in this paper that some of these concerns are exaggerated or misleading because international bailouts have no or very little cost to the international community and the global taxpayer. The problem, in our view, is rather to ensure that the international safety net is not used as an input into bad domestic policies. This may require a shift towards ex ante conditionality, in the sense that the availability and size of official crisis lending need to be conditional on government policies before the crisis.
Zinc and calcium apparent absorption from an infant cereal: a stable isotope study in healthy infants

Abstract Fractional apparent absorption of Zn and Ca from a wheat-milk-based infant cereal was studied in six healthy infants (18-30 weeks old). Mineral absorption was measured by a stable-isotope technique based on faecal excretion of the isotopes. Each test meal (40 g cereal) was extrinsically labelled with 70Zn and 42Ca before intake. All faecal material passed during the 21 d following intake of the labelled test meal was collected on trace-element-free nappies. Individual stool samples were analysed for their content of ‘OZn and 42Ca by thermal ionization mass spectrometry. Apparent absorption was calculated as intake minus total faecal excretion of the isotopes over 68-92 h after administration. The fractional apparent absorption values for Zn and Ca were 33.9 (SD 164) % (range 19.2-639 %) and 53.5 (SD 12.6) %) (range 36.7-71.7 %) respectively. Re-excretion of absorbed 70Zn (> 68-92 h to 21 d after intake of the labelled meal) was 044 (SD 038) %] of administered dose while only one infant re-excreted detectable amounts of 42Ca (1.74%) of administered dose). The analysis of individual stool samples confirmed that 72 h is a sufficient time period for complete collections of non-absorbed isotopes in faecal material from infants during the weaning period and that re-excretion of initially absorbed 70Zn and 42Ca (> 68-92 h to 21 d after intake of the labelled meal) is negligible.
Observations of Quasar Hosts with Adaptive Optics at Lick Observatory

We present near-infrared H-band observations of the hosts of three z ∼ 1 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey made with the adaptive optics system at Lick Observatory. We derive a point-spread function (PSF) for each quasar and model the host plus quasar nucleus to obtain magnitudes and approximate scale sizes for the host galaxies. We find our recovered host galaxies are similar to those found for z ∼ 1 quasars observed with the Hubble Space Telescope. They also have, with one interesting exception, black hole mass estimates from their bulge luminosities that are consistent with those from emission-line widths. We thus demonstrate that adaptive optics can be successfully used for the quantitative study of quasar host galaxies, with the caveat that better PSF calibration will be needed for studies of the hosts of significantly brighter or higher redshift quasars with the Lick system.
Monetary policy in developing countries: the case of Nigeria

In recent times, monetary policy has increasingly adopted the interest rate as an instrument and inflation as the ultimate objective. This is congruous with the propositions of the New consensus macroeconomics (NCM) and synonymous with the somewhat widespread practice of inflation targeting. However, the optimality of a monetary policy approach depends critically on its effectiveness and costs; which would differ between developing and developed countries. This thesis investigates the effectiveness and costs of an NCM-type monetary policy in Nigeria. Essentially, it is a systematic study of the implications of monetary policy in Nigeria, while paying attention to the peculiarities of the Nigerian economy and using a rigorous up-to-date framework. Effectiveness is investigated by considering some underlying assumptions of the NCM. First, the assumption of a complete pass-through from the policy interest rate to the market rates (which is critical for the success of monetary policy) is investigated. Here an array of market, retail deposit and lending rates are examined while an attempt is also made to capture the role of financial market (under)development. Second, the effect of monetary policy on aggregate demand is investigated, since it constitutes the intermediate target of policy. Given the high incidence of poverty in Nigeria and our associated assumption that consumption would, in this case, be inelastic to policy changes, the aggregate demand effect is limited to investigating the responsiveness of investment to monetary policy induced changes in the interest rate. Finally, the cost and benefit analysis of monetary policy in Nigeria is investigated by estimating a NCM-type Phillips curve. To understand the dynamics and source of inflation the standard NCM-type Phillips curve is augmented with supply factors. The relative importance of demand vis-a-vis supply factors as well as the cost and benefits of disinflation are thereafter determined. These are analysed using both theoretical and empirical approaches. Results indicated that an NCM-type monetary policy is generally ineffective in anchoring interest rates or aggregate demand and may be conducted at a considerably high cost in terms of output loss and financial instability. These findings and their policy implications are not entirely surprising given the institutional features of the Nigerian economy. They generally suggest that the use of interest rate policies tended to create more problems than it can solve. Hence, to avert the associated problems, there is a need for other instruments which the central bank can control effectively. Moreover, monetary policy focus should be on long-run output expansion and short-run price-stability, rather than the converse. This would have the benefit of moderating poverty and unemployment.
Proximity to Coast Is Linked to Climate Change Belief

Psychologists have examined the many psychological barriers to both climate change belief and concern. One barrier is the belief that climate change is too uncertain, and likely to happen in distant places and times, to people unlike oneself. Related to this perceived psychological distance of climate change, studies have shown that direct experience of the effects of climate change increases climate change concern. The present study examined the relationship between physical proximity to the coastline and climate change belief, as proximity may be related to experiencing or anticipating the effects of climate change such as sea-level rise. We show, in a national probability sample of 5,815 New Zealanders, that people living in closer proximity to the shoreline expressed greater belief that climate change is real and greater support for government regulation of carbon emissions. This proximity effect held when adjusting for height above sea level and regional poverty. The model also included individual differences in respondents' sex, age, education, political orientation, and wealth. The results indicate that physical place plays a role in the psychological acceptance of climate change, perhaps because the effects of climate change become more concrete and local.