Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design of a Fractional Order Phase Shaper for Iso-Damped Control of a PHWR Under Step-Back Condition

Phase shaping using fractional order (FO) phase shapers has been proposed by many contemporary researchers as a means of producing systems with iso-damped closed loop response due to a stepped variation in input. Such systems, with the closed loop damping remaining invariant to gain changes can be used to produce dead-beat step response with only rise time varying with gain. This technique is used to achieve an active step-back in a Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) where it is desired to change the reactor power to a pre-determined value within a short interval keeping the power undershoot as low as possible. This paper puts forward an approach as an alternative for the present day practice of a passive step-back mechanism where the control rods are allowed to drop during a step-back action by gravity, with release of electromagnetic clutches. The reactor under a step-back condition is identified as a system using practical test data and a suitable Proportional plus Integral plus Derivative (PID) controller is designed for it. Then the combined plant is augmented with a phase shaper to achieve a dead-beat response in terms of power drop. The fact that the identified static gain of the system depends on the initial power level at which a step-back is initiated, makes this application particularly suited for using a FO phase shaper. In this paper, a model of a nuclear reactor is developed for a control rod drop scenario involving rapid power reduction in a 500 MWe Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor using AutoRegressive Exogenous (ARX) algorithm. The system identification and reduced order modeling are developed from practical test data. For closed loop active control of the identified reactor model, the fractional order phase shaper along with a PID controller is shown to perform better than the present Reactor Regulating System (RRS) due to its iso-damped nature.
Robust Sound Event Detection in Continuous Audio Environments

Sound event detection in real world environments has attracted significant research interest recently because of it's applications in popular fields such as machine hearing and automated surveillance, as well as in sound scene understanding. This paper considers continuous robust sound event detection, which means multiple overlapped sound events in different types of interfering noise. First, a standard evaluation task is outlined based upon existing testing data sets for the sound event classification of isolated sounds. This paper then proposes and evaluates the use of spectrogram image features employing an energy detector to segment sound events, before developing a novel segmentation method making use of a Bayesian inference criteria. At the back end, a convolutional neural network is used to classify detected regions, and this combination is compared to several alternative approaches. The proposed method is shown capable of achieving very good performance compared with current state-of-the-art techniques.
Local adaptive transform based image denoising with varying window size

Local adaptive image denoising in transform domain is a powerful tool for adapting to unknown smoothness of the images. We propose to perform local adaptive denoising with adaptively varying local transform support size rather than using a transform with fixed size. We use a special rule (intersection of confidence intervals-ICI) to select the optimum window sizes locally. The algorithm provides significant improvements in the de-noising performance.
Impact of timing and frequency offsets on multicarrier waveform candidates for 5G

This paper presents a study of the candidate waveforms for 5G when they are subject to timing and carrier frequency offset. These waveforms are: orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM), universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC), circular filter bank multicarrier (C-FBMC), and linear filter bank multicarrier (FBMC). We are particularly interested in multiple access interference (MAI) when a number of users transmit their signals to a base station in an asynchronous or a quasi-synchronous manner. We identify the source of MAI in these waveforms and present some numerical analysis that confirm our findings. The goal of this study is to answer the following question, “Which one of the 5G candidate waveforms has more relaxed synchronization requirements? ”.
Is 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose PET/CT acquisition from the upper thigh to the vertex of skull useful in oncological patients?

Aim To assess whether performing routinely 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose PET/CT (18FDG PET/CT) scan from the upper thigh to the vertex of skull is clinically relevant. Materials and Methods: 3502 (1634 female; mean-age 60+16) consecutive patients undergoing 18FDG PET/CT were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were divided in 10 groups according to primary malignancy. Chi-square analysis was used to assess differences among proportions. A p value < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: 18FDG PET/CT was positive in head district in 130/3502 (3,7%) patients. In all patients lesions were unknown before PET/CT examination. PET/CT showed 158 positive brain/head uptake in the 130 patients. The 158 lesions were localized in: brain (43/158; 27%), bone (52/158; 33%), lymph node (1/158; 0,6%), soft tissue (55/158; 35%) and other sites (7/158; 4,4%). According to each group, patients were positive in the head district in 1.0% for Gastrointestinal Cancer (7/690), 3.0 % for Genitourinary Cancer (3/101), 3.7 % for Haemathologic Cancer (59/1590), 2.7 % for Gynaecologic Cancer (3/112), 7.8% for Head-Neck-Thyroid and Parathyroid Cancer (26/331), 3.5% for Breast Cancer (7/200), 2.6% for Lung Cancer (7/271), 3.4% for Melanoma (2/59), 7.4% for Sarcoma (2/27), 11.6% for Unknown Primary Tumour (14/121). Conclusion: Our data show a relatively high incidence of brain/head lesion in patients with Unknown Primary Tumour.
Challenging Knowledge: The University in the Knowledge Society

Drawing from current debates in social theory about the changing nature of knowledge, this book offers the most comprehensive sociological theory of the university that has yet appeared. The famous philosophical conceptions of the university from the Enlightenment to postmodern thought are discussed along with the major writings in modern social theory on the university, such as those of Weber, Parsons, Habermas, Gadamer, Lyotard and Bourdieu. In this far reaching contribution to the sociology of knowledge, Delanty views the university as a key institution of modernity and as the site where knowledge, culture and society interconnect. He assesses the question of the crisis of the university with respect to issues such as globalization, the information age, the nation state, academic capitalism, cultural politics and changing relationships between research and teaching. Arguing against the notion of the demise of the university, his argument is that in the knowledge society of today a new identity for the university is emerging based on communication and new conceptions of citizenship. It will be essential reading for those interested in changing relationships between modernity, knowledge, higher education and the future of the university.
The Prognostic Value and Overexpression of Cyclin A Is Correlated with Gene Amplification of both Cyclin A and Cyclin E in Breast Cancer Patient

Deregulation of cell cycle control is a hallmark of cancer. The primary cyclins (A, B1, D1, D3 and E) are crucial for cell cycle progression. Secondary cyclins (C and H) have putative indirect effects on cell cycle propulsion and are not previously evaluated in breast cancer. We have examined protein expression and gene amplification of cyclins in breast carcinomas and correlated the findings with clinical follow-up data. We have previously demonstrated that over-expression of cyclin A is associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. In this study we wanted to evaluate the mechanisms behinde overexpression of cyclin A, as well as the impact of other cyclins, both at the gene level and at the protein level, on prognosis of breast cancer patients. The impact of TP53 gene mutations on gene amplification of cyclins was also evaluated. Methods: Real-Time Quantitative PCR was used to detect gene amplification of cyclins in tumour tissue from 86 patients operated for invasive breast carcinomas, while immunohistochemistry was applied to detect protein expression of the same cyclins. Result: Of the 80-breast tumour samples available for cyclin A gene amplification analyses, 26.7% (23/80) was defined to have cyclin A gene amplification. 37.2% (32/79) had cyclin B1 gene amplification, 82.6% (71/82) of the samples harboured amplification of cyclin C gene, 74.4% (64/82) had cyclin D1 gene amplification, 41.9% (36/86) had cyclin D3 gene amplification, 29.1% (25/81) of the patients had cyclin E gene amplification and 9.3% (8/86) of the samples showed amplification of the cyclin H gene. When correlation between gene amplification and protein expression was evaluated, we observed a statistical significant correlation between gene amplification and protein expression of cyclin A (p = 0.009) and cyclin D3 (p < 0.001). However, the correlation between gene amplification and protein expression of cyclin A, as well as the prognostic value of cyclin A overexpression, was affected by gene amplification of cyclin E. Gene amplification of none of the other cyclins was associated with patient prognosis. There was a statistical significant correlation between TP53 gene mutations and gene amplification of cyclins A, D3 and B1. No correlation was observed between gene amplification of secondary cyclins (H and C) and TP53 gene mutations. Conclusions: The overexpression of cyclin A is correlated to gene amplification of both cyclin A and cyclin E. Over-expression of cyclin A is associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. When analysed in a multivariate analyses model, gene amplification as well as protein expression of none of the other cyclins than cyclin A are associated with patient prognosis in breast carcinomas. TP53 gene mutation seems to correlate with gene amplification of primary, but not secondary cyclins.
The analysis of the humoral response of the BALB/c mouse immunized with radiation attenuated third stage larvae of Brugia pahangi

BALB/c mice immunized with L3 of Brugia pahangi, irradiated at 45kRad from a 137Caesium source, are strongly immune to challenge infection (75–100% reduction in the recovery of challenge infection larvae on day 6 post‐challenge). The target of immunity appears to be the post‐infective L3, as challenge infection larvae are killed within 5–6 days of infection. By immunoblot analysis, serum from immune animals recognizes a limited set of somatic antigens, the majority of which are shared between different life cycle stages. Serum from immune mice also strongly recognizes larval surface antigens by immunofluorescence, some of which may be stage specific. The larval surface determinants do not appear to be protein or glycoprotein by standard immunochemical analysis. A proportion of the antibody response of the BALB/c mouse is directed towards phosphorylcholine epitopes on filarial antigens, but the limited antigen recognition cannot be explained on the basis of the mouse strain used, as CBA/Ca mice recognize a similar limited set of antigens.
Disorders of Visual Behavior

Volume four of the all-new "Handbook of Neuropsychology" addresses the disorders of visual behaviour. This work reviews the neurophysiology of spatial vision, as well as recent work on recognition deficits for faces, objects and words. Also presented are disorders of spatial representation, of colour processing and of mental imagery. Balint's syndrome, blindsight, and visuospatial or constructional disorders are discussed and the relationship between eye movements and brain damage are described in detail.
Investigation of smoking related features in spatio-spectral domain on resting-state fMRI data using nonnegative matrix factorization

Smoking is a typical exemplar in drug addiction researches for the wide range of tobacco users. The presented study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the resting-state (RS) neural mechanisms associated with smoking deprivation. We propose a novel analysis approach which applies nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm on spatially concatenated two group datasets to investigate smoking related RS features in spatio-spectral domain. The NMF algorithm decomposed the magnitude spectra of fMRI time series into distinct frequency-specific basis functions and corresponding nonnegative spatial maps. After a two sample T-test on the z-scored spatial maps between groups, representative feature regions such as insula, anterior cingulate cortex and precuneus were found to be associated with smoking. These regions were consistent with that revealed by previous literatures studying in spatio-temporal domain. It indicates that our proposed analysis method provides another option for exploring neural mechanism differences between two groups, which might be used in a range of applications.
Web-Based and Mobile Stress Management Intervention for Employees: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Work-related stress is highly prevalent among employees and is associated with adverse mental health consequences. Web-based interventions offer the opportunity to deliver effective solutions on a large scale; however, the evidence is limited and the results conflicting. Objective This randomized controlled trial evaluated the efficacy of guided Web- and mobile-based stress management training for employees. Methods A total of 264 employees with elevated symptoms of stress (Perceived Stress Scale-10, PSS-10≥22) were recruited from the general working population and randomly assigned to an Internet-based stress management intervention (iSMI) or waitlist control group. The intervention (GET.ON Stress) was based on Lazarus’s transactional model of stress, consisted of seven sessions, and applied both well-established problem solving and more recently developed emotion regulation strategies. Participants also had the opportunity to request automatic text messages on their mobile phone along with the iSMI. Participants received written feedback on every completed session from an e-coach. The primary outcome was perceived stress (PSS-10). Web-based self-report assessments for both groups were scheduled at baseline, 7 weeks, and 6 months. At 12 months, an extended follow-up was carried out for the iSMI group only. Results An intention-to-treat analysis of covariance revealed significantly large effect differences between iSMI and waitlist control groups for perceived stress at posttest (F 1,261=58.08, P<.001; Cohen’s d=0.83) and at the 6-month follow-up (F 1,261=80.17, P<.001; Cohen’s d=1.02). The effects in the iSMI group were maintained at 12-month follow-up. Conclusions This Web- and mobile-based intervention has proven effective in reducing stress in employees in the long term. Internet-based stress management interventions should be further pursued as a valuable alternative to face-to-face interventions. Trial Registration German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS): 00004749; http://drks-neu.uniklinik-freiburg.de/ drks_web/setLocale_EN. do (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6e8rl98nl)
Plant Canopy Effects on Wind Erosion Saltation

Maintaining standing vegetative soil cover is an important method of wind erosion control. However, an improved physical understanding of the mechanisms by which standing vegetation control wind erosion is needed so the erosion control level of vegetation not previously tested in a wind tunnel can be calculated. In this report, a theoretical approach that accounts for both the surface friction velocity reduction and the saltation interception by standing stalks is proposed. The predictive ability of the theory is then tested using two previously published data sets from wind tunnel studies in which soil loss was measured. The results show a high correlation between plant area index of stalks and soil protection. However, some initial tunnel experimental data on simulated plants with two movable leaves indicate that both plant area index and aerodynamic roughness may be needed to fully assess the erosion control level of canopies with leaves.
An Antiviral Defense Role of AGO2 in Plants

Background Argonaute (AGO) proteins bind to small-interfering (si)RNAs and micro (mi)RNAs to target RNA silencing against viruses, transgenes and in regulation of mRNAs. Plants encode multiple AGO proteins but, in Arabidopsis, only AGO1 is known to have an antiviral role. Methodology/Principal Findings To uncover the roles of specific AGOs in limiting virus accumulation we inoculated turnip crinkle virus (TCV) to Arabidopsis plants that were mutant for each of the ten AGO genes. The viral symptoms on most of the plants were the same as on wild type plants although the ago2 mutants were markedly hyper-susceptible to this virus. ago2 plants were also hyper-susceptible to cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), confirming that the antiviral role of AGO2 is not specific to a single virus. For both viruses, this phenotype was associated with transient increase in virus accumulation. In wild type plants the AGO2 protein was induced by TCV and CMV infection. Conclusions/Significance Based on these results we propose that there are multiple layers to RNA-mediated defense and counter-defense in the interactions between plants and their viruses. AGO1 represents a first layer. With some viruses, including TCV and CMV, this layer is overcome by viral suppressors of silencing that can target AGO1 and a second layer involving AGO2 limits virus accumulation. The second layer is activated when the first layer is suppressed because AGO2 is repressed by AGO1 via miR403. The activation of the second layer is therefore a direct consequence of the loss of the first layer of defense.
Built-Up Area Detection From Satellite Images Using Multikernel Learning, Multifield Integrating, and Multihypothesis Voting

This letter proposes a novel supervised approach for accurate built-up area detection from high-resolution remote sensing images. In existing supervised built-up area detection approaches based on block-based image interpretation, the determination of the block size and the pursuit of the pixel-level result are not well addressed. Concerning these issues, this letter proposes a complete and systematic approach. It first utilizes multikernel learning to incorporate multiple features to implement the block-level image interpretation. Then, multifield integrating (i.e., the image interpretation results using different block sizes are fused) is proposed to obtain the block-level result. On the basis of the achieved result of the second step, multihypothesis voting is finally presented for working toward the pixel-level built-up area detection result through multihypothesis superpixel representation and graph smoothing. The proposed approach has been validated in the ZY-3 and GF-1 satellite images, and experimental results show that the proposed approach can outperform the state-of-the-art approaches.
Kidney Function, Endothelial Activation and Atherosclerosis in Black and White Africans with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective To determine whether kidney function independently relates to endothelial activation and ultrasound determined carotid atherosclerosis in black and white Africans with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods We calculated the Jelliffe, 5 Cockcroft-Gault equations, Salazar-Corcoran, Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) and Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD-EPI) estimated glomerular filtration rate (EGFR) equations in 233 (112 black) RA patients. Results The CKD-EPI eGFR was <90 ml/min/1.73m2 in 49.1% and 30.6% of black and white patients, respectively (odds ratio (95% confidence interval) = 2.19 (1.28–3.75), p = 0.004). EGFRs were overall consistently associated with monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 and angiopoietin 2 concentrations in white patients, and with carotid intima-media thickness and plaque in black participants. Amongst black patients, plaque prevalence was 36.7% and the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was not associated with plaque presence for the MDRD equation (p = 0.3), whereas the respective relationship was significant or borderline significant (p = 0.003 to 0.08) and of similar extent (p>0.1 for comparisons of AUC (SE)) for the other 8 equations. Based on optimal eGFR cutoff values with sensitivities and specificities ranging from 42 to 60% and 70 to 91% respectively, as determined in ROC curve analysis, a low eGFR increased the odds ratio for plaque 2.2 to 4.0 fold. Conclusion Reduced kidney function is independently associated with atherosclerosis and endothelial activation in black and white Africans with RA, respectively. CKD is highly prevalent in black Africans with RA. Apart from the MDRD, eGFR equations are useful in predicting carotid plaque presence, a coronary heart disease equivalent, amongst black African RA patients.
Visual predictive architecture for biologically inspired object recognition

As the quantity of visual information sources increases, the need to develop sensors that can automatically alert the user to exceptional events is being emphasized. This feature incorporates the ability to detect and classify the targets they “see”. Achieving this goal will dramatically improve the efficiency of CCTV-based security systems, improve search/retrieval engines, increase the autonomy of robotic systems and will contribute in many other areas of life. The performance of the human visual system and its robustness to image degradations still surpasses the best computer vision systems. Remarkable in particular, is the human brain high accuracy in ultra rapid object categorization tasks. Recent studies shows that the mechanism behind the recognition process includes predictions based on prior knowledge about the world. These predictions enable rapid generation of hypothesis that biases the outcome of the recognition process in situation of uncertainty. In this work, we implemented the concepts behind this top-down prediction mechanism of the human visual system. This work focus on the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) role in the prediction process, which appears to be attuned to the associative content of visual information and to facilitate recognition of sensory inputs via predictive feedback to sensory cortices. Specifically, coarse representations reach the OFC, which generate “initial guesses” regarding the targets identity. These predictions are projected to the inferior temporal cortex, which facilitate perception and select the most likely interpretations. We show that imitating this mechanism can potentially create more robust target recognition models than exist today.
Examining the experiences of former D-I and D-III nonrevenue athletes.

Despite the variability across college divisions, conferences, institutions, and athletic teams, recent post-collegiate athletes share a range of common experiences throughout their careers. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of former athletes from Division I and Division III nonrevenue sports regarding their athletic experiences. Through a mixed methods questionnaire, participants from six Midwestern conferences (n=229) reflected on their athletic and academic careers, major influences, and lessons that have impacted them both positively and negatively. Numerous themes emerged from participants’ responses, including overall satisfaction with the college experience, preparedness for life beyond athletic competition, and direct application of work ethic and time management skills to post-collegiate life. The results from this study provide added validation for American colleges and universities to continue the support and improvement of lower-profile athletic programs.