Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feedback strategies and transceivers design in multi-user multi-antenna systems with limited feedback

Multi-antenna wireless systems can provide more reliable transmission and higher spectral efficiency. Many techniques that realize these advantages rely heavily on the channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter (CSIT). CSIT can be obtained through a feedback channel. In our research, we focus on developing feedback strategies and transceiver designs in different multi-antenna systems with limited feedback. We consider the point-to-point multiple-input single-output (MISO) channel and assume that the receiver performs transmit beamforming using a subset of antennas with power gains exceeding a threshold. The optimal threshold that maximizes the capacity is characterized when the number of transmit antennas is asymptotically large. We also obtain numerically the optimal threshold for systems with a finite number of antennas. Inspired by the asymptotic case, we propose a scheme to select the number of transmit antennas for beamforming. The multi-user (MU) MISO interference channel is also studied. For the two-user case, a transmit antenna selection scheme based on the channel gains of desired links is proposed to select the subset of transmit antennas. At high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region, we analyze the expected signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and the rate performance. Both the SINR analysis and simulations suggest that using two transmit antennas achieves best performance when the number of feedback bits is large enough. Finally, we investigate the MU multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with interference alignment (IA). Previous works seldom pay attention to the issue of quantization complexity. We propose a quantization approach with manageable complexity and evaluate the rate loss relative to the perfect CSI case. This shows how the numbers xii of feedback bits affects the numbers of transmit and receive antennas that should be used. An iterative algorithm is introduced to jointly optimize the design of the front-end receive filter and the allocation of the feedback bits among different interference links.
Manifestations neuropsychiatriques révélant une hémorragie cérébro-méningée causée par un accident d’électrisation: à propos d'une observation et revue de la literature

Le courant électrique est susceptible de léser tout tissu de l'organisme rencontré lors de son passage, de manière transitoire ou définitive. Les hémorragies cérébro-méningées secondaires à un accident d’électrisation par courant électrique à haute tension sont très rarement rapportées dans la littérature. Nous rapportons un cas d'hémorragie cérébro-méningée révélée par des manifestations neuropsychiatriques causée par un AE par courant électrique à haute tension observée chez un enfant âgé de 6 ans à Lubumbashi, en République Démocratique du Congo. La particularité que présente notre observation est les manifestations neuropsychiatriques observées tardivement.
A Novel Medical Freehand Sketch 3D Model Retrieval Method by Dimensionality Reduction and Feature Vector Transformation

To assist physicians to quickly find the required 3D model from the mass medical model, we propose a novel retrieval method, called DRFVT, which combines the characteristics of dimensionality reduction (DR) and feature vector transformation (FVT) method. The DR method reduces the dimensionality of feature vector; only the top M low frequency Discrete Fourier Transform coefficients are retained. The FVT method does the transformation of the original feature vector and generates a new feature vector to solve the problem of noise sensitivity. The experiment results demonstrate that the DRFVT method achieves more effective and efficient retrieval results than other proposed methods.
The Role of Between-Case Effect Size in Conducting, Interpreting, and Summarizing Single-Case Research. NCER 2015-002.

The field of education is increasingly committed to adopting evidence-based practices. Although randomized experimental designs provide strong evidence of the causal effects of interventions, they are not always feasible. For example, depending upon the research question, it may be difficult for researchers to find the number of children necessary for such research designs (e.g., to answer questions about impacts for children with low-incidence disabilities). A type of experimental design that is well suited for such low-incidence populations is the single-case design (SCD). These designs involve observations of a single case (e.g., a child or a classroom) over time in the absence and presence of an experimenter-controlled treatment manipulation to determine whether the outcome is systematically related to the treatment. Research using SCD is often omitted from reviews of whether evidence-based practices work because there has not been a common metric to gauge effects as there is in group design research. To address this issue, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) commissioned a paper by leading experts in methodology and SCD. Authors William Shadish, Larry Hedges, Robert Horner, and Samuel Odom contend that the best way to ensure that SCD research is accessible and informs policy decisions is to use good standardized effect size measures--indices that put results on a scale with the same meaning across studies--for statistical analyses. Included in this paper are the authors' recommendations for how SCD researchers can calculate and report on standardized between-case effect sizes, the way in these effect sizes can be used for various audiences (including policymakers) to interpret findings, and how they can be used across studies to summarize the evidence base for education practices. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an overview of the paper and a detailed definition SCDs, their basic forms, and how they can be used to make causal inferences. Chapters 3 and 4 explain SCD research and the benefit of the use of effect sizes in general, the different types of standardized effect sizes (i.e., between-case and within-case), how they can be used in SCD research, and a suggested approach for reporting between-case effect sizes. Chapters 5 and 6 describe how to use between-case effect sizes for individual SCD studies, benefits that are likely to result from increased reporting of between-case effect sizes, and how these effect sizes can be used to identify evidence-based practices across studies. Chapter 7 provides recommendations for future directions and development of between-group effect sizes in SCD. A glossary is included.
Development and Evaluation of the Korean Health Literacy Instrument

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the Korean Health Literacy Instrument, which measures the capacity to understand and use health-related information and make informed health decisions in Korean adults. In Phase 1, 33 initial items were generated to measure functional, interactive, and critical health literacy with prose, document, and numeracy tasks. These items included content from health promotion, disease management, and health navigation contexts. Content validity assessment was conducted by an expert panel, and 11 items were excluded. In Phase 2, the 22 remaining items were administered to a convenience sample of 292 adults from community and clinical settings. Exploratory factor and item difficulty and discrimination analyses were conducted and four items with low discrimination were deleted. In Phase 3, the remaining 18 items were administered to a convenience sample of 315 adults 40–64 years of age from community and clinical settings. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the construct validity of the instrument. The Korean Health Literacy Instrument has a range of 0 to 18. The mean score in our validation study was 11.98. The instrument exhibited an internal consistency reliability coefficient of 0.82, and a test–retest reliability of 0.89. The instrument is suitable for screening individuals who have limited health literacy skills. Future studies are needed to further define the psychometric properties and predictive validity of the Korean Health Literacy Instrument.
Primary Visual Cortex as a Saliency Map: A Parameter-Free Prediction and Its Test by Behavioral Data

It has been hypothesized that neural activities in the primary visual cortex (V1) represent a saliency map of the visual field to exogenously guide attention. This hypothesis has so far provided only qualitative predictions and their confirmations. We report this hypothesis’ first quantitative prediction, derived without free parameters, and its confirmation by human behavioral data. The hypothesis provides a direct link between V1 neural responses to a visual location and the saliency of that location to guide attention exogenously. In a visual input containing many bars, one of them saliently different from all the other bars which are identical to each other, saliency at the singleton’s location can be measured by the shortness of the reaction time in a visual search for singletons. The hypothesis predicts quantitatively the whole distribution of the reaction times to find a singleton unique in color, orientation, and motion direction from the reaction times to find other types of singletons. The prediction matches human reaction time data. A requirement for this successful prediction is a data-motivated assumption that V1 lacks neurons tuned simultaneously to color, orientation, and motion direction of visual inputs. Since evidence suggests that extrastriate cortices do have such neurons, we discuss the possibility that the extrastriate cortices play no role in guiding exogenous attention so that they can be devoted to other functions like visual decoding and endogenous attention.
ASSESSING PLANT AVAILABLE POTASSIUM OF ILLITIC LOESS SOILS POSSESSING HIGH SPECIFIC SURFACE AREA AND WEAK AGGREGATION

Although Quantities of potassium extractable by NH4OAc in some illitic Loess slowly Swelling Soils possessing high specific surface area is high, potassium has been identified as the limiting plant growth factor in this areas. Due to potassium deficiency Golestan provincesoils, taking advantages of theNH4OAc method was not feasible and what has been proposed was sodium tetra phenyl boron (KNabph4) method with 1minute extraction. The aim of this study was soil potassium assessment (KNabph4), specifying whether status of aggregation (SOA) and soil specific surface area (SSA) can effect onKNabph4, and feasibility studies for prediction of the KNabph4. 183 soil samples from 0- 30 centimeter depth with varied physicochemical properties were obtained. Linear regression stepwise (LRS) models were established between the measured 17 parameters. Figures were tested via genetic algorithm (GA) solver and artificial neural network (ANN). MLP, RBF and ELMAN were used in ANN. By investigation of the interactions, it was specified that SOA (0.52**), surface charge excess of potassium (0.69**) and SSA (0.72**) were highly correlated with KNabph4. Therefore, with ascending of the SSA amount, further surfaces of soil particles will be weathered and this process certainly ascends the K release. If the weak aggregation does not reduce the ascending trend of K release, the quantities of potassium availability will be increased. About predicting soil potassium, results indicated the produced models via ANN were much accurate than the LRS and GA. The best model was obtained in MLP network by selecting SOA and SSA as the inputs parameters and KNabph4 as the output of model while the RMSE= 59.36, MEF= 84.06, AEP= 15.46, RTest= 0.99, R2= 0.84 was.
Peregrine

Use of second generation sequencing (SGS) technologies for transcriptional profiling (RNA-Seq) has revolutionized transcriptomics, enabling measurement of RNA abundances with unprecedented specificity and sensitivity and the discovery of novel RNA species. Preparation of RNA-Seq libraries requires conversion of the RNA starting material into cDNA flanked by platform-specific adaptor sequences. Each of the published methods and commercial kits currently available for RNA-Seq library preparation suffers from at least one major drawback, including long processing times, large starting material requirements, uneven coverage, loss of strand information and high cost. We report the development of a new RNA-Seq library preparation technique that produces representative, strand-specific RNA-Seq libraries from small amounts of starting material in a fast, simple and cost-effective manner. Additionally, we have developed a new quantitative PCR-based assay for precisely determining the number of PCR cycles to perform for optimal enrichment of the final library, a key step in all SGS library preparation workflows.
Title: fcMRI During Development: Exploration of the Functional Organization of the Developing Brain

Introduction Advanced neuroimaging techniques have been increasingly applied to the study of pediatric populations in an effort to further define the functional cerebral architecture of the developing brain. Despite improved understanding of the complex relationship between structure and function obtained through these investigations, significant questions remain regarding the nature, location, and timing of the maturational changes which occur during early development. Functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (fcMRI) utilizes spontaneous, low frequency (< 0.1 Hz), coherent fluctuations in blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal to identify networks of functional cerebral connections [1]. In many regards, fcMRI is ideally suited to investigations of infants and children because of the intrinsic characteristics of its acquisition and analysis methods. To date, a limited number of investigations have applied fcMRI to the study of pediatric populations. Results of these inquiries have provided information regarding the earliest forms of cerebral connectivity in the developing brain, highlighting the intricacy of the relationship between cerebral structure and function throughout childhood and providing the foundation for further application of these methods to future neurodevelopmental investigations.
Predictors of first year computing science student failure

There is an abundance of research on Higher and Further education student attrition issues. This study addresses student attrition in the Computing Science course at the University of Glasgow. Following up a project by Roddan (2002), a number of variables were investigated with the aim of building a predictive model of students at risk of failure. Instruments utilising the Tinto Student Integration Model (1975), indicated that academic integration factors explained a significant amount of the variance in first year student exam performance. Results are presented and discussed, and recommendations for further research are made.
Comparison of Pain Score Reduction Using Triamcinolone vs. Betamethasone in Transforaminal Epidural Steroid Injections for Lumbosacral Radicular Pain

ObjectiveAlthough the comparative efficacy of particulate vs. nonparticulate steroids for the treatment of radicular pain with transforaminal epidural steroid injection has been investigated, there is minimal literature comparing particulate steroids. The authors aimed to determine whether transforaminal epidural steroid injection with triamcinolone or betamethasone, two particulate corticosteroids, more effectively reduces lumbosacral radicular pain. DesignThis is a longitudinal cohort study of 1021 patients (1568 transforaminal epidural steroid injections) who received betamethasone or triamcinolone between January 2006 and October 2007 in an academic spine center. The frequency of greater than 50% pain reduction was compared between groups. ResultsThis study included 42.4% (433) male and 57.6% (588) female patients, with a mean (SD) age of 54.1 (16.7) yrs. Betamethasone and triamcinolone were used in 78.8% (1235) and 21.2% (333) of subjects, respectively. Significantly more patients who received triamcinolone (44.4% [95% confidence interval, 36.2%–52.8%]) experienced greater than 50% pain reduction at short-term follow-up (1–4 wks) compared with patients who received betamethasone (26.8% [95% confidence interval, 22.7%–31.4%]). ConclusionsPatients who received transforaminal epidural steroid injection with triamcinolone reported more frequent pain relief of greater than 50% at short-term follow-up compared with those who received betamethasone. These findings further develop the literature on comparative effectiveness in epidural steroid injections. However, given the exploratory and retrospective nature of this investigation, further study is needed.
Association between body weight and distal gut microbes in Hainan black goats at weaning age

Gut microbiota plays a critical role in the healthy growth and development of young animals. However, there are few studies on the gut microbiota of young Hainan black goats. In this study, 12 three-month-old weaned lambs with the same birth date were selected and divided into the high body weight group (HW) and low body weight group (LW). The microbial diversity, composition, and predicted function in the feces of HW and LW groups were analyzed by collecting fecal samples and sequencing the 16S rRNA V3-V4 region. The results indicated that the HW group exhibited higher community diversity compared with the LW group, based on the Shannon index. The core phyla of the HW and LW groups were both Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes. Parabacteroides, UCG-005, and Bacteroides are the core genera of the HW group, and Bacteroides, Escherichia-Shigella, and Akkermansia are the core genera of the LW group. In addition, genera such as Ruminococcus and Anaerotruncus, which were positively correlated with body weight, were enriched in the HW group; those genera, such as Akkermansia and Christensenellaceae, which were negatively correlated with body weight, were enriched in the LW group. Differential analysis of the KEGG pathway showed that Amino Acid Metabolism, Energy Metabolism, Carbohydrate Metabolism, and Nucleotide Metabolism were enriched in the HW group, while Cellular Processes and Signaling, Lipid Metabolism, and Glycan Biosynthesis and Metabolism were enriched in the LW group. The results of this study revealed the gut microbial characteristics of Hainan black goats with different body weights at weaning age and identified the dominant flora that contributed to their growth.
Latissimus Dorsi Donor-Site Morbidity: The Combination of Quilting and Fibrin Sealant Reduce Length of Drain Placement and Seroma Rate

AbstractSeroma formation has been shown to be a multifactorial process in part due to dead space and the formation of raw surfaces, which produce large quantities of serous exudate. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of quilting/progressive tension sutures (to reduce dead space) and fibrin sealant (to seal the raw surface) in combination on the seroma rate and length of drain placement in patients undergoing latissimus dorsi breast reconstruction. A retrospective review of 43 patients undergoing latissimus dorsi flap breast reconstruction was performed. The patients were divided into 2 groups: quilting sutures alone versus those with quilting sutures and fibrin sealant. Data regarding age, body mass index, smoking history, timing of reconstruction, type of breast surgery, radiation history, complications, length of drain placement, use of fibrin glue, and use of quilting/progressive tension sutures were collected for each patient. Results were analyzed statistically using unpaired t tests (P < 0.05). The quilting group included 19 patients with 24 donor sites. The mean drain placement duration was 21.5 days (range, 9–69 days). One patient in 19 developed a seroma, which was treated and resolved with aspiration. The seroma rate for the quilting only group was 5%. The quilting and sealant group included 23 patients with 26 donor sites. The quilting and sealant group had a mean duration of drain placement of 13.9 days (range, 6–38 days). This was a statistically reduced length of drainage (P = 0.04) compared with quilting only. The quilting and sealant group had 1 patient in 23 develop a seroma with a rate of 4% which compared with quilting only was not statistically significant (P = 0.4). The combination of quilting sutures and fibrin sealant directed at the 2 main mechanisms of seroma formation, (dead space and serous exudate, respectively) can decrease the duration of postoperative drain placement and does maintain low seroma rates.
Transcranial Doppler after traumatic brain injury: is there a role?

Purpose of reviewTo present the practical aspects of transcranial Doppler (TCD) and provide evidence supporting its use for the management of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. Recent findingsTCD measures systolic, mean, and diastolic cerebral blood flow (CBF) velocities and calculates the pulsatility index from basal intracranial arteries. These variables reflect the brain circulation, provided there is control of potential confounding factors. TCD can be useful in patients with severe TBI to detect low CBF, for example, during intracranial hypertension, and to assess cerebral autoregulation. In the emergency room, TCD might complement brain computed tomography (CT) scan and clinical examination to screen patients at risk for further neurological deterioration after mild-to-moderate TBI. SummaryThe diagnostic value of TCD should be incorporated into other findings from multimodal brain monitoring and CT scan to optimize the bedside management of patients with TBI and help guide the choice of appropriate therapies.
Using selective memory to track concept drift effectively

In this paper we describe a supervised learning algorithm that uses selective memory to track concept drift. Unlike previous methods to track concept drift that use window heuristics to adapt to changes, we present an improved approach that discriminates between the instances observed. The advantage of this method is that it allows the system to both adapt to and track drift more accurately as well as filter the noise in the data more effectively. We present the algorithm and compare its performance with FLORA a well known concept drift tracking algorithm.
Evaluación de aptitud de tierras al cultivo de caña de azúcar en la Huasteca potosina, México, por técnicas geomáticas

Mexican sugarcane industry competitiveness needs to reestructuring its productive process in order to planning and optimizes the use of the technical, fi nancial and human resources. At Huasteca Mexico an increasing area of sugarcane is being growing for the production of sugar and bioenergy because of its rapid growth and high energy production per ha. However, sugar cane yields had declined because sugarcane crop puts a high demands on the soil due to large amounts of nutrients are removed with the harvest. This research was carried out to analyze the effect of commercial sugarcane production on soil chemical properties using data from the main producing areas from Huasteca and integrating the approaches as Precision Agriculture (PA), soils management and Land Evaluation. The decrease in soil organic matter under continuous sugarcane confi rmed dependence of cane yield and increases the susceptibility of the sugarcane soils to infl uence of the environment
Macrophages

Macrophages play a complex role in tumor progression since they can exert both tumor-preventing (M1 macrophages) and tumor-promoting (M2 macrophages) activities. In colorectal carcinoma (CRC), at odds to many other cancers, macrophage infiltration has been correlated with an improved patient survival. In a recent study, we have evaluated the distribution of M1 and M2 macrophage subtypes in CRC and their impact on patient prognosis.