Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antenna designs and channel modeling for terahertz wireless communications

In this dissertation, channel modeling for Terahertz (THz) channels and designs of nano devices for THz communications are studied. THz communication becomes more and more important for future wireless communication systems that require an ultra high data rate, which motivates us to propose new nano device designs based on graphene and new system models for the THz channel. Besides, the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technique is well known to increase the spectral efficiency of a wireless communications system. Considering THz channels’ particular characteristics, MIMO systems with reconfigurable antennas and distributed antennas are proposed. We compare the differences between MIMO systems in the GHz and THz bands, and highlight the benefits of using multi antennas in the THz band. The work on nano device designs provides two antenna designs with single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and graphene nano ribbon (GNR). First, we analyse the spectral efficiency of an SWCNT bundled dipole antenna based MIMO system in the Terahertz band. Two scenarios are considered: the large scale MIMO and the conventional scale MIMO. It is found that, in order to get the maximum spectral efficiency, the CNT bundle size should be optimized to obtain a tradeoff between the antenna efficiency and the number of antennas for a given area. We also discuss the random fluctuation in the bundle size during the CNT bundled antenna fabrication which reduces the system spectral efficiency. Then, we propose reconfigurable directional antennas for THz communications. The beamwidth and
Reducing Garbage Collection Overhead in SSD Based on Workload Prediction

In solid-state drives (SSDs), garbage collection (GC) plays a key role in making free NAND blocks for newly coming data. The data copied from one block to another by GC affects both the performance and lifetime of SSD significantly. Placing the data with different “temperature” into different NAND blocks can reduce data copy overhead in GC. This paper proposes a scheme to place data according to its predicted future temperature. A neural network called LSTM is applied to increase the accuracy of temperature prediction in both temporal and spatial dimensions. And it also uses KMeans to do clustering and automatically dispatch similar “future temperature” data to the same NAND blocks. The results obtained show that performance and write amplification factor (WAF) are improved in various applications. In the best case, the WAF and 99.99% of the write latency are reduced by up to 43.5% and 79.3% respectively.
Meslek Lisesi Tercihi Sürecinin Keşifsel Olarak İncelenmesi

Meslek secimi, kisinin hayatinda yaptigi en onemli secimlerden biridir. Secimin onem derecesi, Turkiye Egitim Sisteminde verilen meslek lisesi ya da genel liseye devam etme tercihinde oldugu gibi karar verme olgunluguna erisme oncesinde yapildiginda daha da artmaktadir. Mezunlar kendi kararlarini verecek denli buyumus olmadiklari icin egitim sistemi tarafindan rehberlik hizmetinin saglanmasi gerekir. Bu calismada ogrencilerin kendilerine ait degerlendirme sureci, mesleklere ait bilgilerinin duzeyleri ve kayit oncesinde saglanan rehberlik hizmetinin varligina iliskin sorular meslek liselerinin kayit doneminde derinlemesine gorusme teknigi kullanilarak sorgulanmistir. Gorusmelerde ogrencilerin cogunlugunun kendilerini tanimadigi, ilgi alanlarini bilmedigi, tercihlerini ailelerin yonlendirmesine, aldiklari puanlara ve not ortalamasina gore yapmakta olduklari ifade edilmistir. Bu durum ogrencilerin kendileri icin uygun olmayan bolumlerde egitim almasi sonucunu dogurur. Ogrenciler tercih ettikleri meslekler ile ilgili bilgi sahibi olmadiklarini ve kayit oncesinde yeterli rehberlik hizmeti almadiklarini belirtmislerdir.
La Transformée Ridgelet Analytique Discrète 3D

La transformee Ridgelet continue a ete introduite et developpee par E. Candes de l'universite de Stanford. Elle permet theoriquement de representer efficacement les ruptures rectilignes dans une image, informations primordiales pour l'analyse de l'image. Le challenge de ces dernieres annees est la definition d'une transformee discrete. Dans ce cadre, nous proposons une Transformee Ridgelet Analytique Discrete (DART), basee sur la construction d'objets analytiques discrets dans le domaine de Fourier pour calculer la transformee de Radon discrete. La DART 3D est obtenue par une transformee en ondelette 1D de toutes les projections de l'image contenues dans la transformee de Radon discrete. Une etude applicative a ete menee pour le debruitage d'images 3D et de videos. Le debruitage par la DART 3D est perceptuellement correct et le rapport signal sur bruit est meilleur que des methodes classiques.
Histopathological profile of ovarian tumours: A twelve year institutional experience

Context: Ovarian tumours represent about 30% of all cancers of the female genital system. They manifest in a wide spectrum of clinical, morphological and histological features. Aim: To study the frequency of incidence of different histopathological types of ovarian tumours in our institute. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study included 257 cases of histopathologically proven ovarian tumours, reported in the Department of Pathology of a rural tertiary care referral hospital, over a 12 year period (January 2000 to December 2011). These were classified according to the WHO classification of ovarian tumours (2003). Clinical presentation of the patients was analysed from archived case records. Results: Of the 257 tumours studied, 162 (63.04%) were benign, 15 (5.84%) were borderline and 80 (31.12%) were malignant. Surface epithelial tumours were the most common (68.48%) followed by germ cell tumours (15.95%). Mucinous cystadenomas (32.69%) were the most common benign tumours, while serous cystadenocarcinomas (31.13%) were the most common malignant tumours. Most ovarian neoplasms (43.19%) occurred in the 21-40 years age-group. Dull abdominal pain was the most common clinical presentation. Conclusions: Benign ovarian tumours were more common than malignant ones across all age groups. Surface epithelial tumours were the most common histopathological type of ovarian tumour. Due to vague symptoms, patients present late. Development of methods for early diagnosis of ovarian neoplasia is therefore, a pressing need today. The relative frequency of incidence of different ovarian tumours shows regional variations, highlighting the need to identify region-specific risk factors.
Medicinal herbs in the management of male infertility

Male infertility can range from neurohormonal imbalances, reproductive tissue disruptions, qualitative and quantitative deterioration of semen to sexual behavioral problems. The global deterioration of male reproductive health is a major concern and the modern therapeutic approaches to combat male infertility are expensive, less accessible, have long term treatment tenure and possess various side effects. Whereas, the herbal therapies, are better positioned to offer more holistic approaches to improve male reproductive health. In Ayurvedic pharmacology, there exists a special group of herbs, classified as vajikarana or aphrodisiacs, which nourishes and stimulates the sexual tissues. This review concentrates on the Ayurvedic approach to ameliorate male reproductive health referring to some of the most important scientifically tested herbs which have been reported to accentuate male fertility by imposing either stimulating or nourishing effects on the male reproductive organs. Correspondence to: Pallav Sengupta, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, MAHSA University, Jalan SP 2, Jalan Saujana Putra, 42610, Jenjarum, Selangor, Malaysia, Phone: +60 17 4523 780 E-mail: pallav_cu@yahoo.com
Data prefetch mechanisms for accelerating symbolic and numeric computation

Despite rapid increases in CPU performance, the primary obstacles to achieving higher performance in contemporary processor organizations remain control and data hazards. Primary data cache misses are responsible for the majority of the data hazards. With CPU primary cache sizes limited by clock cycle time constraints, the performance of future CPUs is effectively going to be limited by the number of primary data cache misses whose penalty cannot be masked. To address this problem, this dissertation takes a detailed look at memory access patterns in complex, real-world programs. A simple memory reference pattern classification is introduced, which is applicable to a broad range of computations, including pointer-intensive and numeric codes. To exploit the new classification, a data prefetch device called the Indirect Reference Buffer (IRB) is proposed. The IRB extends data prefetching to indirect memory address sequences, while also handling dense scientific codes. It is distinguished from previous designs in its seamless integration of linear and indirect address prefetching. The behavior of the IRB on a suite of programs drawn from the Spec92, Spec95, and public domain codes, is measured under a variety of abstract models. Next, a detailed hardware design for the IRB that can be easily integrated into modern CPUs is presented. In this design, the IRB is decomposed into a recurrence recognition unit (RRU) and a prefetch unit (PU). The RRU is tightly coupled to the CPU pipelines, and monitors individual load instructions in executing programs. The PU operates asynchronously with respect to the processor pipelines, and is coupled only to the processor''s bus interface. This division has two important ramifications. First, it allows the PU to pull ahead of the processor as a program executes. Second, it makes it possible to tune the IRB for processors with varying memory subsystems, simply by redesigning the PU. An early embodiment of the design is evaluated via detailed timing simulation on our benchmark suite. The dissertation concludes by outlining compile-time transformations to enhance IRB performance and offering suggestions for possible extensions to this work.
Robust TDOA-Based Localization for IoT via Joint Source Position and NLOS Error Estimation

Accurate localization is critical to facilitate location services for Internet of Things (IoT). It is particular challenging to provision localization based on nonline-of-sight (NLOS) signals. Thus, we actualize source localization based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) derived from NLOS signal propagations. The existing robust least squares (RLS) method exhibits two shortcomings: 1) it is formulated using too large upper bounds on the NLOS errors, and 2) it suffers from the possible inexact triangle inequality problem. Aiming at circumventing the shortcomings of the existing RLS method, we propose two new RLS formulations. On one hand, to reduce the upper bounds on the NLOS errors, we propose to jointly estimate the source position and the NLOS error in the reference path. On the other hand, to avoid using the triangle inequality, we introduce a “balancing parameter” in the first formulation and develop the second formulation by transforming the measurement model. Both formulations are transformed via the S-lemma into optimization problems that are amendable to semidefinite relaxation. The proposed methods achieve superior performance over the existing methods, as validated by using both simulated and experimental data.
Changing images of cytomegalovirus infection

Background. In this retrospective single center study we have evaluated the relation between the immunosuppressive regimen and the incidence and characteristics of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection in the setting without CMV prophylaxis from 1989 through 1998. Methods. All (470) first cadaveric renal transplantations in nonsensitized (PRA < 60%) patients were analyzed. Immunosuppression consisted of cyclosporine A (Sandimmune) and prednisolone from 1989 through 2-1993 (S; 189 patients), of cyclosporine microemulsion (Neoral) and prednisolone from 3-1993 through 5-1997 (N; 200 patients) and of mycophenolate mofetil, Neoral and prednisolone from 51997 until 1998 (M; 81 patients). CMV pp65-antigenemia was measured routinely at least once weekly from day 10 till 12 weeks after transplantation or until pp65antigenemia became negative. No CMV-prophylaxis was given. Results. By changing from Sandimmune to Neoral and by adding mycophenolate mofetil, respectively, we observed a higher frequency of especially secondary CMV infections (S vs. N vs. M respectively 28 vs. 50 vs. 63%, P = 0.026; S vs. N, P = 0.027; S vs. M, P = 0.015; and N vs. M n.s.). The CMV infections lasted longer (median duration antigenemia S vs. N vs. M respectively 3 vs. 5 vs. 7 weeks, P = 0.0003; S vs. N, P < 0.002; S vs. M, P < 0.001; and N vs. M, P < 0.05). Viral load was higher in M (median maximal pp65-antigenemia S vs. N vs. M respectively 19 vs. 14.5 vs. 73, P < 0.01, S vs. N, n.s.; S vs. M, P < 0.001; and N vs. M, P < 0.01). Conclusions. The use of Neoral and the addition of mycophenolate mofetil caused significant changes in the incidence, duration and viral load of CMV infections. Effects of immunosuppressive regimen 19
A study of the views of practitioners, managers and the professional body, on the purpose of support and supervision for guidance practitioners working as personal advisers

In the context of Connexions and an inclusion agenda, practice for careers advisers (now called personal advisers) has changed. Those working intensively with the 'harder-to-help' appear to need support and supervision. For most (at practitioner, manager and the professional institute level) this is a novel practice and the meanings/perspectives on what it is, and what it can do, are not shared. The study explored these views using a qualitative approach with the intention of foregrounding differences and similarities. Following dissemination of the findings, the aim is to enhance the effectiveness of any models put into place. In exploring the formation of a discourse on support and supervision in the field of career guidance, the study evaluated the usefulness of discourse theory. Through the use of discourse theory the study also examined the need for support and supervision. Ten personal advisers, three line managers and three representatives of the professional and training body were interviewed. Analysis employed the techniques of a grounded, thematic approach that searched for the most important themes for each group. Three main themes emerged from that analysis: - the need for a structured process - managing stress and avoiding burn out - time constraints within a bigger picture of constant change. Although there were many similar views about the purpose of support and supervision, there were differences in emphasis between the groups. For personal advisers the central purpose was to 'manage stress and avoid burn out': support and supervision was viewed as offering a restorative space within, at times, a stressful work environment. While line line managers and representatives of the professional community also talked about this, their views about purpose brought to the fore other aspects. Line managers viewed monitoring of performance as a central function of support and supervision. For the professional representatives the purpose of support and supervision was to 'enhance professional development within the bigger picture of organisational change'. Both groups made use of a professional discourse that placed the needs of the client at the centre of the purpose of support and supervision. They also viewed support and supervision through a lens that must consider accountability and use of the resources of time and personnel: for line managers this was the primary focus of their talk about support and supervision. Foucault's concept of 'productive power' was used in the examination of these differences. The central story for the personal advisers was the need for a restorative space to manage stress and avoid burn out. This discourse on the purpose of support and supervision was positioned above the function of benefiting work with clients. The study concludes that this discourse needs to be heard and not silenced by other more powerful views on the purpose of support and supervision.
ASSESSMENT OF SERUM LEPTIN LEVELS IN DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF BODY MASS INDEX

Objective: To assess leptin concentrations in different categories of Body Mass Index (BMI) in a sample of local population of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Study design: Observational study. Place & Duration of Study: Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital, Rawalpindi, 2009-2010 (8 months). Materials and Methods: Fasting serum leptin concentrations were measured in 100 healthy obese, overweight and non-obese individuals aged 20-50 years, including both sexes. ELISA test was done for serum leptin assay. For each statistical analysis SPSS version 15 was used. The mean, standard deviation, ranges p-values and r-values. were calculated for statistical inference Results: Serum leptin concentrations were strongly associated with sex and the body mass index. Serum leptin level was found comparatively higher in women, in same category of BMI, (mean-64.4 ng/ml, obese group) than in men (mean-40.4 ng/ml, obese group). The mean serum leptin concentration in non-obese women was (12.7 ng/mL) and in men (6.4 ng/mL). Body mass index was strongly positively correlated with serum leptin concentration (r=0.874, P<0.001) in obese group. Serum leptin concentrations were higher in obese individuals (mean 52.8  24.6 ng/mL, P value <0.001) than in non-obese individuals (mean 12.7  6.1 ng/mL). As the grade of obesity increased so does serum leptin levels. It was higher in overweight males (32.6) females (37.8), grade I males (40.4), females (64.4) obesity. Conclusion: In this sample of the local population, serum leptin concentrations correlated positively in different categories of BMI in both sexes. Key words : Leptin, Population, Obese, Overweight, Non-obese, Grades of body mass index.
Imaging in pulmonary hypertension: the role of MR and CT

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a debilitating disease with many causes that has a significant impact on quality of life and results in premature death. Until recently imaging has only played an adjunctive role to primary diagnostic modalities such as echocardiography and right heart catheterization in identifying these patients. The advent of newer imaging techniques and developments in hardware has opened up a new scope for imaging. CT offers excellent structural detail while MRI provides superb functional information without the risk of radiation. These modalities now offer a robust and in-depth diagnostic approach for the investigation of patients with suspected pulmonary hypertension. This document explores the role of MR and CT imaging methods in investigating patients with pulmonary vascular disease and different aspect of lung disease. In particular, subgroups of pulmonary hypertension associated with unique morphological changes have been closely scrutinized. In this work the value of MR angiography in patients suspected with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension or unexplained PH has been explored and in the same subgroup of patients, the role of 3D MR lung perfusion as a diagnostic tool has also been demonstrated. This research has also shown that the thoracic CT offers valuable prognostic information and imaging characteristics in patients with each of the major subcategories of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Furthermore, the diagnostic accuracy and prognostic significance of MR and CT indices for the detection of PH in patients with connective tissue disease associated with PH has been highlighted. Finally, the feasibility and diagnostic quality of MRI to identify structural parenchymal lung changes have also been analysed and this study demonstrates the potential clinical utility of imaging high risk patients with MRI in longitudinal studies thereby avoiding the hazards of radiation exposure.
Backgrounds to Augustan Poetry: Gallus Elegy and Rome

Preface 1. Introduction: from Catullus to Gallus 2. The Sixth Eclogue: Virgil's poetic genealogy 3. Gallus the elegist 4. Propertius' Monobiblos 5. Gallus and the Tenth Eclogue 6. Propertius: from Ardoris Poeta to Romanus Callimachus 7. The Roman poetry of Horace and Tibullus 8. Conclusions List of works cited Index rerum notabiliorum Index locorum potiorum.
Generalized aliasing as a basis for program analysis tools

Tools for automatic program analysis promise to improve programmer productivity by searching and summarizing large bodies of code. However, the phenomenon of aliasing—different names being used to refer to the same data—reduces the effectiveness of simple textual analyses. This dissertation describes the design of a system, Ajax, that addresses this problem by using semantics-based program analysis as the basis for a number of different tools to aid Java programmers. To enable the construction of many tools, Ajax imposes a clean separation between analysis engines that produce alias information and tools that consume it. Analyses are treated as “black boxes” satisfying a simple, formal specification given in terms of the semantics of Java bytecode. Knowing only this specification, one can build many different tools with only a small amount of code. The thesis explores the flexibility and efficiency of the design by describing the construction and evaluation of several different tools: tools to find dead code, resolve Java virtual method calls, statically check Java downcasts, search for accesses to objects, and build object models. To support these tools, Ajax includes a novel static analysis engine for Java called SEMI, based on type inference with polymorphic recursion. SEMI provides fully context sensitive analysis of large programs. Using SEMI with the downcast checking tool, Ajax can prove the safety of more than 50% of the downcast instructions in some real-life Java programs, such as Sun's bytecode disassembler and the JavaCC parser generator. Ajax is the first system to address this particular task. One of the key goals of this thesis is to study issues bearing on the practical utility of static analysis tools for programmers. This document describes some of the challenges involved in building an analysis system for off-the-shelf Java applications, and suggests some possible avenues for future research.