Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Lumped Circuit for Wideband Impedance Matching of a Non-Resonant, Short Dipole or Monopole Antenna

A new technique is proposed for wideband impedance matching of short dipole- or monopole-like antennas in the VHF-UHF bands. Instead of constructing the network topology for every particular antenna, we propose a simple network of one fixed topology. This network is an inductive L-section cascaded with a high-pass T-section. The network includes five discrete components-three inductors and two capacitors. Although the approach is not general, the paper proves that matching with the present network is close to the theoretical limit impedance matching confirmed by Bode-Fano theory. The matching performance also approaches the performance of the Carlin's equalizer for short dipoles and monopoles. The dipoles and monopoles may have different shape and different matching bandwidths. By using the matching circuit of fixed topology we avoid greater difficulties related to the practical realization of the Carlin's equalizer. The key point is to minimize the antenna's matching network complexity (and loss) so that the circuit can be designed and constructed in a straightforward manner.
Effects of multidisciplinary inpatient rehabilitation for chronic back or neck pain: a register-linkage study of sickness absences and analgesic purchases in an occupational cohort

Objective: To determine the effects of multidisciplinary in-patient rehabilitation for chronic back or neck pain on sickness absences and analgesic purchases. Design: A prospective observational study. Setting: 10 towns in Finland. Participants: 34 838 local government employees, including 418 participants in rehabilitation for chronic back pain and 195 participants in rehabilitation for chronic neck pain between 1994 and 2002. Main outcome measures: The annual rates of short (1–3 days), long (>3 days), and very long (>21 days) sickness absences and the defined daily doses (DDD) of prescribed analgesics. Results: The rate of very long (>21 days) sickness absence among the chronic back pain rehabilitees was 3.03-fold (95% CI 2.55 to 3.60) compared to the non-rehabilitees in the year before rehabilitation. This ratio declined to 1.88 (95% CI 1.65 to 2.37) three years after rehabilitation. No further decline in the rate of very long sickness absence was observed in the subsequent years. For chronic neck pain rehabilitees, no evidence of the effectiveness of rehabilitation on sickness absence was found. In relation to consumption of analgesics, the mean rate of DDDs declined among the back and neck pain rehabilitees after rehabilitation compared to the non-rehabilitees. Conclusions: Multidisciplinary in-patient rehabilitation for chronic back pain may decrease the risk of very long sickness absence for three years. In relation to rehabilitation for chronic neck pain, no changes in sickness absences were found.
Frozen-in anticyclones occurring in polar Northern Hemisphere during springtime: Characterization, occurrence and link with quasi-biennial oscillation

During winter, the polar vortex forms a dynamical barrier in the arctic stratosphere which prevents large scale exchanges between the high latitude and tropical regions. Nevertheless, the occurrence of thin tropical air mass intrusions at the edge of the polar vortex have in fact been detected and modeled. These structures could play an important role in improving our knowledge of the balance between chemical and dynamical processes associated with the ozone budget. After the final stratospheric warming in springtime, the breakdown of the polar vortex occurs and the summer circulation starts to develop. Air mass intrusions from the tropics can be trapped at polar latitudes and persist until August in the anticyclone, advected by summer easterlies. These structures, named "frozen-in anticyclones" (FrIACs), have already been observed in 2003 and 2005 by MIPAS-ENVISAT and MLS-AURA tracer measurements. We present here a new case of FrIAC in 2007 highlighted using MLS-AURA measurements. In order to better understand the dynamical conditions required for such events and the associated processes, we performed a climatology of tropical air mass intrusions using a potential vorticity contour advection model. This climatology reveals a preferred path for exchanges between the polar and tropical stratospheres. Using ERA-Iterim wind and temperature reanalysis from ECMWF, we have established links between FrIAC occurrences and Rossby wave activity. There is evidence that FrIACs can exist if no major sudden stratospheric warming occurs during the polar vortex phase and their development seems favorable if the tropical quasi-biennial oscillation is in the easterly phase.
Seminational Surveillance of Fungemia in Denmark: Notably High Rates of Fungemia and Numbers of Isolates with Reduced Azole Susceptibility

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to present the first set of comprehensive data on fungemia in Denmark including the distribution of species and range of susceptibility to major antifungal compounds based on a seminational surveillance study initiated in 2003. The catchment area of the participating hospitals had a population of 2.8 million, or 53% of the Danish population. A total of 303 episodes of fungemia were registered (annual rate, 11 of 100,000 people or 0.49 of 1,000 hospital discharges). Candida species accounted for 97.4% of the fungal pathogens. C. albicans was the predominant species (63%), but the proportion varied from 57% to 72% among participating departments of clinical microbiology. C. glabrata was the second most frequent species (20%; range, 8% to 32%). C. krusei was a rare isolate (3%) and occurred only at two of the participating hospitals. Retrospective data retrieved from the Danish laboratory systems documented a continuous increase of candidemia cases since the early 1990s. For the 272 susceptibility-tested isolates, MICs of amphotericin B and caspofungin were within the limits expected for the species or genus. However, decreased azole susceptibility, defined as a fluconazole MIC of >8 μg/ml and/or itraconazole MIC of >0.125 μg/ml, was detected for 11 Candida isolates that were neither C. glabrata nor C. krusei. Including intrinsically resistant fungi, we detected decreased susceptibility to fluconazole and/or itraconazole in 87 (32%) current Danish bloodstream fungal isolates. We showed a continuous increase of fungemia in Denmark and an annual rate in 2003 to 2004 higher than in most other countries. The proportion of bloodstream fungal isolates with reduced susceptibility to fluconazole and/or itraconazole was also notably high.
Anion conductance of cardiac muscle

The effectiveness of chloride ions in influencing electrical behaviour of a tissue will in general depend on how large a share they contribute to the membrane conductance. In the case of frog skeletal muscle measurements made with different methods are in good agreement and show that the chloride conductance of a resting fibre in Ringer's solution is about twice that of potassium (Hodgkin & Horowicz, 1959; Hutter & Noble, 1960). Experiments on mammalian skeletal muscle (Giebisch, Kraupp, Pillat & Stormann, 1957) and smooth muscle (Burnstock & Straub, 1958) suggest that these tissues are also highly permeable to chloride ions. The present paper gives information on the situation in mammalian cardiac muscle. Although. accurate quantitative information has not been obtained, the indication is that cardiac muscle is more permeable to potassium than to chloride. The striking effects which may nevertheless be produced by replacing chloride with other ions are interpreted as the consequence of the sensitivity of certain phases of the cardiac action potential to changes in membrane conductance. In skeletal muscle the membrane conductance is reduced on replacing chloride by large impermeant anions like sulphate and methyl sulphate, or by bromide, nitrate and iodide which are able to penetrate the membrane slowly (Hutter & Padsha, 1959; Hutter & Noble, 1960). In cardiac muscle the large anions act in the same way, but replacement of chloride by bromide, nitrate and iodide was found to inrrease the membrane conductance. A range of anions of different permeabilities is thus available, and the description of the transient and permanent changes in electrical behaviour which may be produced by varying the anion composition ofthe bathing fluid occupies part of this paper. A brief report of this work has already appeared (Hutter & Noble, 1959).
The impact of an automatic syringe dispensing machine in inner-city Sydney, Australia: No evidence of a 'honey-pot' effect.

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS Needle and syringe automatic dispensing machines (ADM) aim to increase needle/syringe distribution to people who inject drugs. ADM implementation has been met with community concern about potential perceived increases in crime and drug use and that they will attract non-resident drug users-the 'honey-pot effect'. In April 2013, an ADM commenced operation in inner-city Sydney. We assessed the impact of the ADM on crime and examined its use by non-resident drug users (the honey-pot effect). DESIGN AND METHODS Fixed-site needle and syringe program (n = 207) and ADM clients (n = 55) were surveyed to determine whether they lived within 1 km of the ADM. Police-recorded offences between January 2012 and March 2014 across six crime categories for the local and surrounding areas were assessed for trend to measure impact on crime. RESULTS The majority (78%) of needle and syringe program clients reported residing within 1 km of the service. Most (95%) ADM users were fixed-site service clients. The 2 year trend for crime categories remained stable or decreased, except for fraud, which increased significantly (P < 0.05). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Automatic dispensing machine users were largely clients of the existing fixed-site service and lived locally. There was no apparent concurrent increase in crime or a honey-pot effect. It is important that services continue to be aware of community concerns and respond to them appropriately. [Day CA, White B, Haber PS. The impact of an automatic syringe dispensing machine in inner-city Sydney, Australia: No evidence of a 'honey-pot' effect. Drug Alcohol Rev 2016;35:637-643].
The Relevance of Trend Variables for the Prediction of Corporate Crises and Insolvencies

Abstract This study investigated the potential of a specific trend, defined as the relative change of accounting ratios for two consecutive years, to improve the classification accuracy and model performance of insolvency prediction models based on multivariate linear discriminant analysis. The results show that the respective trend can include information from both consecutive years, but this informational content could not be exploited to improve early detection of corporate crises and insolvencies.
Tightening end to end delay upper bound for AFDX network calculus with rate latency FIFO servers using network calculus

This paper presents some new results in network calculus designed to improve the computation of end to end bounds for an AFDX network, using the FIFO assumption. The formal contribution is to allow to handle shaped leaky buckets flows traversing simple rate-latency network elements. Two new results are presented when a sum of some shaped flows crosses one single network element: the first one considers the global aggregated flow, and the second one considers each individual flow, assuming FIFO policy. Some configurations are tested, and the first results obtained are in almost all cases better than already known methods.
From spatial frequency contrast to edge preponderance: the differential modulation of early visual evoked potentials by natural scene stimuli

Abstract The contrast response function of early visual evoked potentials elicited by sinusoidal gratings is known to exhibit characteristic potentials closely associated with the processes of parvocellular and magnocellular pathways. Specifically, the N1 component has been linked with parvocellular processes, while the P1 component has been linked with magnocellular processes. However, little is known regarding the response properties of the N1 and P1 components during the processing and encoding of complex (i.e., broadband) stimuli such as natural scenes. Here, we examine how established physical characteristics of natural scene imagery modulate the N1 and P1 components in humans by providing a systematic investigation of component modulation as visual stimuli are gradually built up from simple sinusoidal gratings to highly complex natural scene imagery. The results suggest that the relative dominance in signal output of the N1 and P1 components is dependent on spatial frequency (SF) luminance contrast for simple stimuli up to natural scene imagery possessing few edges. However, such a dependency shifts to a dominant N1 signal for natural scenes possessing abundant edge content and operates independently of SF luminance contrast.
A lower error antilogarithmic converter using novel four-region piecewise-linear approximation

In this paper, a novel antilogarithmic converter using four-region piecewise-linear approximation is proposed. The proposed technique provides a lower error and area-efficient hardware implementation for antilogarithmic converter with 0.5681% of percent error range, which can outperform previously proposed methods with four-region and six-region schemes. The delay and area of the hardware implementation is 10ns and 6,639 μm2, respectively using 0.18 μm TSMC process.
Expert Systems With Applications

Several algorithms for clustering data streams based on k -Means have been proposed in the literature. However, most of them assume that the number of clusters, k , is known a priori by the user and can be kept ﬁxed throughout the data analysis process. Besides the diﬃculty in choosing k , data stream clustering imposes several challenges to be addressed, such as addressing non-stationary, unbounded data that arrive in an online fashion. In this paper, we propose a Fast Evolutionary Algorithm for Clustering data streams (FEAC-Stream) that allows estimating k automatically from data in an online fashion. FEAC-Stream uses the Page–Hinkley Test to detect eventual degradation in the quality of the induced clusters, thereby triggering an evolutionary algorithm that re-estimates k accordingly. FEAC-Stream relies on the assumption that clusters of (partially unknown) data can provide useful information about the dynamics of the data stream. We illustrate the potential of FEAC-Stream in a set of experiments using both synthetic and real-world data streams, comparing it to four related algorithms, namely: CluStream-OMR k , CluStream-B k M, StreamKM ++ -OMR k and StreamKM ++ -B k M. The obtained results show that FEAC-Stream provides good data partitions and that it can detect, and accordingly react to, data changes.
Infliximab and methotrexate in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor Trial in Rheumatoid Arthritis with Concomitant Therapy Study Group.

BACKGROUND Neutralization of tumor necrosis factor a (TNF-alpha) for three to six months reduces the symptoms and signs of rheumatoid arthritis. However, the capacity of this approach to effect a more sustained benefit and its effect on joint damage are not known. METHODS We treated 428 patients who had active rheumatoid arthritis despite methotrexate therapy with placebo or infliximab, a chimeric monoclonal antibody against TNF-alpha, in intravenous doses of 3 or 10 mg per kilogram of body weight every 4 or 8 weeks in combination with oral methotrexate for 54 weeks. We assessed clinical responses with use of the criteria of the American College of Rheumatology, the quality of life with a health-status questionnaire, and the effect on joint damage radiographically. RESULTS The combination of infliximab and methotrexate was well tolerated and resulted in a sustained reduction in the symptoms and signs of rheumatoid arthritis that was significantly greater than the reduction associated with methotrexate therapy alone (clinical response, 51.8 percent vs. 17.0 percent; P<0.001). The quality of life was also significantly better with infliximab plus methotrexate than with methotrexate alone. Radiographic evidence of joint damage increased in the group given methotrexate, but not in the groups given infliximab and methotrexate (mean change in radiographic score, 7.0 vs. 0.6, P<0.001). Radiographic evidence of progression of joint damage was absent in infliximab-treated patients whether or not they had a clinical response. CONCLUSIONS In patients with persistently active rheumatoid arthritis despite methotrexate therapy, repeated doses of infliximab in combination with methotrexate provided clinical benefit and halted the progression of joint damage.
A key distribution protocol using event markers

The distribution of cryptographic keys in a computer network is discussed. The need for current authentication of communicants to prevent playback attacks is demonstrated, and an earlier protocol is found to be subject to such attacks. A protocol which employs a simple means of obtaining current authentication of communicants and does not require communicants to maintain an absolute sense of time is presented. The protocol is expanded to accommodate key distribution between multiple security communities, where each community is administered by a different authentication server. Another form of the protocol which is appropriate for datagram applications is developed. CR
Guide to Using Masked Design Variables to Estimate Standard Errors in Public Use Files of the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey

Until recently, sample design information needed to correctly estimate standard errors from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) public use files was not released for confidentiality reasons. In 2002, masked sample design variables were released for the first time with the 1995–2000 NAMCS and NHAMCS public use files. This paper shows how to use masked design variables to compute standard errors in three software applications. It also discusses when masking overstates or understates “in-house” standard errors, and how masking affects the significance levels of point estimates and logistic regression parameters.
Cataracts in Galactosaemia *

WHEN milk is taken by mouth, the lactose that it contains (breast milk contains a higher concentration than cow's milk) is hydrolysed by the enzyme lactase into its constituent monosaccharides, glucose and galactose, which are absorbed from the intestine, p'robably by a process of phosphorylation. The galactose, which is the most readily absorbed of the monosaccharides, is then taken to the liver by the portal circulation, where it is normally converted into glycogen by the hepatic cells. Galactosaemia is a disorder of metabolism in which this conversion of galactose into glycogen is interrupted, and in consequence the blood level of the sugar rises, allowing a considerable quantity to appear in the urine. The basic cause of the disease is said to be a defective enzyme system in the liver, the exact nature of which is, as yet, unknown. Clinical features of the disease are a failure to thrive, hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, albuminuria, jaundice, cataracts, and a low blood glucose level; mental retardation is a feature of long-standing cases. A familial tendency has been noted in some of the cases reported (Goppert, 1917; Bell, Blair, Lindsay, and Watson, 1950; Donnell and Lann, 1951 ; Townsend, Mason, and Strong, 1951; de Haas, 1951; Gorter, 1951; Ellenburg and Peterson, 1951). The association of cataracts with galactosaemia was originally described by Mason and Turnert in a personal communication to Bruck and Rapoport (1945), who referred to it in a report of a case of their own.
Model Organisms: New Insights Into Ion Channel and Transporter Function. Caenorhabditis elegans ClC-type chloride channels: novel variants and functional expression

Six ClC-type chloride channel genes have been identified in Caenorhabditis elegans, termed clh-1 through clh-6. cDNA sequences from these genes suggest that clh-2, clh-3, and clh-4 may code for multiple channel variants, bringing the total to at least nine channel types in this nematode. Promoter-driven green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression in transgenic animals indicates that the protein CLH-5 is expressed ubiquitously, CLH-6 is expressed mainly in nonneuronal cells, and the remaining isoforms vary from those restricted to a single cell to those expressed in over a dozen cells of the nematode. In an Sf9 cell expression system, recombinant CLH-2b, CLH-4b, and CLH-5 did not form functional plasma membrane channels. In contrast, both CLH-1 and CLH-3b produced strong, inward-rectifying chloride currents similar to those arising from mammalian ClC2, but which operate over different voltage ranges. Our demonstration of multiple CLH protein variants and comparison of expression patterns among the clh gene family provides a framework, in combination with the electrical properties of the recombinant channels, to further examine the physiology and cell-specific role each isoform plays in this simple model system.
How Does the Agents' Appearance Affect Users' Interpretation of the Agents' Attitudes: Experimental Investigation on Expressing the Same Artificial Sounds From Agents With Different Appearances

An experimental investigation into how the appearance of an agent such as a robot or PC affects people's interpretations of the agent's attitudes is presented. In general, people are said to create stereotypical agent behavioral models in their minds based on the agents' appearances, and these appearances significantly affect their way of interaction. Therefore, it is quite important to address with the following research question: How does an agent's appearance affect its interactions with people? Specifically, a preliminary experiment was conducted to select eight artificial sounds for which people can estimate two specific primitive attitudes (e.g., positive or negative). Then an experiment was conducted where the participants were presented with the selected artificial sounds through three kinds of agents: a MindStorms robot, AIBO robot, and laptop PC. In particular, the participants were asked to select the correct attitudes based on the sounds expressed by these three agents. The results showed that the participants had better interpretation rates when a PC presented the sounds and lower rates when the MindStorms and AIBO robots presented the sounds, even though the sounds expressed by these agents were the same. The results of this study contribute to the design policy of the interactive agents, such as, What types of appearances should agents have to effectively interact with people, and which kinds of information should these agents express to people?