Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Beamforming for Cellular Systems with V-BLAST

Many services of 4G mobile communication are important applications of pervasive computing. Adaptive Beamforming and V-blast are both advanced technologies of 4G mobile communication. In the paper, a new communication scheme with adaptive beamforming is proposed for the uplink of cellular system with vertical bell laboratories layered space-time (V-BLAST) coding. The proposed scheme performs adaptive beamforming processing which could effectively suppress cochannel interference (CCI) to ensure the communication quality of the V-BLAST system. Simulation results show that the scheme could achieve good performance in cellular system with CCI. It means the users of mobile communication could get better service automatically with nothing else to do.
Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A Systematic Review

The evidence concerning the influence of alcohol drinking on the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has yielded intriguing findings but has lacked a clear-cut interpretation due to inconsistencies. To unify this body of evidence, we performed a systematic review. With funding and using a protocol developed by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), 15 bibliographic databases were searched for epidemiological studies that reported a measure of association between alcoholic beverage consumption and NPC. Pooled odds ratios (ORs) for highest-vs.-lowest categories of total alcohol intake was obtained by using an inverse-variance weighted random-effects model. A dose-response trend was examined in models using generalized least square estimation. The search identified 14 case-control studies from 5 countries. For total alcohol intake, the pooled ORs in a comparison of the highest to the lowest category was 1.33 (95% CI: = 1.09–1.62) in 11 studies. Data from 6 studies indicated a J-shape dose-response trend, with NPC risk decreasing with up to 15 drinks/wk and increasing with higher intake. Fewer data were available to assess the associations between NPC and intake of beer, wine, and spirits. The potential J-shaped dose-response trend suggests a reduced risk of NPC related to the light alcohol drinking, an observation that warrants further study. Considered in total, the quantitative summaries of the case-control evidence suggest that heavy alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk of NPC.
Surviving disclosure of infidelity: Results of an international survey of 164 recovering sex addicts and partners

Abstract One of the most significant steps in early recovery from addictive sexual disorders is disclosure by the addict to his or her significant other of the sexual behaviors in which the addict has been engaging, usually outside the primary relationship. To learn about couples' experiences with disclosure, we prepared an anonymous survey, filled out separately by each partner. Surveys were returned by 82 sex addicts and 82 spouses or partners. Addicts had a mean of 3.4 years in recovery. Key findings: Disclosure is often a process, not a one-time event. Even in the absence of relapse, withholding of information is common. Initial disclosure usually is most conducive to healing the relationship in the long run when it includes all the major elements of the acting-out behaviors but avoids the “gory details. ” Over half the partners threatened to leave after disclosure, but only one quarter of couples actually separated. Half the sex addicts reported one or more major slips or relapses, which necessitated .
Reliability Verification of the Performance Evaluation of Multiphase Pump

Abstract — The crude oil in an oil well exists in various phases such as gas, seawater, and sand, as well as oil. Therefore, a phase separator is needed at the front of a single-phase pump for pressurization and transfer. On the other hand, the application of a multiphase pump can provide such advantages as simplification of the equipment structure and cost savings, because there is no need for a phase separation process. Therefore, the crude oil transfer method using a multiphase pump is being applied to recently developed oil wells. Due to this increase in demand, technical demands for the development of multiphase pumps are sharply increasing, but the progress of research into related technologies is insufficient, due to the nature of multiphase pumps that require high levels of skills. This study was conducted to verify the reliability of pump performance evaluation using numerical analysis, which is the basis of the development of a multiphase pump. For this study, a model was designed by selecting the specifications of this study. The performance of the designed model was evaluated through numerical analysis and experiment. The results of the performance evaluation were compared to verify the reliability of the result using numerical analysis.
Full-system analysis and characterization of interactive smartphone applications

Smartphones have recently overtaken PCs as the primary consumer computing device in terms of annual unit shipments. Given this rapid market growth, it is important that mobile system designers and computer architects analyze the characteristics of the interactive applications users have come to expect on these platforms. With the introduction of high-performance, low-power, general purpose CPUs in the latest smartphone models, users now expect PC-like performance and a rich user experience, including high-definition audio and video, high-quality multimedia, dynamic web content, responsive user interfaces, and 3D graphics. In this paper, we characterize the microarchitectural behavior of representative smartphone applications on a current-generation mobile platform to identify trends that might impact future designs. To this end, we measure a suite of widely available mobile applications for audio, video, and interactive gaming. To complete this suite we developed BBench, a new fully-automated benchmark to assess a web-browser's performance when rendering some of the most popular and complex sites on the web. We contrast these applications' characteristics with those of the SPEC CPU2006 benchmark suite. We demonstrate that real-world interactive smartphone applications differ markedly from the SPEC suite. Specifically the instruction cache, instruction TLB, and branch predictor suffer from poor performance. We conjecture that this is due to the applications' reliance on numerous high level software abstractions (shared libraries and OS services). Similar trends have been observed for UI-intensive interactive applications on the desktop.
Devaluation and sequential decisions: linking goal-directed and model-based behavior

In experimental psychology different experiments have been developed to assess goal–directed as compared to habitual control over instrumental decisions. Similar to animal studies selective devaluation procedures have been used. More recently sequential decision-making tasks have been designed to assess the degree of goal-directed vs. habitual choice behavior in terms of an influential computational theory of model-based compared to model-free behavioral control. As recently suggested, different measurements are thought to reflect the same construct. Yet, there has been no attempt to directly assess the construct validity of these different measurements. In the present study, we used a devaluation paradigm and a sequential decision-making task to address this question of construct validity in a sample of 18 healthy male human participants. Correlational analysis revealed a positive association between model-based choices during sequential decisions and goal-directed behavior after devaluation suggesting a single framework underlying both operationalizations and speaking in favor of construct validity of both measurement approaches. Up to now, this has been merely assumed but never been directly tested in humans.
Matrin CYP, an SR-rich Cyclophilin That Associates with the Nuclear Matrix and Splicing Factors*

We report the identification and cloning of a nuclear matrix protein termed matrin cyclophilin or matrin CYP. The derived sequence of matrin cyp encodes a protein of 752 amino acids with a predicted mass of 88 kDa. A 172-residue stretch at the amino terminus shows high identity with the ubiquitous family of cyclophilins. Clustered throughout the carboxyl half of the protein are a series of serine-arginine (SR) repeats that are a characteristic feature of many RNA splicing factors. Antibodies raised against matrin CYP recognize a 106-kDa antigen that is detected in isolated nuclei and quantitatively subfractionates in the nuclear matrix. Laser scanning confocal microscopy localizes most of the anti-matrin CYP-specific antigen within the nucleus in a pattern of large bright speckles that co-localize with splicing factors and diffuse nucleoplasmic staining. A strikingly similar pattern of staining is observed in cells extracted for in situ nuclear matrices. A fusion protein containing the cyclophilin domain of matrin CYP exhibits cyclosporin A (CsA)-sensitive, peptidylprolyl cis-trans-isomerase activity that is characteristic of native cyclophilins. Although total rat liver nuclei contains predominantly CsA-resistant PPIase activity, the corresponding activity in the nuclear matrix is largely CsA-sensitive.
Beta Regression for Modelling Rates and Proportions

This paper proposes a regression model where the response is beta distributed using a parameterization of the beta law that is indexed by mean and dispersion parameters. The proposed model is useful for situations where the variable of interest is continuous and restricted to the interval (0, 1) and is related to other variables through a regression structure. The regression parameters of the beta regression model are interpretable in terms of the mean of the response and, when the logit link is used, of an odds ratio, unlike the parameters of a linear regression that employs a transformed response. Estimation is performed by maximum likelihood. We provide closed-form expressions for the score function, for Fisher's information matrix and its inverse. Hypothesis testing is performed using approximations obtained from the asymptotic normality of the maximum likelihood estimator. Some diagnostic measures are introduced. Finally, practical applications that employ real data are presented and discussed.
Targeting changes in cancer: assessing pathway stability by comparing pathway gene expression coherence levels in tumor and normal tissues

The purpose of this study is to examine gene expression changes occurring in cancer from a pathway perspective by analyzing the level of pathway coherence in tumor tissues in comparison with their normal counterparts. Instability in pathway regulation patterns can be considered either as a result of or as a contributing factor to genetic instability and possibly cancer. Our analysis has identified pathways that show a significant change in their coherence level in tumor tissues, some of which are tumor type specific, indicating novel targets for cancer type–specific therapies. Pathways are found to have a general tendency to lose their gene expression coherence in tumor tissues when compared with normal tissues, especially for signaling pathways. The selective growth advantage of cancer cells over normal cells seems to originate from their preserved control over vital pathways to ensure survival and altered signaling, allowing excessive proliferation. We have additionally investigated the tissue-related instability of pathways, providing valuable clues to the cellular processes underlying the tumorigenesis and/or growth of specific cancer types. Pathways that contain known cancer genes (i.e., “cancer pathways”) show significantly greater instability and are more likely to become incoherent in tumor tissues. Finally, we have proposed strategies to target instability (i.e., pathways that are prone to changes) by identifying compound groups that show selective activity against pathways with a detectable coherence change in cancer. These results can serve as guidelines for selecting novel agents that have the potential to specifically target a particular pathway that has relevance in cancer. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(9):2417–27]
Magda B. Arnold's contributions to emotions research

This paper provides an overview to the special issue of Cognition and Emotion devoted to Magda B. Arnold's (1903–2002) contributions to the psychology of human emotion. Contributors provide insight into the intellectual forebears and theoretical scope of Arnold's emotion theory, and the interconnections of Arnold's theories and contemporary trends in research on emotion, motivation, and social neuroscience. A biography of Arnold places her work and life in the context of her times.
Slow microwave waveguide made of negative permeability metamaterials

The framework for designing a slow light waveguide structure which operates in the GHz and up to THz frequencies is outlined. The design for the structure consists of a dielectric core layer cladded with negative permeability metamaterials. The parameter space for the metamaterial has been identified for the waveguide to stop light and the negative permeability is achieved by split‐ring resonator (SRR) metallic elements. A prototype structure operating at 8.5 GHz is proposed. Numerical simulations of electromagnetic waves interacting with SRRs have been performed to extract scattering parameters and a parameter retrieval method has been used to verify the designed window for negative permeability. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 2705–2709, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24727
Assessing Intercultural Capability in Learning Languages: A Renewed Understanding of Language, Culture, Learning, and the Nature of Assessment

The article examines intercultural capability in learning languages. The author explains that the cultural component of language learning has traditionally comprised a generalized body of knowledge about the target country and its people. She explains that an intercultural orientation to teaching languages seeks the transformation of students' identities in the act of learning. Intercultural orientation in Australia is discussed. The article looks at the notion of "stance" in language learning which is used to capture the overall framework of knowledge. A reconceptualization of the assessment process is also discussed.
Bayes Blocks: An Implementation of the Variational Bayesian Building Blocks Framework

A software library for constructing and learning probabilistic models is presented. The library offers a set of building blocks from which a large variety of static and dynamic models can be built. These include hierarchical models for variances of other variables and many nonlinear models. The underlying variational Bayesian machinery, providing for fast and robust estimation but being mathematically rather involved, is almost completely hidden from the user thus making it very easy to use the library. The building blocks include Gaussian, rectified Gaussian and mixture-of-Gaussians variables and computational nodes which can be combined rather freely.
Intracellular Localization of Differentially Regulated RNA-specific Adenosine Deaminase Isoforms in Inflammation*

Adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) RNA editing is a post-transcriptional process that amplifies the repertoire of protein production. Recently, the induction of this process through up-regulation of the editing enzyme RNA-specific adenosine deaminase 1 (ADAR1) was documented during acute inflammation. Here we report that the inflammation-induced up-regulation of ADAR1 involves differential production and intracellular localization of several isoforms with distinct RNA-binding domains and localization signals. These include the full-length ADAR1 (p150) and two functionally active short isoforms (p80 and p110). ADAR1 p80 starts at a methionine 519 (M519) due to alternative splicing in exon 2, which deletes the putative nuclear localization signal, the Z-DNA binding domain, and the entire RNA binding domain I. ADAR1 p110 is the mouse homologue of the human ADAR1 110-kDa variant (M246), which retains the second half of the Z-DNA binding domain, all RNA binding domains, and the deaminase domain. Additional variations are found in the third RNA binding domain of ADAR1; they are differentially regulated during inflammation, generating isoforms with different levels of activities. Studies in several cell types transfected with ADAR1-EGFP chimeras demonstrated that the p150 and p80 variants are localized in the cytoplasm and nucleolus, respectively. In agreement with this observation, endogenous ADAR1 was identified in the cytoplasm and nucleolus of mouse splenocytes and HeLa cells. Since the ADAR1 variants are differentially regulated during acute inflammation, it suggests that the localization of these variants and of A-to-I RNA editing in the cytoplasm, nucleus, and nucleolus is intracellularly reorganized in response to inflammatory stimulation.
A Mixed Formulation for a Modification to Darcy Equation Based on Picard Linearization and Numerical Solutions to Large-Scale Realistic Problems

In this paper, we consider a modification to the Darcy equation by taking into account the dependence of viscosity on the pressure. We present a stabilized mixed formulation for the resulting governing equations. Equal-order interpolation for the velocity and pressure is considered, and shown to be stable (which is not the case under the classical mixed formulation). The proposed mixed formulation is tested using a wide variety of numerical examples. The proposed formulation is also implemented in a parallel setting, and the performance of the formulation for large-scale problems is illustrated using a representative problem. Two practical and technologically important problems, one each on enhanced oil recovery and geological carbon-dioxide sequestration, are solved using the proposed formulation. The numerical examples show that the predictions based on the Darcy model are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the predictions based on the modified Darcy model, which takes into account the dependence of the viscosity on the pressure. In particular, the numerical example on the geological carbon-dioxide sequestration shows that the Darcy model over-predicts the leakage into an abandoned well when compared to that of the modified Darcy model. On the other hand, the modified Darcy model predicts higher pressures and higher pressure gradients near the injection well. These predictions have dire consequences in predicting damage and fracture zones, and in designing the seal, whose integrity is crucial to the safety of a geological carbon-dioxide sequestration geosystem.
Fast Abdominal Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Abstract Abdominal imaging is the driving force that necessitates the development of numerous techniques for accelerated image acquisition in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Today, numerous techniques are available that enable rapid, high spatial resolution acquisition for both T1 and T2 weighted images. These techniques open new opportunities in the detection and classification of numerous pathologies in the abdomen. However, there is still ongoing progress in the development of fast and ultrafast sequences and promising techniques are currently close to clinical application. With these 4D-technologies, MRI is becoming the central imaging modality for dynamic, motion-compensated imaging of the parenchymal abdominal organs such as liver, pancreas and kidney. Key points: • Fast imaging techniques are especially valuable in the upper abdomen, as this region is particularly affected by respiratory motion. • Parallel imaging and k-space-based acceleration techniques are the basic components of fast 3 D sequences. • By further accelerating 3 D imaging with high spatial resolution, 4 D techniques become available. Citation Format: • Budjan J., Schoenberg S. O. , Riffel P. Fast Abdominal Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Fortschr Röntgenstr 2016; 188: 551 – 558
A MultiAgent Architecture for Distributed Course Timetabling

The course timetabling problem consists in scheduling a set of lectures in a cyclic fixed period of time, typically a week. We consider the course timetabling problem for a set of university departments, in which each department prepares the schedule for its curricula according to private rules, constraints, and objectives, and relying on own resources. Resources are not common property, but departments could negotiate in order to share and/or exchange them for mutual benefits. For this problem, we propose a multiagent scheduling system based on a marketplace and an artificial currency. In this framework, each department has a team of three cooperating agents, which are responsible for different tasks: searching for a local solution, negotiating resources with other departments, and managing relevant information. To prove the effectiveness of the architecture, we present an experimental analysis that shows the benefits in the real situation of our institution.
Regularised feature-based fuzzy connectedness segmentation of ultrasound images for fetal soft tissue quantification across gestation

Ultrasound (US) image segmentation can be a challenging task due to signal dropouts, missing boundaries, and presence of speckle. Typically, purely intensity-based methods do not lead to a good segmentation of the structures of interest. Prior work has shown that local phase and feature asymmetry, derived from the monogenic signal, extract structural information from US images. This paper proposes a novel US segmentation approach based on the fuzzy connectedness framework. The approach uses local phase and feature asymmetry to define the so-called affinity function, which drives the segmentation algorithm, incorporates a shape-based object completion step, and regularises the result by mean curvature flow. Identifying new image-based biomarkers of fetal nutrition across gestation is essential to characterise the well-being of a fetus at an early stage. Results are presented on US images of the fetal arm taken at multiple gestational ages, the adipose tissue being an indicator of the fetal nutritional state.
The Impact of Age , Ethnicity , and Gender on Depressive Symptom Severity , Psychosocial Functioning , and Quality of Life among Ethnically Diverse Undergraduate College Students

The prevalence of depressive symptomatology among college students has become an issue of concern on many college campuses. However, there is a dearth of research examining depressive symptoms in different ethnic groups. The purpose of this study was to examine depressive symptom severity, psychosocial functioning impairment, and quality of life due to depression among Latino, African American, Caucasian, and Caribbean/West Indian college students; and whether these factors vary by age, ethnicity, and gender. A large convenient sample of 1129 college students were recruited from three different sites and asked to complete a battery of questionnaires. Findings indicated mild levels of depressive symptoms, psychosocial functioning impairment, and quality of life. Age, gender and ethnicity were related to all the depressive symptom severity, psychosocial functioning impairment, and quality of life. Implications for mental health treatment and education are discussed.
Using Geometry to Select One Dimensional Exponential Families That Are Monotone Likelihood Ratio in the Sample Space, Are Weakly Unimodal and Can Be Parametrized by a Measure of Central Tendency

One dimensional exponential families on finite sample spaces are studied using the geometry of the simplex Δn°-1 and that of a transformation Vn-1 of its interior. This transformation is the natural parameter space associated with the family of multinomial distributions. The space Vn-1 is partitioned into cones that are used to find one dimensional families with desirable properties for modeling and inference. These properties include the availability of uniformly most powerful tests and estimators that exhibit optimal properties in terms of variability and unbiasedness.