Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient Implementation of a Symbol Timing Estimator for Broadband PLC

Broadband Power Line Communications (PLC) have taken advantage of the research advances in multi-carrier modulations to mitigate frequency selective fading, and their adoption opens up a myriad of applications in the field of sensory and automation systems, multimedia connectivity or smart spaces. Nonetheless, the use of these multi-carrier modulations, such as Wavelet-OFDM, requires a highly accurate symbol timing estimation for reliably recovering of transmitted data. Furthermore, the PLC channel presents some particularities that prevent the direct use of previous synchronization algorithms proposed in wireless communication systems. Therefore more research effort should be involved in the design and implementation of novel and robust synchronization algorithms for PLC, thus enabling real-time synchronization. This paper proposes a symbol timing estimator for broadband PLC based on cross-correlation with multilevel complementary sequences or Zadoff-Chu sequences and its efficient implementation in a FPGA; the obtained results show a 90% of success rate in symbol timing estimation for a certain PLC channel model and a reduced resource consumption for its implementation in a Xilinx Kyntex FPGA.
Selective progesterone receptor modulators (SPRMs): progesterone receptor action, mode of action on the endometrium and treatment options in gynecological therapies

ABSTRACT Introduction: The progesterone receptor plays an essential role in uterine physiology and reproduction. Selective progesterone receptor modulators (SPRMs) have emerged as a valuable treatment option for hormone dependent conditions like uterine fibroids, which have a major impact on women’s quality of life. SPRMs offer potential for longer term medical treatment and thereby patients may avoid surgical intervention. Areas covered: The authors have reviewed the functional role of the progesterone receptor and its isoforms and their molecular mechanisms of action via genomic and non-genomic pathways. The current knowledge of the interaction of the PR and different SPRMs tested in clinical trials has been reviewed. The authors focused on pharmacological effects of selected SPRMs on the endometrium, their anti-proliferative action, and their suppression of bleeding. Potential underlying molecular mechanisms and the specific histological changes in the endometrium induced by SPRMs (PAEC; Progesterone receptor modulator Associated Endometrial Changes) have been discussed. The clinical potential of this compound class including its impact on quality of life has been covered. Expert Opinion: Clinical studies indicate SPRMs hold promise for treatment of benign gynecological complaints (fibroids, heavy menstrual bleeding; HMB). There however remains a knowledge gap concerning mechanism of action.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Neural Correlates of Accelerated Auditory Processing in Children Engaged in Music Training

Keywords: Auditory evoked potentials Electroencephalography Pitch perception Musical training Child development Brain plasticity El Sistema Communication a b s t r a c t Several studies comparing adult musicians and non-musicians have shown that music training is associated with brain differences. It is unknown, however, whether these differences result from lengthy musical training, from pre-existing biological traits, or from social factors favoring musicality. As part of an ongoing 5-year longitudinal study, we investigated the effects of a music training program on the auditory development of children, over the course of two years, beginning at age 6–7. The training was group-based and inspired by El-Sistema. We compared the children in the music group with two comparison groups of children of the same socioeconomic background, one involved in sports training, another not involved in any systematic training. Prior to participating, children who began training in music did not differ from those in the comparison groups in any of the assessed measures. After two years, we now observe that children in the music group, but not in the two comparison groups, show an enhanced ability to detect changes in tonal environment and an accelerated maturity of auditory processing as measured by cortical auditory evoked potentials to musical notes. Our results suggest that music training may result in stimulus specific brain changes in school aged children.
Money Stock Targeting, Base Drift and Price-Level Predictability: Lessons from the U.K. Experience

It is controversial whether money stock targeting without base drift (i.e. following a trend-stationary growth path) makes the price level more predictable in the presence of permanent shocks to money demand. Developing a procedure that does not run into the Lucas critique, and applying this procedure to the case of the U.K., the paper finds that the variance of the trend inflation rate in the U.K. would have been reduced by more than one half if the Bank of England had not allowed base drift.
Synaptic NMDA receptor channels have a low open probability

Realistic estimates of channel-gating parameters of synaptic receptors are essential to an understanding of synaptic transmission and modulation. However, the gating of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) channels appears to differ, depending on recording conditions; thus, it remains unclear what measurements are most relevant to synaptic receptors. To further explore this discrepancy, we examined the open probability (Po) of NMDA channels in whole-cell and outside-out patch recording from cultured hippocampal neurons. Currents were evoked by rapid application of saturating concentrations of NMDA in the presence or absence of the “irreversible” open channel blocker, MK-801 ((+)-5-methyl-10,11-dihydro- 5H-dibenzo[a,d]cyclohepten-5,10-imine) . The reduction of the peak amplitude and the acceleration of the decay of the current in MK-801 were used to derive Po by fitting the current traces to a multistate kinetic model. The Po in whole cell was low (0.04), similar to that previously measured for synaptically activated NMDA channels. In contrast, ensemble average currents from outside-out patches were much more rapidly blocked in the presence of MK-801, indicative of a significantly higher Po. The Po also gradually increased with the duration of recording in both whole-cell and outside-out configurations, suggesting that channel gating is sensitive to mechanical alterations of the patch or that washout of cytoplasmic factors leads to an increase in channel open probability.
Students' experience of component versus integrated virtual learning environments

The use of virtual learning environments (VLEs) has become increasingly common in most higher education (HE) institutions. Recent developments have proposed the interoperability of software systems and content, to create component VLEs in contrast with the integrated, monolithic ones that are currently prevalent. This paper examines the student experience of two VLEs, one integrated approach and the other component. In general, students preferred the component system, although this may have been influenced by other factors such as performance. Although the study is limited to one cohort of student it makes a number of suggestions relevant to anyone deploying a VLE. These are that the component approach is a viable one from a student perspective, the broader context in which the VLE operates is important in student perception and that poor system performance may have unpredictable consequences for the learning experience.
Exploiting Color Information for Better Scene Text Recognition

This paper presents an approach to text recognition in natural scene images. The main contribution of this paper is the efficient exploitation of colour information for the identification of text regions in the presence of surrounding noise. We propose a pipeline of image processing operations involving the bilateral regression for the identification of characters in the images. A pre-processing step has been proposed to increase the performance of bilateral regression based character identification. The proposed method segments the characters so well that a combination of an off the shelf feature representation and classification technique achieves state-of-the-art character recognition performance. The capability of the framework is further extended for word recognition where a basic string matching criterion is applied to match recognized strings against a lexicon to eliminate errors that occur due to inaccuracies in character classification. We performed extensive experiments to evaluate our method on challenging datasets (Chars74K, ICDAR03, ICDAR11 and SVT) and results show that the proposed method superseded the existing state-of-the-art techniques.
Guilt, Shame and Compassionate Imagery in War: Traumatized German Soldiers with PTSD, a Pilot Study

Background: The consideration of specific trauma-associated emotions poses a challenge for the differential treatment planning in trauma therapy. Soldiers experiencing deployment-related posttraumatic stress disorder often struggle with emotions of guilt and shame as a central component of their PTSD. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which soldiers’ PTSD symptoms and their trauma-related guilt and shame may be affected as a function of their ability to develop compassionate imagery between their CURRENT SELF (today) and their TRAUMATIZED SELF (back then). Method: The sample comprised 24 male German soldiers diagnosed with PTSD who were examined on the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale (PDS) and two additional measures: the Emotional Distress Inventory (EIBE) and the Quality of Interaction between the CURRENT SELF and the TRAUMATIZED SELF (QUI-HD: Qualität der Interaktion zwischen HEUTIGEN ICH und DAMALIGEN ICH) at pre- and post-treatment and again at follow-up. The treatment used was imagery rescripting and reprocessing therapy (IRRT). Results: Eighteen of the 24 soldiers showed significant improvement in their PTSD symptoms at post-treatment and at follow-up (on their reliable change index). A significant change in trauma-associated guilt and shame emerged when compassionate imagery was developed towards one’s TRAUMATIZED SELF. The degree and intensity of the guilt and shame felt at the beginning of treatment and the degree of compassionate imagery developed toward the TRAUMATIZED SELF were predictors for change on the PDS scores. Conclusions: For soldiers suffering from specific war-related trauma involving PTSD, the use of self-nurturing, compassionate imagery that fosters reconciling with the traumatized part of the self can effectively diminish trauma-related symptoms, especially when guilt and shame are central emotions.
Instrumentation for video-rate near-infrared diffuse optical tomography

This article describes the design, rationale, and system performance of a rapid imaging near-infrared diffuse optical tomography system that is capable of collecting tomographic measurements at video rate. Data-acquisition speed of 35frames∕s is achieved by spectral encoding of the sources, followed by spectral decoding of all detection channels in parallel in a spectrometer and using charge-coupled-device (CCD)-based detection. The combination of spectral decoding of the source lights horizontally in a spectrometer and spatial separation of the detector positions vertically at the entrance slit provides separate data for the entire set of source-detector pairs which can be acquired at the frame rate of the CCD camera. The described system features eight sources at an overall 785nm center band with an average of 1.25nm spacing in wavelength and eight detectors evenly deployed in a 27mm array designed for imaging with small animal tissues. The system performs with localization error of 2.5mm, and absorptio.
Neuropsychological Effects of Hypoxia in Medical Disorders

1 local terms. It is generally due to a more speci c restriction in blood supply (and therefore oxygen supply) to a speci c organ. Hypoxemia, a term commonly confused with hypoxia, refers to an ab de ciency in the concentration of oxygen in arterial blood. Anoxia refers to the complete deprivation of oxygen supply. Finally, hypercapnia is an associated state marked by an ably high level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood. Hypercapnia can be the result of a variety of causes such as hypoventilation, lung disease, or diminished consciousness. Hypercapnia is less o& en the focus of cognitive studies, but it is associated with hypoxia and may be a more sensitive variable in some clinical populations. ' is chapter focuses on hypoxia and hypoxemia, using the de nition that best ts the study in question, but each term is employed to refer to a limitation in oxygen supply to the brain.
Fusion-Related Host Proteins Are Actively Regulated by NA during Influenza Infection as Revealed by Quantitative Proteomics Analysis

Three recombinant influenza A viruses with different neuraminidases (NAs) in the background of A/PR/8/34 (PR8), named rPR8-H5N1NA, rPR8-H9N2NA, and rPR8-H1N1NA, derived from H5N1, H9N2, H1N1 (swine) viruses, respectively, were constructed. We performed a quantitative proteomics analysis to investigate differential protein expression in Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells infected with recombinant and wild-type influenza viruses to determine whether NA replacement would alter host cell gene expression. Using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-TOF MS) and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE), we identified 12 up-regulated and 49 down-regulated protein spots, including cytoskeletal proteins, molecular biosynthesis proteins, ubiquitin-proteasome pathway proteins, and heat shock proteins. The most significant changes in infected cells were observed for molecular biosynthesis proteins. We found more differentially expressed protein spots in cells infected with rPR8-H5N1NA or rPR8-H9N2NA viruses than cells infected with wild-type virus. Many of those proteins are postulated to be involved in cell-cell fusion, but the full mechanism remains to be explored. Meanwhile, our data demonstrate that the wild-type virus has evolutionary advantages over recombinant viruses.
Energy Efficiency in Wireless Ad Hoc Network using Clustering

Wireless networking has witnessed an explosion of interest from consumers in recent years for its applications in mobile and personal communication. Energy efficiency is also an important design consideration due to the limited battery life of wireless node. In order to maximize the network life time and to minimize energy consumption, instead of routing through shortest path we propose routing through alternate paths. Along with that when traversing in one path, other nodes of network will be switched off in order to reduce energy consumption. For efficient sleep and active node mechanism we divide the entire network into clusters. In this paper we propose the method of using clustering along with that the probabilistic approach to find the number of active and sleep nodes at a particular time. We consider the network in terms of queuing network and consider the packets arrival rate in terms of poisson
Multi-relational Classification Based on the Contribution of Tables

The structure in the multiple tables is so complex that we should not only improve the efficiency, but also insure the accuracy of classification when we classify the data. Some existing classification algorithms have good results in terms of the efficiency and the accuracy, for example: an efficient multi-relational Bayesian classifier based on the semantic relationship graph. But how to get the information from each table can affect the final accuracy while traversing the semantic relationship graph and the existing algorithms always query all the tables. It not only cost much time, but also has less improvement on the accuracy of the classification. This paper firstly defines the contribution of the single relation based on singular value decomposition, and measures the effect of the tables on the classification according to their contribution. Then we can reduce some tables which have a little effect on the classification and query the tables according to their contribution, and we can find some tables which can make the greatest accuracy of the classification. When we do like this, we can improve the efficiency of the classification and ensure the accuracy at the same time. The experiment proves the method is right and efficient.
ODDC: A Novel Clustering Algorithm Based on One-Dimensional Distance Calculation

The scale of spatial data is usually very large. Clustering algorithm needs very high performance, good scalability, and able to deal with noise data and high-dimensional data. Proposed a quickly clustering algorithm based on one-dimensional distance calculation. The algorithm first partitions space-sets by one-dimensional distance, then clusters space-sets by set-distance and set-density. Next, uses the same approach to the next dimension, until all dimensions have been processed. Experimental results show ODDC algorithm has high-efficient features and is not sensitive to noise data.
Oligonucleotide primers, probes and molecular methods for the environmental monitoring of methanogenic archaea

For the identification and quantification of methanogenic archaea (methanogens) in environmental samples, various oligonucleotide probes/primers targeting phylogenetic markers of methanogens, such as 16S rRNA, 16S rRNA gene and the gene for the α‐subunit of methyl coenzyme M reductase (mcrA), have been extensively developed and characterized experimentally. These oligonucleotides were designed to resolve different groups of methanogens at different taxonomic levels, and have been widely used as hybridization probes or polymerase chain reaction primers for membrane hybridization, fluorescence in situ hybridization, rRNA cleavage method, gene cloning, DNA microarray and quantitative polymerase chain reaction for studies in environmental and determinative microbiology. In this review, we present a comprehensive list of such oligonucleotide probes/primers, which enable us to determine methanogen populations in an environment quantitatively and hierarchically, with examples of the practical applications of the probes and primers.
Opioid-Mediated Placebo Responses Boost Pain Endurance and Physical Performance: Is It Doping in Sport Competitions?

The neurobiological investigation of the placebo effect has shown that placebos can activate the endogenous opioid systems in some conditions. So far, the impact of this finding has been within the context of the clinical setting. Here we present an experiment that simulates a sport competition, a situation in which opioids are considered to be illegal drugs. After repeated administrations of morphine in the precompetition training phase, its replacement with a placebo on the day of competition induced an opioid-mediated increase of pain endurance and physical performance, although no illegal drug was administered. The placebo analgesic responses were obtained after two morphine administrations that were separated as long as 1 week from each other. These long time intervals indicate that the pharmacological conditioning procedure has long-lasting effects and that opioid-mediated placebo responses may have practical implications and applications. For example, in the context of the present sport simulation, athletes can be preconditioned with morphine and then a placebo can be given just before competition, thus avoiding administration of the illegal drug on the competition day. However, these morphine-like effects of placebos raise the important question whether opioid-mediated placebo responses are ethically acceptable in sport competitions or whether they have to be considered a doping procedure in all respects.
Intracellular Proton Conductance of the Hepatitis C Virus p7 Protein and Its Contribution to Infectious Virus Production

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) p7 protein is critical for virus production and an attractive antiviral target. p7 is an ion channel when reconstituted in artificial lipid bilayers, but channel function has not been demonstrated in vivo and it is unknown whether p7 channel activity plays a critical role in virus production. To evaluate the contribution of p7 to organelle pH regulation and virus production, we incorporated a fluorescent pH sensor within native, intracellular vesicles in the presence or absence of p7 expression. p7 increased proton (H+) conductance in vesicles and was able to rapidly equilibrate H+ gradients. This conductance was blocked by the viroporin inhibitors amantadine, rimantadine and hexamethylene amiloride. Fluorescence microscopy using pH indicators in live cells showed that both HCV infection and expression of p7 from replicon RNAs reduced the number of highly acidic (pH<5) vesicles and increased lysosomal pH from 4.5 to 6.0. These effects were not present in uninfected cells, sub-genomic replicon cells not expressing p7, or cells electroporated with viral RNA containing a channel-inactive p7 point mutation. The acidification inhibitor, bafilomycin A1, partially restored virus production to cells electroporated with viral RNA containing the channel inactive mutation, yet did not in cells containing p7-deleted RNA. Expression of influenza M2 protein also complemented the p7 mutant, confirming a requirement for H+ channel activity in virus production. Accordingly, exposure to acid pH rendered intracellular HCV particles non-infectious, whereas the infectivity of extracellular virions was acid stable and unaffected by incubation at low pH, further demonstrating a key requirement for p7-induced loss of acidification. We conclude that p7 functions as a H+ permeation pathway, acting to prevent acidification in otherwise acidic intracellular compartments. This loss of acidification is required for productive HCV infection, possibly through protecting nascent virus particles during an as yet uncharacterized maturation process.
A teleoperation system with an exoskeleton interface

In this paper, a teleoperation system with an exoskeleton interface is proposed. An upper-limb exoskeleton worn by a user acts as an interface between the user and a robot in a remote place by exchanging position and force information via the Internet. The robot performs a dexterous task by following the upper-limb motion. The applied external force to the robot is transmitted to the exoskeleton worn by the user. To deliver and apply the position and force information accurately, a rotary series elastic mechanism controlled by a proportional and derivative (PD) controller whose gain is tuned by a linear quadratic (LQ) method is applied as an actuator module. A robust control algorithm, disturbance observer, is added to improve the robustness against the modeling uncertainties. A transmission control protocol (TCP) with a packet buffer is used for telecommunications. The performance of the proposed system and control algorithms was verified by experiments with an elbow-actuated upper-limb exoskeleton and a one degrees of freedom (DOF) robotic arm.