Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance analysis of feedbacked passive systems for decentralized design of large-scale systems

This paper addresses quantitative analysis and performance improvement of feedbacked passive systems. Matrix-parameters are integrated into the passivity to enable performance evaluation of passive dynamical systems. With the matrices, the feedback system composed of the passive subsystems is quantitatively evaluated. It is further shown that the performance of the feedback system is improved as compared to that of the disconnected subsystems. Then, the quantitative analysis of the feedback system is extended to that of an iterative feedback system. Motivated from the analysis of a decentralized controlled system, we assume that each subsystem in the iterative feedback system has a special structure. Then, the gradual performance improvement is shown via the additional subsystem connection.
Reputation and User Requirement Based Price Modeling for Dynamic Spectrum Access

Secondary service providers can buy spectrum resources from primary service providers for a short or long period of time and exploit it to solve the problem of spectrum scarcity. This buying decision of spectrum buyers can depend on several factors including pricing of the spectrum, reputation of a seller, and duration of the contract and spectrum quality. However, existing pricing models for dynamic spectrum access consider mainly bandwidth which makes them unsuitable for real-world trading. In this paper, we consider these issues related to the pricing of spectrum sale in terms of microeconomic theories. First, we consider reputation of spectrum sellers and update it dynamically by considering a buyer's own trading experience with the sellers and collecting recommendations on sellers from other buyers. Second, trustworthiness of recommenders as well as incentive to encourage recommendations are modeled. Third, contract duration and spectrum quality are incorporated such that a buyer's utility is formulated as a function of buyer's resource requirement, reputation of seller and trustworthiness of recommenders. Fourth, the model is analyzed using dynamic pricing of the market and the solution is obtained using market equilibrium. Results demonstrate the superiority of our model over the existing microeconomic models for dynamic spectrum trading.
Local B1+ shimming for prostate imaging with transceiver arrays at 7T based on subject‐dependent transmit phase measurements

High‐quality prostate images were obtained with transceiver arrays at 7T after performing subject‐dependent local transmit B1 (B1+) shimming to minimize B1+ losses resulting from destructive interferences. B1+ shimming was performed by altering the input phase of individual RF channels based on relative B1+ phase maps rapidly obtained in vivo for each channel of an eight‐element stripline coil. The relative transmit phases needed to maximize B1+ coherence within a limited region around the prostate greatly differed from those dictated by coil geometry and were highly subject‐dependent. A set of transmit phases determined by B1+ shimming provided a gain in transmit efficiency of 4.2 ± 2.7 in the prostate when compared to the standard transmit phases determined by coil geometry. This increased efficiency resulted in large reductions in required RF power for a given flip angle in the prostate which, when accounted for in modeling studies, resulted in significant reductions of local specific absorption rates. Additionally, B1+ shimming decreased B1+ nonuniformity within the prostate from (24 ± 9%) to (5 ± 4%). This study demonstrates the tremendous impact of fast local B1+ phase shimming on ultrahigh magnetic field body imaging. Magn Reson Med 59:396–409, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The work of economics: how a discipline makes its world

What is the work of economics? How does it operate to establish facts and make them stable? Is it sometimes able to use the world as a laboratory? If so, what measures are necessary to organize the world as a laboratory for economic experiments? To what extent do these measures rely upon the efforts of nonacademic economists, and of other social agents and arrangements including think tanks, government policies, development programs, NGOs, and social movements? A recent “natural experiment” using the social world as a laboratory, carried out in Peru, produced remarkable results, enthusiastically received by economists in the United States and by international development agencies. The paper examines the work of organizing the socio-technical world required to produce this knowledge, the curious kind of facts that were produced, the connections among those involved in this work, in particular the organized work of the neoliberal movement, and the role of the new facts in making possible further efforts at economic experimentation. Comment les économistes établissent-ils les faits dont ils traitent ? Quand ils tiennent le monde pour un laboratoire et raisonnent comparativement, les mesures sur lesquelles ils s’appuient relèvent largement de non-universitaires, économistes ou non, et aussi des politiques gouvernementales, des ONG, des programmes de développement etc. On prend ici le cas d’une “ expérience naturelle ” qui s’est déroulée au Pérou et qui a été reçue avec enthousiasme par les économistes américains et les agences de développement. L’auteur examine le travail d’organisation du monde sociotechnique nécessaire pour produire ces connaissances, les faits curieux, les modalités et connexions avec le courant néolibéral et, finalement, la contribution de ces faits nouveaux au progrés de l’expérimentation économique. Wie arbeiten Wirtschaftswissenschaftler? Wie werden Datenmaterial und Messungen geschaffen und am Leben erhalten? Ist die Welt gar ein Labor? Falls dem so sein sollte, welche Informationen erlauben es, die Welt als Labor für wirtschaftliche Versuche zu verwenden: solche von Nicht-Wissenschaftlern, Wirtschaftswissenschaftlern und Nicht-Wirtschaftswissenschaftlern, von Think Tanks, Politikern, NSG und sozialen Verbänden? Unser Beispiel beruht auf einem “natürlichen Versuch” in Peru, der die Bewunderung amerikanischer Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und Entwicklungsagenturen erntete. Es bedarf einer gewissen Organisation der soziotechnischen Welt, um diese erstaunlichen Fakten, die Verbindungen zwischen den Projektteilnehmern und hier vor allen Dingen der neoliberalen Bewegung und deren Beitrag herstellen und schließlich zur Fortsetzung jener wirtschaftlichen Versuche beitragen zu können.
Word count : 6 , 287 kt ISD : Dynamic Cardiac MR Imaging Using Compressed Sensing with Iterative Support Detection

Compressed sensing (CS) has been used in dynamic cardiac MRI to reduce the data acquisition time. The sparseness of the dynamic image series in the spatial and temporal-frequency (x-f) domain has been exploited in existing works. In this paper, we propose a new k-t Iterative Support Detection (k-t ISD) method to improve the CS reconstruction for dynamic cardiac MRI by incorporating additional information on the support of the dynamic image in x-f space based on the theory of CS with partially known support. The proposed method uses an iterative procedure for alternating between image reconstruction and support detection in x-f space. At each iteration, a truncated 1 minimization is applied to obtain the reconstructed image in x-f space using the support information from the previous iteration. Subsequently, by thresholding the reconstruction, we update the support information to be used in the next iteration. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed k-t ISD method improves the reconstruction quality of dynamic cardiac MRI over the basic CS method in which support information is not exploited.
A greedy approach to sparse poisson denoising

In this paper we propose a greedy method combined with the Moreau-Yosida regularization of the Poisson likelihood in order to restore images corrupted by Poisson noise. The regularization provides us with a data fidelity term with nice properties which we minimize under sparsity constraints. To do so, we use a greedy method based on a generalization of the well-known CoSaMP algorithm. We introduce a new convergence analysis of the algorithm which extends it use outside of the usual scope of convex functions. We provide numerical experiments which show the soundness of the method compared to the convex l1-norm relaxation of the problem.
The poor availability of psychological research data for reanalysis.

The origin of the present comment lies in a failed attempt to obtain, through e-mailed requests, data reported in 141 empirical articles recently published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Our original aim was to reanalyze these data sets to assess the robustness of the research findings to outliers. We never got that far. In June 2005, we contacted the corresponding author of every article that appeared in the last two 2004 issues of four major APA journals. Because their articles had been published in APA journals, we were certain that all of the authors had signed the APA Certification of Compliance With APA Ethical Principles, which includes the principle on sharing data for reanalysis. Unfortunately, 6 months later, after writing more than 400 e-mails--and sending some corresponding authors detailed descriptions of our study aims, approvals of our ethical committee, signed assurances not to share data with others, and even our full resumes-we ended up with a meager 38 positive reactions and the actual data sets from 64 studies (25.7% of the total number of 249 data sets). This means that 73% of the authors did not share their data.
Foot strike patterns of recreational and sub-elite runners in a long-distance road race

Abstract Although the biomechanical properties of the various types of running foot strike (rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot) have been studied extensively in the laboratory, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the frequency of running foot strike variants among runners in competitive road races. We classified the left and right foot strike patterns of 936 distance runners, most of whom would be considered of recreational or sub-elite ability, at the 10 km point of a half-marathon/marathon road race. We classified 88.9% of runners at the 10 km point as rearfoot strikers, 3.4% as midfoot strikers, 1.8% as forefoot strikers, and 5.9% of runners exhibited discrete foot strike asymmetry. Rearfoot striking was more common among our sample of mostly recreational distance runners than has been previously reported for samples of faster runners. We also compared foot strike patterns of 286 individual marathon runners between the 10 km and 32 km race locations and observed increased frequency of rearfoot striking at 32 km. A large percentage of runners switched from midfoot and forefoot foot strikes at 10 km to rearfoot strikes at 32 km. The frequency of discrete foot strike asymmetry declined from the 10 km to the 32 km location. Among marathon runners, we found no significant relationship between foot strike patterns and race times.
Novel Folded-KES Architecture for High-Speed and Area-Efficient BCH Decoders

In this brief, we present a novel folding technique for high-speed and low-cost Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH) decoders. In the conventional BCH decoder, the critical path lies on the Galois-field (GF) multiplier of the key equation solver, where the speedup of the critical path is very difficult due to a significant area increase. In the proposed work, the regularly structured GF multiplier is introduced to be efficiently folded to reduce the complexity and the critical delay. Moreover, the conventional global folding scheme can be applied to further reduce the hardware costs. The implementation results show that the proposed folding scheme enhances the area efficiency by 1.73 and 1.9 times in the Digital Video Broadcasting–Satellite–Second Generation system and the storage controller, respectively.
Fear Appeals in Health Communication: Should the Receivers’ Nationality or Cultural Orientation be Taken into Account?

This study investigated the influence of both nationality and cultural orientation on reactions to fear appeal messages including a self-targeted or a family-targeted threat. Participants from Spain (n = 138) and from the Netherlands (n = 127) either read a version of a story that accentuated the misery of a girl suffering from chlamydia, or a version that focused on her parents’ sorrow. Cultural orientation was assessed using a scale for measuring individualism and collectivism, and a scale for measuring familism. Contrary to claims from the earlier studies, neither nationality nor cultural orientation proved to interact with message version on any of the outcome variables.
Stakeholder-centered Process Implementation: Assessing S-BPM Tool Support

Since Subject-oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM) models can be executed after validation without further transformation, toolshave been developed to support model execution. Asthese tools target not only non-disruptive execution of process models but also intuitive ease of use, stakeholders could expect effective and efficient implementation support of business processes. In the presented study we have challenged 3 stakeholder-centered tools refining, validating, and executing a complex process model. We wanted to knowhow much effort needs to be spent when a prototypical applicationis generated from a process specificationprovided by theinvolved stakeholders. The tools were a commercially available suite, a tool currently approaching the market, and a research tool. Our assessmentstudy reveals substantial effortthat needs to be spent for refining and validating process models, before being able to generate an interactive process experience. Hence, (S-)BPM tool developers are encouraged tosupport stakeholders according to the identified needs.
Usefulness and Limitations of Animal Models of Venous Thrombosis

Introduction To study the pathogenesis of in vivo thrombus formation and to evaluate novel preventive or therapeutic strategies, animal models of venous thrombosis have been in use for more than 50 years. In the past decades numerous animal models of venous thrombosis have been developed and have been applied for a variety of objectives and mostly without certain predictive value for the relevance to human venous thrombosis. The Subcommittee on Animal, Cellular, and Molecular Models of Thrombosis and Haemostasis of the Scientific and Standardization Committee of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis decided to systematically review the various animal models of venous thrombosis and to analyze the contribution of these models to the study of the pathogenesis and treatment of venous thrombosis. This manuscript summarizes the results of this analysis and it draws some conclusions on the appropriate use of animal models for venous thrombosis.
The Impact of a Social Justice Service-Learning Field Experience in a Social Foundations Course.

This interpretive study examines the outcomes of using a social justice service-learning field experience in a social foundations course to help illuminate for teacher candidates the often “invisible” institutionalized inequities of public schools. The findings demonstrate how social justice service-learning can be used as a field placement to increase preservice teachers’ exposure to diversity, to help refocus attention on the needs of individual learners, and to assist teacher candidates in understanding and questioning existing school structures.
A Deep Architecture for Coreference Resolution

The automatic resolution of surface forms into clusters which co-refer to the same abstract entity is a difficult task with a long history in computational linguistics. Existing systems for this task tend to rely on complex linguistically-motivated rules or statistical information about pairs of mentions to make coreference decisions; these systems can be brittle, and tend to have difficulty with high-level abstract semantics, an area where deep models may be expected to be of use. In this work, we present a deep architecture for coreference resolution using LSTMs which requires virtually no hand-engineering of features and potentially better models human processes of reference resolution. We evaluate our system on the standard CoNLL 2012 shared task dataset and compare to existing models. While our results are not state of the art, we surpass some existing published handengineered systems and show that this line of research is a promising direction for this difficult task.
A critique of current criteria for early dementia in epidemiological studies

Differences between age‐associated memory impairment and mild dementia have yet to be clarified. Attempts to validate the diagnosis of mild dementia have raised considerable difficulties in the absence of a ‘gold standard’. Agreed criteria of mild dementia are still lacking. Progressive deterioration of cognition is generally held to be a cardinal feature of dementia. Many of the multiple factors which can impair cognition and give a spurious impression of mild dementia still present major methodological problems. Agreed diagnostic criteria, use of standardized measuring instruments, clinical interview, key informant inquiry and possibly psychometric testing are highly desirable in order to detect early dementia. For epidemiological surveys reliable screening instruments are important. It is concluded that, at present, there are too many fundamental conceptual and methodological problems to be overcome before we can successfully undertake large‐scale community epidemiological studies of mild dementia.
Trajectory tracking for groups of unicycles with convergence of the orientation angles

This paper presents a trajectory tracking control strategy for unicycles based on local potential functions and the leader-followers scheme. The leader robot must follow a prescribed trajectory and the rest of the robots follows the leader whereas achieves a desired formation at the same time. Every follower robot does not possess a global information about the leader path and the goals of the other followers. The control strategy does not influence directly the orientation angles, however a sufficient condition is established for their convergence to the same value. Finally, the performance of the proposed strategy is evaluated over an experimental set-up consisting of three unicycle-type robots and a computer vision system.
Tissue fractionation studies. 6. Intracellular distribution patterns of enzymes in rat-liver tissue.

more acidic solutions, with pH < 7 0, a few seconds elapsed before equilibrium was attained. Taking into account the ionization of the haem-linked group on MetMb and the higher oxidation state, the variation of Kb,. with pH is shown to confirm the conclusion that 2 moles ofH+ are liberated/mole of acidic MetMb. Using 6-1 for the pK of the group in MetMb as established in other studies, the results give apK of75 for the group in the higher oxidation state at 200 and I= 0 04. 3. The variation of KRb, with temperature gives AHO = 10-0 ± 2*0 kcal. /g.mol. : if the ionization of the haem-linked group is allowed for, the value 9*0 ± 1.0 kcal. /g.mol. is obtained. 4. The dependence of Kob. on ionic strength is in accord with a change in charge from + 1 on MetMb to zero on the higher oxidation state. 5. The results are shown to favour the ferryl ion structure, or an isomer of this structure, for the higher oxidation state. The isomeric structures would, in general, require the presence of another ionizing group in myoglobin, but no evidence for such an ionization could be found. With other direct evidence favouring the ferryl ion structure this is to be preferred, and the higher oxidation state may provisionally be named ferrylmyoglobin.
Effects of single, short term exposures of human retinal pigment epithelial cells to thiotepa or 5-fluorouracil: implications for the treatment of proliferative vitreoretinopathy

AIM To investigate the effects of single, short term (5 or 30 minutes) exposures to thiotepa or 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) on collagen lattice contraction and retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell proliferation. METHODS For collagen contraction studies, RPE cells seeded into free floating type I collagen lattices were exposed to single 5 or 30 minute treatments with thiotepa (0.06–4 mg/ml), or 5-FU (0.25–25 mg/ml), or phosphate buffered saline alone as a control. For proliferation studies, RPE cell monolayers were similarly exposed to these agents. The degree of contraction, effects on cell number, and viability were determined up to 14 days after treatment. RESULTS Contraction of collagen lattices containing RPE cells and proliferation of RPE cells were significantly inhibited (p<0.05) by thiotepa and 5-FU at concentrations above 0.06 mg/ml and 0.25 mg/ml respectively (for both 5 and 30 minute treatments), compared with controls. Cell death did not occur except for exposure of the RPE cells in collagen lattices to the highest concentration of thiotepa (4 mg/ml). CONCLUSION It was concluded that single 5 or 30 minute exposures to thiotepa or 5-FU significantly inhibited collagen contraction and the proliferation of RPE cells. These findings suggest that short, single, non-toxic exposures to thiotepa or 5-FU which can be reproduced clinically may be useful in the modulation of proliferative vitreoretinopathy.
Flexible Information Coding in Human Auditory Cortex during Perception, Imagery, and STM of Complex Sounds

Auditory cortex is the first cortical region of the human brain to process sounds. However, it has recently been shown that its neurons also fire in the absence of direct sensory input, during memory maintenance and imagery. This has commonly been taken to reflect neural coding of the same acoustic information as during the perception of sound. However, the results of the current study suggest that the type of information encoded in auditory cortex is highly flexible. During perception and memory maintenance, neural activity patterns are stimulus specific, reflecting individual sound properties. Auditory imagery of the same sounds evokes similar overall activity in auditory cortex as perception. However, during imagery abstracted, categorical information is encoded in the neural patterns, particularly when individuals are experiencing more vivid imagery. This highlights the necessity to move beyond traditional “brain mapping” inference in human neuroimaging, which assumes common regional activation implies similar mental representations.
Fitting long-range information using interpolated distanced n-grams and cache models into a latent dirichlet language model for speech recognition

We propose a language modeling (LM) approach using interpolated distanced n -grams into a latent Dirichlet language model (LDLM) [1] for speech recognition. The LDLM relaxes the bag-of-words assumption and document topic extraction of latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). It uses default background n - grams where topic information is extracted from the ( n - 1) history words through Dirichlet distribution in calculating n -gram probabilities. The model does not capture the long-range information from outside of the n -gram events that can improve the language modeling performance. In this paper, we present an interpolated LDLM (ILDLM) by using different distanced n -grams. Here, the topic information is exploited from ( n - 1) history words through the Dirichlet distribution using interpolated distanced n -grams. The n -gram probabilities of the model are computed by using the distanced word probabilities for the topics and the interpolated topic information for the histories. In addition, we incorporate a cache-based LM, which models the re-occurring words, through unigram scaling to adapt the LDLM and ILDLM models that model the topical words. We have seen that our approaches give signiﬁcant reductions in per-plexity and word error rate (WER) over the probabilistic latent semantic analysis (PLSA) and LDLM approaches using the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) corpus.