Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regularized MIMO Decoders

In the Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) antenna system, it is known that the Linear Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) receiver is equivalent to Tikhonov regularization. Given that, we develop a family of generalized receivers based on regularization with different penalty functions that penalize the received symbols outside the convex hull of the modulating constellation. For illustration purposes we consider two types of penalty functions, the deadzone and infinity norm penalty functions. The proposed decoders have low complexity and can be implemented efficiently using convex optimization algorithms. Simulation results show that the proposed receivers outperform the MMSE receiver by as high as 5-dB at low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR).
Developable Surfaces with Curved Creases

Fascinating and elegant shapes may be folded from a single planar sheet of material without stretching, tearing or cutting, if one incorporates curved folds into the design. We present an optimizationbased computational framework for design and digital reconstruction of surfaces which can be produced by curved folding. Our work not only contributes to applications in architecture and industrial design, but it also provides a new way to study the complex and largely unexplored phenomena arising in curved folding.
Neuropsychiatric Symptoms, Endophenotypes, and Syndromes in Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease: Focus on APOE Gene

Neuropsychiatric symptoms, previously denominated as behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, are common features of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and are one of the major risk factors for institutionalization. At present, the role of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene in the development of neuropsychiatric symptoms in AD patients is unclear. In this paper, we summarized the findings of the studies of neuropsychiatric symptoms and neuropsychiatric syndromes/endophenotypes in AD in relation to APOE genotypes, with special attention to the possible underlying mechanisms. While some studies failed to find a significant association between APOE and neuropsychiatric symptoms in late-onset AD, other studies reported a significant association between the APOE ε4 allele and an increase in agitation/aggression, hallucinations, delusions, and late-life depression or anxiety. Furthermore, some negative studies that focused on the distribution of APOE genotypes between AD patients with or without neuropsychiatric symptoms further emphasized the importance of subgrouping neuropsychiatric symptoms in distinct neuropsychiatric syndromes. Explanations for the variable findings in the existing studies included differences in patient populations, differences in the assessment of neuropsychiatric symptomatology, and possible lack of statistical power to detect associations in the negative studies.
A Massive Repository for the National Medical Knowledge Bank Warren M. Sterling, Ph.D

This paper describes a massively parallel object relational (O/R) database used in an advanced development program to create a comprehensive medical information system called the National Medical Knowledge Bank (NMKB). This database, named the Teradata Object Relational Database (TOR), was developed for massive data warehouse applications in the multiple terabyte range. We present a brief discussion of the NMKB architecture, its healthcare applications, and the requirements of TOR to support the NMKB. We then concentrate on the architecture of TOR including scalability features, large object store, system and user defined functions, geo-spatial data types, and the internal indices required to support these features.
Tyramine pressor effect in man: studies with moclobemide, a novel, reversible monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

The pressor effect of tyramine (TYR) administered i.v. and orally was measured in healthy volunteers during treatment with different therapeutic doses of moclobemide, a new, reversible, preferential type A monoamine oxidase inhibitor. With moclobemide 3 X 100 mg/day the systolic blood pressure (SBP) increase produced by TYR administered i.v. was potentiated 2.4-fold and that in response to TYR p.o. in the fasting state was increased 4.1-fold, as determined from equieffective TYR doses before and during moclobemide treatment. Peak concentrations of free TYR in plasma after oral doses of TYR were increased 2.6-fold, and a 2.5-fold smaller plasma TYR concentration produced the same SBP rise as before moclobemide treatment. No SBP increase was observed at plasma TYR concentrations below 20 ng/ml or after p.o. TYR does smaller than 80 mg. The potentiation of the pressor effect of i.v. TYR by single moclobemide doses up to 300 mg had disappeared 24 hrs after moclobemide administration. Peak TYR plasma concentration and concomitant SBP increments were considerably smaller when TYR was administered with a meal than when administered as a bolus with tap water, 2.1 times higher oral TYR doses being required to achieve similar peak TYR plasma concentration as in the fasting condition. The pressor effect of TYR was further, but only slightly, increased during treatment with moclobemide 3 x 200 mg/day, however SBP rises were again significantly smaller when TYR was given together with a meal. In contrast, tranylcypromine produced a 20 to 40-fold potentiation of the pressor effect of oral TYR and this potentiation was only slightly smaller when TYR was given with a meal. In conclusion the potentiation by moclobemide of the pressor response to oral TYR corresponds roughly to a fourfold left shift of the TYR dose-pressor response curve and is about 10 times less marked than after tranylcypromine. In real life situations, the ingestion of TYR in amounts less than 100 mg is highly unlikely to produce a clinically relevant blood pressure elevation.
Answering tree pattern queries using views: a revisit

We revisit the problem of answering tree pattern queries using views. We first show that, for queries and views that do not have nodes labeled with the wildcard *, there is an alternative to the approach of query rewriting which does not require us to find any rewritings explicitly yet which produces the same answers as the maximal contained rewriting. Then, using the new approach, we give a simple criterion and a corresponding algorithm for identifying redundant view answers, which are view answers that can be ignored when evaluating the maximal contained rewriting. Finally, for queries and views that do have nodes labeled *, we provide a method to find the maximal contained rewriting and show how to answer the query using views without explicitly finding the rewritings.
Mapping Rubber Plantations and Natural Forests in Xishuangbanna (Southwest China) Using Multi-Spectral Phenological Metrics from MODIS Time Series

We developed and evaluated a new approach for mapping rubber plantations and natural forests in one of Southeast Asia’s biodiversity hot spots, Xishuangbanna in China. We used a one-year annual time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) reflectance data to develop phenological metrics. These phenological metrics were used to classify rubber plantations and forests with the Random Forest classification algorithm. We evaluated which key phenological characteristics were important to discriminate rubber plantations and natural forests by estimating the influence of each metric on the classification accuracy. As a benchmark, we compared the best classification with a classification based on the full, fitted time series data. Overall classification accuracies derived from EVI and SWIR time series alone were 64.4% and 67.9%, respectively. Combining the phenological metrics from EVI and SWIR time series improved the accuracy to 73.5%. Using the full, smoothed time series data instead of metrics derived from the time series improved the overall accuracy only slightly (1.3%), indicating that the phenological metrics were sufficient to explain the seasonal changes captured by the MODIS time series. The results demonstrate a promising utility of phenological metrics for mapping and monitoring rubber expansion with MODIS.
Mind Operational Semantics and Brain Operational Architectonics: A Putative Correspondence

Despite allowing for the unprecedented visualization of brain functional activity, modern neurobiological techniques have not yet been able to provide satisfactory answers to important questions about the relationship between brain and mind. The aim of this paper is to show how two different but complementary approaches, Mind Operational Semantics (OS) and Brain Operational Architectonics (OA), can help bridge the gap between a specific kind of mental activity—the higher-order reflective thought or linguistic thought—and brain. The fundamental notion that allows the two different approaches to be jointly used under a common framework is that of operation. According to OS, which is based on introspection and linguistic data, the meanings of words can be analyzed in terms of elemental mental operations (EOMC), amongst which those of attention play a key role. Linguistic thought is made possible by special kinds of elements, which OS calls “correlators”, which have the function of tying together the other elements of thought, which OS calls “correlata” (a "correlational network” that is, a sentence, is so formed). Therefore, OS conceives of linguistic thought as a hierarchy of operations of increasing complexity. Likewise, according to OA, which is based on the joint analysis of cognitive and electromagnetic data (EEG and MEG), every conscious phenomenon is brought to existence by the joint operations of many functional and transient neuronal assemblies in the brain. According to OA, the functioning of the brain is always operational (made up of operations), and its structure is characterized by a hierarchy of operations of increasing complexity: single neurons, single assemblies of neurons, synchronized neuronal assemblies or Operational Modules (OM), integrated or complex OMs. The authors put forward the hypothesis that the whole level of OS’s description (EOMC, correlators, and correlational networks) corresponds to the level of OMs (or set of them) of different complexity within OA’s theory: EOMC could correspond to simple OMs, correlators to complex OMs and the correlational network to a set of simple and complex OMs. Finally, a set of experiments is proposed to verify the putative correspondence between OS and OA and prove the existence of an integrated continuum between brain and mind.
Task analysis of information technology-mediated medication management in outpatient care

Aims Educating physicians in the procedural as well as cognitive skills of information technology (IT)-mediated medication management could be one of the missing links for the improvement of patient safety. We aimed to compose a framework of tasks that need to be addressed to optimize medication management in outpatient care. Methods Formal task analysis: decomposition of a complex task into a set of subtasks. First, we obtained a general description of the medication management process from exploratory interviews. Secondly, we interviewed experts in-depth to further define tasks and subtasks. Setting: Outpatient care in different fields of medicine in six teaching and academic medical centres in the Netherlands and the United States. Participants: 20 experts. Tasks were divided up into procedural, cognitive and macrocognitive tasks and categorized into the three components of dynamic decision making. Results The medication management process consists of three components: (i) reviewing the medication situation; (ii) composing a treatment plan; and (iii) accomplishing and communicating a treatment and surveillance plan. Subtasks include multiple cognitive tasks such as composing a list of current medications and evaluating the reliability of sources, and procedural tasks such as documenting current medication. The identified macrocognitive tasks were: planning, integration of IT in workflow, managing uncertainties and responsibilities, and problem detection. Conclusions All identified procedural, cognitive and macrocognitive skills should be included when designing education for IT-mediated medication management. The resulting framework supports the design of educational interventions to improve IT-mediated medication management in outpatient care.
How to juggle columns: an entropy-based approach for table compression

Many relational databases exhibit complex dependencies between data attributes, caused either by the nature of the underlying data or by explicitly denormalized schemas. In data warehouse scenarios, calculated key figures may be materialized or hierarchy levels may be held within a single dimension table. Such column correlations and the resulting data redundancy may result in additional storage requirements. They may also result in bad query performance if inappropriate independence assumptions are made during query compilation. In this paper, we tackle the specific problem of detecting functional dependencies between columns to improve the compression rate for column-based database systems, which both reduces main memory consumption and improves query performance. Although a huge variety of algorithms have been proposed for detecting column dependencies in databases, we maintain that increased data volumes and recent developments in hardware architectures demand novel algorithms with much lower runtime overhead and smaller memory footprint. Our novel approach is based on entropy estimations and exploits a combination of sampling and multiple heuristics to render it applicable for a wide range of use cases. We demonstrate the quality of our approach by means of an implementation within the SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator. Our experiments indicate that our approach scales well with the number of columns and produces reliable dependence structure information. This both reduces memory consumption and improves performance for nontrivial queries.
Fuzzy Optimal Design of the Plate-Fin Heat Exchangers by Particle Swarm Optimization

Plate-fin heat exchanger has been widely used in chemical, mechanical and electronic engineering etc. The optimal design of PFHE is an important method to improve the performance of PFHE. According to the engineering requirements, the minimum weight, higher heat efficiency and reasonable pressure loss are set as optimal objectives of PFHE, which is termed as multi-objective optimal problem. To implement the multi-objective optimal design of PFHE, fuzzy optimization technology by particle swarm optimization is developed, in which the fuzzy factors are dealt with as membership functions. A numerical engineering example of PFHE is given to examine the validity of the proposed fuzzy optimization approach, the results compared with one by trial-and-error process show that the optimal PFHE has better synthetically performance than the one designed by trial-and-error process.
Analyses of human sensitivity to redirected walking

Redirected walking allows users to walk through large-scale immersive virtual environments (IVEs) while physically remaining in a reasonably small workspace by intentionally injecting scene motion into the IVE. In a constant stimuli experiment with a two-alternative-forced-choice task we have quantified how much humans can unknowingly be redirected on virtual paths which are different from the paths they actually walk. 18 subjects have been tested in four different experiments: (E1a) discrimination between virtual and physical rotation, (E1b) discrimination between two successive rotations, (E2) discrimination between virtual and physical translation, and discrimination of walking direction (E3a) without and (E3b) with start-up. In experiment E1a subjects performed rotations to which different gains have been applied, and then had to choose whether or not the visually perceived rotation was greater than the physical rotation. In experiment E1b subjects discriminated between two successive rotations where different gains have been applied to the physical rotation. In experiment E2 subjects chose if they thought that the physical walk was longer than the visually perceived scaled travel distance. In experiment E3a subjects walked a straight path in the IVE which was physically bent to the left or to the right, and they estimate the direction of the curvature. In experiment E3a the gain was applied immediately, whereas the gain was applied after a start-up of two meters in experiment E3b. Our results show that users can be turned physically about 68% more or 10% less than the perceived virtual rotation, distances can be up- or down-scaled by 22%, and users can be redirected on an circular arc with a radius greater than 24 meters while they believe they are walking straight.
The splicing regulators Esrp1 and Esrp2 direct an epithelial splicing program essential for mammalian development

Tissue- and cell-type-specific regulators of alternative splicing (AS) are essential components of posttranscriptional gene regulation, necessary for normal cellular function, patterning, and development. Mice with ablation of Epithelial splicing regulatory protein (Esrp1) develop cleft lip and palate. Loss of both Esrp1 and its paralog Esrp2 results in widespread developmental defects with broad implications to human disease. Deletion of the Esrps in the epidermis revealed their requirement for establishing a proper skin barrier, a primary function of epithelial cells comprising the epidermis. We profiled the global Esrp-mediated splicing regulatory program in epidermis, which revealed large-scale programs of epithelial cell-type-specific splicing required for epithelial cell functions. These mice represent a valuable model for evaluating the essential role for AS in development and function of epithelial cells, which play essential roles in tissue homeostasis in numerous organs, and provide a genetic tool to evaluate important functional properties of epithelial-specific splice variants in vivo. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.08954. 001
Approximate ambient occlusion for dynamic scenes using the GPU

Ambient occlusion has been tackled in many different ways to inculcate realism into renderings. Ambient occlusion is a crude approximation to global illumination. But performing a full global illumination in real-time has turned out to be computationally expensive. Combined with local rendering models, ambient occlusion can produce renderings which have increased realism.
A magnetically responsive nanocomposite scaffold combined with Schwann cells promotes sciatic nerve regeneration upon exposure to magnetic field

Peripheral nerve repair is still challenging for surgeons. Autologous nerve transplantation is the acknowledged therapy; however, its application is limited by the scarcity of available donor nerves, donor area morbidity, and neuroma formation. Biomaterials for engineering artificial nerves, particularly materials combined with supportive cells, display remarkable promising prospects. Schwann cells (SCs) are the absorbing seeding cells in peripheral nerve engineering repair; however, the attenuated biologic activity restricts their application. In this study, a magnetic nanocomposite scaffold fabricated from magnetic nanoparticles and a biodegradable chitosan–glycerophosphate polymer was made. Its structure was evaluated and characterized. The combined effects of magnetic scaffold (MG) with an applied magnetic field (MF) on the viability of SCs and peripheral nerve injury repair were investigated. The magnetic nanocomposite scaffold showed tunable magnetization and degradation rate. The MGs synergized with the applied MF to enhance the viability of SCs after transplantation. Furthermore, nerve regeneration and functional recovery were promoted by the synergism of SCs-loaded MGs and MF. Based on the current findings, the combined application of MGs and SCs with applied MF is a promising therapy for the engineering of peripheral nerve regeneration.
Pulmonary dead space fraction and pulmonary artery systolic pressure as early predictors of clinical outcome in acute lung injury.

STUDY OBJECTIVE The primary objective of this study was to test whether an elevated systolic pulmonary artery (PA) pressure or an elevated pulmonary dead space fraction (Vd/Vt) in early acute lung injury (ALI) is associated with poor clinical outcomes in the era of lung-protective ventilation. DESIGN Prospective observational cohort study. SETTING ICUs of a university hospital. PATIENTS Forty-two patients with ALI receiving mechanical ventilation. MEASUREMENTS PA pressure was measured noninvasively using transthoracic echocardiography. Vd/Vt was measured by volumetric capnography (NICO Cardiopulmonary Management System; Novametrix; Wallingford, CT). MAIN RESULTS There was no difference in the mean systolic PA pressure in patients who died compared to those who survived (43 +/- 9 mm Hg vs 41 +/- 9 mm Hg, p = 0.54) [mean +/- SD]. In contrast to the PA systolic pressure, Vd/Vt was significantly higher in patients who died compared to those who survived (0.61 +/- 0.09 vs 0.53 +/- 0.10, p = 0.02). Similarly, Vd/Vt was higher in patients with < 7 ventilator-free days during the first 28 days after enrollment compared to those with > 7 ventilator-free days (0.61 +/- 0.08 vs 0.52 +/- 0.11, p = 0.008). CONCLUSION In the era of lung-protective ventilation, systolic PA pressure early in the course of ALI is elevated but not predictive of outcome. However, elevated Vd/Vt in early ALI is associated with increased mortality and with fewer ventilator-free days.
Characterization and Measurements from the Infrared Grazing Angle Reflectometer

Abstract : A commonly used metric for measuring the reflective properties of a sample is Directional Hemispherical Reflectance (DHR). The Infrared Grazing Angle Reflectometer measures DHR at high angles of incidence. To facilitate this measurement, a novel three dimensional multi-face pyroelectric detector is used. This detector can theoretically measure better than 98% of the light reflected by the sample, regardless of the diffusivity of the sample measured. The setup of this equipment is discussed, and the procedure for calibration is derived. Several of the difficulties in performing measurements are described, and several sample measurements are discussed.
Fish as Hosts of Vibrio cholerae

Vibrio cholerae, the causative agent of pandemic cholera, is abundant in marine and freshwater environments. Copepods and chironomids are natural reservoirs of this species. However, the ways V. cholerae is globally disseminated are as yet unknown. Here we review the scientific literature that provides evidence for the possibility that some fish species may be reservoirs and vectors of V. cholerae. So far, V. cholerae has been isolated from 30 fish species (22 freshwater; 9 marine). V. cholerae O1 was reported in a few cases. In most cases V. cholerae was isolated from fish intestines, but it has also been detected in gills, skin, kidney, liver and brain tissue. In most cases the fish were healthy but in some, they were diseased. Nevertheless, Koch postulates were not applied to prove that V. cholerae and not another agent was the cause of the disease in the fish. Evidence from the literature correlates raw fish consumption or fish handling to a few cholera cases or cholera epidemics. Thus, we can conclude that V. cholerae inhabits some marine and freshwater fish species. It is possible that fish may protect the bacteria in unfavorable habitats while the bacteria may assist the fish to digest its food. Also, fish may disseminate the bacteria in the aquatic environment and may transfer it to waterbirds that consume them. Thus, fish are reservoirs of V. cholerae and may play a role in its global dissemination.