Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Series expression of BER performance for DQPSK/OFDM signals employing selection combining diversity reception over nonlinear fading channels

This paper presents an analytical expression of the bit error rate (BER) performance for DQPSK/OFDM signals using selection combining diversity reception under nonlinear fading channels. In the proposed approach, the soft envelope limiter is assumed to be a peak limited devices and the effects of nonlinear distortion are treated as the additive Gaussian noise with zero mean and suitable variance. This approach has an advantage of reducing the computational cost dramatically compared with the computer simulation because the proposed formula for predicting the BER performance consists of a simple series form. The theoretical results show perfect agreement with those obtained by the computer simulation.
The bHLH TAL-1/SCL regulates endothelial cell migration and morphogenesis

The basic helix-loop-helix tal-1 gene (or scl), known for its fundamental role in embryonic and adult hematopoiesis in vertebrates, is also required for embryonic vascular remodeling. In adults, TAL-1 protein is undetectable in quiescent endothelium but it is present in newly formed vessels including tumoral vasculature, indicating its involvement in angiogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that TAL-1 expression is tightly regulated during in vitro angiogenesis: it is low during the initial step of migration and is upregulated during formation of capillary-like structures. We investigated whether ectopic expression of either wild-type TAL-1 or a dominant-negative mutant lacking the DNA-binding domain (Δ-bas) modulates the activity of human primary endothelial cells in the angiogenic processes of migration, proliferation and cell morphogenesis. Overexpression of either wild-type or Δ-bas TAL-1 affected chemotactic migration of primary endothelial cells without modifying their proliferative properties. Ectopic expression of wild-type TAL-1 accelerated the formation of capillary-like structures in vitro and, in vivo, enhanced vascularisation in mice (Matrigel implants) associated with a general enlargement of capillary lumens. Importantly, transduction of the mutant Δbas completely impaired in vitro angiogenesis and strongly inhibited vascularisation in mice. Taken together, our data show that TAL-1 modulates the angiogenic response of endothelial cells by stimulating cell morphogenesis and by influencing their behavior in migration. This study highlights the importance of TAL-1 regulation in postnatal vascular remodeling and provides the first physiological evidence that links TAL-1 activity to endothelial cell morphogenic processes.
A dynamin‐like protein in Arabidopsis thaliana is involved in biogenesis of thylakoid membranes

Dynamin, a GTP‐binding protein found in rat brain, plays a role in endocytosis. Suborganellar fractionation studies of Arabidopsis leaf tissue revealed that a dynamin‐like protein, ADL1, is localized in the thylakoid membranes of chloroplasts. This notion was supported further by in vivo targeting experiments using an ADL1‐green fluorescent fusion protein and immunogold labeling with the anti‐ADL1 antibody. Transgenic plants harboring various deletion mutant genes of ADL1 had a yellow leaf phenotype where the cells had very few chloroplasts. In addition, the remaining chloroplasts appeared morphologically not fully developed. The detailed structure of the chloroplasts revealed by electron microscopy showed a greatly reduced amount of thylakoid membranes. Also, the level of thylakoid membrane proteins such as the light‐harvesting complex II and CP29 was greatly reduced in these transgenic plants. When we examined the expression of the ADL1 deletion mutant genes, these genes were highly expressed at the transcriptional level. However, the mutant ADL1s were not detectable at the protein level by Western blot analysis. Moreover, the endogenous ADL1 protein level was greatly reduced in these transgenic plants, probably due to a post‐transcriptional silencing effect of the transgenes. We propose, therefore, that ADLl is involved in the biogenesis of thylakoid membranes.
Incremental learning of gestures by imitation in a humanoid robot

We present an approach to teach incrementally human gestures to a humanoid robot. By using active teaching methods that puts the human teacher “in the loop” of the robot's learning, we show that the essential characteristics of a gesture can be efficiently transferred by interacting socially with the robot. In a first phase, the robot observes the user demonstrating the skill while wearing motion sensors. The motion of his/her two arms and head are recorded by the robot, projected in a latent space of motion and encoded probabilistically in a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). In a second phase, the user helps the robot refine its gesture by kinesthetic teaching, i.e. by grabbing and moving its arms throughout the movement to provide the appropriate scaffolds. To update the model of the gesture, we compare the performance of two incremental training procedures against a batch training procedure. We present experiments to show that different modalities can be combined efficiently to teach incrementally basketball officials' signals to a HOAP-3 humanoid robot.
DISCOURSE AND PARTICIPATION IN ESL FACE-TO-FACE AND WRITTEN ELECTRONIC CONFERENCES

This study was a comparative investigation of face-to-face and written electronic conferences. The participants were advanced English as a second language (hereafter: ESL) students. The two types of conferences were compared in terms of textual features and participation. There was no statistically significant difference in the total number of words that students produced in an equivalent amount of time in the two types of conferences. The discourse in written electronic conferences displayed greater lexical range, and students in these conferences produced more discourse demonstrating interactive competence. The statistically significant finding of increased lexical range in written electronic conferences persisted even when the interactive discourse was eliminated from the conference transcripts and the transcripts were reanalyzed. This finding suggests that, during written electronic conferences, students were better able to use and practice a wider range of vocabulary related to the topics. For one of the groups, participation in written electronic conferences was more balanced among students, while for the other group participation was about equally balanced regardless of the conference setting. This last finding came as a surprise and points to a need for further research into variables that might mediate balanced participation in face-to-face and written electronic conferences.
Connecting the ISM to TeV PWNe and PWN candidates

Abstract We investigate the interstellar medium towards seven TeV gamma-ray sources thought to be pulsar wind nebulae using Mopra molecular line observations at 7 mm [CS(1–0), SiO(1–0, v = 0)], Nanten CO(1–0) data and the Southern Galactic Plane Survey/GASS Hi survey. We have discovered several dense molecular clouds co-located to these TeV gamma-ray sources, which allows us to search for cosmic rays coming from progenitor SNRs or, potentially, from pulsar wind nebulae. We notably found SiO(1–0, v = 0) emission towards HESS J1809–193, highlighting possible interaction between the adjacent supernova remnant SNR G011.0–0.0 and the molecular cloud at d ∼ 3.7 kpc. Using morphological features, and comparative studies of our column densities with those obtained from X-ray measurements, we claim a distance d ∼ 8.6 − 9.7kpc for SNR G292.2–00.5, d ∼ 3.5 − 5.6 kpc for PSR J1418–6058 and d ∼ 1.5 kpc for the new SNR candidate found towards HESS J1303–631. From our mass and density estimates of selected molecular clouds, we discuss signatures of hadronic/leptonic components from pulsar wind nebulae and their progenitor SNRs. Interestingly, the molecular gas, which overlaps HESS J1026–582 at d ∼ 5 kpc, may support a hadronic origin. We find however that this scenario requires an undetected cosmic-ray accelerator to be located at d < 10 pc from the molecular cloud. For HESS J1809–193, the cosmic rays which have escaped SNR G011.0–0.0 could contribute to the TeV gamma-ray emission. Finally, from the hypothesis that at most 20% the pulsar spin down power could be converted into CRs, we find that among the studied pulsar wind nebulae, only those from PSR J1809–1917 could potentially contribute to the TeV emission.
Initial brazilian experience in the treatment of localized prostate cancer using a new generation cryotechnology: feasibility study.

INTRODUCTION The objective of our study is to present the first Brazilian cryoablation experience in the treatment of low and intermediate risk localized prostate cancer using 3rd generation cryoablation and real-time biplanar transrectal ultrasonography. MATERIALS AND METHODS Ten Brazilian patients underwent primary cryoablation for localized prostate cancer between October 2010 and June 2011. All patients consented for whole gland primary cryotherapy. The procedures were performed by 3rd generation cryoablation with the Cryocare System ® (Endocare, Irvine, California). Preoperative data collection included patient demographics along with prostate gland size, Gleason score, serum prostate specific antigen, and erectile function status. Operative and post--operative assessment involved estimated blood loss, operative time, complications, serum PSA level, erectile function status, urinary incontinence, biochemical disease free survival (BDFS), and follow-up time. RESULTS All patients in the study successfully underwent whole gland cryoablation. The mean of: age, prostate size, PSA level, and Gleason score, was 66.2 years old; 40.7 g; 7.8 ng/mL; and 6 respectively. All patients were classified as low or moderate D' Amico risk (5 low and 5 moderate). Erectile dysfunction was present in 50% of patients. The estimated blood loss was minimal, operative time was 46.1 minutes. All patients that developed erectile dysfunction post-treatment responded to oral or intracavernosal medications with early penile rehabilitation. All patients maintained urinary continence by the end of a 10 months evaluation period and none had biochemical relapse within the mean follow-up of 13 months (7-15 months). CONCLUSION Our initial experience shows that cryoablation is a minimally invasive option for the treatment of localized prostate cancer. Short term data seems to be promising but longer follow-up is necessary to verify oncological and functional results.
Transfer Paths and Academic Performance: The Primary School Merger Program in China

A B S T R A C T In the late 1990s and early 2000s, China’s Ministry of Education embarked on an ambitious program of primary school mergers by shutting down small village schools and opening up larger centralized schools in towns and county seats. The goal of the program was to improve the teacher and building resources in an attempt to raise the human capital of students in poor rural areas, although it was recognized that students would lose the opportunity to learn in the settings of their own familiar villages. Because of the increased distances to the new centralized schools, the merger program also entailed building boarding facilities and encouraging or mandating that students live at school during the week away from their family. Given the magnitude of the program and the obvious mix of benefits and costs that such a program entails there has been surprisingly little effort to evaluate the impact of creating a new system that transfers students from school to school during their primary school period of education and, in some cases, making student live in boarding facilities at school. In this paper, our overall goal is to examine the impact of the Rural Primary School Merger Program on academic performance of students using a dataset from a survey that we designed to reflect transfer paths and boarding statuses of students. We use OLS and Propensity Score Matching approaches and demonstrate that there is a large ‘‘resource effect’’ (that is, an effect that appears to be associated with the better facilities and higher quality of teachers in the town and county schools) that appears to be associated with the transfers of students from less centralized schools (such as village schools) to more centralized schools. Boarding, however, is shown to have negative impacts on academic performance. However, students who transfer to county school benefit from the transfer no matter where they start and whether they board or not.
A space-time varying graph for modelling places and events in a network

ABSTRACT Modelling topological relationships between places and events is challenging especially because these relationships are dynamic, and their evolutionary analysis relies on the explanatory power of representing their interactions across different temporal resolutions. In this paper, we introduce the Space-Time Varying Graph (STVG) based on the whole graph approach that combines directed and bipartite subgraphs with a time-tree for representing the complex interaction between places and events across time. We demonstrate how the proposed STVG can be exploited to identify and extract evolutionary patterns of traffic accidents using graph metrics, ad-hoc graph queries and clustering algorithms. The results reveal evolutionary patterns that uncover the places with high incidence of accidents over different time resolutions, reveal the main reasons why the traffic accidents have occurred, and disclose evolving communities of densely connected traffic accidents over time.
Coprime Array Design with Minimum Lag Redundancy

In this paper, we propose a new sparse coprime array design that achieves a higher number of degrees-of-freedom for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. The proposed array design completely avoids lag redundancies between the two constituting subarrays of the coprime array, thus achieving the maximum number of unique correlation lags under the coprime array framework. As a result, given the same number of physical sensors, the proposed design resolves more sources than other coprime array designs with enhanced DOA estimation performance. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed coprime array design.
Goji (fruits of Lycium spp.): traditional uses, quality assessment, and value chain analysis

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Lycium is widely distributed in the arid to semi-arid environments of North and South America, Africa, and Eurasia. In recent years, Lycium barbarum and L. chinense have been advertised as “superfood” with healthy properties. Despite of its popularity, there is a lack of an integrated and critical appraisal of the existing evidence for the use of Lycium. Aim of the study: There is a need to understand: 1) Which species were used and how the uses of Lycium developed spatially and over time, 2) how uses differ among regions with different culture backgrounds, and 3) how traditional and current therapeutic and preventive health claims correlate with pharmacological findings. Methods: Information was retrieved from floras, taxonomic, botanical, and ethnobotanical databases, research articles, recent editions of historical Chinese herbals over the last 2000 years, and pharmacopoeias. Results: Of totally 97 species, 35 have recorded uses as food and/or medicine worldwide. Usually the fruits are used. While 85% of the Lycium species occur in the Americas and Africa, 26% of them are used, but 9 out of 14 species in Eurasia. In China, seven species and two varieties of the genus Lycium occur, of which four species have been used by different ethnic groups. Only L. barbarum and L. chinense have been transformed into globally traded commodities. In China, based on the name “枸杞”, their use can be traced back over the last two mil-lennia. Lycium fruits for anti-aging, improving eyesight and nourishment were documented already in 500 C.E. (Mingyi Bielu). Recent findings explain the pharmacological foundations of the traditional uses. Especially polysaccharides, zeaxanthin dipalmitate, vitamins, betaine, and mixed extracts were reported to be responsible for anti-aging, improving eyesight, and anti-fatigue effects. Conclusions: The integration of historical, ethnobotanical, botanical, phytochemical and pharmacological data has enabled a detailed understanding of Lycium and its wider potential. It highlights that the focus so far has only been on two species and that the genus can potentially yield a wide range of other products with different properties.
TOPALi v2: a rich graphical interface for evolutionary analyses of multiple alignments on HPC clusters and multi-core desktops

Summary: TOPALi v2 simplifies and automates the use of several methods for the evolutionary analysis of multiple sequence alignments. Jobs are submitted from a Java graphical user interface as TOPALi web services to either run remotely on high-performance computing clusters or locally (with multiple cores supported). Methods available include model selection and phylogenetic tree estimation using the Bayesian inference and maximum likelihood (ML) approaches, in addition to recombination detection methods. The optimal substitution model can be selected for protein or nucleic acid (standard, or protein-coding using a codon position model) data using accurate statistical criteria derived from ML co-estimation of the tree and the substitution model. Phylogenetic software available includes PhyML, RAxML and MrBayes. Availability: Freely downloadable from http://www.topali. org for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. Contact: iain.milne@scri.ac. uk
Photocoagulation of Human Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells In Vitro: Evaluation of Necrosis, Apoptosis, Cell Migration, Cell Proliferation and Expression of Tissue Repairing and Cytoprotective Genes

Aims Sight-threatening diabetic retinopathy has been treated with photocoagulation for decades but the mechanisms behind the beneficial clinical effects are poorly understood. One target of irradiation and a potential player in this process is the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Here we establish an in vitro model for photocoagulation of human RPE cells. Methods ARPE-19 cells were exposed to photocoagulation and studied at various time points up to 168h. Lesion morphology, necrosis and apoptosis were investigated by light microscopy; LIVE/DEAD staining and measurements of lactate dehydrogenase activity; and TUNEL- and ELISA-based quantification of DNA fragments, respectively. Cell migration and proliferation were explored using docetaxel and mitomycin C; temporal and spatial changes in proliferation were assessed by confocal immunofluorescence of proliferating cell nuclear antigen. Gene expression was measured by qPCR. Results Photocoagulation of ARPE-19 resulted in denaturation of proteins and reproducible lesion formation. A transient peak in necrosis, followed by a peak in apoptosis was observed in cells within the lesions at 6h and 24h, respectively after photocoagulation. Cell proliferation was depressed during the first hours after photocoagulation, back to control levels at 24h and augmented in the following days. These effects were not limited to cells in the lesions, but also evident in neighbouring cells. Changes in cell proliferation during lesion repair were preceded by changes in cell migration. Altered mRNA expression of genes previously implicated in the regulation of cell proliferation (FOS, IL-1β, IL-8, HMGA2), migration and tissue repairing (TGFBR2, ADAMTS6, TIMP3, CTGF) was observed, as well as increased expression of the alarmin IL33 and the cytoprotective gene HSPA6. Conclusions Using a laser system and experimental settings that comply with standards used in clinical practice, we have established a suitable model for in vitro photocoagulation of human RPE cells to isolate their contribution to the beneficial effects of laser treatment.
Water discharge in East Africa from grace, satellite altimetry and Landsat data

In this study, lake level changes in East Africa (i.e. Lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, and Malawi) are investigated using satellite gravimetry and altimetry as well as hydrological models and Landsat data from January 2003 to January 2013. The fitted trend of the time series of altimetric lake height shows a significant decline in the average lake level for all of the three lakes between 2003 and 2006 with different rates. The main reason of this significant declination is the drought happened in much of East Africa during this period of time. After 2006, the lake level started to increase rapidly until 2009 for Lakes Victoria and Malawi and until 2010 for Lake Tanganyika. After which it shows a slight increase for Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika while it shows a significant decrease between 2010 and 2012 with -215 mm/yr for Lake Malawi. For each lake, the STL decomposition plot of the monthly GRACE TWS shows the same pattern as the time series of altimetric lake height. It shows a significant decrease in the TWS between 2003 and 2006 with the max rate in Lake Victoria, followed by a significant increase until 2009. After which it shows a slight increase for Lake Victoria while Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi experienced a reduction between 2010 and 2013. Water discharge in East Africa is also similar with results from Landsat-7 ETM+ data.
Allyl 4-hydroxyphenyl carbonate

The title molecule, C10H10O4, is a functionalized carbonate used in the synthetic route to organic glasses. The central CH fragment of the allyl group is disordered over two positions, with occupancies in a 0.758 (10):0.242 (10)ratio. This disorder reflects the torsional flexibility of the oxygen–allyl group, although both disordered parts present the expected anticlinal conformation, with O—CH2—CH=CH2 torsion angles of −111 (2) and 119.1 (4)°. The crystal structure is based on chains parallel to [010], formed by O⋯H—O hydrogen bonds involving hydroxyl and carbonyl groups as donors and acceptors, respectively. The molecular packing is further stabilized by two weak C—H⋯π contacts from the benzene ring of the asymmetric unit with two benzene rings of neighboring molecules.
Instrumentation for assessment of tremor, skin vibrations, and cardiovascular variables in MIR space missions

A versatile and simple to use biomedical instrumentation for noninvasive examinations of cosmonauts at the Russian MIR space station was developed. It consists of a comfortable sensor jacket to assess signals from the body surface, a precision hand dynamometer to produce muscular and cardiovascular loads, and a small interactive microprocessor unit that controls the examination and stores measurement data. The sensor jacket includes highly sensitive piezo-resistive accelerometers, pulse sensors, an ECG system, and a skin-mountable mechanical vibrator. The functionality of this instrumentation was evaluated during long-term space flights and also proved very useful in laboratory and clinical studies.