Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 0.1–1.5GHz harmonic rejection receiver front-end with hybrid 8 phase LO generator, phase ambiguity correction and vector gain calibration

A 0.1-1.5GHz harmonic rejection (HR) receiver front-end is presented. A flexible HR mixer is proposed to correct phase ambiguity, and a vector gain calibration is used to eliminate the gain/phase mismatch and improve the HR ratio. With the proposed hybrid 8 phase local oscillating (LO) generator, the highest carrier frequency from the frequency synthesizer is only twice of the desired LO frequency. The HR receiver has been implemented in 65nm CMOS. With 1.8mm2 core chip area and 5.4-24.5mA current consumption from a 1.2V power supply, the receiver achieves 85dB conversion gain, 4.3dB NF, +13dBm/+14dBm IB/OB-IIP3, >54/56 dB HR3/HR5 with 30-40dB improvement by calibration, and 2.3% EVM with 32QAM modulation signal.
Small Talk Is “Big Talk” in Clinical Discourse: Appreciating the Value of Conversation in SLP Clinical Interactions

Small talk has received only limited attention related to its role in general clinical contexts. Interaction in the speech–language pathologist clinic provides a forum for exploring the role of small talk. Although its value is recognized in some speech–language pathologist contexts, little systematic analysis has been undertaken. This paper focuses on the identification of small talk in interactions between speech–language pathologists and adults with communication disorders associated with stroke and with chronic schizophrenia. Mapping the emergence of small talk in these domains of discourse demonstrates its positive influence on the therapeutic management of people with communication disorders.
Literacy coaching and Reading First ‘redelivery’: a discourse analysis

Practitioners are often faced with the national legislation’s influence at the school‐based curricular level. In the United States, the federal government No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates reading instruction at the early primary grade levels. The position of literacy coach was created to support this curriculum change by providing professional development to teachers in schools. This study focused on a crucial component of literacy coaches’ professional lives – the redelivery of professional development in Reading First, in order to understand what it means to redeliver state‐mandated curriculum change. The authors interviewed two literacy coaches in the Georgia Reading First curriculum model about how they redelivered professional development. The authors used a social constructivist perspective and discourse analysis to explore how two literacy coaches operated. The coaches negotiate competing discursive forces, frame success and represent their practices in different and complex ways despite the assumed uniformity of Reading First redelivery.
Fast Complex Network Clustering Algorithm Using Agents

Recently, the sizes of networks are always very huge, and they take on distributed nature. Aiming at this kind of network clustering problem, in the sight of local view, this paper proposes a fast network clustering algorithm in which each node is regarded as an agent, and each agent tries to maximize its local function in order to optimize network modularity defined by function Q, rather than optimize function Q from the global view as traditional methods. Both the efficiency and effectiveness of this algorithm are tested against computer-generated and real-world networks. Experimental result shows that this algorithm not only has the ability of clustering large-scale networks, but also can attain very good clustering quality compared with the existing algorithms. Furthermore, the parameters of this algorithm are analyzed.
Follicular fluid composition in relation to follicular size in pregnant and non pregnant dromedary camels (Camelus dromedaries)

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of the reproductive status of female dromedary camels (pregnant vs. non-pregnant) on the chemical composition, hormonal profile and antioxidant capacity of follicular fluid collected from different sized ovarian follicles during the breeding season. One hundred ovaries were collected at slaughterhouse from fifty female dromedary camels. The ovaries were collected in pairs from each animal and allocated into two groups according to the reproductive status of the females; 25 pairs were obtained from pregnant females and 25 pairs were obtained from non-pregnant animals. The follicles on each ovary were categorized according to their diameter into three categories; small (1-3 mm), medium (4-9 mm) and large (10-20 mm). Follicular fluid (FF) aspirated from each follicle category from each pair of ovaries was analyzed. The results showed that the average number of follicles per ovary was greater (P < 0.05) in the ovaries obtained from nonpregnant females compared to those collected from pregnant ones (6.4 ± 1.2 vs. 3.6 ± 0.9, respectively). Progesterone concentrations were significantly higher in the follicular fluid collected from all follicle categories in pregnant animals than those obtained from nonpregnant animals. Glucose concentrations were higher (P < 0.05) in the follicular fluid collected from large follicles in the non-pregnant group (64.9 ± 6.1 mg/dl) than those obtained from the same follicle category in the pregnant ovaries (45.4 ± 4.0 mg/dl). Concentrations of malondialdehyde (MDA) were higher (P < 0.05) in the FF collected from small, medium and large follicles in pregnant ovaries than non-pregnant ones. In conclusion, these data indicate that FF composition differs according to the reproductive status of the female. In pregnant camels, the presence of the corpus luteum on the ovaries could play an important role not only in the process of follicle growth and development, but also in the concentrations of biochemical metabolites and hormonal profiles in the FF of
The Escalation of Commitment to a Failing Course of Action: Toward Theoretical Progress

Escalating commitment (or escalation) refers to the tendency for decision makers to persist with failing courses of action. The present article first reviews evidence suggesting that escalation is determined, at least in part, by decision makers' unwillingness to admit that their prior allocation of resources to the chosen course of action was in vain (the self-justification explanation). A distinction is drawn in the second part of the article between alternative (to self-justification) explanations of escalating commitment: Some are designed to replace self-justification, whereas others are intended to supplement self-justification, that is, to add explanatory power beyond that which can be accounted for by self-justification. There is little evidence that the replacement theories provide a better explanation than does self-justification; however, theories designed to supplement self-justification are likely to lead to a more complete explanation. The article concludes by describing several research str.
Prediction of MicroRNA-Target Gene by Machine Learning Algorithms in Lung Cancer Study

 Abstract — MicroRNAs are small non-coding RNA found in many different species. They play crucial roles in cancer such as biological processes of apoptosis and proliferation. The identification of microRNA-target genes can be an essential first step towards to reveal the role of microRNA in various cancer types. In this paper, we predict miRNA-target genes for lung cancer by integrating prediction scores from miRanda and PITA algorithms used as a feature vector of miRNA-target interaction. Then, machine-learning algorithms were implemented for making a final prediction. The approach developed in this study should be of value for future studies into understanding the role of miRNAs in molecular mechanisms enabling lung cancer formation.
Commercialisation of Food Crops in Rural Malawi: Insights from the Household Survey

Since 1981, through structural adjustment programme, the agricultural sector has undergone several reforms which were expected to raise the incomes of smallholder farmers and hence increase their entitlement to food through the market. Data from the national household survey, however, show that most of smallholder farming remains subsistence. Only 10 percent of households sold their maize while 83 percent produced purely for own consumption. The study also reveals that the quantities of maize produced fell far short of the minimum requirement for a staple, implying that most households were net food buyers in 1997/98. The inequality in the distribution of land is one of the binding constraints for smallholder farmers in achieving food security through cultivation of either food crops or cash crops. This has implications for the adoption of technologies and the viability of promoting cash crops as a vehicle for achieving food security.
Least-Squares Phase Predistortion of a +30 dBm Class-D Outphasing RF PA in 65 nm CMOS

This paper presents a model-based phase-only predistortion method suitable for outphasing radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PA). The predistortion method is based on a model of the amplifier with a constant gain factor and phase rotation for each outphasing signal, and a predistorter with phase rotation only. Exploring the structure of the outphasing PA, the model estimation problem can be reformulated from a nonconvex problem into a convex least-squares problem, and the predistorter can be calculated analytically. The method has been evaluated for 5 MHz Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) uplink signals with Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of 3.5 dB and 6.2 dB, respectively, applied to one of the first fully integrated +30 dBm Class-D outphasing RF PAs in 65 nm CMOS. At 1.95 GHz for a 5.5 V (6.0 V) supply voltage, the measured output power of the PA was +29.7 dBm (+30.5 dBm) with a power-added efficiency (PAE) of 27%. For the WCDMA signal with +26.0 dBm of channel power, the measured Adjacent Channel Leakage Ratio (ACLR) at 5 MHz and 10 MHz offsets were - 46.3 dBc and - 55.6 dBc with predistortion, compared to -35.5 dBc and -48.1 dBc without predistortion. For the LTE signal with +23.3 dBm of channel power, the measured ACLR at 5 MHz offset was - 43.5 dBc with predistortion, compared to -34.1 dBc without predistortion.
Fast high-resolution 3D total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy by incidence angle scanning and azimuthal averaging

Significance Recent progress has pushed forward the resolving capacity of optical microscopy at the expense of a low acquisition rate and use of specific probes. Such limitations make these techniques incompatible with dynamics localization of multiple elements in single cell. We report here a method to recover 3D volumes from images obtained using several total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) incidence angles at dense regime of acquisition. This approach allows investigating several dynamical processes occurring in depth of the cell up to 800 nm from the plasma membrane such as actin remodeling. The study of time-correlated molecular behaviors at the very late steps of vesicle docking–fusion during exocytosis of two distinct recycling transport intermediates, in 3D and at high axial resolution, is also accessible. Total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) is the method of choice to visualize a variety of cellular processes in particular events localized near the plasma membrane of live adherent cells. This imaging technique not relying on particular fluorescent probes provides a high sectioning capability. It is, however, restricted to a single plane. We present here a method based on a versatile design enabling fast multiwavelength azimuthal averaging and incidence angles scanning to computationally reconstruct 3D images sequences. We achieve unprecedented 50-nm axial resolution over a range of 800 nm above the coverslip. We apply this imaging modality to obtain structural and dynamical information about 3D actin architectures. We also temporally decipher distinct Rab11a-dependent exocytosis events in 3D at a rate of seven stacks per second.
Ensuring Numerical Quality in Grid Computing

Certain numerically intensive applications executed within a grid computing environment crucially depend on the properties of floating-point arithmetic implemented on the respective platform. Differences in these properties may have drastic effects. This paper identifies the central problems related to this situation. We propose an approach which gives the user valuable information on the various platforms available in a grid computing environment in order to assess the numerical quality of an algorithm run on each of these platforms. In this manner, the user will at least have very strong hints whether a program will perform reliably in a grid before actually executing it. Our approach extends the existing IeeeCC754 test suite by two "grid-enabled" modes: The first mode calculates a "numerical checksum" on a specific grid host and executes the job only if the checksum is identical to a locally generated one. The second mode provides the user with information on the reliability and IEEE 754-conformity of the underlying floating-point implementation of various platforms. Furthermore, it can help to find a set of compiler options to optimize the application's performance while retaining numerical stability.
Optimizing retrieval and processing of multi-dimensional scientific datasets

We have developed the Active Data Repository (ADR), an infrastructure that integrates storage, retrieval, and processing of large multi-dimensional scientific datasets on distributed memory parallel machines with multiple disks attached to each node. In earlier work, we proposed three strategies for processing range queries within the ADR framework. Our experimental results show that the relative performance of the strategies changes under varying application characteristics and machine configurations. In this work we investigate approaches to guide and automate the selection of the best strategy for a given application and machine configuration. We describe analytical models to predict the relative performance of the strategies where input data elements are uniformly distributed in the attribute space of the output dataset, restricting the output dataset to be a regular d-dimensional array.
Role of autocide AMI in development of Myxococcus xanthus

A new developmental mutant of Myxococcus xanthus has been isolated by screening TnV insertion mutants for AMI-dependent development in submerged culture. This mutant (ER304) aggregated and sporulated on agar surfaces but required at least 3.8 micrograms of autocide AMI per ml for development in submerged cultures. Spore rescue of ER304 was obtained with the saturated, monounsaturated, and diunsaturated fatty acid fractions of AMI, with specific activities of 68, 115, and 700 U/mg, respectively. In addition, several model fatty acids were capable of rescuing sporulation of ER304; however, there was no correlation between specific lytic activity observed in vegetative cultures and specific rescue activity. Rescue of ER304 was effected during the first ca. 12 h after the initiation of starvation conditions; after this time, addition of AMI or model fatty acids killed the cells. Supernatant fluids of ER304 rescued development in dsg mutants (e.g., DK3260) in submerged cultures, but dsg mutant supernatant fluids were incapable of rescuing ER304 development. The data presented in this article support the idea that the primary mechanism of rescue by AMI is not via lysis, although developmental lysis may be an indirect result of the rescue event. A membrane permeability model is presented to explain the role of autocides in early developmental events in wild-type strains and in the aggregation and sporulation rescue of developmental mutants ER304 and DK3260.
Semi-extractive multi-document summarization

In this thesis, I design a Maximum Coverage problem with KnaPsack constraint (MCKP) based model for extractive multi-document summarization. The model integrates three measures to detect important sentences including Coverage, rewards sentences in regards to their representative level of the whole document, Relevance, focuses to select sentences that related to the given query, and Compression, rewards concise sentences. To generate a summary, I apply an efficient and scalable greedy algorithm. The algorithm has a near optimal solution when its scoring functions are monotone non-decreasing and submodular. I use DUC 2007 dataset to evaluate our proposed method. Investigating the results using ROUGE package shows improvement over two closely related works. The experimental results illustrates that integrating compression in the MCKP-based model, applying semantic similarity measures to detect Relevance measure and also defining all scoring functions as a monotone submodular function result in having a better performance in generating a summary.
Utilizing flash-memory SSD for developing hybrid filesystem

As the technology of NAND flash memory rapidly grows, SSD is becoming an excellent alternative for storage solutions, because of its high random I/O throughput and low power consumption. These SSD potentials have drawn great attention from IT enterprises that seek for better I/O performance. However, high SSD cost per capacity makes it less desirable to construct a large-scale storage subsystem solely composed of SSD devices. An alternative is to build a hybrid storage subsystem where both HDD and SSD devices are incorporated in an economic manner, while employing the strengths of both devices. This paper presents a hybrid file system, called HybridFS, that attempts to utilize the advantages of HDD and SSD devices, to provide a single, virtual address space by integrating both devices. HybridFS not only proposes an efficient implementation for the file management in the hybrid storage subsystem but also suggests an experimental framework for making use of the excellent features of existing file systems. Several performance evaluations were conducted to verify the effectiveness and suitability of HybridFS.
To Compress or Not To Compress: Processing vs Transmission Tradeoffs for Energy Constrained Sensor Networking

In the past few years, lossy compression has been widely applied in the field of wireless sensor networks (WSN), where energy efficiency is a crucial concern due to the constrained nature of the transmission devices. Often, the common thinking among researchers and implementers is that compression is always a good choice, because the major source of energy consumption in a sensor node comes from the transmission of the data. Lossy compression is deemed a viable solution as the imperfect reconstruction of the signal is often acceptable in WSN, subject to some application dependent maximum error tolerance. Nevertheless, this is seldom supported by quantitative evidence. In this paper, we thoroughly review a number of lossy compression methods from the literature, and analyze their performance in terms of compression efficiency, computational complexity and energy consumption. We consider two different scenarios, namely, wireless and underwater communications, and show that signal compression may or may not help in the reduction of the overall energy consumption, depending on factors such as the compression algorithm, the signal statistics and the hardware characteristics, i.e., micro-controller and transmission technology. The lesson that we have learned, is that signal compression may in fact provide some energy savings. However, its usage should be carefully evaluated, as in quite a few cases processing and transmission costs are of the same order of magnitude, whereas, in some other cases, the former may even dominate the latter. In this paper, we show quantitative comparisons to assess these tradeoffs in the above mentioned scenarios (i.e., wireless versus underwater). In addition, we consider recently proposed and lightweight algorithms such as Lightweight Temporal Compression (LTC) as well as more sophisticated FFT- or DCT-based schemes and show that the former are the best option in wireless settings, whereas the latter solutions are preferable for underwater networks. Finally, we provide formulas, obtained through numerical fittings, to gauge the computational complexity, the overall energy consumption and the signal representation accuracy of the best performing algorithms as a function of the most relevant system parameters.
Fast enumeration-based modulo scheduling heuristic for VLIW architectures

Modulo scheduling is a software pipelining technique exploiting instruction-level parallelism (ILP) of VLIW architectures to efficiently implement loops. This paper presents a novel enumeration-based resource-constrained heuristic for modulo scheduling. It takes into consideration the criticality of the nodes, generating near optimal schedules in terms of initiation intervals and register requirements. The scheduling algorithm outperformed better-known heuristics in terms of the quality of schedules, while presenting small compilation time enabling it to be used in a production environment. Experimental results on the VLIW TMS320C6678 DSP processor, showed improved performance on a signal processing set of algorithms.
“The New Americans”: The Creation of a Typology of Vietnamese-American Identity in Children's Literature

The influx of Vietnamese refugees, “boat people,” and immigrants into the United States after April 1975 has led to the establishment of a significant Vietnamese-American community. There is a body of literature written for children and young adults that creates and delineates this new community within the topography of a welcoming and immigrant-friendly USA. This paper will examine the meanings and implications of the appellation “Vietnamese-American” as defined within a body of nonfiction children's literature. It will highlight how these texts negotiate questions related to refugee status, immigration, identity and belonging, contributing in many instances to a bland re-creation of a formerly oppressed but now coherent and increasingly prosperous and Americanized people. The children's literature plays an important role in defining the relatively new community to itself and to mainstream America. In its dissemination of truisms about Confucian heritages and stereotypes of “model minorities” the literature reveals as much about American ideological desires as it does about “the new Americans. ”
Acoustic Events and “Optophonic” Cochlear Responses Induced by Pulsed Near-Infrared LASER

Optical stimulation of neural tissue within the cochlea was described as a possible alternative to electrical stimulation. Most optical stimulation was performed with pulsed lasers operating with near-infrared (NIR) light and in thermal confinement. Under these conditions, the coexistence of laser-induced optoacoustic stimulation of the cochlea (“optophony”) has not been analyzed yet. This study demonstrates that pulsed 1850-nm laser light used for neural stimulation also results in sound pressure levels up to 62 dB peak-to-peak equivalent sound pressure level (SPL) in air. The sound field was confined to a small volume along the laser beam. In dry nitrogen, laser-induced acoustic events disappeared. Hydrophone measurements demonstrated pressure waves for laser fibers immersed in water. In hearing rats, laser-evoked signals were recorded from the cochlea without targeting neural tissue. The signals showed a two-domain response differing in amplitude and latency functions, as well as sensitivity to white-noise masking. The first component had characteristics of a cochlear microphonic potential, and the second component was characteristic for a compound action potential. The present data demonstrate that laser-evoked acoustic events can stimulate a hearing cochlea. Whenever optical stimulation is used, care must be taken to distinguish between such “optophony” and the true optoneural response.