Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Convergence Analysis of Narrowband Active Noise Equalizer System Under Imperfect Secondary Path Estimation

Active noise equalizer systems are used to adjust the noise level in an environment, based on the preference of retaining noise information. Several researches have been carried out to determine the maximum step size bond of narrowband active noise control system with perfect secondary path estimation without gain factor consideration. However, in practical environment, secondary path estimation error of the system exists. In this paper, a stochastic approach analysis is applied to determine the maximum step size of the system under imperfect secondary path estimation. Simulation results are conducted to verify the analysis. Results show that the gain factor, sampling frequency, and secondary path estimation errors are all major factors governing the maximum step size of the narrowband active noise equalizer system under imperfect secondary path estimation.
Sexual Satisfaction Concept Analysis in Iranian Married Women: A Hybrid Model Study

Background: Sexual satisfaction is considered to be a sexual right and an important component of sexual health. The purpose of this qualitative study was to clarify the meaning and the nature of sexual satisfaction in Iranian married women, and to provide a cultural-based definition of it. Method: Sexual satisfaction was examined in three phases by the Hybrid Model of concept analysis: (1) the theoretical phase; (2) the fieldwork phase and (3) the analytical phase. Hybrid concept analysis method was chosen because its inclusion of married women’s perspectives enriches the limits of sexual health search literature. Result: The critical attributes of sexual satisfaction were investigated. They included ‘two-dimensional structure’, ‘an affective response’, ‘a means to achieve marital satisfaction’, ‘unique’, ‘a concept based on expectations’ and ‘a concept on shadow of values’. Conclusion: The concept analysis of sexual satisfaction showed some of the attributes and antecedents for this concept that, have not been mentioned in the literature.
The novel biomarker growth differentiation factor 15 in heart failure with normal ejection fraction

Heart failure with normal ejection fraction (HFnEF) is an important clinical entity that remains incompletely understood. The novel biomarker growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF‐15) is elevated in systolic heart failure (HFrEF) and is predictive of an adverse outcome. We investigated the clinical relevance of GDF‐15 plasma levels in HFnEF.
Risk and Protective Factors for Comorbid Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Homeless Individuals in Treatment for Substance-Related Problems

Homeless individuals undergoing treatment for substance use disorders (SUD) can pose clinical challenges. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms have been observed in the most difficult clients. The study sample consisted of 51 homeless individuals, 9 women and 42 men, undergoing consultation for SUD in Montreal. The mean age was 46 years (SD = 7.19). Of the sample, 49% had a potential PTSD diagnosis. Most participants had the following characteristics: an alcoholic parent, a history of an early trauma, and little social support. The participants with a potential PTSD diagnosis were significantly more likely to have had an alcoholic parent, to have experienced an early trauma, and to use more maladaptive coping strategies. The study results and limits are discussed.
Preparative Isolation of Immune Complexes from Serum by Sucrose Gradient Ultracentrifugation

Immune complexes were isolated by ultracentrifugation in sucrose gradients (20‐65% (w/w)). The centrifugation procedure was demonstrated 10 be isopycnic. The banding density of the complexes was influenced by the chemical nature and molecular size of the antigen and by the antigen to antibody ratio. The method was applied for preparative isolation of immune complexes from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, and uncomplicated psoriasis.
Explaining and developing social capital for knowledge management purposes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the growing literature bridging social capital (SC) and knowledge management (KM). The paper seeks to identify the causal factors for this recent research into the connection between SC and KM, and also to explicate the relationship between the most relevant neo‐capital theories and KM. Further, the paper aims to argue that Granovetter's and Coleman's socially embedded understanding of market activity is the most relevant for examining the SC and KM interface. Finally, the paper seeks to offer guiding approaches drawn from SC literature for enhancing KM performance.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the SC literature from a KM perspective.Findings – First, interest in SC from KM scholars is driven by a number of inter‐linked causal factors. Second, SC is significant for KM purposes and can be understood as being complementary to and parallel with other intangible capitalisations, such as human capital (HC) and intellectual capital (IC). Third, .
Reconstructing the story of Simplemente Maria, the most popular telenovela in Latin America of all time

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate a spectacular mass media phe nomenon that occurred some twenty-five years ago: The case of a highly popular Peruvian telenovela Simplemente Maria ('Simply Mary'), which to this date is considered by many as the most popular television program of all time in Peru and in most countries of Latin America. Our methods of data-collection activities in reconstructing the history of Simplemente Maria are described. We explore the reasons for Simplemente María's audience popularity and its several intended and unintended effects. One of Simplemente María's serendipitous effects was the formulation of the entertainment-education strategy in television.
Finding Diverse High-Quality Plans for Hypothesis Generation

New applications that use AI planning to generate explanations and hypotheses have given rise to a new class of planning problems, requiring ﬁnding multiple alternative plans while minimizing the cost of those plans. Hypotheses or explanations about a system, such as a monitored network host that could be infected by malware, are generated as candidate plans given a planning problem deﬁnition de-scribing the sequence of observations and a domain model capturing the possible state transitions for the modeled system, as well as the many-to-many correspondence between the states and the observations. The plans must minimize both the penalties for unexplained observations and the cost of state transitions. Additionally, among those candidate plans, a small number of the most diverse plans must be selected as representatives for further analysis. To this end, we have developed a planner that ﬁrst efﬁciently solves the “top- k ” cost-optimal planning problem to ﬁnd k best plans, followed by clustering to produce diverse plans as cluster representatives. Experiments set in hypothesis generation domains show that the top- k planning problem can be solved in time comparable to cost-optimal planning using Fast-Downward. We further empirically evaluate multiple clustering algorithms and similarity measures, and characterize the tradeoffs in choosing parameters and similarity measures.
Focusing Graphical User Interfaces in Model-Driven Software Development

— To meet fast changing demands on modern software architectures the ambition to shorten and improve software development processes has increased. The approach of model-driven software development focuses models as specification of software and on transformations of those models to finally get source code. The advantage of the model-driven approach still has to be proven because a continuous tool-supported transformation process from model to source code with regard to all aspects of a software system is not yet possible. This paper concentrates on the aspect of user interaction by presenting an easy to apply approach allowing for a tool-supported, model-driven software development of graphical user interfaces for any kind of platform. A case study demonstrates the usage and benefit of our model-driven approach applied to a common software development process.
PhoneWrap - Injecting the "How Often" into Mobile Apps

Mobile apps have access to a variety of sensitive resources and data. Current permissionbased policies guarding these resources are not expressive enough to distinguish the wanted functionality from malicious attacks. We present the tool PhoneWrap which inserts fine-grained ticket-based policies into mobile JavaScript apps written with the PhoneGap framework. Our policies grant a bounded number of accesses for each functionality based on the user’s interaction with the app. The policies are enforced without modification of the execution environment. We have applied PhoneWrap successfully to hand-crafted examples and real-world Android apps to show that accurate policies can be retrofitted.
GRAPMAN: Gradual power manager for consistent throughput of energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes

In this work, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications that require long-term sustainability are considered. Energy harvesting forms a promising technology to address this challenge, by allowing each node to be entirely powered by energy harvested from its environment. To be sustainable, each node must dynamically adapt its Quality of Service (QoS), regarding the harvested energy using a power management strategy. This strategy is implemented on each node by the Power Manager (PM). In this paper, GRAPMAN (GRAdual Power MANager) is proposed, a novel PM for Energy-Harvesting WSN (EH-WSN) powered by pseudo-periodic energy sources. Unlike most state of the art PMs, GRAPMAN aims to achieve high average throughput while maintaining consistent QoS, i.e. with low fluctuations with respect to time, by looking for the highest throughput that can be supplied by the node over a finite time horizon while remaining sustainable. We show through extensive trace-driven network simulations that GRAPMAN outperforms state of the art PMs in both average throughput and throughput consistency.
Advances on Security Threats and Countermeasures for Cognitive Radio Networks: A Survey

Cognitive radio (CR) is regarded as an emerging technology, which equips wireless devices with the capability to adapt their operating parameters on the fly based on the radio environment, to utilize the scarce radio frequency spectrum in an efficient and opportunistic manner. However, due to the increasingly pervasive existence of smart wireless devices in cognitive radio networks (CRNs), CR systems are vulnerable to numerous security threats that affect the overall performance. There have been many significant advances on security threats and countermeasures in CRNs in the past few years. Our main goal in this paper is to present the state-of-the-art research results and approaches proposed for CRN security to protect both unlicensed secondary users and licensed primary users. Specifically, we present the recent advances on security threats/attacks and countermeasures in CRNs focusing more on the physical layer by categorizing them in terms of their types, their existence in the CR cycle, network protocol layers (exploited during their activities and defense strategies), and game theoretic approaches. The recent important attacks and countermeasures in CRNs are also summarized in the form of tables. We also present recommendations that can be followed while implementing countermeasures to enhance CRN security. With this paper, readers can have a more thorough understanding of CRN security attacks and countermeasures, as well as research trends in this area.
Quantification of Age‐Related Facial Wrinkles in Men and Women Using a Three‐Dimensional Fringe Projection Method and Validated Assessment Scales

BACKGROUND Whereas the molecular mechanisms of skin aging are well understood, little information is available concerning the clinical onset and lifetime development of facial wrinkles. OBJECTIVES To perform the first systematic evaluation of the lifetime development of facial wrinkles and sex‐specific differences using three‐dimensional (3D) imaging and clinical rating. METHODS 200 men and women aged 20 to 70 were selected. Wrinkle severity of periorbital, glabellar, and forehead lines was evaluated using 3D imaging and validated assessment scales. RESULTS Wrinkle severity was greater at all assessed locations with older age. In men, wrinkles manifested earlier and were more severe than in women. In women, periorbital lines were the first visible wrinkles, in contrast to the forehead lines in men. In both sexes, glabellar lines did not clinically manifest before the age of 40. CONCLUSION The results of the present study confirm a progressive increase of crow's feet and forehead and glabellar lines in men and women. Although the development of facial wrinkles happens earlier and is more severe in men, perimenopause seems to particularly affect development in women. Clinical ratings and 3D measurements are suitable methods to assess facial wrinkle severity in men and women.
Immune Responses of Breast Cancer Patients to Mutated Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGF-RvIII, ΔEGF-R, and de2–7 EGF-R)1

Mutated epidermal growth factor receptor (EGF-RvIII, ΔEGF-R, and de2–7 EGF-R) is the result of an 801-bp deletion within the extracellular domain of wild-type EGF-R and is expressed by breast carcinomas, but not by normal breast tissues. EGF-RvIII is expressed both on the surface and in the cytoplasm of tumor cells. Thus, EGF-RvIII is a potential tumor-specific target for both Abs and T cells. However, it is not known whether breast cancer patients can raise immune responses to EGF-RvIII expressed by their tumors. The demonstration of EGF-RvIII-specific immune responses in patients would suggest that immunization of patients with EGF-RvIII vaccines is feasible, because these vaccines may boost a pre-existing immune response. We have evaluated humoral and cellular immune responses to EGF-RvIII in 16 breast cancer patients and three healthy donors. Seven of 16 patients developed EGF-RvIII-specific Abs that bound to isolated EGF-RvIII protein or the protein expressed by EGF-RvIII-transfected mouse fibroblasts. The Abs that bound to EGF-RvIII did not bind to wild-type EGF-R, and anti-EGF-RvIII Abs were not found in the sera of healthy donors. Three patients had EGF-RvIII peptide-specific lymphoproliferative responses, and two of these patients also had humoral immune responses. Humoral and cellular immune responses correlated with EGF-RvIII expression by patients’ tumors in most cases. These studies demonstrate that breast cancer patients specifically recognize EGF-RvIII with an overall immune response rate of 50%, suggesting that patients may benefit from vaccination against EGF-RvIII, boosting pre-existing immune responses.
Immunopathology and Infectious Disease Methamphetamine Enhances HIV Infection of Macrophages

From the Division of Allergy and Immunology,* Joseph Stokes, Jr., Research Institute at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Center for AIDS Research and Department of Epidemiology of School of Public Health, and the First Affiliated Hospital, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning City, People’s Republic of China; and the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, and Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of China
Equilibrium in Evolutionary Games: Some Experimental Results

Evolutionary game theory informs the design and analysis of twenty-six experimental sessions using normal form games with six to twenty-four players. The state typically converges to the subset of Nash equilibria called evolutionary equilibria, especially under conditions of mean matching and history. Mixed strategy equilibria are explained better by 'purification' strategies than by homogenous independent individual randomization. The risk dominance criterion fares poorly in some coordination game environments. With small player populations and large gains to cooperative behavior, some players apparently attempt to influence other players' actions, contrary to a key theoretical assumption. Copyright 1996 by Royal Economic Society.
Accurate Floating-Point Summation Part I: Faithful Rounding

Given a vector of floating-point numbers with exact sum $s$, we present an algorithm for calculating a faithful rounding of $s$, i.e., the result is one of the immediate floating-point neighbors of $s$. If the sum $s$ is a floating-point number, we prove that this is the result of our algorithm. The algorithm adapts to the condition number of the sum, i.e., it is fast for mildly conditioned sums with slowly increasing computing time proportional to the logarithm of the condition number. All statements are also true in the presence of underflow. The algorithm does not depend on the exponent range. Our algorithm is fast in terms of measured computing time because it allows good instruction-level parallelism, it neither requires special operations such as access to mantissa or exponent, it contains no branch in the inner loop, nor does it require some extra precision: The only operations used are standard floating-point addition, subtraction, and multiplication in one working precision, for example, double precision. Certain constants used in the algorithm are proved to be optimal.
Similarity of human motion: congruity between perception and data

To duplicate human motion on the computer while retaining the individuality of the source, this paper discusses what the viewers focus on when they attempt to distinguish the identity of the source. In order to define the degree of similarity on motion, the data obtained by motion capture system are categorized using Self-Organizing maps, and the validity of the categorization is investigated to confirm the extent to which it is in agreement with the viewer's intuitive judgment. Human walking patterns are measured and shown as animations of a skeleton model to permit distinction testing. The degree of similarity between walking patterns is calculated according to the results of the tests. The motion data are processed using Self-Organizing maps, and the degree of similarity from the aspect of data processing is also calculated as the distance between walking patterns in the map. These two measures of similarity are compared, and it is found that the degree of similarity between the human viewpoint and the data processing viewpoint indicates a high level of correlation.
Phylogenetic Analysis of the Human Gut Microbiota Using 16S rDNA Clone Libraries and Strictly Anaerobic Culture‐Based Methods

The human gut microbiota from three healthy subjects were compared by the use of a sequence analysis of 16S rDNA libraries and a culture‐based method. Direct counts ranged from 1.9 × 1011 to 4.0 × 1011 cells/g (wet weight), and plate counts totaled 6.6 × 1010 to 1.2 × 1011 CFU/g (wet weight). Sixty to seventy percent of the bacteria in the human intestinal tract cannot be cultured with currently available methods. The 16S rDNA libraries from three subjects were generated from total community DNA in the intestinal tract with universal primer sets. Randomly selected clones were partially sequenced. All purified colonies detected from the surface of the agar plate were used for a partial sequencing of 16S rDNA. On the basis of sequence similarities, the clones and colonies were classified into several clusters corresponding to the major phylum of the domain Bacteria. Among a total of 744 clones obtained, approximately 25% of them belonged to 31 known species. About 75% of the remaining clones were novel “phylotypes” (at least 98% similarity of clone sequence). The predominant intestinal microbial community consisted of 130 species or phylotypes according to the sequence data in this study. The 16S rDNA libraries and colonies included the Bacteroides group, Streptococcus group, Bifidobacterium group, and Clostridium rRNA clusters IV, IX, XIVa, and XVIII. Moreover, several previously uncharacterized and uncultured microorganisms were recognized in clone libraries and colonies. Our results also showed marked individual differences in the composition of intestinal microbiota.
Verbal abuse experienced by nursing students.

AIM This paper is a report of a study to describe the nature, severity, frequency and sources of verbal abuse experienced by nursing students while gaining clinical experience. BACKGROUND Verbal abuse of healthcare workers is currently receiving considerable attention and nursing students have been identified as a group vulnerable to experiencing workplace verbal abuse. METHOD Questionnaires were distributed in 2005 to a convenience sample of 156 third year nursing students from one pre-registration nursing programme in England. A total of 114 questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 73.0%. FINDINGS Experience of verbal abuse was reported by 45.1% of respondents, 34.5% had witnessed other students experiencing this and 65.5% reported that they were aware of other students experiencing verbal abuse. The incidents involved patients in 64.7% of cases, 15.7% involved visitors or relatives and 19.6% involved other healthcare workers. Students reported experiencing threats to kill them, racial abuse and sexually oriented verbal abuse, with the majority of incidents occurring in general medical, mental health and general surgical clinical areas. CONCLUSION Education and healthcare providers should prepare students to manage negative verbal exchanges during nursing education, and policies and support networks relating to managing verbal abuse in clinical practice should be available to nursing students.
Oxidized Ca2+/Calmodulin-Dependent Protein Kinase II Triggers Atrial Fibrillation

Background— Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a growing public health problem without adequate therapies. Angiotensin II and reactive oxygen species are validated risk factors for AF in patients, but the molecular pathways connecting reactive oxygen species and AF are unknown. The Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) has recently emerged as a reactive oxygen species–activated proarrhythmic signal, so we hypothesized that oxidized CaMKII&dgr; could contribute to AF. Methods and Results— We found that oxidized CaMKII was increased in atria from AF patients compared with patients in sinus rhythm and from mice infused with angiotensin II compared with mice infused with saline. Angiotensin II–treated mice had increased susceptibility to AF compared with saline-treated wild-type mice, establishing angiotensin II as a risk factor for AF in mice. Knock-in mice lacking critical oxidation sites in CaMKII&dgr; (MM-VV) and mice with myocardium-restricted transgenic overexpression of methionine sulfoxide reductase A, an enzyme that reduces oxidized CaMKII, were resistant to AF induction after angiotensin II infusion. Conclusions— Our studies suggest that CaMKII is a molecular signal that couples increased reactive oxygen species with AF and that therapeutic strategies to decrease oxidized CaMKII may prevent or reduce AF.