Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards a Theory of Multi-Swing Transient Instability Problems in Electric Power Systems

Multi-swing trajectories, which refer to those trajectories which oscillate several cycles and then become unbounded, has been a nuisance in general simulation programs for power system stability study since the corresponding transient stability is very difficult to access accurately. In this letter, two possible models are developed to explain possible scenarios of such multi-swing behaviors. Theoretical investigation has strongly indicated a close relationship between multi-swing instability problems and chaotic behaviors of the power system.
Analysis of backscattering modelling improvements for soil roughness and moisture estimation

The objective of this paper is to present the contribution of a new dielectric constant characterization for the modelling of radar backscattering behavior. Our analysis is based on a large number of radar measurements acquired during different experimental campaigns (Orgeval'94, Pays de Caux'98, 99). We propose a dielectric constant model, based on the combination of contributions from both soil and air fractions. This modelling clearly reveals the joint influence of the air and soil phases, in backscattering measurements over rough surfaces with large clods. A relationship is established between the soil fraction and soil roughness, using the Integral Equation Model (IEM), fitted to real radar data. Finally, the influence of the air fraction on the linear relationship between moisture and the backscattered radar signal is discussed.
Opportunistic multi-channel CSMA protocol for OFDMA systems

In this letter, we present an opportunistic multichannel CSMA protocol for OFDMA systems in frequency-selective fading channel. In order to opportunistically exploit the frequency selectivity, an OFDM-based single-channel CSMA protocol can employ water-filling power allocation as it allows a single station to utilize the whole frequency bandwidth at each time instant. In contrast, the proposed OFDMA-based multichannel CSMA protocol achieves the multi-user diversity gain by arranging multiple stations to transmit on their favorable sub-channels simultaneously. The proposed protocol is designed as an opportunistic version of the original multi-channel CSMA protocol, which was proposed in our previous work, and adopts a channel-adaptive backoff (or transmission probability control) algorithm, enabling each station to attempt data transmission on its high-SNR sub-channel with a high probability. The opportunistic multi-channel CSMA turns out to improve the total data rate significantly over the opportunistic single-channel CSMA, and to achieve almost full multi-user diversity gain despite the distributed operation.
Prevention of cigarette smoking through mass media intervention and school programs.

OBJECTIVES In this study we tested the ability of mass media interventions to enhance the efficacy of school cigarette smoking prevention programs. METHODS For 4 years, students in one pair of communities received media interventions and school programs that had common educational objectives. Students in a matched pair of communities received only the school programs. The combined cohort of 5458 students was surveyed at baseline in grades 4, 5, and 6 and was followed up annually for 4 years. RESULTS Significant reductions in reported smoking, along with consistent effects on targeted mediating variables, were observed for the media-and-school group. For cigarettes per week the reduction was 41% (2.6 vs 4.4); for smoking cigarettes yesterday the reduction was 34% (8.6% vs 13.1%); and for smoking in the past week the reduction was 35% (12.8% vs 19.8%). No effects were observed for substance use behaviors not targeted by the interventions. CONCLUSIONS These results provide evidence that mass media interventions are effective in preventing cigarette smoking when they are carefully targeted at high-risk youths and share educational objectives with school programs.
MAPKAP Kinase 2 Blocks Tristetraprolin-directed mRNA Decay by Inhibiting CAF1 Deadenylase Recruitment

Tristetraprolin (TTP) directs its target AU-rich element (ARE)-containing mRNAs for degradation by promoting removal of the poly(A) tail. The p38 MAPK pathway regulates mRNA stability via the downstream kinase MAPK-activated protein kinase 2 (MAPKAP kinase 2 or MK2), which phosphorylates and prevents the mRNA-destabilizing function of TTP. We show that deadenylation of endogenous ARE-containing tumor necrosis factor mRNA is inhibited by p38 MAPK. To investigate whether phosphorylation of TTP by MK2 regulates TTP-directed deadenylation of ARE-containing mRNAs, we used a cell-free assay that reconstitutes the mechanism in vitro. We find that phosphorylation of Ser-52 and Ser-178 of TTP by MK2 results in inhibition of TTP-directed deadenylation of ARE-containing RNA. The use of 14-3-3 protein antagonists showed that regulation of TTP-directed deadenylation by MK2 is independent of 14-3-3 binding to TTP. To investigate the mechanism whereby TTP promotes deadenylation, it was necessary to identify the deadenylases involved. The carbon catabolite repressor protein (CCR)4·CCR4-associated factor (CAF)1 complex was identified as the major source of deadenylase activity in HeLa cells responsible for TTP-directed deadenylation. CAF1a and CAF1b were found to interact with TTP in an RNA-independent fashion. We find that MK2 phosphorylation reduces the ability of TTP to promote deadenylation by inhibiting the recruitment of CAF1 deadenylase in a mechanism that does not involve sequestration of TTP by 14-3-3. Cyclooxygenase-2 mRNA stability is increased in CAF1-depleted cells in which it is no longer p38 MAPK/MK2-regulated.
HLA based co-simulation framework for multiagent-based smart grid applications

Multiagent Systems (MAS) are used extensively in Smart Grid research as a mean of distributed control. The integration of power system, communication network and MAS based control system creates complex dynamics difficult to comprehend. In this paper, a co-simulation framework for the investigation of the multi-disciplinary interdependencies between the three systems will be proposed. The proposed design combines the power system simulator PSCAD/EMTDC, network simulator OPNET, and the well-recognized MAS platform JADE. In order to promote extensibility and reusability of simulation modules, as well as to enforce causality constraint, our design is in compliance with the High Level Architecture (HLA, IEEE 1516) standard.
Detection and Assessment of Mitral Regurgitation by Left Atrial Indicator‐Dilution Curves

Indicator-dilution curves were recorded simultaneously from the left atrium and the femoral artery during injections of indocyanine green into the left ventricle in normal dogs and in dogs with chronic mitral regurgitation. A study was made-without the use of thoracotomy-of the effect of the following factors on the amount of early appearing indicator detected in the left atrium: (a) the timing of the injection of indicator in relation to the cardiac cycle, (b) the position of the injecting catheter in the left ventricle, and (c) the position of the sampling catheter in the left atrium. It was found that the time and site of the injection into the left ventricle had little effect on the amount of early appearing dye detected in the left atrium and that, although the position of the sampling catheter in the left atrium was important, reproducible results were attained when the sampling site was restricted to a region in close proximity to the mitral valve. A close correlation was demonstrated between the volume of regurgitation determined independently on a hydraulic basis and the volume estimated from the fraction of early appearing indicator detected in the left atrium. It is concluded that further work with this upstream-sampling technique is justified in order to study its possibilities as a practical method for detecting and quantitating mitral regurgitation in human beings.
Metric Preserving Dense SIFT Compression

The problem of compressing a large collection of feature vectors so that object identiﬁcation can further be processed on the compressed form of the features is investigated. The idea is to perform matching against a query image in the compressed form of the feature descriptor vectors retaining the metric. Given two SIFT feature vectors, in previous work we suggested to compress them using a lossless encoding for which the pairwise matching can be done directly on the compressed ﬁles, by means of a Fibonacci code. In this paper we extend our work to Dense SIFT and in particular to PHOW features, that contain, for each image, about 300 times as many vectors as the original SIFT .
Mosquito Faunal Survey In a Central Park of the City of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract A total of 2,582 specimens of mosquitoes of 16 taxonomic categories grouped into 5 genera (Aedes, Culex, Mansonia, Toxorhynchites, and Wyeomyia) were collected in a central park of São Paulo City, Brazil. It is crucial to include such an area in official entomological surveillance programs since this park has all the epidemiological characteristics needed to maintain an enzootic cycle of arboviruses.
Isolation and Characterization of a New Ginsenoside from the Fresh Root of Panax Ginseng

A new saponin, malonylginsenoside Ra3, was isolated from the fresh root of Panax ginseng, along with four known ginsenosides. The new compound was identified as (20S)-protopanaxadiol-3-O-(6-O-malonyl-β-D-glucopyranosyl(1→2)-β-D-glucopyranoside-20-O-β-D-xylopyranosyl(1→3)-β-D-glucopyranosyl(1→6)-β-D-glucopyranoside on the basis of extensive 1D and 2D NMR as well as HRESI-MS spectroscopic data analysis.
A survey on cloud forensics challenges and solutions

In recent years, cloud computing has gained popularity, and it is now used to support various areas of human life. Cloud forensics has been introduced to help forensic investigators find potential evidence against cloud criminal activities and maintain the security and integrity of the information stored in the cloud. While great research in the area has been carried out concerning challenges and solutions, the research on methodologies and frameworks is still in its infancy. This article focuses on the methodological aspects of cloud forensics. It critically reviews cloud forensics' existing challenges and solutions, and it explores, based on a detailed review of the area, all the work that has been carried out both in digital and cloud forensic methodologies mainly for supporting the investigation of security incidents in cloud. Furthermore, the detailed comparison reveals similarities and drawbacks of the existing methodologies providing some novel future research directions. Finally, the specific paper can be considered as a starting point for researchers wishing to design cloud-forensicable services over the cloud. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global adaptive fuzzy dynamic surface control of strict-feedback systems

The paper presents a global tracking fuzzy control design for strict feedback systems with unknown control affine nonlinearities. In particular, the so-called explosion of complexity problem alleviated via using a modified dynamic surface control (DSC) technique. The modification mainly involves a first-order filter with a space-modulated input, which in turn ensures the boundedness of the filter states. However, the repeated differentiations in the auxiliary robust controller remains as the price of preserving the global stability. Nevertheless, since the adaptive fuzzy controller dominates most of the time, the overall controller still significantly improves the existing global designs in terms of computation and implementation. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the validity of the proposed scheme.
Image quality and myocardial scar size determined with magnetic resonance imaging in patients with permanent atrial fibrillation: a comparison of two imaging protocols

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the heart generally requires breath holding and a regular rhythm. Single shot 2D steady‐state free precession (SS_SSFP) is a fast sequence insensitive to arrhythmia as well as breath holding. Our purpose was to determine image quality, signal‐to‐noise (SNR) and contrast‐to‐noise (CNR) ratios and infarct size with a fast single shot and a standard segmented MRI sequence in patients with permanent atrial fibrillation and chronic myocardial infarction.
Lossless and near lossless compression of real color filter array data

Compression of Bayer pattern color filter array (CFA) data has gained a lot of attention during past years. Numerous algorithms have been proposed for lossless, near-lossless and lossy compression. The performance evaluation of compression methods is typically done only for artificial CFA data, obtained by sub-sampling full color images according to CFA pattern, without taking into account that CFA data are heavily processed before obtaining full color images. Therefore, some assumptions that are true for reconstructed images may not hold for real raw data. Thus, compression efficiency of different methods may vary. In this paper we evaluate the performance of some methods for lossless and near-lossless compression for real raw Bayer pattern CFA data obtained from digital cameras.
Performance Evaluation of MANET Routing Protocols under Different Traffic Loads for Varying Maximum Congestion Window Size

A Mobile ad hoc network is a collection of wireless mobile nodes connected to form a temporary wireless network without using any communication infrastructure. Due to limited network resources and in order to exchange data packets within the network, wireless multiple hops route scheme adopted for mobile node’s connection. Researchers, with the increasing importance of applications in nonmilitary areas proposed several routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks. This work investigates and compares the performance of MANET routing protocols, namely AODV, DSR and DSDV under different traffic loads with different maximum TCP congestion window size. The Metrics used to compare routing protocol performance are addressed as a packet delivery ratio, the average end-to-end delay, average routing load, and average network throughput.
The development of modern psychiatric services in China 1891-1949

This article deals with the development of psychiatric services in China largely through the prism of Western observation, from the opening of the first psychiatric hospital in China in 1898 to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. There was no tradition of institutional care for the mentally ill in old China. Nor did the Chinese pharmacopoeia have medicines that were effective in the symptomatic treatment of psychotic disorders, although there were, and are, preparations that have a sedative effect. Within the ancient medical literature, Chinese physicians recognized and described the aetiology and symptoms of mental disease (Xia 1981, Young & Chang 1983). However, the holistic form of Chinese medinine did not encourage the development of clinical specialties. Psychiatry in particular, based as it is upon a dualism between mind and body, did not find fertile soil in traditional China. Thus the introduction of asylums for the insane and the various forms of treatment that were espoused at that time may be seen as alien forms grafted on to Chinese society rather than an indigenous product.
Complete analysis of fiecewise-linear resistive circuits using integer programming

An efficient and easily implementable method is proposed for finding complete solution sets of piecewise-linear resistive circuits. In this method, a piecewise-linear resistive circuit is first described by a generalized linear complementarity problem, and then it is formulated as an integer programming problem. Then, it is solved by the integer programming solver CPLEX. The proposed method can be implemented easily without writing complex programs, and the complete solution set can be obtained by solving integer programming problems only twice.
Twin-Arginine Translocation of Active Human Tissue Plasminogen Activator in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT When eukaryotic proteins with multiple disulfide bonds are expressed at high levels in Escherichia coli, the efficiency of thiol oxidation and isomerization is typically not sufficient to yield soluble products with native structures. Even when such proteins are secreted into the oxidizing periplasm or expressed in the cytoplasm of cells carrying mutations in the major intracellular disulfide bond reduction systems (e.g., trxB gor mutants), correct folding can be problematic unless a folding modulator is simultaneously coexpressed. In the present study we explored whether the bacterial twin-arginine translocation (Tat) pathway could serve as an alternative expression system for obtaining appreciable levels of recombinant proteins which exhibit complex patterns of disulfide bond formation, such as full-length human tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) (17 disulfides) and a truncated but enzymatically active version of tPA containing nine disulfides (vtPA). Remarkably, targeting of both tPA and vtPA to the Tat pathway resulted in active protein in the periplasmic space. We show here that export by the Tat translocator is dependent upon oxidative protein folding in the cytoplasm of trxB gor cells prior to transport. Whereas previous efforts to produce high levels of active tPA or vtPA in E. coli required coexpression of the disulfide bond isomerase DsbC, we observed that Tat-targeted vtPA and tPA reach a native conformation without thiol-disulfide oxidoreductase coexpression. These results demonstrate that the Tat system may have inherent and unexpected benefits compared with existing expression strategies, making it a viable alternative for biotechnology applications that hinge on protein expression and secretion.
Understanding community beliefs of Chinese‐Australians about cancer: Initial insights using an ethnographic approach

Ethnography was employed to investigate the hypothesis that the cultural meaning of cancer is one of the possible barriers to access of cancer services. The objectives were to identify indigenous terminologies, taxonomies and illness explanatory models of cancer in a community‐based sample of 15 Chinese‐Australians and a sample of 16 informants who had been recruited through two Sydney familial cancer clinics. Many of the informants included in their narrative terms that seemed to match Western biomedical explanations for cancer. The majority of informants also maintained traditional Chinese beliefs, despite high acculturation and beliefs in biomedical explanations about cancer. Explanations of illness including cancer, referred to the following concepts: (i) karma (yeh), (ii) retribution (bao ying), (iii) fate (ming yun) or Heaven's or God's will, (iv) geomancy (feng‐shui), (v) touched evil (zhong chia), (vi) misfortune or bad luck (shui wan, dong hark); (vii) offending the gods or deities requiring prayers or offerings for appeasement; and (viii) kong‐tau (spells invoked through human intervention). Taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the Chinese population, the findings provide an insight into Chinese illness conceptualization that may assist health professionals to develop an understanding of how the cultural explanatory models affect access to screening services, communication of diagnosis of cancer and management of treatment regimen. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
"Facebook Distress": A Model to Investigate Discontinuation of Social Networking Site Use

The study proposes a model to investigate discontinuation of social networking site use based on gratification and distress factors. The model of two contrasting beliefs is founded on Social Exchange Theory (Homans, 1958). The study reviews past research of user motivations to participate in social networking sites, and identifies gratification factors of using the sites, however, uses methods from thematic analysis (Aronson, 1994; Barun & Clarke, 2006) to identify the factors that cause use-based distress. Drawing on the recognition of these two contrasting beliefs and two forms of affective reactions, the article argues that users make cost-benefit assessments leading to post-adoption decisions on whether to continue or discontinue social networking site use. The article concludes with several theoretical and practical contributions.
Local reasoning about Web programs

Since 1990, the world wide web has evolved from a static collection of reference pages to a dynamic programming and application-hosting environment. At the core of this evolution is the programming language JavaScript and the XML update library “DOM”. Every modern web browser contains a DOM implementation which allows JavaScript programs to read and alter the web page that the user is currently viewing. JavaScript and DOM are extremely successful, and this success may be in part due to their highly dynamic and tightly integrated nature. However, this very nature hinders formal program analysis and tool development. Even the implementation independent specification that defines DOM is largely written in the English language, and not using any formal system. While client-side web programming was once a simple discipline of form validation and interface trickery, it is fast becoming a far more serious business encompassing application development for the emerging ubiquitous “cloud”. As this evolution gains pace there is an increasing demand for client-side tool support of the sort commonly enjoyed by “enterprise” programmers, working in more easily analysed languages such as Java. This thesis makes use of recent developments in program reasoning using context logic to provide the first formal, compositional specification for the Fundamental Interfaces of DOM Core Level 1. It presents both a bigstep operational semantics for the necessary operations of the library and a context logic for reasoning about programs which use the library. Finally, it presents example programs that use the library and shows how context logic can be used to prove useful properties of those programs.
A physical-statistical approach to match passive microwave retrieval of rainfall to Mediterranean climatology

A physical-statistical approach to simulate cloud structures and their upward radiation over the Mediterranean is described. It aims to construct a synthetic database of microwave passive observations matching the climatological conditions of this geographical region. The synthetic database is conceived to train a Bayesian maximum a posteriori probability inversion scheme to retrieve precipitating cloud parameters from spaceborne microwave radiometric data. The initial microphysical a priori information on vertical profiles of cloud parameters is derived from a mesoscale cloud-resolving model. In order to complement information from cloud models and to match simulations to the conditions of the area of interest, a new approach is proposed. Climatological constraints over the Mediterranean are derived on a monthly basis from available radiosounding profiles, rain-gauge network measurements, and colocated METEOSAT infrared measurements. In order to introduce the actual surface background in the radiative-transfer simulations, a further constraint is represented by the monthly average and variance maps of surface emissivity derived from Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) clear-air observations. A validation of the forward model is carried out by comparing a large set of brightness temperatures measured by the SSM/I with the synthetic cloud radiative database to asses its representativeness and range of variability.