Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Gain of Joint Processing of Pilot and Data Symbols in Stationary Rayleigh Fading Channels

In many typical mobile communication receivers, the channel is estimated based on pilot symbols to allow for a coherent detection and decoding in a separate processing step. Currently, much work is spent on receivers which break up this separation, e.g., by enhancing channel estimation based on reliability information on the data symbols. In this paper, we evaluate the possible gain of a joint processing of data and pilot symbols in comparison to the case of a separate processing in the context of stationary Rayleigh flat-fading channels. Therefore, we discuss the nature of the possible gain of a joint processing of pilot and data symbols. We show that the additional information that can be gained by a joint processing is captured in the temporal correlation of the channel estimation error of the solely pilot-based channel estimation, which is not retrieved by the channel decoder in case of separate processing. In addition, we derive a new lower bound on the achievable rate for joint processing of pilot and data symbols. Finally, the results are extended to multiple-input multiple-output channels.
Endoscope Tracking Using Wavelet-Gravitation Network Incorporated with Kalman Filter

Inspired by the movement of comet under gravitational interaction with planets and stars, we propose a novel wavelet-gravitation network (WGN) for endoscope optical tracking. We substitute the world gravitation law with interaction described by radial wavelet function. The WGN is trained based on the energy conservation law. The prediction of target image position is made with movement described by the second Newton's law. The WGN is incorporated with Kalman filtering framework. Our experiments show that WGN performs especially well for nonlinear movement tracking. As the movement of surgical tools is hand-driven, it is mostly nonlinear and affected by both tangential and normal accelerations. Our proposed methodology has been successfully applied to endoscope tracking for image guided surgery
The Effects of Suggestion on Dream Recall Frequency

The present research was designed to examine whether the power of suggestion can play a substantial role in a participant’s dream recall frequency (DRF; i.e., the average number of dreams remembered nightly). Nineteen students participated in a lab session in exchange for course credit, during which they completed a task assessing working memory capacity and several questionnaires. Of the 19 students, five chose to participate in the second phase of the study, for which they received $10. These five participants were randomly assigned to a “high dream capacity” group (i.e., told they have the highest dream capacity of anyone studied thus far) or an “average dream capacity” group (control) during the lab session. Participants recorded their DRF and other sleep-related measures for seven consecutive nights following the initial lab session. Although there was no significant difference between the DRF of participants in the high capacity group and the DRF of those in the average capacity group, a pattern consistent with the hypothesis was found. That is, those given the suggestion of a higher dream capacity experienced a higher DRF in the week following the initial lab session than those given the suggestion of an average dream capacity.
Talent management best practices: how exemplary health care organizations create value in a down economy.

BACKGROUND : Difficult economic conditions and powerful workforce trends pose significant challenges to managing talent in health care organizations. Although robust research evidence supports the many benefits of maintaining a strong commitment to talent management practices despite these challenges, many organizations compound the problem by resorting to workforce reductions and limiting or eliminating investments in talent management. PURPOSE : This study examines how nationwide health care systems address these challenges through best practice talent management systems. Addressing important gaps in talent management theory and practice, this study develops a best practice model of talent management that is grounded in the contextual challenges facing health care practitioners. METHODOLOGY : Utilizing a qualitative case study that examined 15 nationwide health care systems, data were collected through semistructured interviews with 30 executives and document analysis of talent management program materials submitted by each organization. FINDINGS : Exemplary health care organizations employ a multiphased talent management system composed of six sequential phases and associated success factors that drive effective implementation. Based on these findings, a model of talent management best practices in health care organizations is presented. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS : Health care practitioners may utilize the best practice model to assess and enhance their respective talent management systems by establishing the business case for talent management, defining, identifying, and developing high-potential leaders, carefully communicating high-potential designations, and evaluating talent management outcomes.
Accelerating OLAP Workload on Interconnected FPGAs with Flash Storage

The data volume used in online analytical processing (OLAP) applications is rapidly increasing because of the increasing popularity of various Web services and emerging sensor technologies. Since the amount of accumulated data is frequently too large to store in an in-memory database, it is necessary to have a secondary storage to store such big data. On the basis of this premise, the most important factor to determine the performance of data-intensive applications is to reduce the number and the size of the data transfers between the secondary storage and the main memory. To achieve an energy-efficient computing environment, offloading a user-defined function (UDF) onto interconnected FPGA-boards that equip high-speed storage is effective due to FPGA's performance ratio of operations per I/O. In this paper, we focus on the aggregate operations that are popularly used UDF in OLAP, and propose an acceleration scheme utilizing interconnected FPGAs with flash storage. The scheme is by introducing an accelerator modules which apply operations to data-stream passing through the FPGA, in addition to appropriate data distribution and partitioning. We implemented an accelerator module that aggregates the data transferred from the flash storage to the DRAM in order to show availability. Through preliminary evaluations of the accelerator, we confirmed that aggregate operations supported by the active-disk mechanism outperforms a software-based database management system by more than 30 times.
Robust Large Scale Calibration for Massive MIMO

In the massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) era, there are hundreds of antenna elements at one single base station (BS). It becomes critical to take full advantage of time-division duplexing (TDD) channel reciprocity to learn the downlink (DL) channel state information (CSI) from the uplink (UL) channel measurements at the BS. However, due to different radio frequency branches for transmitting and receiving, antenna calibration at the BS is necessary to effect this reciprocity between the end-to-end DL and UL channels. In massive MIMO, this procedure becomes extremely challenging since all the existing antenna calibration approaches do not scale well with the size of the antenna array. In this paper, we rely on compressive sensing (CS) theory to develop an efficient and robust way to calibrate the massive antenna array at the BS, which only requires CSI feedback in the order of $\mathbb{O}(\log N)$ instead of $\mathbb{O}(N)$ as in those conventional calibration schemes. Extensive simulations demonstrate our approach can maintain the whole large scale antenna system in a ``calibrated'' state with only a small amount of feedback overhead. The proposed novel scheme thus allows us to make full use of the channel reciprocity in TDD massive MIMO systems.
Efficient algorithms for geometric optimization

We review the recent progress in the design of efficient algorithms for various problems in geometric optimization. We present several techniques used to attack these problems, such as parametric searching, geometric alternatives to parametric searching, prune-and-search techniques for linear programming and related problems, and LP-type problems and their efficient solution. We then describe a wide range of applications of these and other techniques to numerous problems in geometric optimization, including facility location, proximity problems, statistical estimators and metrology, placement and intersection of polygons and polyhedra, and ray shooting and other query-type problems.
Adherence to Antihypertensive Therapy and Elevated Blood Pressure: Should We Consider the Use of Multiple Medications?

Background Although a majority of patients with hypertension require a multidrug therapy, this is rarely considered when measuring adherence from refill data. Moreover, investigating the association between refill non-adherence to antihypertensive therapy (AHT) and elevated blood pressure (BP) has been advocated. Objective Identify factors associated with non-adherence to AHT, considering the multidrug therapy, and investigate the association between non-adherence to AHT and elevated BP. Methods A retrospective cohort study including patients with hypertension, identified from a random sample of 5025 Swedish adults. Two measures of adherence were estimated by the proportion of days covered method (PDC≥80%): (1) Adherence to any antihypertensive medication and, (2) adherence to the full AHT regimen. Multiple logistic regressions were performed to investigate the association between sociodemographic factors (age, sex, education, income), clinical factors (user profile, number of antihypertensive medications, healthcare use, cardiovascular comorbidities) and non-adherence. Moreover, the association between non-adherence (long-term and a month prior to BP measurement) and elevated BP was investigated. Results Non-adherence to any antihypertensive medication was higher among persons < 65 years (Odds Ratio, OR 2.75 [95% CI, 1.18–6.43]) and with the lowest income (OR 2.05 [95% CI, 1.01–4.16]). Non-adherence to the full AHT regimen was higher among new users (OR 2.04 [95% CI, 1.32–3.15]), persons using specialized healthcare (OR 1.63, [95% CI, 1.14–2.32]), and having multiple antihypertensive medications (OR 1.85 [95% CI, 1.25–2.75] and OR 5.22 [95% CI, 3.48–7.83], for 2 and ≥3 antihypertensive medications, respectively). Non-adherence to any antihypertensive medication a month prior to healthcare visit was associated with elevated BP. Conclusion Sociodemographic factors were associated with non-adherence to any antihypertensive medication while clinical factors with non-adherence to the full AHT regimen. These differing findings support considering the use of multiple antihypertensive medications when measuring refill adherence. Monitoring patients' refill adherence prior to healthcare visit may facilitate interpreting elevated BP.
Building a Pragmatic Semantic Web

Many real-world tasks require the acquisition and integration of information from a distributed set of heterogeneous sources. Hence, there's no shortage of opportunities for applications using Semantic Web (SW) technologies. The power of publishing and linking data in a way that machines can automatically interpret through ontologies is beginning to materialize. However, market penetration level is relatively low, and it's still no routine matter for an enterprise, organization, governmental agency, or business with large distributed databases to add them to the Web of linked and semantically enriched data. In part, they may suspect that they're expected to pioneer an approach in which quick wins are few. Moreover, cost and privacy issues arise when ever-increasing amounts of information are linked into the Web. A practical approach to adopting semantic Web technologies enables large organizations to share data while achieving clear private as well as public reuse benefits.
Specifying temporal behavior in hypermedia documents

We have designed and implemented a system for creating, editing, and displaying hypermedia dOcuments. This system uses an improved document model with two major feat ures. First, it allows authors to specify temporal synchronization constraints among events of interest within media segments. Second, it allows asynchronous material, such as user interaction, links, or programs, to be combined with richly coordinated synchronous material in a single hypermedia document. The system incorporates a linear programming algorithm to solve the temporal constraints. This process automatically constructs a schedule for displaying a document and may involve stretching or shrinking media segments. Because synchronization constraints record the author’s intentions and because the system creates schedules automatically, both creating documents and maintaining them thr~ughout their life cycles should be easier.
The Oncopig Cancer Model: An Innovative Large Animal Translational Oncology Platform

Despite an improved understanding of cancer molecular biology, immune landscapes, and advancements in cytotoxic, biologic, and immunologic anti-cancer therapeutics, cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide. More than 8.2 million deaths were attributed to cancer in 2012, and it is anticipated that cancer incidence will continue to rise, with 19.3 million cases expected by 2025. The development and investigation of new diagnostic modalities and innovative therapeutic tools is critical for reducing the global cancer burden. Toward this end, transitional animal models serve a crucial role in bridging the gap between fundamental diagnostic and therapeutic discoveries and human clinical trials. Such animal models offer insights into all aspects of the basic science-clinical translational cancer research continuum (screening, detection, oncogenesis, tumor biology, immunogenicity, therapeutics, and outcomes). To date, however, cancer research progress has been markedly hampered by lack of a genotypically, anatomically, and physiologically relevant large animal model. Without progressive cancer models, discoveries are hindered and cures are improbable. Herein, we describe a transgenic porcine model—the Oncopig Cancer Model (OCM)—as a next-generation large animal platform for the study of hematologic and solid tumor oncology. With mutations in key tumor suppressor and oncogenes, TP53R167H and KRASG12D, the OCM recapitulates transcriptional hallmarks of human disease while also exhibiting clinically relevant histologic and genotypic tumor phenotypes. Moreover, as obesity rates increase across the global population, cancer patients commonly present clinically with multiple comorbid conditions. Due to the effects of these comorbidities on patient management, therapeutic strategies, and clinical outcomes, an ideal animal model should develop cancer on the background of representative comorbid conditions (tumor macro- and microenvironments). As observed in clinical practice, liver cirrhosis frequently precedes development of primary liver cancer or hepatocellular carcinoma. The OCM has the capacity to develop tumors in combination with such relevant comorbidities. Furthermore, studies on the tumor microenvironment demonstrate similarities between OCM and human cancer genomic landscapes. This review highlights the potential of this and other large animal platforms as transitional models to bridge the gap between basic research and clinical practice.
Real-world characterization and differentiation of the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease strategy classification

Background This study aimed to characterize and differentiate the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) strategy 2011 cut points through the modified Medical Research Council dyspnea scale (mMRC) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) assessment test (CAT). Methods Analysis of COPD patient data from the 2012 Adelphi Respiratory Disease Specific Program was conducted in Europe and US. Matched data from physicians and patients included CAT and mMRC scores. Receiver operating characteristic curves and kappa analysis determined a cut point for CAT and mMRC alignment and thus defined patient movement (“movers”) within GOLD groups A–D, depending on the tool used. Logistic regression analysis, with a number of physician- and patient-reported covariates, characterized those movers. Results Comparing GOLD-defined high-symptom patients using mMRC and CAT cut points (≥2 and ≥10, respectively), there were 890 (53.65%) movers; 887 of them (99.66%) moved from less symptomatic GOLD groups A and C (using mMRC) to more symptomatic groups B and D (using CAT). For receiver operating characteristic (area under the curve: 0.82, P<0.001) and kappa (maximized: 0.45) recommended CAT cut points of ≥24 and ≥26, movers reduced to 429 and 403 patients, respectively. Logistic regression analysis showed variables significantly associated with movers were related to impact on normal life, age, cough, and sleep (all P<0.05). Within movers, direction of movement was significantly associated with the same variables (all P<0.05). Conclusion Use of current mMRC or CAT cut points leads to inconsistencies for COPD assessment classification. It is recommended that cut points are aligned and both tools administered simultaneously for optimal patient care and to allow for closer management of movers. Our research may suggest an opportunity to investigate a combined score approach to patient management based on the worst result of mMRC and CAT. The reduced number of remaining movers may then identify patients who have greater impact of disease and may require a more personalized treatment plan.
Tumor-Reactive CD8+ T Cells in Metastatic Gastrointestinal Cancer Refractory to Chemotherapy

Purpose: To evaluate whether patients with metastatic gastrointestinal adenocarcinomas refractory to chemotherapy harbor tumor-reactive cytotoxic T cells. Experimental Design: Expansion of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) and cancer cell lines was attempted from gastrointestinal cancer metastases in 16 consecutive patients for the study of antitumor immune recognition. Retroviral transduction of genes encoding T-cell receptors (TCR) was used to define HLA-restriction elements and specific reactivity. Results: TIL were expanded from metastases in all patients, and new tumor cell lines were generated in 5 patients. Autologous tumor recognition without cross-reactivity against allogeneic HLA-matched gastrointestinal tumors was found in CD8+ TIL from 3 of these 5 patients. In a patient with gastric cancer liver metastases, the repertoire of CD8+ TIL was dominated by cytolytic sister clones reactive to 2 out of 4 autologous cancer cell lines restricted by HLA-C*0701. From the same patient, a rare CD8+ TIL clone with a distinct TCR recognized all four cancer cell lines restricted by HLA-B*4901. In a patient with bile duct cancer, two distinct antitumor cytolytic clones were isolated from a highly polyclonal CD8+ TIL repertoire. TCRs isolated from these clones recognized epitopes restricted by HLA-A*0201. In a third patient, CD8+ TIL reactivity was progressively lost against an autologous colon cancer cell line that displayed loss of HLA haplotype. Conclusions: This study provides a basis for the development of immunotherapy for patients with advanced gastrointestinal malignancies by first establishing the presence of naturally occurring tumor-reactive CD8+ TIL at the molecular level. Clin Cancer Res; 20(2); 331–43. ©2013 AACR.
Estimating the relative risk of developing melanoma in INK4A carriers

Estimation of the relative risk of cancer due to rare germline mutations using population-based epidemiological techniques is challenging, since studies with very large numbers of subjects are required. In this pilot study using a novel study design, we evaluated the role of INK4A mutations in melanoma by comparing patients with multiple primary melanomas to those with single primaries. Patients were ascertained from the Surgery and Dermatology Clinics at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and at the Yale University Pigmented Lesion Clinic. Subjects completed a questionnaire covering risk factors for melanoma and were tested for INK4A mutations. Five (8%) of 65 patients with multiple primaries had a mutation, compared with none of 88 patients with single primaries (P=0.03). Examination of other factors, such as number of nevi on the arms of the patients, fair skin, hair and eye colour, and other phenotypic characteristics associated with the risk of melanoma, demonstrates that these factors exhibit higher prevalence in the multiple primary cases than in the single primaries. These results provide evidence of the utility of the new study design in evaluating the impact of rare but highly penetrant cancer risk factors.
A Theoretical Investigation into Entrepreneurship and Organizational Innovation-Based Competitive Strategy in Malaysia

After half decade of independent and variety of edu cation, training and financial support from Malaysia government to increasing the number of young and in dependent entrepreneur, it a time to looking the re sult by using competitive strategy. I will analyze the theory; th ey are positive relationship between entrepreneuria l or organization intensity and sustained competitive advantage and swhether the theory and empirical observation con tradict each other in Malaysia point of view. By organizing, inte grating, and evaluating previously published materi al, this will consider the progress of new research toward clarif ying a problem in Malaysia entrepreneur and organiza tion in competitive strategy.
Self-Efficacy and Interests: Relationships of Holland Themes to College Major.

The relationship between self-efficacy/interests and college major was the focus of a study. A sample of 760 midwestern college students reported their present college major on a demographic questionnaire and completed either the research version of the 1994 Strong Interest Inventory (SII) or the actual 1994 SII and the 1996 Skills Confidence Inventory (SCI). The students were divided into six groups based on categories of college majors that were formulated by using Holland's six general occupational themes (GOTs): realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Twelve univariate analyses of variance were used to determine the extent to which the GOTs and the six general confidence themes (GCTs) included on the SCI contributed to the separation of students into six groups. F ratios were calculated to determine significance, and Wilks' lambdas were calculated at the univariate level to determine effect sizes for each GOT and GCT. Results suggest that self-efficacy and interests are related to college major in accordance with Holland's typology. The six SII GOTs and the six SCI GCTs predicted Holland majors. Combined, the GOT and GCT have even greater discriminant power. (Contains 12 references) (MN) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** Self-efficacy and Interests: Relationships of Holland Themes to College Major Jeremy J. Isaacs, Fred H. Borgen, David A.C. Donnay, & Tara A. Hansen Department of Psychology Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 50011 APA Poster Presentation, Chicago, August 15, 1997