Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterisation of TFMS and CPW Lines and Interconnections up to 100 GHz in Multilayer Photoimageable Thick Film Technology

This paper describes the characterisation of a photoimageable multilayer thick film process up to 100 GHz using a side-coupled TFMS linear microstrip resonator. The technique yields more consistent results than previous ring resonator work. The TFMS and CPW transmission lines and wideband layer to layer transition are also characterised up to 100 GHz for multilayer MCM application. Up to 80 GHz the TFMS and CPW lines exhibit low loss of <0.25dB/mm and the layer-to-layer transitions demonstrate extremely low loss of < 0.1dB. This performance is better than many reported results for thin film technology
Influence of contextual factors on health‐care leadership

Purpose – To extend understanding of the influence of contextual factors on: power and influence; creativity and innovation; and leadership behaviour.Design/methodology/approach – The review has been compiled following a search of seven electronic databases from 1999 to 2004. The author also uses her experience as a physiotherapy manager within a children's hospital NHS Trust to reflect on some of the theories in the workplace.Findings – While the literature is contradictory in places, some trends do emerge. Bureaucratic organizations can inhibit an empowering environment, as can those that are poor at disseminating information or communicating a vision. Hierarchical structures, high staff turnover and lack of resources are likely to stifle creativity and innovation. Organic structures tend to facilitate a more transformational leadership style, whereas bureaucratic structures encourage a more transactional style. The quality of leader‐member exchange is thought to be related to work group size, work grou.
Sliding mode control design under partial state feedback for ball and beam system

In this paper, we develop a state observer in order to estimate the velocity of a ball and angular velocity of a motor. With the observer, we propose a sliding mode controller where sliding surface consists of some measured and estimated states. Then, a new rigorous analysis will be done to show the behavior of the system on the sliding surface. We show the stability analysis and convergence analysis of the partial state observer. In addition, the experimental results show the validity of the proposed controller.
Predicting Youth Out-of-School Time Participation: Multiple Risks and Developmental Differences

Youth out-of-school time (OST) programs and activities can provide developmental benefits for participating youth. Yet little research has examined the contextual predictors of youth OST participation. To address this issue, we examined a collection of child-, family-, school-, and neighborhood-level characteristics as predictors of OST participation using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—Child Development Supplement. In summary, child and family characteristics were most useful in predicting participation such that children least likely to participate were those characterized by high levels of developmental (e.g., low achievement, behavior problems, poor health) and family (e.g., parent psychological distress and low emotional support) problems. These relations, however, emerged only during middle school and high school. For certain types of activities, namely athletics and lessons, problems measured across various contexts were more strongly associated with OST participation for higher-income families than for lower-income families. These findings point to the importance of considering multiple developmental domains and developmental periods in understanding predictors of youth OST participation.
Pooled analysis of fluorouracil-based adjuvant therapy for stage II and III colon cancer: who benefits and by how much?

PURPOSE Although it is well-established that fluorouracil- (FU-) based adjuvant therapy improves survival for patients with resected high-risk colon cancer, the magnitude of adjuvant therapy benefit across specific subgroups and for individual patients has been uncertain. PATIENTS AND METHODS Using a pooled data set of 3,302 patients with stage II and III colon cancer from seven randomized trials comparing FU + leucovorin or FU + levamisole to surgery alone, we performed an analysis based on a Cox proportional hazards regression model. Treatment, age, sex, tumor location, T stage, nodal status, and grade were tested for both prognostic and predictive significance. Model derived estimates of 5-year disease-free survival and overall survival (OS) for surgery alone and surgery plus FU-based therapy were calculated for a range of patient subsets. RESULTS Nodal status, T stage, and grade were the only prognostic factors independently significant for both disease-free survival and OS. Age was significant only for OS. In a multivariate analysis, adjuvant therapy showed a beneficial treatment effect across all subsets. Treatment benefits were consistent across sex, location, age, T-stage, and grade. A significant stage by treatment interaction was present, with treatment benefiting stage III patients to a greater degree than stage II patients. CONCLUSION Patients with high-risk resected colon cancer obtain benefit from FU-based therapy across subsets of age, sex, location, T stage, nodal status, and grade. Model estimates of survival stratified by T stage, nodal status, grade, and age are available at http://www.mayoclinic. com/calcs. This information may improve patients' and physicians' understanding of the potential benefits of adjuvant therapy.
Foods offered in Quebec school cafeterias: do they promote healthy eating habits? Results of a provincial survey.

OBJECTIVE A school environment that encourages students to opt for food with sound nutritional value is both essential and formative in ensuring that young people adopt healthy eating habits. The aim of this paper is to describe the food offered for lunch in the cafeteria service lines in Quebec schools on regular school days. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was conducted between November 2008 and June 2009 with a representative sample of 207 French-speaking schools in the province of Quebec. The response rate was 71%. The cafeteria food available from the service line was observed directly and systematically by research assistants trained in observational procedures. Bivariate and descriptive analyses were performed. RESULTS While most schools offered a vegetable side dish, only 71% of primary schools, 71% of public secondary schools, and 54% of private secondary schools did not offer cold-cut dishes, stuffed pastry, or a fried food on their daily menus. The sandwiches available were rarely made with whole-grain bread. Public secondary schools had more cookies, biscuits, muffins, and chewing gum than private primary and secondary schools. Milk was available in 85% of the primary schools. Most of the schools had eliminated sodas but were still offering fruit cocktails instead of 100% fruit juice. CONCLUSION The school eating environment changed significantly from 2002 to 2009, presumably as a result of the government action plan and the Framework Policy. Improvements must be made with respect to reducing added sugar in beverages and desserts and promoting baked rather than fried snacks. Vigilance is required since many new products are making their way into the market.
Mitigation of DoS attacks through QoS regulation

As more and more critical services are provided over the Internet, the risk to these services from malicious users is also increasing. Several networks have witnessed denial of service attacks in the past. This paper reports on our experience in building a Linux-based prototype to mitigate the effect of such attacks. Our prototype provides an efficient way to keep track of server and network resources at the network layer and allows aggregate resource regulation. Our scheme provides a general, and not attack specific, mechanism to provide graceful server degradation in the face of such an attack. We report on the rationale of our approach, the experience in building the prototype, and the results from real experiments. We show that traditional rate-based regulation combined with proposed window-based regulation of resources at the aggregate level at the network layer is a feasible vehicle for mitigating the impact of DOS attacks on end servers.
Effects of a Marital Relationship Enrichment Program on Communication, Conflict Resolution, and Marital Satisfaction in Multicultural Couples

Purpose: This study was conducted to examine the effects of a marital relationship enrichment program on communication, conflict resolution and marital satisfaction in multicultural couples. Methods: A quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent control group pre-post test design was used. Participants were sampled from couples registered at 2 local centers and 2 multicultural family support centers in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Sixteen pairs each were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group. The experimental group received the marital relationship enrichment program for 120 minutes/session/week for 6 weeks. Data were analyzed using x-test, Fisher’s exact test, Mann-Whitney U test, and t-test for subject homogeneity verification, and ANCOVA to examine the hypotheses. Results: Communication and marital satisfaction increased significantly after the program in experimental group compared with control group. Among conflict solution styles, collaborating and compromising increased and avoiding decreased significantly after the program in the experimental group. Competing decreased significantly after the program for wives in the experimental group. Accommodating did not change significantly in either experimental or control groups. Conclusion: Results of the study confirm that marital relationship enrichment programs are effective in promoting multicultural couples’ communication and marital satisfaction, and causing positive changes in conflict resolution.
Outage Probability of Two-Way Amplify-and-Forward Relaying Over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

The outage probability of a two-way amplify-and-forward relay system over independent and non-identical Nakagami-m fading channels is investigated. The arbitrary transmit powers at transceivers and relay are considered, and a generalized closed-form expression for the outage probability of the system is derived. Finally, numerical simulations are used to verify the tightness of the analytical result.
Issues in the Debriefing Debate for the Emergency Services: Moving Research Outcomes Forward

Despite over 20 years of research, the efficacy of group psychological debriefing remains unresolved. The present review outlines a clear strategy to answer this empirical question. Rather than critically evaluating individual studies, the critique focuses on methodological and conceptual shortcomings that have prevented research in this area from progressing. An organizing framework is provided within which the key issues are identified, clarified, and linked to guidelines for future research, which should foster greater understanding about the empirical side of the debriefing debate. Together, promoting clarity and understanding, as well as specifying guidelines for future research, represent the foundation for a path forward in this area.
Exascaling Your Library: Will Your Implementation Meet Your Expectations?

Many libraries in the HPC field encapsulate sophisticated algorithms with clear theoretical scalability expectations. However, hardware constraints or programming bugs may sometimes render these expectations inaccurate or even plainly wrong. While algorithm engineers have already been advocating the systematic combination of analytical performance models with practical measurements for a very long time, we go one step further and show how this comparison can become part of automated testing procedures. The most important applications of our method include initial validation, regression testing, and benchmarking to compare implementation and platform alternatives. Advancing the concept of performance assertions, we verify asymptotic scaling trends rather than precise analytical expressions, relieving the developer from the burden of having to specify and maintain very fine grained and potentially non-portable expectations. In this way, scalability validation can be continuously applied throughout the whole development cycle with very little effort. Using MPI as an example, we show how our method can help uncover non-obvious limitations of both libraries and underlying platforms.
The development of children’s sympathy, moral emotion attributions, and moral reasoning in two cultures

The current study investigated the development of children’s sympathy, moral emotion attributions, and moral reasoning in two cultures: Chile and Switzerland. One hundred seventy-six children in two age groups (i.e., 6 and 9 years old) were asked to report their sympathy. Moral emotion attributions and moral reasoning were measured using two hypothetical moral transgressions (i.e., omitting a prosocial duty, stealing from another child). Younger Chilean children reported higher levels of sympathy than younger Swiss children. Across cultures, older children attributed more moral emotions than did younger children. Younger Swiss children used more moral reasoning following judgements about rule violations than did younger Chilean children. The findings are discussed from both a developmental and cross-cultural perspective.
Regulatory T-cell expansion during chronic viral infection is dependent on endogenous retroviral superantigens

Regulatory T cells (Treg) play critical roles in the modulation of immune responses to infectious agents. Further understanding of the factors that control Treg activation and expansion in response to pathogens is needed to manipulate Treg function in acute and chronic infections. Here we show that chronic, but not acute, infection of mice with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus results in a marked expansion of Foxp3+ Treg that is dependent on retroviral superantigen (sag) genes encoded in the mouse genome. Sag-dependent Treg expansion was MHC class II dependent, CD4 independent, and required dendritic cells. Thus, one unique mechanism by which certain infectious agents evade host immune responses may be mediated by endogenous Sag-dependent activation and expansion of Treg.
Tissue Doppler gated (TDOG) dynamic three‐dimensional ultrasound imaging of the fetal heart

Dynamic three‐dimensional (3D) ultrasound imaging of the fetal heart is difficult due to the absence of an electrocardiogram (ECG) signal for synchronization between loops. In this study we introduce tissue Doppler gating (TDOG), a technique in which tissue Doppler data are used to calculate a gating signal. We have applied this cardiac gating method to dynamic 3D reconstructions of the heart of eight fetuses aged 20–24 weeks.
Enhancement of Epimedium Fried with Suet Oil Based on in Vivo Formation of Self-Assembled Flavonoid Compound Nanomicelles

The purpose of this work was to research the enhancement of Epimedium fried with suet oil based on the in vivo formation self-assembled flavonoid nanomicelles. Taking icariin as the representative, under the action of suet oil, self-assembled nanomicelles were prepared under simulated gastrointestinal tract conditions and were characterized by dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The experiments with icariin self-assembled nanomicelles without suet oil were done according to the above. The influence of suet oil on the transportation of icariin across Caco-2 cell monolayers and the absorption in rat intestine of self-assembled nanomicelles were evaluated. The particle size of icariin self-assembled nanomicelles with suet oil was smaller than without suet oil. The nanomicelles seemed to be monodisperse spherical particle with smooth surfaces. The icariin entrapment efficiency of self-assembled nanomicelles with suet oil was increased from 43.1% to 89.7%. In Caco-2 cell monolayers, the absorptive permeability, secretory permeability and efflux ratio of icariin self-assembled nanomicelles with suet oil was 1.26 × 10−6 cm/s, 5.91 × 10−6 cm/s and 4.69, respectively, while that of icariin self-assembled nanomicelles without suet oil was 0.62 × 10−6 cm/s, 3.00 × 10−6 cm/s, and 4.84, respectively. In rat intestinal perfusion experiments, the permeability coefficient of icariin self-assembled nanomicelles with suet oil in duodenum was higher than the value of icariin self-assembled nanomicelles without suet oil (p < 0.05). With the action of suet oil, icariin self-assembled nanomicelles were more stable and the entrapment efficiency was higher than that without suet oil, which could increase the solubility of icariin and improve its intestinal absorption. Therefore, suet oil plays a role in its enhancement.
Critical Closing Pressure of Vessels Supplying the Capillary Loops of the Nailfold

The critical closing pressure (CCP) of vessels supplying the capillary loops of the nailfold was estimated as the digital systolic pressure minus the air pressure required on the finger to just prevent flow of blood in the capillary loops. The digital blood pressure was estimated by an auscultatory method and the presence or absence of flow in the loops was detected by direct microscopic examination. It was shown that the method is valid and does not simply measure a local intravascular pressure or some rheological factor. The CCP was lower after body heating than after body cooling and was markedly reduced by anesthetization of the digital nerves. In hypertensive patients the CCP was higher than in normal subjects.
Consumer – brand engagement on Facebook: liking and commenting behaviors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study factors affecting consumers’ liking and commenting behavior on Facebook brand pages, and to analyze the mediating role of mode of interaction on relationships between personality traits and liking/commenting behavior. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using an online national survey from 269 respondents, ages between 18 and 32. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling. Findings – Results support nine of ten hypotheses with significant relationships between analyzed constructs. It was found that two different modes of interaction acted as mediators between three personality traits and liking/commenting behavior on Facebook. Research limitations/implications – This study only included liking and commenting behavior on Facebook. Future studies could extend the conceptual model by including sharing behavior and other personality traits that were not included in this conceptual model. Practical implications – The findings have.
Onset Detection : A Wavelet Packet Based Approach with Recurrent Neural Networks

This paper concerns the exploitation of multiresolution time-frequency features via Wavelet Packet Transform to improve audio onset detection. In our approach, Wavelet Packet Energy Coefficients (WPEC) and Auditory Spectral Features (ASF) are processed by Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BLSTM) recurrent neural network that yields the onsets location. The combination of the two feature sets, together with the BLSTM based detector, form an advanced energy-based approach that takes advantage from the multi-resolution analysis given by the wavelet decomposition of the audio input signal. The neural network is trained with a large database of onset data covering various genres and onset types. Due to its data-driven nature, our approach does not require the onset detection method and its parameters to be tuned to a particular type of music. We show a comparison with other types and sizes of recurrent neural networks and we compare results with state-of-the-art methods on the whole onset dataset. We conclude that our approach significantly increase performance in terms of F -measure without any music genres or onset type constraints.
Design of intention-based assistive robot for upper limb

Graphical Abstract Robotic assistive devices for rehabilitation have proven to be beneficial for many individuals with impaired limbs by providing accessible, consistent and cost-effective therapy. However, it is important to acknowledge that many people need an alternative form of assistance for physical impairments, both while undergoing rehabilitation and in the common scenario of rehabilitation providing insufficient improvements. The aim of this paper is to present an intention-detecting assistive robot for upper limb motion, which may serve as a complement to rehabilitation procedures. The proposed system collects real-time data from an eye-tracker and force-sensing resistors to determine the intended movement of the arm of a user and physically assists the said movement. We show that the system is capable of moving an impaired upper limb to a desired position with average errors of less than 5 cm, and in this manner may assist motion required by various activities of daily living for someone suffering from physical impairments in their upper limbs.
Deconstruction and complexity: a critical economy

In this paper we argue for the contribution that deconstruction can make towards an understanding of complex systems. We begin with a description of what we mean by complexity and how Derrida's thought illustrates a sensitivity towards the problems we face when dealing with complex systems. This is especially clear in Derrida's deconstruction of the structuralist linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. We compare this critique with the work of Edgar Morin, one of the foremost thinkers of contem- porary complexity and argue for the possible contributions that both thinkers provide towards an understanding of complex phenomena in the world. We then move on to illustrate the particular economy of thinking we are forced to engage with when dealing with complex systems. This economy is inspired by Derrida's deconstruction of Bataille's general economy. This economy illustrates the fundamental nature of critique in the process of dealing with complex systems, the third concept we explore in this paper. The process of critique illustrates the necessity for both cutting apart and weaving together of economies in order to maintain the possibility for divergent ways of being in the world. We conclude with the ethical implications of dealing with complex systems and some first steps towards an ‘ethics of complexity’.
Misunderstandings about Student Transitions to University: A Slow-Motion Dialogue between Staff and Students

This study is based on a stage-by-stage dialogue between four geography staff and seven students. Members of staff were asked to identify issues that reflect academically inappropriate behaviour in classes for students at university (as opposed to school) level. Students were then asked to comment on the staff's views. In general, the students felt that staff's comments showed a lack of understanding about what the students were going through in making the transition to tertiary education. Rejoinders from staff were notable for leading to new ideas, reinforcing positions or, in one case, feeling misinterpreted. The dialogue led to reflections on misunderstandings about student transitions to tertiary education.