Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear multivariate and time series analysis by neural network methods

Methods in multivariate statistical analysis are essential for working with large amounts of geophysical data, data from observational arrays, from satellites, or from numerical model output. In classical multivariate statistical analysis, there is a hierarchy of methods, starting with linear regression at the base, followed by principal component analysis (PCA) and finally canonical correlation analysis (CCA). A multivariate time series method, the singular spectrum analysis (SSA), has been a fruitful extension of the PCA technique. The common drawback of these classical methods is that only linear structures can be correctly extracted from the data. Since the late 1980s, neural network methods have become popular for performing nonlinear regression and classification. More recently, neural network methods have been extended to perform nonlinear PCA (NLPCA), nonlinear CCA (NLCCA), and nonlinear SSA (NLSSA). This paper presents a unified view of the NLPCA, NLCCA, and NLSSA techniques and their applications to various data sets of the atmosphere and the ocean (especially for the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation and the stratospheric quasi‐biennial oscillation). These data sets reveal that the linear methods are often too simplistic to describe real‐world systems, with a tendency to scatter a single oscillatory phenomenon into numerous unphysical modes or higher harmonics, which can be largely alleviated in the new nonlinear paradigm.
The biochemical characterization of a cell surface antigen associated with acute lymphoblastic leukemia and lymphocyte precursors.

The acute lymphoblastic leukemia- (ALL) associated membrane antigen is a single glycosylated polypeptide of approximate m.w. of 100,000 (gp100), containing no intrachain disulfide linkages. Approximately 50% of gp100 will bind to lentil lectin, whereas 100% will bind to the lectin from Ricinus communis. Both lentil-binding and lentil nonbinding forms of the antigen appear to be identical by 2-dimensional isoelectric focusing/SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and peptide mapping. Carbohydrate, although contributing approximately 20 to 25% of the m.w. , appears not to be involved in the antigenic site of the ALL antigen as judged by precipitation of a molecule after tunicamycin treatment of cells or glycosidase digestion. Charge shift electrophoresis and labeling with the lipophilic nitrene reagent hexanoyl diiodo-N-(4-azido-2-nitrophenyl)-tyramine suggests that the cALL antigen is probably not an integral membrane protein; however, it remains tightly bound to the plasma membrane after subcellular fractionation. A glycoprotein of the same m.w. has been detected by immunoprecipitation on bone marrow cells of nonleukemic patients. serologic studies indicate that the cALL-associated antigen is found on the terminal transferase-positive lymphoid cells, and it therefore seems likely that the gp100 molecule is a normal gene products of lymphocyte precursors.
Officer Recruitment For the All-Volunteer Force: Trends and Prospects

This article examines officer recruiting policies in the U. S. armed forces during the 1970s and assesses recruiting prospects in the 1980s. Incremental policy adjustments in ROTC and other accession programs enabled the services to meet quantitative goals during the past decade. Officer accessions improved in quality, and the services refined procedures in recruitment of minority and female officers. Expansion of the ROTC scholarship programs is expected to provide further gains in quality during the 1980s. The officer recruiting system does not display any pronounced bias toward any geographic regions. Further, the major recruiting source, ROTC, is firmly based at civilian educational institutions of average and above-average quality.
Insulin sensitivity and atherosclerosis. The Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS) Investigators.

BACKGROUND Reduced insulin sensitivity has been proposed as an important risk factor in the development of atherosclerosis. However, insulin sensitivity is related to many other cardiovascular risk factors, including plasma insulin levels, and it is unclear whether an independent role of insulin sensitivity exists. Large epidemiological studies that measure insulin sensitivity directly have not been conducted. METHODS AND RESULTS The Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS) evaluated insulin sensitivity (SI) by the frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance test with analysis by the minimal model of Bergman. IRAS measured intimal-medial thickness (IMT) of the carotid artery as an index of atherosclerosis by use of noninvasive B-mode ultrasonography. These measures, as well as factors that may potentially confound or mediate the relationship between insulin sensitivity and atherosclerosis, were available in relation to 398 black, 457 Hispanic, and 542 non-Hispanic white IRAS participants. There was a significant negative association between SI and the IMT of the carotid artery both in Hispanics and in non-Hispanic whites. This effect was reduced but not totally explained by adjustment for traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors, glucose tolerance, measures of adiposity, and fasting insulin levels. There was no association between SI and the IMT of the carotid artery in blacks. The association between SI and the IMT was stronger for the internal carotid artery than for the common carotid artery in all ethnic groups. CONCLUSIONS Higher levels of insulin sensitivity are associated with less atherosclerosis in Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites but not in blacks. This effect is partially mediated by traditional cardiovascular risk factors.
Vitamin E in the Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer The Women ’ s Health Study : A Randomized Controlled Trial

FREE RADICALS CAN CAUSE LIPID peroxidation and DNA damage, contributing to the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer. Vitamin E has antioxidant properties, including inhibition of oxidation of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol in plasma, leading to the hypothesis that it can prevent these chronic diseases. In some, but not all, basic research reports, vitamin E supplementation retarded atherogenesis. In descriptive data, investigators noted a strong inverse relation between plasma vitamin E concentrations and death rates from ischemic heart disease in men in several European countries. Additionally, several large cohort studies observed decreased CVD rates among individuals who self-selected for higher intakes of vitamin E through diet and/or supplements. By 1997, despite a lack of randomized trials, 44% of US cardiologists reported routine use of antioxidant supplements, primarily vitamin E, compared with 42% who routinely used aspirin for the primary prevention of CVD. See also pp 47 and 105. Author Affiliations are listed at the end of this article. Corresponding Author: I-Min Lee, MBBS, ScD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 900 Commonwealth Ave E, Boston, MA 02215 (ilee@rics.bwh.harvard.edu). Context Basic research provides plausible mechanisms and observational studies suggest that apparently healthy persons, who self-select for high intakes of vitamin E through diet or supplements, have decreased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Randomized trials do not generally support benefits of vitamin E, but there are few trials of long duration among initially healthy persons.
Goals of learning and the organization of knowledge

In this paper the author outlines a framework for interpreting the concept of competence. In so doing he offers a systematic way for comparing educational standards, curricula and assessment practices that will help us to better identify the goals of learning and design curricula. (DIPF/Orig.) In [diesem] Beitrag untersucht der Autor grundlegende Fragen der Kompetenzmodellierung und der Kompetenzmessung, indem er Bildungsziele, Curricula und Assessment-Ansatze vor dem Hintergrund eines umfassenden Rahmenmodells zueinander in Beziehung setzt. (DIPF/Orig.)
Ultra-wideband technology-based ranging platform with real-time signal processing

The ultra-wideband (UWB) technology is recognized as an ideal candidate to provide accurate localization in challenging indoor environments where other technologies, e.g. WiFi or ZigBee cannot yield good accuracy due to their signal bandwidth limitation. The energy detection receiver is currently one of the most promising low complexity non-coherent architectures that neither requires high sampling rates nor information about the channel. Despite a vast body of research on UWB ranging and localization, relatively little knowledge is available regarding practical implementations of the proposed ideas. Although there are some testbeds already proposed and built, most of them imply a sort of correlation and require very high sampling rates (in the order of several GS/s) which are still difficult to realize in hardware. Moreover, the majority of the platforms does not support visualization of results in real-time. In this paper, a UWB-based ranging platform with real-time signal processing is presented. It is based on the time-of-arrival (ToA) technique and relatively simple to implement non-coherent energy detection (ED) receiver architecture. Our first measurement results indicate that it is possible to achieve ranging accuracy of 1–3 cm with the sampling rate of 1 GS/s and with max. 3 bits of the A/D resolution.
FENO and AHR mannitol in patients referred to an out-of-hospital asthma clinic: a real-life study

Abstract Objective: Ongoing airway inflammation measured by fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) and airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) to mannitol are associated in selected asthma patients, but no evidence exists of this association in unselected asthma patients. The aim was to investigate the association between FENO and AHR to mannitol in unselected individuals with possible asthma. Methods: A real-life study on patients with possible asthma referred to a specialized asthma clinic. Data on asthma history, FEV1, FENO, atopy, smoking, treatment and AHR to mannitol were collected. Results: In 217 unselected patients with symptoms suggestive of asthma, FENO and response to mannitol were tested. Of the 141 who underwent both tests, 32 (23%) had FENO > 25 ppb, and 58 (41%) had AHR to mannitol. A significant association between high FENO and AHR was found (p < 0.001); 26% responded to mannitol despite a normal NO, and 8% had a high FENO but no AHR. Additionally, a weak association was found between log FENO and log response to mannitol (r = 0.32, p < 0.01). The area under the ROC curve for FENO as a predictor of AHR was 0.66 (95% CI 0.6–0.8) and for mannitol for having high FENO was 0.73 (95%CI 0.6–0.9). Conclusion: In a large sample of patients referred to an asthma clinic, an association was found between FENO and AHR to mannitol. However, a significant proportion of asthma patients had a normal FENO despite having AHR, suggesting that in some patients, AHR to mannitol is not driven by eosinophilic airway inflammation.
An Empirical Study of Greedy Local Search for Satisfiability Testing

GSAT is a randomized local search procedure for solving propositional satisfiability problems. GSAT can solve hard, randomly generated problems that are an order of magnitude larger than those that can be handled by more traditional approaches, such as the DavisPutnam procedure. This paper presents the results of numerous experiments we have performed with GSAT in order to improve our understanding of its capabilities and limitations. We first characterize the space traversed by GSAT. We will see that for nearly all problem classes we have encountered, the space consists of a steep descent followed by broad flat plateaus. We then compare GSAT with simulated annealing, and show how GSAT can be viewed as an efficient method for executing the lowtemperature tail of an annealing schedule. Finally, we report on extensions to the basic GSAT procedure. We discuss two general, domain-independent extensions that dramatically improve GSAT's performance on structured problems: the use of clause weights, and a way to average in near-solutions when initializing lhe procedure before each try.
An empirical investigation into the influence of human resource management practices on work engagement: the case of customer-contact employees in Malaysia.

Purpose – This study aims to examine the impact of specific human resource management practices on employees’ work engagement. Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered using surveys from a sample of 438 customer-contact employees attached to 34 upscale hotels throughout Malaysia and analyzed using partial least squares technique. Findings – The findings showed that service training and performance appraisal have a positive and significant influence on work engagement. The proposed model was able to explain 16.2 per cent of the variance in work engagement. Research limitations/implications – The findings indicate that hotel authorities can enhance work engagement of their customer-contact employees by improving service training and refining performance appraisal practices. Originality/value – This study is one of the few studies that focus on the specific effect of individual human resource management practices on work engagement, especially within the context of a developing country (i.e. Malaysia.
Social capital and participatory management in the Pátzcuaro basin

Setting out from a survey of the theoretical postulates of social capital, the present paper analyses the utility and scope of this approach for generating solutions that can reverse environmentally harmful processes by activating and empowering existing social capital in different communities and social groups. For this purpose, it takes the socio-environmental situation in the Lake Patzcuaro basin as its empirical referent and explores the social and political developments now holding out the promise of a revival of social capital in the area, the processes whereby significant changes might be triggered as a result of social capital, and the potential and limitations of what an outside agency can achieve.
A Context-Aware Relation Extraction Methodfor Relation Completion

Identify relation completion (RC) as one recurring problem that is central to the success of novel big data applications such as Entity Reconstruction and Data Enrichment. Given a semantic relation R, RC attempts at linking entity pairs between two entity lists under the relation R. To accomplish the RC goals, propose to formulate search queries for each query entity a based on some auxiliary information, so that to detect its target entity b from the set of retrieved documents. For instance, a pattern-based method (PaRE) uses extracted patterns as the auxiliary information in formulating search queries. However, high-quality patterns may decrease the probability of finding suitable target entities. As an alternative, propose CoRE method that uses context terms learned surrounding the expression of a relation as the auxiliary information in formulating queries. The experimental results based on several real-world web data collections demonstrate that CoRE reaches a much higher accuracy than PaRE for the purpose of RC.
Demo: Wireless Link Selection on Smartphone: Throughput vs Battery Drain

The method for automatic selection of wireless interface on smart phones is presented. We consider the selection between WiFi and LTE / 3G radios to maximize the throughput of the data transmission and minimize the amount of energy used to scan and measure the throughput of the network. The proposed selection algorithm defines when to measure and how to estimate the network throughput to balance between the accuracy of the selection and the battery drain caused by the measurements. The link speed estimation method optimized for LTE and WiFi networks is also demonstrated
A STATCOM-Control Scheme for Grid Connected Wind Energy System for Power Quality Improvement

Injection of the wind power into an electric grid affects the power quality. The performance of the wind turbine and thereby power quality are determined on the basis of measurements and the norms followed according to the guideline specified in International Electro-technical Commission standard, IEC-61400. The influence of the wind turbine in the grid system concerning the power quality measurements are-the active power, reactive power, variation of voltage, flicker, harmonics, and electrical behavior of switching operation and these are measured according to national/international guidelines. The paper study demonstrates the power quality problem due to installation of wind turbine with the grid. In this proposed scheme STATic COMpensator (STATCOM) is connected at a point of common coupling with a battery energy storage system (BESS) to mitigate the power quality issues. The battery energy storage is integrated to sustain the real power source under fluctuating wind power. The STATCOM control scheme for the grid connected wind energy generation system for power quality improvement is simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK in power system block set. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme relives the main supply source from the reactive power demand of the load and the induction generator. The development of the grid co-ordination rule and the scheme for improvement in power quality norms as per IEC-standard on the grid has been presented.
Rotifer diversity of Mirik Lake in Darjeeling Himalaya

Rotifer diversity was studied in Mirik Lake, Darjee ling Himalaya, for a period of two years during Oct ober, 2005 to September, 2007 from the surface water samples of s even selected sampling locations. A total of sevent een varieties of rotifers were recorded during the whole study pe riod, of which Asplancha sp. and Brachionus sp. wer e the most common genera in the lake. While the density varied from 24 to 8530/m 3 it was relatively higher during summer months. The highest diversity was recorded at sampl ing location 6.
Network-sensitive adaptive LAA LBT strategy for downlink LAA-WiFi coexistence

Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) is the clear channel assessment (CCA) check method of Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) framework. A flexible LBT strategy is important when LAA devices coexist with WiFi system in unlicensed spectrum. The existing adaptive LBT methods modify the LAA contention window (CW) size according to information exchanged between the coexisting two systems. This work proposes an adaptive LAA-LBT scheme, without the need of special inter-system coordinations and information exchange, for the fair coexist of downlink LAA and WiFi devices. This strategy includes a flexible Initial Clear-Channel Assessment (ICCA) procedure and a dynamic CW adjustment scheme, where the ICCA duration and the CW size varies according to the detection results by LAA system. All the LAA detection needed in this work is non-threatening and transparent to WiFi system. Simulation results show that this strategy is valid for adjusting the successful-airtime-ratio for the two coexisting systems.
Complexity tradeoffs for read and update operations

Recent work established that some restricted-use objects, such as max registers, counters and atomic snapshots, admit polylogarithmic step-/complexity wait-free implementations using only reads and writes: when only polynomially-many updates are allowed, reading the object (by performing a ReadMax, CounterRead or Scan operation, depending on the object's type) incurs O(log N) steps (where N is the number of processes), which was shown to be optimal. But what about the step-/complexity of update operations? With these implementations, updating the object's state (by performing a WriteMax, Counter Increment or Update operation, depending on the object's type) requires Ω(log N) steps. The question that we address in this work is the following: are there read-optimal implementations of these restricted-use objects for which the asymptotic step-/complexity of update operations is sub-logarithmic? We present tradeoffs between the step-/complexity of read and update operations on these objects, establishing that updating a read-optimal counter or snapshot incurs Ω(log N) steps. These tradeoffs hold also if compare-and-swap (CAS) operations may be used, in addition to reads and writes. We also derive a tradeoff between the step-complexities of read and update operations of M-bounded max registers: if the step-/complexity of the Read-Max operation is O(f(min(N,M))), then the step-/complexity of the Write-Max operation is Ω(log log min(N,M)/log f(min(N,M))). It follows from this tradeoff that the step-/complexity of Write-Max in any read-/optimal implementation of a max register from read, write and CAS is Ω(log log min(N,M)). On the positive side, we present a wait-free implementation of an M-bounded max register from read, write and CAS for which the step complexities of Read-Max and Write-Max operations are O(1) and O(log min(N,M)), respectively.
On evaluating higher-order derivatives of the QR decomposition of tall matrices with full column rank in forward and reverse mode algorithmic differentiation

We address the task of higher-order derivative evaluation of computer programs that contain QR decompositions of tall matrices with full column rank. The approach is a combination of univariate Taylor polynomial arithmetic and matrix calculus in the (combined) forward/reverse mode of algorithmic differentiation (AD). Explicit algorithms are derived and presented in an accessible form.
American College of Medical Genetics recommendations for the design and performance expectations for clinical genomic copy number microarrays intended for use in the postnatal setting for detection of constitutional abnormalities

Genomic copy number microarrays have significantly increased the diagnostic yield over a karyotype for clinically significant imbalances in individuals with developmental delay, intellectual disability, multiple congenital anomalies, and autism, and they are now accepted as a first tier diagnostic test for these indications. As it is not feasible to validate microarray technology that targets the entire genome in the same manner as an assay that targets a specific gene or syndromic region, a new paradigm of validation and regulation is needed to regulate this important diagnostic technology. We suggest that these microarray platforms be evaluated and manufacturers regulated for the ability to accurately measure copy number gains or losses in DNA (analytical validation) and that the subsequent interpretation of the findings and assignment of clinical significance be determined by medical professionals with appropriate training and certification. To this end, the American College of Medical Genetics, as the professional organization of board-certified clinical laboratory geneticists, herein outlines recommendations for the design and performance expectations for clinical genomic copy number microarrays and associated software intended for use in the postnatal setting for detection of constitutional abnormalities.