Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fibonacci-Based Hardware Post-Processing for Non-Autonomous Signum Hyperchaotic System

This paper presents a hardware implementation of a robust non-autonomous hyperchaotic-based PRNG driven by a 256-bit LFSR. The original chaotic output is post-processed using a novel technique based on the Fibonacci series, bitwise XOR, rotation, and feedback. The proposed post-processing technique preserves the throughput of the system and enhances the randomness in the output which is verified by successfully passing all NIST SP. 800-22 tests. The system is realized on a Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA achieving throughput up to 13.165 Gbits/s for 16-bit bus-width surpassing previously reported CB-PRNGs.
Phosphorus accumulates faster than nitrogen globally in freshwater ecosystems under anthropogenic impacts.

Combined effects of cumulative nutrient inputs and biogeochemical processes that occur in freshwater under anthropogenic eutrophication could lead to myriad shifts in nitrogen (N):phosphorus (P) stoichiometry in global freshwater ecosystems, but this is not yet well-assessed. Here we evaluated the characteristics of N and P stoichiometries in bodies of freshwater and their herbaceous macrophytes across human-impact levels, regions and periods. Freshwater and its macrophytes had higher N and P concentrations and lower N : P ratios in heavily than lightly human-impacted environments, further evidenced by spatiotemporal comparisons across eutrophication gradients. N and P concentrations in freshwater ecosystems were positively correlated and N : P was negatively correlated with population density in China. These results indicate a faster accumulation of P than N in human-impacted freshwater ecosystems, which could have large effects on the trophic webs and biogeochemical cycles of estuaries and coastal areas by freshwater loadings, and reinforce the importance of rehabilitating these ecosystems.
Family systems, psychosocial characteristics, and communicationin college student dating relationships: Implications for "safer" sex behavior

This study examined the associations among family environmental factors, psychosocial characteristics, such as social anxiety, social desirability and social skill, and relational factors with HIV communication, number of past sexual partners, and current condom usage. Seventy-two college aged dating couples completed a sexual communication interaction task in a laboratory and then completed self-report measures of family environment, psychosocial characteristics, and past and current sexual behavior. Results indicated that family environment factors were a major predictor of situational social skill for women, but not men. Additionally, participants who indicated higher levels of HIV communication were also more likely to engage in HTV risk behaviors. Individuals whose partners reported more HIV communication were more likely to engage in HIV risk behaviors. A bias effect was also demonstrated for reports of social skill during the sexual communication interaction task, such that individuals who reported their own social skill to be high, also reported high social skill for their partners.
Pseudo-Outbreak of Pre-Extensively Drug-Resistant (Pre-XDR) Tuberculosis in Kinshasa: Collateral Damage Caused by False Detection of Fluoroquinolone Resistance by GenoType MTBDRsl

ABSTRACT Fluoroquinolones are the core drugs for the management of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Molecular drug susceptibility testing methods provide considerable advantages for scaling up programmatic management and surveillance of drug-resistant TB. We describe here the misidentification of fluoroquinolone resistance by the GenoType MTBDRsl (MTBDRsl) (Hain Lifescience GmbH, Nehren, Germany) line probe assay (LPA) encountered during a feasibility and validation study for the introduction of this rapid drug susceptibility test in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The double gyrA mutation 80Ala and 90Gly represented 57% of all fluoroquinolone mutations identified from MDR-TB patient sputum samples, as confirmed by DNA sequencing. This double mutation was previously found to be associated with susceptibility to fluoroquinolones, yet it leads to absent hybridization of a wild-type band in the MTBDRsl and is thus falsely scored as resistance. Our findings suggest that MTBDRsl results must be interpreted with caution when the interpretation is based solely on the absence of a wild-type band without confirmation by visualization of a mutant band. Performance of the MTBDRsl LPA might be improved by replacing the gyrA wild-type probes by additional probes specific for well-documented gyrA mutations that confer clinically relevant resistance.
A multi-layer gap waveguide array antenna suitable for manufactured by die-sink EDM

In this paper, a multilayer wideband slot array antenna is presented for high gain applications at V-band. The proposed antenna consists of three unconnected metal layers based on the recently introduced gap waveguide technology. A 2×2 cavity-backed slot subarray is fed by a ridge gap waveguide corporate distribution network. The subarray is optimized to have wide bandwidth and low grating lobes in an infinite array environment. A simple slot-tilting method is used to fulfill the radiation pattern requirement of the ETSI 302 standard for fixed radio links. A prototype consisting of 16×16 slots is manufactured by die-sink Electric Discharge Machining (EDM), a fast modern planar-3D spark machining method. The measured antenna has a relative bandwidth of 18% with input reflection coefficient better than -10 dB, and the radiation patterns satisfy the ETSI 302 standard co-polar sidelobe envelope over 56-67 GHz frequency band. The measured total aperture efficiency is over most of the frequency band better than 80%.
ZERO CROSSINGS WITH PEAK AMPLITUDES AND PERCEPTUAL FEATURES FOR ROBUST SPEECH RECOGNITION

It is known that certain properties of human speech perception are invariant or less affected by additive and reverberant noise. In this paper the zero crossings with peak amplitudes (ZCPA) model is evaluated for speech recognition with several perceptual properties of human hearing. Experimental results indicate that under white Gaussian noise, the maximum performance benefit is obtained by the inclusion of a low-pass filter module for high frequency synchrony reduction. It is shown that improved recognition rate can be obtained by combining mean rate processing with the ZCPA. The proposed enhancement is more robust and performs well in noisy conditions compared to the MFCC, PLP and EIH processing at moderate and low SNRs.
Fast and robust tensor decomposition with applications to dictionary learning

We develop fast spectral algorithms for tensor decomposition that match the robustness guarantees of the best known polynomial-time algorithms for this problem based on the sum-of-squares (SOS) semidefinite programming hierarchy. Our algorithms can decompose a 4-tensor with $n$-dimensional orthonormal components in the presence of error with constant spectral norm (when viewed as an $n^2$-by-$n^2$ matrix). The running time is $n^5$ which is close to linear in the input size $n^4$. We also obtain algorithms with similar running time to learn sparsely-used orthogonal dictionaries even when feature representations have constant relative sparsity and non-independent coordinates. The only previous polynomial-time algorithms to solve these problem are based on solving large semidefinite programs. In contrast, our algorithms are easy to implement directly and are based on spectral projections and tensor-mode rearrangements. Or work is inspired by recent of Hopkins, Schramm, Shi, and Steurer (STOC'16) that shows how fast spectral algorithms can achieve the guarantees of SOS for average-case problems. In this work, we introduce general techniques to capture the guarantees of SOS for worst-case problems.
Analyses of volatile organic compounds from human skin

Background Human skin emits a variety of volatile metabolites, many of them odorous. Much previous work has focused upon chemical structure and biogenesis of metabolites produced in the axillae (underarms), which are a primary source of human body odour. Nonaxillary skin also harbours volatile metabolites, possibly with different biological origins than axillary odorants.
Automatic localization of page segmentation errors

Page segmentation is a basic step in any character recognition system. Its failure is one of the major causes for deteriorating overall accuracy of the current Indian language OCR engines. Many segmentation algorithms are proposed in literature. Often these algorithms fail to adapt dynamically to a given page and thus tend to yield poor segmentation for some specific regions or some specific pages. Given the ground truth, locating page segmentation errors is a straight foreword problem and merely useful for comparing segmentation algorithms. In this work, we locate segmentation errors without directly using the ground truth. Such automatic localization of page segmentation errors can be considered a major step towards improving page segmentation errors. In this work, we focus on localizing line level segmentation errors. We perform experiments on more than 18000 scanned pages of 109 books belonging to four prominent south Indian languages.
How Do School Peers Influence Student Educational Outcomes? Theory and Evidence from Economics and Other Social Sciences

Background Interest among social scientists in peer influences has grown with recent reseg-regation of the nation's schools and court decisions that limit the ability of school districts to consider race in school assignment decisions. If having more advantaged peers is beneficial, then these trends may reduce educational equity. Previous studies have outlined individual or groups of theories about how peers influence one another, but these theories have rarely been subjected to empirical tests. Focus of Study This study provides a description of a wide range of peer influence theories from psychologists, sociologists, and economists. A taxonomy is developed that distinguishes theories based primarily on whether students are hypothesized to change each other's beliefs and values (direct influences) versus more indirect influences, such as the allocation of teachers and school resources. Whether empirical evidence, including important new advancements by economists, informs the validity of the various theories is then considered. Although far from definitive, the study highlights the importance of carrying out empirical analysis that tests specific theories. Research Design Quantitative researchers are increasingly aware of the great difficulty of determining whether correlations between individual and group outcomes reflect a causal effect of peers. The review of empirical evidence focuses on experimental and quasi-experimental studies, which most plausibly reflect causal influences. These studies focus on student achievement as the outcome of interest. Conclusions The evidence is not completely consistent with any single theory, though it is more supportive of some over others. A new hybrid theory—group-based contagion—is proposed that is more consistent with the evidence.
The mechanics and control of pitching manoeuvres in a freely flying hawkmoth (Manduca sexta)

SUMMARY Insects produce a variety of exquisitely controlled manoeuvres during natural flight behaviour. Here we show how hawkmoths produce and control one such manoeuvre, an avoidance response consisting of rapid pitching up, rearward flight, pitching down (often past the original pitch angle), and then pitching up slowly to equilibrium. We triggered these manoeuvres via a sudden visual stimulus in front of free-flying hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) while recording the animals' body and wing movements via high-speed stereo videography. We then recreated the wing motions in a dynamically scaled model to: (1) associate wing kinematic changes with pitch torque production and (2) extract the open-loop dynamics of an uncontrolled moth. Next, we characterized the closed-loop manoeuvring dynamics from the observed flight behaviour assuming that hawkmoths use feedback control based on translational velocity, pitch angle and angular velocity, and then compared these with the open-loop dynamics to identify the control strategy used by the moth. Our analysis revealed that hawkmoths produce active pitch torque via changes in mean wing spanwise rotation angle. Additionally, body translations produce passive translational damping and pitch torque, both of which are linearly dependent on the translational velocity. Body rotations produce similar passive forces and torques, but of substantially smaller magnitudes. Our comparison of closed-loop and open-loop dynamics showed that hawkmoths rely largely on passive damping to reduce the body translation but use feedback control based on pitch angle and angular velocity to control their orientation. The resulting feedback control system remains stable with sensory delays of more than two wingbeats.
Adjuvant prednisone therapy in pharyngitis: a randomised controlled trial from general practice.

BACKGROUND Acute pharyngitis is a frequent and well-documented complaint in general practice but the associated suffering has remained largely unaddressed in the literature. Evidence, however, from five randomised controlled trials suggests that corticosteroids may be useful in relieving pain and discomfort arising from the condition. AIM To determine if short-acting oral therapy with prednisone was more effective than placebo in alleviating the suffering from acute pharyngitis in adults in a general practice setting. DESIGN OF STUDY Randomised placebo-controlled trial. SETTING General practice in Israel. METHOD Patients with acute pharyngitis were randomised to receive 60 mg prednisone orally for 1 or 2 days, or identical placebo treatment. The main outcome measures were throat pain, measured by a visual analogue scale at 12, 24, 48 and 72 hours after presentation, time off work, fever, dysphagia, recurrence of symptoms and bacterial recurrence. RESULTS Patients treated with prednisone experienced more rapid throat pain resolution than those in the placebo group. No adverse effects were reported nor any differences between the two groups regarding either symptom or positive bacterial culture recurrence. CONCLUSION Short-acting oral steroid therapy is effective for shortening throat pain duration in acute pharyngitis.
Practical Effect of Sorafenib Monotherapy on Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Portal Vein Tumor Thrombosis

Background/Aims We investigated the effects of sorafenib monotherapy on advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and portal vein tumor thrombosis (PVTT) in a clinical setting. Methods In total, 143 consecutive patients with unresectable HCC were treated with sorafenib. Among these patients, 30 patients with advanced HCC and PVTT (Vp3 or 4) were treated with sorafenib monotherapy. Results All patients had a performance status of 1 to 2 (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group 1/2, 20/10) and Child-Pugh class A or B (A/B, 17/13). Eleven patients had modified Union for International Cancer Control stage IVA tumors, whereas 19 had stage IVB tumors. All patients had PVTT (Vp3, 6; Vp4, 24). Following sorafenib monotherapy, three patients (10.0%) had a partial response with PVTT revascularization, and nine (30.0%) had stable disease, with a disease control rate of 33.3%. The median overall survival was 3.1 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 2.70 to 3.50), and the median progression-free survival was 2.0 months (95% CI, 1.96 to 2.05). Fatigue and hand-foot skin reactions were the most troublesome side effects. Conclusions A limited proportion of patients with advanced HCC and PVTT exhibited a remarkable outcome after sorafenib monotherapy, although the treatment results in this type of patient is extremely poor. Further studies to predict good responders to personalized therapy are warranted.
β-Catenin/Smad3 Interaction Regulates Transforming Growth Factor-β-Induced Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition in the Lens

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide. Although surgery is a successful method to restore vision loss due to cataracts, post-surgical complications can occur, such as secondary cataracts, also known as posterior capsular opacification (PCO). PCO arises when lens epithelial cells (LEC) are left behind in the capsular bag following surgery and are induced to undergo epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT). Following EMT, LEC morphology and phenotype are altered leading to a loss of transparency and vision. Transforming growth factor (TGF)-β-induced signaling through both canonical, TGF-β/Smad, and non-canonical, β-catenin/Wnt and Rho/ROCK/MRTF-A, pathways have been shown to be involved in lens EMT, and thus PCO. However, the interactions between these signaling pathways in the lens have not been thoroughly explored. In the current study we use rat LEC explants as an ex vivo model, to examine the interplay between three TGF-β-mediated pathways using α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) as a molecular marker for EMT. We show that Smad3 inhibition via SIS3 prevents nuclear translocation of β-catenin and MRTF-A, and α-SMA expression, suggesting a key role of Smad3 in regulation of MRTF-A and β-catenin nuclear transport in LECs. Further, we demonstrate that inhibition of β-catenin/CBP interaction by ICG-001 decreased the amount of phosphorylated Smad3 upon TGF-β stimulation in addition to significantly decreasing the expression levels of TGF-β receptors, TBRII and TBRI. Overall, our findings demonstrate interdependence between the canonical and non-canonical TGF-β-mediated signaling pathways controlling EMT in the lens.
A non linear power HEMT model operating in multi-bias conditions

This paper presents a non linear model of HEMT device which operate in multi-bias conditions, that is to say in class-AB, class-B, class-C, class-D and class-S. The model was derived from pulsed I(V), pulsed S parameters and large signals measurements. The aim is to provide to the designers a single model that can be used whatever the operating class, whatever the application referred. It should be underlined that this model is able to describe third quadrant phenomena (when driving the transistor in the negative drain voltage). The target was to make this model reliable when the transistor works in class-S operating conditions. For this purpose, the model was validated on different HEMT devices and for multi-bias conditions.
Distributed link-aware rate allocation for R-D optimal multiple video streaming over wireless networks

When multiple video streams are delivered in wireless networks, careful rate allocation is desirable to share the available bandwidth without overflowing the whole network or any individual link, as well as to maximize the total received quality among the competing streams. This paper presents a distributed rate allocation for Rate Distortion (R-D) optimal multiple video streaming in a video- and link-aware fashion. We take into account video R-D characteristics, as well as network and link congestion in the optimization framework, to strive for the minimal total video distortion of all participating streams while limiting network and individual link channel time utilization. Initial Start scheme addresses the initialization problem for video streaming effectively, and Fast Recovery scheme eliminates network and any individual link congestion as fast as possible. Global optimal rates can be obtained in a distributed manner. Results from numerical experiments confirm excellent performance of this distributed rate allocation.
A recommender system architecture for an inter-application environment

Recommender systems help to show possible items of interest, but these recommendations are closely linked to the amount of available user information. This information is generated by user interaction with the system, which is generally absent, especially in the case of a new user. In this contribution, we intend to check the methods of filtering applied in the context of traditional recommendation systems by adapting them to an inter-application context by using collaborative filtering techniques. To this end, we propose the architecture and rules for building an environment of a recommendation system for inter-application. The resulting database was developed for evaluations of inter-analysis applications and it will be made available to the scientific community for future research.
Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Apoptosis in Cumulus Cells of Type I Diabetic Mice

Impaired oocyte quality has been demonstrated in diabetic mice; however, the potential pathways by which maternal diabetes exerts its effects on the oocyte are poorly understood. Cumulus cells are in direct contact with the oocyte via gap junctions and provide essential nutrients to support oocyte development. In this study, we investigated the effects of maternal diabetes on the mitochondrial status in cumulus cells. We found an increased frequency of fragmented mitochondria, a decreased transmembrane potential and an aggregated distribution of mitochondria in cumulus cells from diabetic mice. Furthermore, while mitochondrial biogenesis in cumulus cells was induced by maternal diabetes, their metabolic function was disrupted as evidenced by lower ATP and citrate levels. Moreover, we present evidence suggesting that the mitochondrial impairments induced by maternal diabetes, at least in part, lead to cumulus cell apoptosis through the release of cytochrome c. Together the deleterious effects on cumulus cells may disrupt trophic and signaling interactions with the oocyte, contributing to oocyte incompetence and thus poor pregnancy outcomes in diabetic females.
In Vivo Imaging of Functional Inhibitory Networks on the Mauthner Cell of Larval Zebrafish

Noninvasive in vivo calcium imaging was used to observe and characterize inhibitory circuitry in intact larval zebrafish. In the teleost hindbrain, the inhibitory network onto the major pair of reticulospinal neurons known as Mauthner cells (M-cells) has been described in detail. There are three sources of inhibition onto M-cells: recurrent inhibition mediated by an ipsilateral collateral of the M-cell axon, feedforward inhibition driven by sensory afferents, and reciprocal inhibition between bilaterally opposed M-cells. To visualize these inhibitions, M-cells were retrogradely loaded with the calcium indicator calcium green dextran. Recurrent inhibition attenuated the Ca2+ response associated with an action potential in M-cells. Whole-cell recording revealed recurrent IPSCs, the conductance of which may underlie the shunting effect on action potentials and the attenuation of the Ca2+ signal in M-cells. Blocking synaptic transmission within the recurrent network abolished both the Ca2+ signal attenuation and the IPSCs. Electrical stimulation of the otic vesicle to activate VIII nerve afferents resulted in feedforward suppression of antidromically evoked test Ca2+ responses in the contralateral M-cell. Orthodromic activation of M-cells produced a reciprocal reduction of the test Ca2+ response in the contralateral M-cell. Thus, in the present study, we visualized the three types of inhibition and demonstrated that they are functional at 4 d after fertilization. The use of noninvasive techniques to image inhibitionin vivo suggest the plausibility of studying the hypothesis previously tested in adult goldfish that use-dependent changes in inhibitions underlie sound conditioning in escape behavior.