Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Broadband Microstrip Leaky Wave Antenna with Inhomogeneous Substrate

This work seeks to improve the bandwidth performance of the Menzel's simple microstrip leaky wave antenna (LWA) by incorporating a substrate that is inhomogeneous. Several different inhomogeneous substrate profiles and leaky wave antenna configurations are considered. The finite elements (FE) technique is particularly suitable to model inhomogeneous dielectric profiles and is used to evaluate the fields and performance of the LWA's considered here. It is demonstrated that it is possible to obtain a significant improvement in the bandwidth performance by choosing an appropriate inhomogeneous profile. The complex propagation constant corresponding to the leaky wave mode can be deduced from the fields computed using the FE technique and is compared to the values obtained using the transverse resonance method
Enhanced JBIG-based compression for satisfying objectives of engineering document management system

The main objectives of an engineering document manage- ment (EDM) system are outlined. Existing image compression algorithms (e.g., Group 4 (G4) and Joint Bilevel Image Experts Group (JBIG)) offer efficient solutions to the storage problem but do not sufficiently support other objectives such as spatial access and fast decoding. We propose a novel method based on JBIG in which the other objectives are also met. The compression performance of the proposed method is only 10% worse than that of JBIG, and at the same time, spatial access to a com- pressed file is achieved. The method is also 2.5 times faster in decom- pression than JBIG. This speedup is comparable to the G4 standard, but with better compression performance. The proposed method is appli- cable not only to engineering drawings but to binary images in any docu- ment imaging system. © 1998 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. (S0091-3286(98)02705-6)
Primate globus pallidus and subthalamic nucleus: functional organization.

Neuronal relations to active movements of individual body parts and neuronal responses to somatosensory stimulation were studied in the external (GPe) and internal (GPi) segments of the globus pallidus (GP) and the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of awake monkeys. In GPe (n = 249), GPi (n = 151), and STN (n = 153), 47, 29, and 28% of the cells, respectively, discharged in relation to active arm movements, 10, 11, and 15% to leg movements, and 22, 22, and 18% to orofacial movements. Of the neurons whose activity was related to arm movements, 26, 16, and 21% in GPe, GPi, and STN, respectively, discharged in relation to movements of distal parts of the limb. Of cells whose discharge was related to active limb movements, 37, 22, and 20% in GPe, GPi, and STN, respectively, also responded to passive joint rotation, which was usually specific in terms of joint and direction of movement. Only a small percentage of cells responded to muscle or joint palpation, tendon taps, or cutaneous stimulation. Short-latency, direction-specific neuronal responses to load perturbations confirmed the existence of proprioceptive driving. In both GPe and GPi, leg movement-related neurons were centrally located in the rostrocaudal and dorsoventral dimensions. In contrast, arm movement-related cells were found throughout the entire rostrocaudal extent of both segments, although in greater numbers caudally. In the central portions they were situated largely inferior and lateral to leg movement-related neurons. Neurons related to orofacial movements were largely confined to the caudal halves of both segments, where they were located largely ventral to arm movement-related cells. The STN cells whose activity was related to leg movements were observed largely in the central portions of the nucleus in the rostrocaudal and mediolateral dimensions. Cells whose activity was related to arm movements were found throughout the rostrocaudal extent of the nucleus, but were most numerous at the rostral and caudal poles. Neurons related to movements of the facial musculature and to licking and chewing movements were distributed over the entire rostrocaudal extent of the nucleus, where they generally occupied the ventrolateral regions. In all three nuclei, neurons with similar functional properties were sometimes clustered together. Within the arm and leg areas, however, there was no clear evidence for a simple organization of clusters related to different parts of the limb. These studies provide further evidence for a role of the basal ganglia in the control of limb movements. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
An Efficient and Accurate Building Optimization Strategy Using Singular Value Decomposition

Optimizing the life cycle cost of a building typically involves a large number of variables due to the many options that exist at the time that a building is being designed. Such large-scale optimization problems are often prohibitive within the building industry because of the excessive computational time required by the building energy modeling software; therefore, any optimization studies that are performed during a building design are typically only completed using a small number of variables. To achieve the goal of performing a life cycle building optimization in an acceptable time frame, this paper proposes an accurate and efficient method using singular value decomposition on the design variables. Through the use of singular value decomposition a large number of design variables can be reduced to a smaller subset of design variables that can be solved more quickly by the optimization algorithm. In this paper the authors apply this methodology to a case study of a typical residential building in six separate locations across the U.S. and compare the results with those of the full optimization process over the entire design space.
Escherichia coli growth and transport in the presence of nanosilver under variable growth conditions

Nanosilver (silver nanoparticles) has the ability to anchor to the bacterial cell membrane and subsequently penetrate it, thereby causing structural changes (i.e. permeability) in the cell membrane and death of the cell. The bacterial responses to the presence of nanosilver usually vary depending on the concentration of nanosilver particles, exposure time and the bacterial physiological stage. Since bacterial anabolism dependents upon a stoichiometric ratio of carbon and inorganic elements (nutrients), the macronutrient ratio, i.e. carbon to nitrogen ratio (C/N) thus plays an important role of bacterial responses to the exposure of nanosilver. This study investigated the responses of Escherichia coli to the exposure of nanosilver under variable growth conditions. It was discovered that E. coli grown under different growth conditions had different responses to the presence of nanosilver. E. coli had least resistance to the toxicity of nanosilver when cultured under carbon-limited conditions. However, the presence of rhamnolipid, a commonly utilized biosurfactant for soil remediation increased the resistance of E. coli to nanosilver. The transport of E. coli cultured under carbon-limited conditions was further studied in silica sand columns. E. coli adsorption in silica sand increased when cultured in the presence of nanosilver. On the contrary, E. coli adsorption in silica sand was significantly reduced when cultured in the presence of rhamnolipid.
A novel video annotation framework using near-duplicate segment detection

The traditional video annotation approaches focus on annotating keyframes, shots, or the whole video with semantic keywords. However, the extractions of keyframes and shots lack of semantic meanings, and it is hard to use a few keywords to describe a video by using multiple topics. Therefore, we propose a novel video annotation framework using near-duplicate segment detection not only to preserve but also to purify the semantic meanings of target annotation units. A hierarchical near-duplicate segment detection method is proposed to efficiently localize near-duplicate segments in frame-level. Videos containing near-duplicate segments are clustered and keyword distributions of clusters are analyzed. Finally, the keywords ranked according to keyword distribution scores are annotated onto the obtained annotation units. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed video annotation framework and near-duplicate segment detection method.
Adaptive algorithms for Weighted Myriad Filter optimization

Stochastic gradient-based adaptive algorithms are developed for the optimization of weighted myriad filters, a class of nonlinear filters, motivated by the properties of /spl alpha/-stable distributions, that have been proposed for robust non-Gaussian signal processing in impulsive noise environments. An implicit formulation of the filter output is used to derive an expression for the gradient of the mean absolute error (MAE) cost function, leading to necessary conditions for the optimal filter weights. An adaptive steepest-descent algorithm is then derived to optimize the filter weights. This is modified to yield an algorithm with a very simple weight update, computationally comparable to the update in the classical LMS algorithm. Simulations demonstrate the robust performance of these algorithms.
International Assignments : An updated picture of important factors for expatriate spouse adjustment

Although several scholars have argued that the spouses failure to adjust is one of the main reasons expatriate employees return prematurely from international assignments, research about spouse adjustment is scarce, and existing research about the phenomenon was conducted almost two decades ago. Therefore, our research was conducted in order to empirically examine theoretical variables that historically relate to host country adjustment of the spouse in order to see if these variables are still valid today. The present study focused on personality, family characteristics and anticipatory and in-country adjustment variables of the intercultural adjustment of expatriate spouses. Among a sample of 105 expatriate spouses it was shown that the variables measuring time in host-country, positive pre-move opinion held by the spouse, living conditions at least equal to home, cultural novelty, personality traits, and family cohesion were significant moderators of the adjustment to the new country of the spouse. We could also show that the adjustment of the spouse affects the adjustment of the expatriate, thus increasing the relevance for companies to aim more attention to the spouse well-being. An area for future research could be to investigate more closely if there is different effectiveness of different types of training.
Automatic Transformations by RewritingTechniques ?

The paper shows how term rewriting techniques can be used to automatically transform rst-order functional programs by both deforestation (eliminating useless intermediate data structures) and tupling (eliminating parallel traversals of identical data structures). Its novelty is that it includes these strategies for program improvement in a transformation system which uses completion procedures to automatically control a unfold/fold methodology. This means that eurekas for these strategies are automatically discovered and that they are processed by a completion procedure. The completion procedure is automatically constrained for orienting pairs into rules and for producing critical pairs. An interesting result is that the process preserves termination of the original set of rules, which is not guaranteed in general by a unfold/fold method.
Blunted erythropoietin production and decreased erythropoiesis in early pregnancy.

After decreasing in the first trimester of pregnancy, the total red blood cell mass increases in the second and third trimesters to peak at term at about 120% to 125% of nonpregnant values, but how this is brought about by changes in the rate of erythropoiesis is not known. We evaluated erythropoiesis by measuring serum transferrin receptor (TfR) levels in 406 women during normal pregnancy (N = 317), at delivery (N = 63), or in the early postpartum (N = 27). Despite the presence of the placenta and the frequent occurrence of iron deficiency, TfR levels remained low in the first two trimesters and increased in the third trimester and at delivery. To explain why erythropoiesic activity was relatively low in early pregnancy, we also measured serum immunoreactive erythropoietin (Epo) in relation to the degree of anemia. There was a very strong correlation between serum TfR and Epo levels in the entire group (r = .59, P less than .0001) as well as in each period of pregnancy. Epo levels remained low for the degree of anemia and did not correlate with hematocrit in the first two trimesters, but recovered afterwards. In the early postpartum, Epo production and erythropoiesis were normal. We conclude that: (1) erythropoiesis is decreased in the first part of pregnancy but increases afterwards; and (2) blunted Epo production in early pregnancy could be responsible for that observation.
Diminished Expression of Aquaporin Water Channels in Ureteral-obstructed Kidney in Rats

Objective: We investigated whether regulation of aquaporin (AQP) water channels is altered in the ureteral-obstructed kidney. Material and Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were unilaterally obstructed of their left proximal ureters for 48 r h. The protein expression of AQP1-3 channels was determined in the kidney by Western blot analysis. The expression of AQP2 was also determined by immunohistochemistry. In order to specifically determine primary impairment of the pathway leading to an altered regulation of AQP channels stimulated by the arginine vasopressin (AVP)/cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) pathway, the catalytic activity and protein expression of different parts of the adenylyl cyclase complex were separately determined. Results: In the previously obstructed kidney, urinary osmolality and free water reabsorption were greatly decreased. The expression of AQP2 proteins was decreased in the cortex, outer medulla and inner medulla. Immunohistochemistry also showed a marked decrease in AQP2 expression. The expression of AQP1 and AQP3 was decreased in the outer medulla and inner medulla. cAMP generation in response to AVP, sodium fluoride or forskolin was greatly decreased. The expression of Gs ! and adenylyl cyclase VI proteins was decreased. The contralateral kidney showed minimal or no changes in these parameters. Conclusions: The reduced abundance of AQP water channels may at least partly account for the urinary concentration defect in the ureteral-obstructed kidney. The primary point of impairment of AQP channels regulated by the AVP/cAMP pathway may lie at the level of the catalytic unit of adenylyl cyclase.
[Apoptosis as a mechanism of tissue injury in hepatobiliary diseases].

BACKGROUND Cell death by apoptosis is a fundamental biologic process involved in many physiologic and pathophysiologic processes in the liver. OBJECTIVE To review the process of apoptosis, its cellular mechanisms, its regulation by external factors, and its role in pathophysiologic process and specific diseases of the liver. CONCLUSION An understanding of the cellular mechanisms of apoptosis and their dysregulation during pathophysiologic disturbances will help in understanding human liver diseases. The modulation of apoptosis may lead to novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of a wide range of liver diseases.
Xylem Embolism in Ring‐Porous, Diffuse‐Porous, and Coniferous Trees of Northern Utah and Interior Alaska

Xylem embolism was measured in nine tree species for one or more years. Species were ring-porous (Quercus sp.), diffuse-porous (Alnus, Betula, Populus spp.) or coniferous (Picea, Larix, Abies spp.). Intraspecific (Populus tremuloides) and intrageneric (Betula, Alnus) comparisons were made between sites in northern Utah and interior Alaska. Most embolism, >90% in some dicot species, occurred in winter. Within sites, dicot trees embolized more than conifers. Between sites, Alaskan dicot trees embolized less than their Utah counterparts. Differences were explained by vulnerability to embolism caused by freeze-thaw cycles. Most conifers were entirely resistant, whereas dicot trees were vulner- able. Less embolism in Alaskan dicot trees was associated with fewer freeze-thaw events in Alaska vs. Utah. Vulnerability was positively correlated with conduit volume and hy- draulic conductance per unit xylem area (ks). Tracheids were superior to vessels in avoiding freeze-thaw-induced embolism, and had lower k,. At the other extreme, ring-porous xylem had the highest k, but lost > 90% of hydraulic conductance after a single freeze-thaw event. Vulnerability to water-stress-induced cavitation was not correlated with conduit volume or k,. Dicot species either reversed winter embolism by refilling vessels with positive root pressures during spring (Betula, Alnus spp.), or tolerated it and relied on new xylem pro- duction to restore hydraulic conductance (Quercus sp.). Conifers reversed embolism by refilling tracheids in the absence of positive pressure. Populus species behaved inconsis- tently, showing some reversal one year but none the next. Even without embolism reversal, Populus species had hydraulic conductances per unit leaf area equal to other diffuse-porous species.
Path layout planning and software based fast failure detection in survivable OpenFlow networks

In an OpenFlow network, the controller is responsible to control and manage the whole network. Although such central control paradigm is easier to achieve efficient network resources usage, the controller becomes the bottleneck when the network size is large. In this paper, we propose using pre-provisioned paths to mitigate the burden on a controller. The basic idea is to setup some background paths in the network. When an ordinary flow coming into the network, the controller only needs to setups flow entries at the ingress and egress switches. An admitted flow follows a preplanned path toward its destination. Except the ingress and egress switches, the flow entries in the remaining switches on the path kept unchanged. Since routing paths for ordinary flows are pre-planned, the whole admission and connection setup process are simplified. Jointly considering load balancing, network survivability, fast failure recovery, and flow entry consumption are the major challenges in this problem. The contribution of this paper includes two parts. First, we propose a path preplanning scheme that takes advantage of interface specific forwarding (ISF) to resolve the problem. We formulate the path preplanning problem as an integer linear programming problem. Optimization based heuristic algorithms are proposed to obtain a near optimal solution. In the second contribution, we propose a software based failure detection and failure location identification scheme. Since some existing switches take longer time to detect a network failure, a reliable lightweight software based failure detection scheme that can fast pinpoint the failure location is needed. We have performed simulations and experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes. The experimental results indicate that the proposed software failure detection scheme generates very limited overhead on the OpenFlow controller. It can be used to achieve fast failure recovery even when the network is in heavy load state. The simulation results also show that the proposed ISF based path preplanning scheme can reduce controller load and is able to achieve 100% survivability against any single link failure with low bandwidth consumption.
Spatial Interference Cancellation for Multiantenna Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Interference between nodes is a critical impairment in mobile ad hoc networks. This paper studies the role of multiple antennas in mitigating such interference. Specifically, a network is studied in which receivers apply zero-forcing beamforming to cancel the strongest interferers. Assuming a network with Poisson-distributed transmitters and independent Rayleigh fading channels, the transmission capacity is derived, which gives the maximum number of successful transmissions per unit area. Mathematical tools from stochastic geometry are applied to obtain the asymptotic transmission capacity scaling and characterize the impact of inaccurate channel state information (CSI). It is shown that, if each node cancels interferers, the transmission capacity decreases as as the outage probability vanishes. For fixed , as grows, the transmission capacity increases as where is the path-loss exponent. Moreover, CSI inaccuracy is shown to have no effect on the transmission capacity scaling as vanishes, provided that the CSI training sequence has an appropriate length, which we derive. Numerical results suggest that canceling merely one interferer by each node may increase the transmission capacity by an order of magnitude or more, even when the CSI is imperfect.
Discrete and Intersample Analysis of Systems With Aperiodic Sampling

This article addresses the stability analysis of linear time invariant systems with aperiodic sampled-data control. Adopting a difference inclusion formalism, we show that necessary and sufficient stability conditions are given by the existence of discrete-time quasi-quadratic Lyapunov functions. A constructive method for computing such functions is provided from the approximation of the necessary and sufficient conditions. In practice, this leads to sufficient stability criteria under LMI form. The inter-sampling behavior is discussed there: based on differential inclusions, we provide continuous-time methods that use the advantages of the discrete-time approach. The results are illustrated by numerical examples that indicate the improvement with regard to the existing literature.
Object retrieval using adaptive rectangular windows

In this paper, we propose adaptive rectangular windows to improve object retrieval. The adaptive rectangular windows are created by G-means clusters, and solve the problem that G-means splits the database image into small irregular regions and decreases the retrieval accuracy. According to the spatial information in the clusters and the relative spatial relationship between the clusters, the rectangular windows adjust adaptively and represent the object regions with more spatial information. Afterwards, each adaptive rectangular window corresponds to an independent window vector, which increases the similarity between query object region and object regions of database images. The experimental results on the Oxford building dataset demonstrate that the adaptive rectangular windows improve the retrieval accuracy while ensuring the retrieval efficiency.
Semiclassical and quantum Liouville theory

We develop a functional integral approach to quantum Liouville field theory completely independent of the hamiltonian approach. To this end on the sphere topology we solve the Riemann-Hilbert problem for three singularities of finite strength and a fourth one infinitesimal, by determining perturbatively the Poincare accessory parameters. This provides the semiclassical four point vertex function with three finite charges and a fourth infinitesimal. Some of the results are extended to the case of n finite charges and m infinitesimal. With the same technique we compute the exact Green function on the sphere on the background of three finite singularities. Turning to the full quantum problem we address the calculation of the quantum determinant on the background of three finite charges and of the further perturbative corrections. The zeta function regularization provides a theory which is not invariant under local conformal transformations. Instead by employing a regularization suggested in the case of the pseudosphere by Zamolodchikov and Zamolodchikov we obtain the correct quantum conformal dimensions from the one loop calculation and we show explicitly that the two loop corrections do not change such dimensions. We then apply the method to the case of the pseudosphere with one finite singularity and compute the exact value for the quantum determinant. Such results are compared to those of the conformal bootstrap approach finding complete agreement.