Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A modified variable rate particle filter for maneuvering target tracking

To address the problem of maneuvering target tracking, where the target trajectory has prolonged smooth regions and abrupt maneuvering regions, a modified variable rate particle filter (MVRPF) is proposed. First, a Cartesian-coordinate based variable rate model is presented. Compared with conventional variable rate models, the proposed model does not need any prior knowledge of target mass or external forces. Consequently, it is more convenient in practical tracking applications. Second, a maneuvering detection strategy is adopted to adaptively adjust the parameters in MVRPF, which helps allocate more state points at high maneuver regions and fewer at smooth regions. Third, in the presence of small measurement errors, the unscented particle filter, which is embedded in MVRPF, can move more particles into regions of high likelihood and hence can improve the tracking performance. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
A fully integrated sub-1 V 4 GHz CMOS VCO, and a 10.5 GHz oscillator

This paper presents the design and experimental measurements of three CMOS LC-based oscillators. The first circuit is optimized for low voltage operation in a 0.25 µm process, requiring only a 0.85 Volt power supply and reaching a maximum frequency of 4 GHz. The second circuit is a 5 GHz oscillator in a 0.35 µm process operating from a 1.5 Volt power supply and optimized for a wide tuning range (10%) while maintaining reasonable phase noise (-87.3 dBc/Hz @ 100 KHz offset). Finally, the third oscillator targeted high frequency operation reaching a maximum oscillating frequency of 10.5 GHz in a 0.35 µm process. The oscillators make use of on-chip components only, allowing for simple and robust integration.
The Role of Mindfulness and Acculturation in Binge Drinking Behavior Among Asian-American College Students

Binge drinking is a considerable problem for many college and universities. Alcohol use, and accompanying consequences have often been minimized when considering Asian-Americans due to a lower rate of alcohol dependence. The prevalence of alcohol related problems is unclear however, because of the vast number and differences between Asian subgroup cultures. Furthermore, it has also been suggested that mindfulness and acculturation both moderate alcohol use and binge drinking behavior. Eighty-five Asian-American undergraduate students completed surveys that measured acculturation, mindfulness, and drinking behavior. The analysis for subgroup differences in alcohol consumption was not significant (F(9,75)= . 66, p=. 74). Subgroup differences for binge drinking however, were significant (F(9,75)=2.11, p=. 04) with Hmong students reported the greatest frequency of binge drinking (M=3.5, SD=.71) and Taiwanese, Japanese, and Vietnamese all reported the lowest frequency of binge drinking (M=1.0 SD=0.0). Mindfulness was found to be a significant negative predictor of binge drinking behavior (β = -.30, p =.003), whereas acculturation was not (β = -.10, p =.32). The interaction between alcohol use and mindfulness was not significant, nor was the interaction between alcohol use and acculturation. Thus it is can be interpreted that mindfulness is a negative predictor of binge drinking behavior however; higher awareness does not necessarily cause less binge drinking behavior. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Psychology (PsyD) Committee Chair Catherine Moonshine, Ph.D., MAC, CADC III Second Advisor Michael S. Christopher, Ph.D. Third Advisor Michel Hersen, Ph.D., ABPP
Interpretations of Task Difficulty in Terms of Resources: Efficiency, Load, Demand, and Cost Composition.

Abstract : The effect of task difficulty on performance can be conceptualized within a theory which posits that performance depends on the use of resources from a single pool. When the difficulty of a task is said to increase it may mean either that resources invested in it can now do less (i.e., a decrease in efficiency), or are now required to do more (i.e., an increase in load), or have now less time to do it (i.e., a stricter limit on processing duration). Either way, difficulty should most often interact with resource investment in such a way that effects of resource investment on quality or speed of performance are more pronounced the easier the task. If the processing system is viewed as comprised of a number of mechanisms each having its own capacity, whicy may be considered as a separate resource, then a difficulty manipulation may affect differentially the use of each of those capacities. If in a dual-task situation manipulation of the difficulty of one task affects the use of a mechanism which is not required by the other task, processing of the latter may remain intact under some circumstances. To get a complete picture of how difficulty affects dual-task performance, it is proposed to manipulate task preferences as well as difficulty parameters and to present their joint effect by families of POCs. Application of this methodology to the study of pursuit tracking is briefly described and interpreted in terms of multiple resources.
Brain interstitial fluid glutamine homeostasis is controlled by blood–brain barrier SLC7A5/LAT1 amino acid transporter

L-glutamine (Gln) is the most abundant amino acid in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid and a precursor for the main central nervous system excitatory (L-glutamate) and inhibitory (γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)) neurotransmitters. Concentrations of Gln and 13 other brain interstitial fluid amino acids were measured in awake, freely moving mice by hippocampal microdialysis using an extrapolation to zero flow rate method. Interstitial fluid levels for all amino acids including Gln were ∼5–10 times lower than in cerebrospinal fluid. Although the large increase in plasma Gln by intraperitoneal (IP) injection of 15N2-labeled Gln (hGln) did not increase total interstitial fluid Gln, low levels of hGln were detected in microdialysis samples. Competitive inhibition of system A (SLC38A1&2; SNAT1&2) or system L (SLC7A5&8; LAT1&2) transporters in brain by perfusion with α-(methylamino)-isobutyric acid (MeAIB) or 2-aminobicyclo-(2,2,1)-heptane-2-carboxylic acid (BCH) respectively, was tested. The data showed a significantly greater increase in interstitial fluid Gln upon BCH than MeAIB treatment. Furthermore, brain BCH perfusion also strongly increased the influx of hGln into interstitial fluid following IP injection consistent with transstimulation of LAT1-mediated transendothelial transport. Taken together, the data support the independent homeostatic regulation of amino acids in interstitial fluid vs. cerebrospinal fluid and the role of the blood–brain barrier expressed SLC7A5/LAT1 as a key interstitial fluid gatekeeper.
Omega-3 Fatty Acid Enriched Chevon (Goat Meat) Lowers Plasma Cholesterol Levels and Alters Gene Expressions in Rats

In this study, control chevon (goat meat) and omega-3 fatty acid enriched chevon were obtained from goats fed a 50% oil palm frond diet and commercial goat concentrate for 100 days, respectively. Goats fed the 50% oil palm frond diet contained high amounts of α-linolenic acid (ALA) in their meat compared to goats fed the control diet. The chevon was then used to prepare two types of pellets (control or enriched chevon) that were then fed to twenty-male-four-month-old Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 10 in each group) for 12 weeks to evaluate their effects on plasma cholesterol levels, tissue fatty acids, and gene expression. There was a significant increase in ALA and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in the muscle tissues and liver of the rats fed the enriched chevon compared with the control group. Plasma cholesterol also decreased (P < 0.05) in rats fed the enriched chevon compared to the control group. The rat pellets containing enriched chevon significantly upregulated the key transcription factor PPAR-γ and downregulated SREBP-1c expression relative to the control group. The results showed that the omega-3 fatty acid enriched chevon increased the omega-3 fatty acids in the rat tissues and altered PPAR-γ and SREBP-1c genes expression.
Effect of physical and mental workload interactions on human attentional resources and performance

Many tasks in the real world require simultaneous processing of mental information alongside physical activity. Most of researchers have studied the impact of physical activities on simple cognitive tasks, but have neglected other important influences (such as different attentional resource pools, as well as gender). Therefore, this thesis proposes a new model that investigates the combined impact of physical and mental workload on different attentional resources (visual and auditory, verbal and spatial). This thesis presents three experimental studies that examined the effects of physical and mental workload interactions, as well as gender, on visual tasks performance and auditory tasks. This thesis uses different methods to evaluate the impacts of workload interactions on task performance: performance measure, physiological parameters and brain activity (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) method) and subjective assessment tools. Finally, this thesis translates the experimental studies setting into a field study to validate the model. Based on the experimental results, this research creates a new theoretical model that illustrates in general that physical activity is beneficial for performance on cognitive tasks (visual and auditory), particularly at low levels of workload interactions, while other workload interactions lead to worse performance on cognitive tasks. However, when physical activity was introduced, performance at the medium level of mental workload was equivalent to that in the low mental workload condition; furthermore, at the low mental workload, there were no differences in performance between low and medium physical workloads. The general pattern of results suggests that physical workload leads to better performance in these medium-demand conditions up to the higher level in the low-demand condition. A mechanism for this effect is proposed based on physiological arousal and brain oxygenation. This thesis further suggests that the NIRS is a valuable technique to reflect the influence of physical and mental workload interactions on brain activity. Finally, this thesis demonstrates the translation of experimental findings into a field setting to verify the new model as well as to make recommendations for job design.
Modeling truncated hemoglobin vibrational dynamics

We present a study on the near equilibrium dynamics of two small proteins in the family of truncated hemoglobins, developed under the framework of a Gaussian network approach. Effective beta carbon atoms are taken into account besides Cαs for all residues but glycines in the coarse‐graining procedure, without leading to an increase in the degrees of freedom (β Gaussian Model). Normalized covariance matrix and deformation along slowest modes with collective character are analyzed, pointing out anticorrelations between functionally relevant sites for the proteins under study. In particular, we underline the functional motions of an extended tunnel‐cavity system running inside the protein matrix, which provide a pathway for small ligands binding with the iron in the heme group. We give a rough estimate of the order of magnitude of the relaxation times of the slowest two overdamped modes and compare results with previous studies on globins. Proteins 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
EFFECT OF AN 8‐WEEK COMBINED WEIGHTS AND PLYOMETRICS TRAINING PROGRAM ON GOLF DRIVE PERFORMANCE

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a combined weights and plyometrics program on golf drive performance. Eleven male golfers' full golf swing was analyzed for club head speed (CS) and driving distance (DD) before and after an 8-week training program. The control group (n = 5) continued their normal training, while the experimental group (n = 6) performed 2 sessions per week of weight training and plyometrics. Controls showed no significant (p > 0.05) changes, while experimental subjects showed a significant increase (p > 0.05) in CS and DD. The changes in golf drive performance were attributed to an increase in muscular force and an improvement in the sequential acceleration of body parts contributing to a greater final velocity being applied to the ball. It was concluded that specific combined weights and plyometrics training can help increase CS and DD in club golfers.
Load Independence of the Instantaneous Pressure‐Volume Ratio of the Canine Left Ventricle and Effects of Epinephrine and Heart Rate on the Ratio

As a means of assessing ventricular performance, we analyzed the time-varying ratio of instantaneous pressure, P(t), to instantaneous volume, V(t), in the canine left ventricle. Intraventricular volume was measured by plethysmography, while the right heart was totally bypassed. The cardiac nerves were sectioned, and an epinephrine infusion was used to alter the contractile state. The instantaneous pressure-volume ratio was defined as E(t) = P(t)/[V(t) – Vd], where Vd is an experimentally determined correction factor. We found that (1) all the E(t) curves thus defined were similar in their basic shape and attained their peak near the end of the ejection phase regardless of the mechanical load, the contractile state, or the heart rate, (2) under a constant heart rate and contractile state extensive changes in preload, afterload, or both did not alter the peak value of E(t), Emax, or the time to Emax from the onset of systole, Tmax, and (3) these parameters of E(t) markedly changed with epinephrine infusion or increases in heart rate. At an epinephrine infusion rate of 2 μg/kg min−1, Emax increased to 12.2 ± 4.5 (SD) mm Hg/ml (N = 9) from its control value of 6.6 ± 1.2 mm Hg/ml before the infusion. Simultaneously, Tmax shortened from 191 ± 29 msec to 157 ± 26 msec. Increases in the paced heart rate proportionally shortened Tmax (45% per 100-beats/min change in heart rate) without any effect on Emax. We concluded that E(t), represented by Emax and Tmax, explicitly reflects the ventricular contractility.
A Quarter-Century of Wait-Free Synchronization

It is an honour and a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak about what in my opinion is Maurice Herlihy’s most influential paper, and indeed one of the most significant papers in the theory of distributed computing. I am referring to his work on wait-free synchronization, which appeared in preliminary form in PODC 1988 [8] and in its final form in TOPLAS three years later [10]. I will first review the key contributions of this paper and then I will discuss its impact.
Flower development of Phalaenopsis orchid involves functionally divergent SEPALLATA-like genes

The Phalaenopsis orchid produces complex flowers that are commercially valuable, which has promoted the study of its flower development. E-class MADS-box genes, SEPALLATA (SEP), combined with B-, C- and D-class MADS-box genes, are involved in various aspects of plant development, such as floral meristem determination, organ identity, fruit maturation, seed formation and plant architecture. Four SEP-like genes were cloned from Phalaenopsis orchid, and the duplicated PeSEPs were grouped into PeSEP1/3 and PeSEP2/4. All PeSEPs were expressed in all floral organs. PeSEP2 expression was detectable in vegetative tissues. The study of protein–protein interactions suggested that PeSEPs may form higher order complexes with the B-, C-, D-class and AGAMOUS LIKE6-related MADS-box proteins to determine floral organ identity. The tepal became a leaf-like organ when PeSEP3 was silenced by virus-induced silencing, with alterations in epidermis identity and contents of anthocyanin and chlorophyll. Silencing of PeSEP2 had minor effects on the floral phenotype. Silencing of the E-class genes PeSEP2 and PeSEP3 resulted in the downregulation of B-class PeMADS2-6 genes, which indicates an association of PeSEP functions and B-class gene expression. These findings reveal the important roles of PeSEP in Phalaenopsis floral organ formation throughout the developmental process by the formation of various multiple protein complexes.
Leveraging historical co-change information for requirements traceability

Requirements traceability (RT) links requirements to the corresponding source code entities, which implement them. Information Retrieval (IR) based RT links recovery approaches are often used to automatically recover RT links. However, such approaches exhibit low accuracy, in terms of precision, recall, and ranking. This paper presents an approach (CoChaIR), complementary to existing IR-based RT links recovery approaches. CoChaIR leverages historical co-change information of files to improve the accuracy of IR-based RT links recovery approaches. We evaluated the effectiveness of CoChaIR on three datasets, i.e., iTrust, Pooka, and SIP Communicator. We compared CoChaIR with two different IR-based RT links recovery approaches, i.e., vector space model and Jensen-Shannon divergence model. Our study results show that CoChaIR significantly improves precision and recall by up to 12.38% and 5.67% respectively; while decreasing the rank of true positive links by up to 48% and reducing false positive links by up to 44%.
Considering schedule requirements of software integration in component based embedded systems

The definition of the integration order in a component based embedded system is often a crucial part in the software development process. The integration sequence is affected by many parameters and there is a lack of methods to determine an order which fits best. This decision often depends on integrators expertise. This article considers schedule requirements which are present in most development processes and describes an approach to determine a most suitable integration order of embedded systems.
Estimating Smooth Structural Change in Cointegration Models

This paper studies nonlinear cointegration models in which the structural coefficients may evolve smoothly over time, and considers time-varying coefficient functions estimated by nonparametric kernel methods. It is shown that the usual asymptotic methods of kernel estimation completely break down in this setting when the functional coefficients are multivariate. The reason for this breakdown is a kernel-induced degeneracy in the weighted signal matrix associated with the nonstationary regressors, a new phenomenon in the kernel regression literature. Some new techniques are developed to address the degeneracy and resolve the asymptotics, using a path-dependent local coordinate transformation to re-orient coordinates and accommodate the degeneracy. The resulting asymptotic theory is fundamentally different from the existing kernel literature, giving two different limit distributions with different convergence rates in the different directions of the (functional) parameter space. Both rates are faster than the usual root-nh rate for nonlinear models with smoothly changing coefficients and local stationarity. In addition, local linear methods are used to reduce asymptotic bias and a fully modified kernel regression method is proposed to deal with the general endogenous nonstationary regressor case, which facilitates inference on the time varying functions. The finite sample properties of the methods and limit theory are explored in simulations. A brief empirical application to macroeconomic data shows that a linear cointegrating regression is rejected but finds support for alternative polynomial approximations for the time-varying coefficients in the regression.
Transient B12-Dependent Methyltransferase Complexes Revealed by Small-Angle X-ray Scattering

In the Wood–Ljungdahl carbon fixation pathway, protein–protein interactions between methyltransferase (MeTr) and corrinoid iron–sulfur protein (CFeSP) are required for the transfer of a methyl group. While crystal structures have been determined for MeTr and CFeSP both free and in complex, solution structures have not been established. Here, we examine the transient interactions between MeTr and CFeSP in solution using anaerobic small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and present a global analysis approach for the deconvolution of heterogeneous mixtures formed by weakly interacting proteins. We further support this SAXS analysis with complementary results obtained by anaerobic isothermal titration calorimetry. Our results indicate that solution conditions affect the cooperativity with which CFeSP binds to MeTr, resulting in two distinct CFeSP/MeTr complexes with differing oligomeric compositions, both of which are active. One assembly resembles the CFeSP/MeTr complex observed crystallographically with 2:1 protein stoichiometry, while the other best fits a 1:1 CFeSP/MeTr arrangement. These results demonstrate the value of SAXS in uncovering the rich solution behavior of transient protein interactions visualized by crystallography.
N-[1-(5-Acetamido-3-acetyl-2-methyl-2,3-dihydro-1,3,4-thiadiazol-2-yl)-2-phenylethyl]acetamide

In the title compound, C17H22N4O3S, the dihedral angle between the planes of the thiadiazole and phenyl rings is 63.47 (7)°. The dihedral angle between the thiadiazole ring and the acetamide side chain is 7.72 (9)°. Molecules related by a 21 screw axis along the a axis are linked by intermolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds generating a supramolecular chain.
Ribosome-Inactivating Proteins: From Plant Defense to Tumor Attack

Ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) are EC3.2. 32.22 N-glycosidases that recognize a universally conserved stem-loop structure in 23S/25S/28S rRNA, depurinating a single adenine (A4324 in rat) and irreversibly blocking protein translation, leading finally to cell death of intoxicated mammalian cells. Ricin, the plant RIP prototype that comprises a catalytic A subunit linked to a galactose-binding lectin B subunit to allow cell surface binding and toxin entry in most mammalian cells, shows a potency in the picomolar range. The most promising way to exploit plant RIPs as weapons against cancer cells is either by designing molecules in which the toxic domains are linked to selective tumor targeting domains or directly delivered as suicide genes for cancer gene therapy. Here, we will provide a comprehensive picture of plant RIPs and discuss successful designs and features of chimeric molecules having therapeutic potential.
Hyperspectral Image Denoising Using Spatio-Spectral Total Variation

This letter introduces a hyperspectral denoising algorithm based on spatio-spectral total variation. The denoising problem has been formulated as a mixed noise reduction problem. A general noise model has been considered which accounts for not only Gaussian noise but also sparse noise. The inherent structure of hyperspectral images has been exploited by utilizing 2-D total variation along the spatial dimension and 1-D total variation along the spectral dimension. The denoising problem has been formulated as an optimization problem whose solution has been derived using the split-Bregman approach. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to reduce a significant amount of noise from real noisy hyperspectral images. The proposed algorithm has been compared with existing state-of-the-art approaches. The quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity, and the visual quality.