Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of the finite conductivity on RLSA antenna design

In this paper, we consider the effect of the finite conductivity on the design of a radial line slot array (RLSA). Such an effect can be not negligible at high frequencies, especially when low cost metallization techniques are adopted. We show how this effect can be easily introduced in the numerical modeling of the antenna. As a matter of the fact, we extend the analytical evaluation of the dyadic admittance Green's function to the case of a low, arbitrary impedance surface, and we use it within a Method of Moment (MoM) for RLSA. The results of the MoM numerical simulations have been tested against those by commercial codes for different conductivity values.
Identification of Reference Genes for Quantitative Gene Expression Studies in a Non-Model Tree Pistachio (Pistacia vera L.)

The tree species, Pistacia vera (P. vera) is an important commercial product that is salt-tolerant and long-lived, with a possible lifespan of over one thousand years. Gene expression analysis is an efficient method to explore the possible regulatory mechanisms underlying these characteristics. Therefore, having the most suitable set of reference genes is required for transcript level normalization under different conditions in P. vera. In the present study, we selected eight widely used reference genes, ACT, EF1α, α-TUB, β-TUB, GAPDH, CYP2, UBQ10, and 18S rRNA. Using qRT-PCR their expression was assessed in 54 different samples of three cultivars of P. vera. The samples were collected from different organs under various abiotic treatments (cold, drought, and salt) across three time points. Several statistical programs (geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper) were applied to estimate the expression stability of candidate reference genes. Results obtained from the statistical analysis were then exposed to Rank aggregation package to generate a consensus gene rank. Based on our results, EF1α was found to be the superior reference gene in all samples under all abiotic treatments. In addition to EF1α, ACT and β-TUB were the second best reference genes for gene expression analysis in leaf and root. We recommended β-TUB as the second most stable gene for samples under the cold and drought treatments, while ACT holds the same position in samples analyzed under salt treatment. This report will benefit future research on the expression profiling of P. vera and other members of the Anacardiaceae family.
Dieting: really harmful, merely ineffective or actually helpful?

Dieting has developed a negative reputation among many researchers and health care professionals. However, ‘dieting’ can refer to a variety of behavioural patterns that are associated with different effects on eating and body weight. The wisdom of dieting depends on what kind of dieting is involved, who is doing it, and why. Thus, depending on what one means by the term, dieting can be quite harmful, merely ineffective or actually beneficial. The present paper considers examples of all three. In particular, we argue that judgements about the desirability of dieting should consider the likely consequences to particular individuals of engaging in, or not engaging in, dieting behaviour.
A 40 Gb/s clock and data recovery circuit in 0.18 μm CMOS technology

A phase-locked clock and data recovery circuit incorporates a multiphase LC oscillator and a quarter-rate bang-bang phase detector. The oscillator is based on differential excitation of a closed-loop transmission line at evenly spaced points, providing half-quadrature phases. The phase detector employs eight flip-flops to sample the input every 12.5 ps, detecting data transitions while retiming and demultiplexing the data into four 10-Gb/s outputs. Fabricated in 0.18m CMOS technology, the circuit produces a clock jitter of 0.9 psrms and 9.67 pspp with a PRBS of 2 1 while consuming 144 mW from a 2-V supply.
Towards a Taxonomy for the Clarification of PCG Actors' Roles

This work proposes a novel classification system that clarifies the multiple role configurations in the context of video-game design production involving use of Procedural Content Generation (PCG) methods. Specifically, the role that designers can have, either by the direct PCG-game design or via interaction with PCG-tools, and its consequent impact on PCG's output. Towards this effect, a taxonomy is specified that synthesizes existing PCG taxonomies so that it lists all possible roles and impact that each actor - the Human Designer, the Computational Algorithm and the Human Player Can have in PCG's evaluation and generation processes.
Root minimum variance toa estimation for wireless location

This paper addresses the TOA (Time Of Arrival) estimation problem for ranging applications in wireless location systems. High resolution first arrival path detector based on MV (Minimum Variance) and NMV (Normalized Minimum Variance) can provide an accurate TOA estimation even in high multipath scenarios and when LOS (Line-Of-Sight) signal is strongly attenuated. A new TOA estimator based on a polynomial rooting approach of the MV criterion, named RMV (Root Minimum Variance), is proposed in this paper. Performance of RMV TOA estimator is compared with the grid search MV and NMV TOA estimators and with the RDMV (Root Derivative Minimum Variance) TOA estimator presented in previous works. Root approaches provide higher resolution than grid search algorithms.
Hepatoma-Derived Growth Factor Upregulation Is Correlated with Prognostic Factors of Early-Stage Cervical Adenocarcinoma

Hepatoma-derived growth factor (HDGF) is a unique nuclear/growth factor that plays an important role in the progression of different types of cancer. A total of 63 patients with early-stage cervical adenocarcinoma (Cx) were enrolled in this retrospective study. The expression of HDGF was significantly increased compared with adjacent non-tumor tissue samples (p < 0.001). Moreover, elevated nuclear HDGF levels were correlated with lymph-vascular space invasion (LVSI; p < 0.05), lymph node metastasis (LNM; p < 0.001), recurrence (p < 0.001) and advanced grade (AG; p < 0.001). The growth of cervical cancer cells (Hela cells) was enhanced by HDGF treatment. The HDGF mRNA and protein level were significantly higher in malignant cervical cancer cells compared with primary ones. By adenovirus gene delivery, HDGF overexpression enhanced, whereas HDGF knockdown perturbed the tumorigenic behaviors of cervical cancer cells. HDGF overexpression is common in early-stage cervical adenocarcinoma and is involved in the carcinogenesis of cervical adenocarcinoma. Cytoplasmic HDGF expression is strongly correlated with pelvic lymph node metastasis and recurrence, indicating that HDGF may serve as a novel prognostic marker for patients with Cx.
Interventional therapies for hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract Hepatocellular carcinoma is the third most common cause of cancer-related death. In the past few years, staging systems have been developed that enable patients to be stratified into treatment algorithms in a multidisciplinary setting. Several of these treatments involve minimally invasive image-guided therapy that can be performed by radiologists.
Les effets non spécifiques de la publicité subliminale

Nous avancons, dans cette recherche, l'hypothese que les images subliminales ont des effets non specifiques sur le comportement de consommation. A l'issue d'une premiere experience, les sujets exposes a une image subliminale du produit Coca-Cola n'etaient pas plus nombreux, lorsqu'ils avaient le choix entre un Coca-Cola et un Orangina, a choisir de consommer effectivement le Coca-Cola. De meme, les sujets exposes au produit Orangina n'ont pas ete plus nombreux a en consommer par rapport aux autres sujets. Toutefois, les sujets exposes a un produit (Coca-Cola ou Orangina) ont ete plus nombreux a choisir de consommer une de ces deux boissons que les sujets qui ont ete exposes a un stimulus neutre. La seconde experience a permis de consolider ce resultat. Ces deux experiences montrent que si les images subliminales n'orientent pas le comportement de consommation vers un produit donne, elles permettent neanmoins d'activer des besoins existants et de produire par consequent des comportements non specifiques. Les resultats sont interpretes en termes d'attribution.
Understanding link-level characterization of long-distance 802.11g semi-urban links

WiFi-based Long Distance (WiLD) mesh networks have been widely deployed with the intention of bringing extremely low-cost Internet connectivity to the rural areas worldwide. Prior studies do not discuss performance degradation in outdoor 802.11g links caused by faulty driver/card-specific proprietary algorithms and have fewer investigations on the impact of external WiFi interferences in terms of burst loss on WiLD 802.11g links. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of long distance 802.11g links in a typical semi-urban environment, concerning the maximum achievable throughput as well as the bursty features of loss ratio. We found that the principle causes for poor link performance are the buggy ANI (Ambient Noise Immunity) algorithm implemented in Atheros chips and the inefficient 802.11 CSMA/CA mechanism for point-to-point links. The former results in massive undecodable frames due to PHY errors while the latter throttles the transmission rate of the sender. OFDM timing and CRC errors caused by external interference contribute most to the burst loss, which appears in the magnitude of several to tens of seconds. Besides, we also document some valuable experiences learned in our experiments.
A hybrid method for clause splitting in unrestricted English texts

It is important to know the structure of the sentence for many NLP tasks. In this paper we propose a hybrid method for clause splitting in unrestricted English texts which requires less human work than existing approaches. The results of a machine learning algorithm, trained on an annotated corpus, are processed by a shallow rule-based module in order to improve the accuracy of the method. The evaluation of the results showed that the machine learning algorithm is useful for identification of clause’s boundaries and the rule-based module improves the results. Using some very simple rules we can report precision of around 88%.
Detecting Goal Structure Facilitates Learning

Does detecting hierarchical structure in observed action enhance action learning? Forty participants observed and segmented a film of an object assembly task that they later performed. Half described the action of each segment as they segmented. Participants who described the actions they segmented, who had better hierarchical segmentation, and who took the perspective of the actor later assembled the object more efficiently. Attending to the intentions of others enhances social learning.
Successful treatment of patients with lipoprotein glomerulopathy by protein A immunoadsorption: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND No established therapy is available for patients with lipoprotein glomerulopathy (LPG). Protein A immunoadsorption has been proved to be effective in reducing proteinuria in patients with nephrotic syndrome. In this uncontrolled pilot study, we investigated the efficiency of immunoadsorption onto staphylococcal protein A as treatment for LPG. METHODS Thirteen patients with renal biopsy-proven LPG were treated with staphylococcal protein A immunoadsorption. Immunoadsorption was administered for 10 cycles per session and 10 sessions as a course. A total of 30 l of plasma was regenerated in each course. RESULTS Single immunoadsorption course led to a rapid decline in proteinuria from 4.01 +/- 3.09 g/24 h to 1.21 +/- 0.97 g/24 h (mean +/- SD) (n = 13, P = 0.001), along with a dramatic decline in apolipoprotein E (apo E) from 9.79 +/- 5.04 mg/dl to 6.20 +/- 2.22 mg/dl (P = 0.004). A repeated renal biopsy (n = 12) showed that intraglomerular lipoprotein thrombi almost disappeared. Six patients were enrolled in the investigation of long-term outcome, and proteinuria returned to baseline levels within 12 months. Four recurrent patients received repeat immunoadsorption treatment; proteinuria decreased from 5.02 +/- 1.85 g/24 h to 1.64 +/- 0.55 g/24 h at the end of the treatment, serum apo E decreased from 14.65 +/- 11.17 mg/dl to 7.90 +/- 1.72 mg/dl. No patients suffered from severe complications. CONCLUSION Our observations suggest that immunoadsorption onto protein A might be an effective treatment for resolving intraglomerular thrombi and improving nephrotic syndrome in patients with LPG. Further studies are required to define the influence of immunoadsorption on long-term effects in LPG patients.
THEORY FOR COOPERATIVE DIVERSITY IN WIRELESS NETWORKS

by Deqiang Chen In a wireless network, users can relay information to exploit cooperative diversity, thereby increasing reliability and reducing power consumption. This thesis focuses on noncoherent communication theory for cooperative diversity. This thesis develops a general framework for maximum likelihood (ML) demod-ulation for cooperative diversity with a decode-and-forward protocol at the relays. A piecewise-linear (PL) demodulator is developed as an accurate approximation of nonlinear ML detectors. This PL detector leads to an involved yet closed-form approximation for the error probability of ML detectors. Numerical results show that the approximation is very tight. Analysis based on the Bhattacharyya upper bound suggests cooperative diversity with decoding relays does not achieve full diversity order. This conclusion is supported by the high SNR approximation of error probability obtained from the PL approximation. This thesis also presents some results about the application of convolutional codes in cooperative diversity. Given the same spectral efficiency, simulation results suggest that cooperative diversity can perform better than non-cooperative single-hop in the block fading channel given both schemes use ML detectors designed for the i.i. d. fading channel.
An Approach to Modeling and Analyzing Security Requirements of Service Composition

Service composition is an important means for integrating the individual Web services to create new value added systems that can satisfy complex requirements. However, it is a challenge to analyze security requirements for those applications due to the uncertainty factors in distributive environment. This paper proposes an approach to modeling and analyzing security requirements of service composition. Petri nets are used to model the different components of service composition, the dynamic matching strategy of service composition is proposed. Aspect-orientation is used to weave the security requirements into service composition, which includes evaluation concern, authorization, security level outputting and access outputting. The operation semantics and related theories of Petri nets help prove its effectiveness and correctness. An example explains the modeling and analyzing process of service composition, and a series of experiments are done to explain that the use of aspects for analyzing security requirements of service composition is more efficient than conventional techniques.
Pinhole-to-Projection Pyramid Subtraction for Reconstructing Non-rigid Objects from Range Images

In this paper, we propose a novel method for reconstructing the shape model of a non-rigid object. We represent the non-rigid object as the union of rigid components, and acquire range images of the object and motion of each component while the object varies its shape. We acquire the range images using one-shot scanning, and we use marker-based motion capture for motion acquisition. Based on them, our method performs registration of the range images and assigns a shape to each component. We propose the use of the Pinhole-to-Projection Pyramid obtained from each range image to non-iteratively solve the assignment task. The effectiveness of our method is demonstrated by applying it to reconstruct the shape of a human hand.
Does CRM System Really Matter?: An Exploratory Study of CRM System in the Hotel Industry in Singapore

Organizations in practically every industry are now adopting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems as a mission-critical business strategy. As CRM systems evolve from mere technology solutions used for capturing customer interactions into strategies aimed at deriving maximum value from them, businesses today realize the importance of these systems in attaining and sustaining competitive edge. Hotel industry emphasizes customer service and multiplicity of customer touch points. Consequently, hotels may be expected to place great importance on the CRM in order to achieve and sustain their competitive edge. Surprisingly, an exploratory study of four hotels in Singapore, which vary in size, market (local or global) and target customers (leisure guests or business travelers), shows that some of them do not use CRM system or exploit its potential. This paper explores and presents the reasons behind this phenomenon.
Life: the first two billion years

Microfossils, stromatolites, preserved lipids and biologically informative isotopic ratios provide a substantial record of bacterial diversity and biogeochemical cycles in Proterozoic (2500–541 Ma) oceans that can be interpreted, at least broadly, in terms of present-day organisms and metabolic processes. Archean (more than 2500 Ma) sedimentary rocks add at least a billion years to the recorded history of life, with sedimentological and biogeochemical evidence for life at 3500 Ma, and possibly earlier; phylogenetic and functional details, however, are limited. Geochemistry provides a major constraint on early evolution, indicating that the first bacteria were shaped by anoxic environments, with distinct patterns of major and micronutrient availability. Archean rocks appear to record the Earth's first iron age, with reduced Fe as the principal electron donor for photosynthesis, oxidized Fe the most abundant terminal electron acceptor for respiration, and Fe a key cofactor in proteins. With the permanent oxygenation of the atmosphere and surface ocean ca 2400 Ma, photic zone O2 limited the access of photosynthetic bacteria to electron donors other than water, while expanding the inventory of oxidants available for respiration and chemoautotrophy. Thus, halfway through Earth history, the microbial underpinnings of modern marine ecosystems began to take shape. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The new bacteriology’.
A catalogue and analysis of X-ray luminosities of early-type galaxies

ABSTRA C T We present a catalogue of X-ray luminosities for 401 early-type galaxies, of which 136 are based on newly analysed ROSAT PSPC pointed observations. The remaining luminosities are taken from the literature and converted to a common energy band, spectral model and distance scale. Using this sample we fit the LX : LB relation for early-type galaxies and find a best-fit slope for the catalogue of ,2.2. We demonstrate the influence of group-dominant galaxies on the fit and present evidence that the relation is not well modelled by a single power-law fit. We also derive estimates of the contribution to galaxy X-ray luminosities from discrete-sources and conclude that they provide Ldscr /L B . 29:5 erg s 21 L 21 B( . We compare this result with luminosities from our catalogue. Lastly, we examine the influence of environment on galaxy X-ray luminosity and on the form of the LX : LB relation. We conclude that although environment undoubtedly affects the X-ray properties of individual galaxies, particularly those in the centres of groups and clusters, it does not change the nature of whole
teragram: Rule-based detection of sentiment phrases using SAS Sentiment Analysis

For SemEval-2013 Task 2, A and B (Sentiment Analysis in Twitter), we use a rulebased pattern matching system that is based on an existing ‘Domain Independent’ sentiment taxonomy for English, essentially a highly phrasal sentiment lexicon. We have made some modifications to our set of rules, based on what we found in the annotated training data that was made available for the task. The resulting system scores competitively, especially on task B.
Cloudbreak: Answering the Challenges of Cyber Command and Control

As the number and size of networks maintained by the Department of Defense (DoD) continue to grow, concerns about the complexity of providing cyber security for these networks have mounted. In 2012, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta established the Joint Cyber Centers (JCC) at U.S. geographic combatant commands (COCOMs) to coordinate cyber activities within each command’s area of responsibility (AoR) and to apprise combatant commanders of the impacts of the cyber landscape to their missions [1]. The JCCs were instituted to resolve the lack of coordinated cyber security within and across all the COCOMs. The JCCs charted their own paths for defining the structure of their organizations, determining their work processes, and procuring the tools and capabilities necessary to accomplish their missions. To help address the COCOMs’ capability needs and improve upon their model for technology delivery, leadership at the JCCs turned to Lincoln Laboratory’s Cloudbreak1 initiative, which had been sponsored by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. During its four-year tenure, the Cloudbreak program successfully filled critical gaps in COCOMs’ cyber situational awareness by utilizing an iterative user-centered design process to rapidly deploy cyber capabilities to the warfighter. The Cloudbreak process is designed to address nearterm capability gaps once for all COCOMs rather than once for each COCOM. The overall goal of Cloudbreak
A Device-Independent 3D User Interface for Mobile Phones Based on Motion and Tracking Techniques

The user interaction in mobile phones has been traditionally based on key behaviors that users have adapted around their mobile devices. Although this type of interaction could be suitable for some contents, it could be improved from the point of view of the usability. In this paper we present a new user interface based on 3D navigation oriented to mobile phones. To enhance the user experience, we have developed a new interface based on 3D real-time graphics where users interact by means of natural movements of their devices. The goals of this development consist in enhancing the user interaction and accessibility to web content or interactive multimedia applications by means of avoiding a key-based, or a mouse-based, navigation and proposing a software solution adaptable to multiple and different mobile devices. In this sense, the user inputs can be detected by different input devices such as accelerometers or cameras, as well as the traditional keypads. Since mobile phones with on-board digital cameras are now widely available at low cost, the proposed 3D user interface exploits the acquisition capabilities of these input devices. In this sense, a differential algorithm has been applied in order to estimate phone movements from video images. The results of the performance evaluation of the 3D user interface shows that the proposed algorithm not only obtains a motion and tracking under extreme lighting conditions, but also adds an insignificant overhead to the system performance. Finally, a 3D environment has been designed to evaluate the performance of the presented approach, which has been successfully tested in actual users.
Taxonomy for Evolution of Service-Based System

With the rapid development of service computing related technology, the number of application of service based system (SBS) in enterprise is increasing rapidly. Research on evolution of SBS is becoming more and more important. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy framework for evolution of SBS, which is illustrated from five perspectives: (a) motivations of SBS evolutionary changes (why), (b) stakeholders of SBS evolutionary changes (who), (c) locations of SBS evolutionary changes happening (where), (d) times of SBS evolutionary changes happening (when), (e) support mechanisms in the process of SBS evolutionary changes (how). Furthermore, propagation of evolutionary changes of SBS is analyzed in the paper.