Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Numerical modeling of artificial ionospheric layers driven by high‐power HF heating

[1] We present a multi-scale dynamic model for the creation and propagation of artificial plasma layers in the ionosphere observed during high-power high-frequency (HF) heating experiments at HAARP. Ordinary (O) mode electromagnetic (EM) waves excite parametric instabilities and strong Langmuir turbulence (SLT) near the reflection point. The coupling between high-frequency electromagnetic and Langmuir waves and low-frequency ion acoustic waves is numerically simulated using a generalized Zakharov equation. The acceleration of plasma electrons is described by a Fokker-Planck model with an effective diffusion coefficient constructed using the simulated Langmuir wave spectrum. The propagation of the accelerated electrons through the non-uniform ionosphere is simulated by a kinetic model accounting for elastic and inelastic collisions with neutrals. The resulting ionization of neutral gas increases the plasma density below the acceleration region, so that the pump wave is reflected at a lower altitude. This leads to a new turbulent layer at the lower altitude, resulting in a descending artificial ionized layer (DAIL), that moves from near 230 km to about 150 km. At the terminal altitude, ionization, recombination, and ambipolar diffusion reach equilibrium, so the descent stops. The modeling results reproduce artificial ionospheric layers produced for similar sets of parameters during the high-power HF experiments at HAARP. Citation: Eliasson, B. , X. Shao, G. Milikh, E. V. Mishin, and K. Papadopoulos (2012), Numerical modeling of artificial ionospheric layers driven by high-power HF heating, J. Geophys. Res., 117, A10321, doi:10.1029/2012JA018105.
Plasma oestrone‐fatty acid ester levels are correlated with body fat mass in humans

The metabolites of steroidal hormones, including sulphate, glucuronide, and fatty acid (FA) ester derivatives, have received little attention, although these steroid derivatives are essential components in the global assessment of steroid metabolism. The study of FA‐derivatives could, in obesity, contribute some insights into factors modulating steroid metabolism and their plasma levels. In a recent study we found that, in rats, an oestrone‐fatty acid ester (E1‐FA) was produced by white adipose tissue and released into lipoproteins in the bloodstream. We have examined whether E1‐FA levels correlate with body fat and insulin sensitivity in humans.
Enhanced Models for Expertise Retrieval Using Community-Aware Strategies

Expertise retrieval, whose task is to suggest people with relevant expertise on the topic of interest, has received increasing interest in recent years. One of the issues is that previous algorithms mainly consider the documents associated with the experts while ignoring the community information that is affiliated with the documents and the experts. Motivated by the observation that communities could provide valuable insight and distinctive information, we investigate and develop two community-aware strategies to enhance expertise retrieval. We first propose a new smoothing method using the community context for statistical language modeling, which is employed to identify the most relevant documents so as to boost the performance of expertise retrieval in the document-based model. Furthermore, we propose a query-sensitive AuthorRank to model the authors' authorities based on the community coauthorship networks and develop an adaptive ranking refinement method to enhance expertise retrieval. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of both community-aware strategies. Moreover, the improvements made in the enhanced models are significant and consistent.
Periodicity and Evoked Responses in Motor Cortex

Spiking in primary motor cortex (MI) exhibits a characteristic beta frequency periodicity, but the functional relevance of this rhythmic firing is controversial. We simultaneously recorded multiple single units and local field potentials in MI in two monkeys (Macaca mulatta) during continuous, self-paced movements to serially presented targets. We find that the appearance of each new target evokes precisely timed spiking in MI at a characteristic latency but that the exact timing of this response varies depending on its relationship to the phase of the ongoing beta range oscillation. As a result of this interaction between evoked spiking and endogenous beta periodicity, we find that the amount of information about target location encoded in the spiking of MI neurons is not simply a function of elapsed time but depends also on oscillatory phase. Our results suggest that periodicity may be an important feature of the early stages of sensorimotor processing in the cortical motor system.
Fiber optics for atmospheric mine monitoring

The authors describe work done by the US Bureau of Mines to address methane, carbon monoxide, and distributed temperature monitoring. A review is made of the potential and problems of using fiber optics for mine monitoring systems. Methane detection is based on differential absorption of infrared light. A methane monitor that can detect concentrations as low as 0.2% as far away as 2 km via fiber-optic cable is described. The upper range is 100% volume methane. Since the system requires no electrical power within the mines, it is intrinsically safe. A carbon monoxide monitoring system that combines a low-powdered electrochemical cell with fiber-optic telemetry is described. Testing has shown the system can operate maintenance-free for several months. Finally, a distributed fiber-optic temperature monitoring system is being investigated for possible application in mine fire detection. The sensor employs optical time domain reflectometry techniques that allow the entire length of fiber (up to 2 km) to function as a distributed temperature sensor. <<ETX>>
To Harvest and Jam: A Paradigm of Self-Sustaining Friendly Jammers for Secure AF Relaying

This paper studies the use of multi-antenna harvest-and-jam (HJ) helpers in a multi-antenna amplify-and-forward (AF) relay wiretap channel assuming that the direct link between the source and destination is broken. Our objective is to maximize the secrecy rate at the destination subject to the transmit power constraints of the AF relay and the HJ helpers. In the case of perfect channel state information (CSI), the joint optimization of the artificial noise (AN) covariance matrix for cooperative jamming and the AF beamforming matrix is studied using semidefinite relaxation (SDR) which is tight, while suboptimal solutions are also devised with lower complexity. For the imperfect CSI case, we provide the equivalent reformulation of the worst-case robust optimization to maximize the minimum achievable secrecy rate. Inspired by the optimal solution to the case of perfect CSI, a suboptimal robust scheme is proposed striking a good tradeoff between complexity and performance. Finally, numerical results for various settings are provided to evaluate the proposed schemes.
Improvement in Mycobacterial Yield and Reduced Time to Detection in Pediatric Samples by Use of a Nutrient Broth Growth Supplement

ABSTRACT There is an urgent need to improve the methods used for the bacteriological diagnosis of childhood mycobacterial disease. This study compared the mycobacterial yields and the times to detection (in days) of mycobacteria in pediatric clinical specimens by using Mycobacterial Growth Indicator Tubes (MGITs) and solid Löwenstein-Jensen (LJ) slants with and without a nutrient broth supplement. A total of 801 specimens from 493 patients were processed: 82.8% were gastric aspirate specimens, 15.6% were sputum specimens, and 1.6% were fine-needle-aspiration biopsy specimens. The mycobacterial yield obtained with MGITs (with and without nutrient broth) was 11.0%, and that obtained with LJ slants was 1.6% (P < 0.001). Of the 88 positive cultures, 62 were detected in MGITs and 73 were detected in MGITs supplemented with nutrient broth (P = 0.11). The mean time to detection in MGITs (without nutrient broth) was 18.5 days, whereas it was 12.4 days in MGITs with nutrient broth (P < 0.001). Supplementation of standard MGITs improved the mycobacterial yield and significantly reduced the time to detection of mycobacteria in pediatric samples.
Adhésion volontaire versus adhésion involontaire dans la production d'un bien collectif. Etude expérimentale.

Dans cette these nous nous interrogeons sur les consequences d'une approche volontariste de decentralisation de la gestion de perimetres irrigues en Tunisie sur le comportement cooperatif des agriculteurs. Nous examinons l'effet de l'adhesion volontaire comme mecanisme incitatif dans la provision d'un bien collectif. Pour cela, nous comparons la provision d'un bien public avec seuil de fourniture a celle d'un bien club. Notre experimentation a ete conduite en laboratoire et sur le terrain. L'experience montre que la presence d'adhesion volontaire augmente la contribution du groupe, le succes de provision et le bien etre. Elle augmente aussi le nombre de contributeurs dans le groupe. Une explication possible de nos resultats peut etre la reduction de l'incertitude strategique. Notre experience revele egalement que lorsque la dimension risque dans le jeu est neutralise, l'adhesion volontaire n'ameliore plus la contribution du groupe. L'adhesion volontaire fait alors seulement baisser la variance. L'etude de la validite externe des resultats obtenus en laboratoire montre qu'il n'existe pas de differences importantes en fonction de l'origine des sujets. Le comportement cooperatif des etudiants tunisiens est similaire au comportement des sujets d'origine montpellieraine. Seule, la variance de contribution du groupe baisse. Cependant, l'experience de terrain avec les agriculteurs montre que l'adhesion volontaire n'ameliore pas le comportement cooperatif autant que dans le laboratoire. Le succes de provision et le bien etre s'ameliorent seulement dans un group d'agriculteurs sur trois. L'experience de terrain montre neanmoins que l'adhesion volontaire augmente le nombre des contributeurs et revele un niveau de cooperation eleve qui se maintient dans le temps.
Trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole compared with ciprofloxacin for treatment and prophylaxis of Isospora belli and Cyclospora cayetanensis infection in HIV-infected patients. A randomized, controlled trial.

BACKGROUND In developing countries, Isospora belli and Cyclospora cayetanensis frequently cause chronic diarrhea in HIV-infected patients. OBJECTIVE To compare 1 week of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole treatment and 1 week of ciprofloxacin treatment in HIV-infected patients with chronic diarrhea caused by I. belli and C. cayetanensis. DESIGN Randomized, controlled trial. SETTING HIV clinic in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. PATIENTS 42 HIV-infected patients with chronic diarrhea due to I. belli (n = 22) or C cayetanensis (n = 20). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomly assigned to receive oral trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (160 mg or 800 mg) or ciprofloxacin (500 mg) twice daily for 7 days. Patients who responded clinically and microbiologically received prophylaxis for 10 weeks (1 tablet orally, three times per week). MEASUREMENTS Treatment success was measured by cessation of diarrhea and negative stool examination at day 7. Prophylaxis success was measured by recurrent disease rate. RESULTS Diarrhea ceased in all 19 patients treated with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Eighteen of 19 patients had negative results on stool examination at day 7 (95%). Among the 23 patients who received ciprofloxacin, diarrhea ceased in 20 (87% [CI; 66% to 97%]) and 16 had negative results on stool examination at day 7 (70%). By survival analysis, diarrhea from isosporiasis and cyclosporiasis ceased more rapidly with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole than with ciprofloxacin. All patients receiving secondary prophylaxis with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole remained disease-free, and 15 of 16 patients receiving secondary prophylaxis with ciprofloxacin remained disease-free. CONCLUSIONS A 1-week course of trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole is effective in HIV-infected patients with cyclosporiasis or isosporiasis. Although ciprofloxacin is not as effective, it is acceptable for patients who cannot tolerate trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.
Parent experiences of variations in service delivery of Rapid Syllable Transition (ReST) treatment for childhood apraxia of speech

ABSTRACT Purpose: To understand parents’ perceptions of Rapid Syllable Transition (ReST) treatment and their experience of either telehealth or combined parent-clinician delivery of speech–language pathology. Method: Thematic analyses of semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 parents (5 telehealth, 5 parent-clinician) after their child completed 12 sessions of ReST treatment. Results: Three themes were unique to telehealth: “telehealth was a million times easier,” “technical problems weren’t deal breakers,” and “telehealth therapy has different boundaries. ” Three themes were unique to parent-clinician delivery: “therapy is something to get over and done with,” “I wasn’t very good at doing therapy,” and “my child doesn’t like me as his therapist. ” Both groups had themes related to the significance of childhood apraxia of speech, the importance of specialist treatment, and ReST being a “different way forward. ” Conclusions: Speech–language pathologists should carefully consider the suitability of caregiver-provided ReST treatment, and increase telehealth delivery of ReST treatment.
Reliability of patient-reported outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis patients: an observational prospective study.

OBJECTIVE Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) such as pain, patient global assessment (PGA) and fatigue are regularly assessed in RA patients. In the present study, we aimed to explore the reliability and smallest detectable differences (SDDs) of these PROs, and whether the time between assessments has an impact on reliability. METHODS Forty RA patients on stable treatment reported the three PROs daily over two subsequent months. We assessed the reliability of these measures by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and the SDDs for 1-, 7-, 14- and 28-day test-retest intervals. RESULTS Overall, SDD and ICC were 25 mm and 0.67 for pain, 25 mm and 0.71 for PGA and 30 mm and 0.66 for fatigue, respectively. SDD was higher with longer time period between assessments, ranging from 19 mm (1-day intervals) to 30 mm (28-day intervals) for pain, 19 to 33 mm for PGA, and 26 to 34 mm for fatigue; correspondingly, ICC was smaller with longer intervals, and ranged between the 1- and the 28-day interval from 0.80 to 0.50 for pain, 0.83 to 0.57 for PGA and 0.76 to 0.58 for fatigue. The baseline simplified disease activity index did not have any influence on reliability. Lower baseline PRO scores led to smaller SDDs. CONCLUSION Reliability of pain, PGA and fatigue measurements is dependent on the tested time interval and the baseline levels. The relatively high SDDs, even for patients in the lowest tertiles of their PROs, indicate potential issues for assessment of the presence of remission.
Identifying changes in spatial patterns from police interventions: the importance of multiple methods of analysis

The policing initiative of foot patrol was implemented to reduce crime and disorder as well as benefit the relationship between the community and the police in the community of Lower Lonsdale, North Vancouver, British Columbia. In this paper, police incident data are analyzed to evaluate the impact of police foot patrol on the hot spots of crime in this community. Specifically, two spatial analysis techniques (kernel density estimation and local Moran’s I) are used to show how the nuances of changes in spatial crime patterns can emerge when multiple methods of analysis are used.
Short term fluctuations of wind and solar power systems

Wind and solar power are known to be highly influenced by weather events and may ramp up or down abruptly. Such events in the power production influence not only the availability of energy, but also the stability of the entire power grid. By analysing significant amounts of data from several regions around the world with resolutions of seconds to minutes, we provide strong evidence that renewable wind and solar sources exhibit multiple types of variability and nonlinearity in the time scale of seconds and characterise their stochastic properties. In contrast to previous findings, we show that only the jumpy characteristic of renewable sources decreases when increasing the spatial size over which the renewable energies are harvested. Otherwise, the strong non-Gaussian, intermittent behaviour in the cumulative power of the total field survives even for a country-wide distribution of the systems. The strong fluctuating behaviour of renewable wind and solar sources can be well characterised by Kolmogorov-like power spectra and q-exponential probability density functions. Using the estimated potential shape of power time series, we quantify the jumpy or diffusive dynamic of the power. Finally we propose a time delayed feedback technique as a control algorithm to suppress the observed short term non-Gaussian statistics in spatially strong correlated and intermittent renewable sources.
Responsiveness of outcome measures in patients with superior labral anterior and posterior lesions

Background Evaluation of patients with superior labral anterior and posterior (SLAP) lesions requires outcome measures validated for the purpose. The present study aimed to evaluate the responsiveness of the Rowe score, Oxford Instability Shoulder Score (OISS), Western Ontario Shoulder Instability Index (WOSI) and EuroQol (EQ-5D and EQ-VAS) in patients treated for SLAP lesions. Methods Eighty-nine patients were included: 34 had arthroscopic labral repair, 28 had mini-open biceps tenodesis and 27 had physical treatment. The outcome measures were administrated before treatment and after 6 months. Responsiveness was evaluated using standardized response mean (SRM), area under receiver-operating characteristic curve (ROCAUC), reliable chance proportion (RCP) statistics and hypothesis testing. Minimal clinically important change (MCIC) estimates were reported. Results All outcome measures had high values of SRM (0.86–1.92). RCPs for the improved group were 68% to 79% for OISS, WOSI and Rowe score, and 15% to 49% for EuroQol. ROCAUC was >0.70 for all outcomes. MCIC estimates were 8 and 10 for OISS; 451 and 569 for WOSI; 17 and 18 for Rowe score; 0.39 and 0.53 for EQ-5D; and 35 and 41 for EQ-VAS. Responsiveness tested with hypotheses favours the shoulder-specific outcomes. Conclusions OISS, WOSI and Rowe score are more responsive than EuroQol in evaluation of patients with SLAP lesions.
Analysis of the Reported Ethical Complaints and Violations to the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification, 2006–2013

This study reviewed ethical complaints and violations received from Fiscal Year 2006–2013 by the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification. There were 71 complaints, of which 37 cases (52.1%) progressed to full adjudication. Of the cases involving a violation, more than half (56.4%) involved ethical misconduct pertaining to role and relationship boundaries, client rights and welfare, and honest and responsible conduct. Strategies to ameliorate common violations as well as define and promote the ethical behavior of all Certified Rehabilitation Counselors are provided.
Automatic Facial Skin Defect Detection System

Skin analysis is one of the most important procedures before medical cosmetology. Most conventional skin analysis systems are semi-automatic. They often require human intervention. In this study, an automatic facial skin defect detection approach is proposed. The system first detects human face in the facial image. Based on the detected face, facial features are extracted to locate regions of interest. Then, a pattern recognition approach is applied to detect facial skin defects, such as spots and wrinkles, in the regions of interest. For a specific kind of defect, a classifier is designed to provide higher performance for recognition. Using few features extracted from the region of interest, the proposed approach can successfully detect the skin defects. Experimental results demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed approach.
IL12p40 Regulates Functional Development of Human CD4+ T Cells

AbstractThe proinflammatory effects of IL12p40 had been documented in the literature, and anti-IL12p40 treatment had been proved to be effective in therapy of Crohn disease (CD) in a phase 2b clinical trial. However, the precise role of IL12p40 in the pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) was still poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the expressions of IL12p40 and its receptor interleukin-12 receptor &bgr; 1 both locally and systemically in IBD cases and healthy controls, and the contribution of IL12p40 in IBD pathogenesis. We found that the expression of IL12p40 was elevated both at messenger RNA and protein levels systematically and locally in IBD patients but more significantly in CD patients. Our genetic association study revealed that the polymorphisms of IL12B rs6887695 were associated with both CD and ulcerative colitis (UC) susceptibility in Chinese population, but did not affect the serum IL12p40 level in either CD patients or UC patients. In addition, CD4+ T cells isolated from peripheral blood of CD patients secreted the most abundant IL12p40 production, compared with the UC patients and healthy controls. We also found for the first time that neutralizing IL12p40 secretion could inhibit proliferation, enhance apoptosis, induce a G0/G1 arrest, restrain T helper 1 type immune responses, and promote chemokine C-C motif ligand 20-mediated migration of human CD4+ T cells, which might be the mechanisms why anti-IL12p40 treatment presented efficacy in CD.
Quality Assessment of Wikipedia External Links

: Wikipedia is a unique source of information that has been collectively supplied by thousands of people. Since its nascence in 2001, Wikipedia is continuously evolving and like most websites it is interconnected via hyperlinks to other web information sources. Wikipedia articles contain two types of links: internal and external. Internal links point to other Wikipedia articles, while external links point outside Wikipedia and normally they are not used in the body of the article. Although there exist specific guidelines about both the style and the purpose of the article external links, no approach has been recorded that tries to capture in a systematic manner the quality of Wikipedia external links. In this paper, we study the quality of Wikipedia external links by assessing the degree to which these conform to their intended purpose; that is to formulate a comprehensive list of accurate information sources about the article contents. For our study, we estimate the decay of Wikipedia external links and we investigate their distribution in the Wikipedia articles. Our measurements give perceptible evidence for the value of external links and may imply their corresponding articles' quality in a holistic Wikipedia evaluation.
Do we need wide flits in Networks-on-Chip?

Packet-based Networks-on-Chip (NoC) have emerged as the most viable candidates for the interconnect backbone of future Chip Multi-Processors (CMP). The flit size (or width) is one of the fundamental design parameters within a NoC router, which affects both the performance and the cost of the network. Most studies pertaining to the NoC of general-purpose microprocessors adopt a certain flit width without any reasoning or explanation. In fact, it is not easy to pinpoint an optimal flit size, because the flit size is intricately intertwined with various aspects of the system. This paper aims to provide a guideline on how to choose an appropriate flit width. It will be demonstrated that arbitrarily choosing a flit width without proper investigation may have serious repercussions on the overall behavior of the system.