Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Panchromatic wavelet texture features fused with multispectral bands for improved classification of high-resolution satellite imagery

This study presents a novel approach in combining textural information from the panchromatic band with spectral information from the multispectral bands for improved image classification. Firstly, we develop a texture measure based on wavelet coefficients of the panchromatic band that can be aggregated to the resolution of the multispectral bands. Secondly, we combine the texture measures with the spectral information in the multispectral bands in a fuzzy classification framework. Thirdly, we illustrate our approach with a case study of vegetation and land cover classification based on a Quickbird image of subantarctic Macquarie Island.
Introduction to coopetition and innovation: contemporary topics and future research opportunities

Coopetition - collaboration between competing firms - has become a prominent research stream in management literature. In particular, research has shown that coopetition can facilitate innovation among firms, networks, and ecosystems. However, coopetition also involves challenges and tensions, and research on its role in innovation is constantly bringing up new insights, issues, and research opportunities. To this end, this introductory article identifies and elaborates four major discourses in the intersection of coopetition and innovation literatures, and also positions the articles in this special issue within these discourses. We also discuss promising future research opportunities in the domain of coopetition and innovation.
Improved stacked-diode ESD protection in nanoscale CMOS technology

An improved electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection design, using stacked diodes with silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR), is presented to protect the radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuits in nanoscale CMOS process. Using the stacked diodes and SCR together to form diode-triggered-SCR-like paths, the critical ESD current paths are enhanced. The test circuits of the proposed ESD protection and conventional designs are compared in silicon chip. As verified in a 0. 18μm CMOS process, the proposed design exhibits a lower clamping voltage and higher current handling ability during ESD stress conditions, and sufficiently low parasitic capacitance and leakage current during normal circuit operating conditions. Therefore, the proposed design is suitable for ESD protection of RF circuits in low-voltage CMOS process.
Reliability of Enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Fabricated by Fluorine Plasma Treatment

The reliability of enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMTs fabricated by the fluorine plasma treatment technique was investigated by applying OFF-state and ON- state long-term high-electric-field stress. A moderate negative shift (-0.25 V) was observed in the threshold voltage after 288 hours of stress. This shift, however, can be eliminated with an enhancement/depletion dual-gate configuration which effectively prevents high electric field from influencing the fluorine plasma treated area.
Classification of low-level finger contraction from single channel surface EMG

This paper reports a study that has investigated a new technique to identify very low level finger flexion by the classification of single channel surface electromyogram (sEMG). The technique is based on decomposing of sEMG based on the model of transmission of motor unit action potentials (MUAP) in body tissues. This technique is relevant for identifying control commands that are often based on low level and complex muscle contraction such as finger flexion which are often a convenient way for a user to control equipment or a prosthesis device. Use of single channel is extremely important because it does not require an expert to mount the electrodes and has a further advantage in reduced cost and computational complexity. The paper reports experiments conducted on four healthy volunteer subjects with four actions and tested over 50 repetition and a high classification accuracy.
Double-blind controlled randomised study of lactulose and lignin hydrolysed combination in complex therapy of atopic dermatitis

Background Atopic dermatitis (AD) is an immune mediated disease with complex pathogenesis characterised by persistency, frequent exacerbations, and inefficacy of existing therapies. Damaged or weakened intestinal microbiocenosis is considered as an important aetiological factor of AD. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of medical preparation Lactofiltrum (lactulose and sorbent (lignin hydrolysed)) in comparison with placebo in complex with standard therapy of AD. Methods Double-blind, placebo controlled, randomised comparative study of effectiveness and safety of 400 mg lactulose and 120 mg lignin hydrolysed combination as a part of standard combined AD treatment, conducted in parallel groups of patients aged 18–60. Results Comparison of clinical efficacy of Lactofiltrum in combination with the standard treatment has been demonstrated by measuring the following parameters: administration of Lactofiltrum results in 1) distinct clinical improvement in 56.75% of patients, 2) decrease of the mean values of scoring atopic dermatitis (SCORAD) index in 71.94% of patients, 3) elimination of itching in 50% of patients, and 4) life quality improvement for 76.41%. In the placebo group, 1) distinct clinical improvement was observed in 20% of patients, 2) decrease in SCORAD index values observed by 56.98%, 3) itching relief in 15.56%, and 4) life quality improvement by 36.38%. Conclusions Clinical improvement and persistent termination of clinical symptoms provide evidence of effectiveness in use of Lactofiltrum combined with the standard treatment of AD.
Inflectional Bootstrapping in 2-year-olds

The theory of syntactic bootstrapping proposes that children can use syntax to infer the meanings of words. This paper presents experimental evidence that children are also able to use word inflections to infer word reference. Twenty-four- and 30-month-olds were tested in a preferential looking experiment. Children were shown a pair of novel images, one showing a single object, the other a pair of objects, whilst they heard novel words with and without the English plural inflection. Word-image associations were then assessed. Analyses revealed that the older group of children had learnt to associate the words with the appropriate pictures. These results demonstrate that early in the third year, children are readily able to identify whether a spoken word is a singular or plural form, that they have a proper understanding of the significance of plural morphology and that they can deploy this knowledge inferentially to aid the process of word learning—a strategy we call inflectional bootstrapping.
A Double-Blind, Randomized, and Placebo-Controlled Trial of Buspirone Added to Risperidone in Patients With Chronic Schizophrenia

Objective: The role of partial agonism at 5-HT1A receptors in general and of buspirone in particular remains unclear in the treatment of negative symptoms of schizophrenia. This study was designed to investigate the effect of buspirone added to risperidone as augmentation therapy in patients with chronic schizophrenia and prominent negative symptoms in a double-blind randomized clinical trial. Methods: The participants were 31 men and 15 women aged 19 to 44 years who were inpatients at 2 psychiatric teaching hospitals in Iran. All patients were inpatients and were in the active phase of the illness and met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision criteria for schizophrenia. Patients were allocated in a random fashion: 23 patients to risperidone at 6 mg/d plus buspirone at 60 mg/d and 20 patients to risperidone at 6 mg/d plus placebo. The outcome was measured using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Results: The buspirone group had significantly greater improvement in the negative symptoms and positive general psychopathology subscales and Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale total scores over the 8-week trial. Therapy with 60 mg of buspirone per day was well tolerated, and no clinically important adverse effects were observed. Conclusions: The present study indicates buspirone as a potential adjunctive treatment strategy for the treatment of schizophrenia, in particular, negative symptoms. Nevertheless, results of larger controlled trials are needed before recommendation for a broad clinical application can be made. This trial is registered with the Iranian Clinical Trials Registry (IRCT138712051556N8).
Health Literacy and Health Status in People With Chronic Heart Failure

Purpose/Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate whether health literacy, self-efficacy, and medication adherence can explain or predict the variance in health outcomes (measured as perceived physical or mental health status [HS]) in persons with chronic heart failure (HF). Design: A nonexperimental cross-sectional survey study used data gathered from 175 patients with chronic HF from urban cardiology practices in the northeast United States. Methods: The Paasche-Orlow and Wolf Causal Pathways conceptual model and Bandura's self-efficacy theory were used to select and test variables in the study. A demographic questionnaire, the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy, the Self-Efficacy for Appropriate Medication Use Scale, the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale, and the Short Form-12 version 2 assessing perceived physical and mental HS were completed. Multiple hierarchical regression analyses were used to analyze relationships among the variables. Results: Significant associations between health literacy and self-efficacy and between health literacy and perceived mental HS were found (P < .05). High self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of physical HS (P < .01). The strongest predictor of mental HS was medication adherence (P < .01). Conclusions: Support of self-efficacy and medication adherence may improve HS. Including health literacy strategies in clinical practice may support improvements in HS in people with chronic HF.
Reversion strategy for online portfolio selection with transaction costs

This paper is about the online portfolio selection problem with transaction costs, which is an unavoidable factor in real financial trading. By exploiting the mean reversion property of stock prices, we propose a portfolio selection strategy named 'mean reversion strategy with transaction costs (MRTC)'. To avoid overmuch transaction costs, the strategy adaptively transfers a proper amount of capital between stocks to adjust the turnover. Furthermore, we conduct numerical experiments on several real market datasets, and show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the existing state-of-the-art ones when taking transaction costs into account.
Multirobot Internet-based architecture for telemanipulation: experimental validation

The design of online robots is a difficult task that must take into account multiple aspects like for example: (1) the system architecture, (2) the user interface, (3) communications, (4) time delay, (5) limited bandwidth, etc. Besides this, taking into account that the Web permits multiple people to easily access a single system, methods for managing the control of a unique robot must be designed (e.g. off-line virtual interfaces, connecting several robots to the system, etc.). In this paper we present the system architecture that have been used in our laboratory to let users program remotely two educational and two industrial robots through the same Web based system. Experimental results show different alternatives to organize the architecture and focus on the system performance aspects.
Lack of relationship between Down's syndrome and maternal exposure to Australia antigen.

Serologic evidence of exposure to Australia (Au) antigen prior to conception, as indicated by the presence of Au antigen or Au antibody during pregnancy, was not more frequent in 58 mothers who delivered infants with Down's syndrome than in 58 mothers who delivered normal babies. Australia antibody was detected in 13.8% (eight of 58) of the serum samples of mothers delivering infants with Down's syndrome and in 25.8% (14 of 58) of the matched control mothers. Probable placental transfer of antibody was observed in ten of 11 cases in which there was detectable maternal Au antibody. While no association was found for serum hepatitis and Down's syndrome, the possible association of maternal infectious hepatitis and Down's syndrome could not be assessed as there are as yet no reliable tests for infectious hepatitis virus or antibody.
Taxonomic review of the New World tamarins (Primates: Callitrichidae)

Twelve generic names have been ascribed to the New World tamarins but all are currently placed in just one: Saguinus Hoffmannsegg, 1807. Based on geographical distributions, morphology, and pelage patterns and coloration, they have been divided into six species groups: (1) nigricollis, (2) mystax, (3) midas, (4) inustus, (5) bicolor and (6) oedipus. Molecular phylogenetic studies have validated five of these groups; each are distinct clades. Saguinus inustus is embedded in the mystax group. Genetic studies show that tamarins are sister to all other callitrichids, diverging 15−13 Ma. The small-bodied nigricollis group diverged from the remaining, larger tamarins 11−8 Ma, and the mystax group diverged 7−6 Ma; these radiations are older than those of the marmosets (Callithrix, Cebuella, Mico), which began to diversify 6−5 Ma. The oedipus group diverged from the midas and bicolor groups 5−4 Ma. We review recent taxonomic changes and summarize the history of the generic names. Taking into account the Late Miocene divergence time (11−8 Ma) between the large- and small-bodied tamarin lineages, the small size of the nigricollis group species when compared with other tamarins, and the sympatry of the nigricollis group species with the larger mystax group species, we argue that the nigricollis group be recognized as a distinct genus: Leontocebus Wagner, 1839.
Preclinical studies of the Chinese Herbal Medicine formulation PHY906 (KD018) as a potential adjunct to radiation therapy

Abstract Objective: Abdominal and pelvic radiotherapy is limited by the radiosensitivity of the small and large intestine. PHY906 (KD018), a state-of-the-art, well defined adaptation of a traditional Chinese medicine, decreased intestinal injury from chemotherapy in preclinical studies and is in clinical trials with chemotherapy. This project assessed whether PHY906 would also reduce intestinal injury from abdominal irradiation in mice. Materials and methods: BALB/c mice received whole-abdomen irradiation (2 Gy/day) ± PHY906 by oral gavage twice daily for 4 days. Intestinal injury was assayed by physiological observations and histological studies. Effects of PHY906 on EMT6 mouse mammary tumors were assayed in tumor growth studies. Results: PHY906 decreased toxicity from fractionated abdominal irradiation. Radiation alone produced marked blunting and loss of villi, crypt hyperplasia and irregular crypt morphology, which were reduced by PHY906. The radiation-induced reduction in viable crypt numbers was also mitigated by PHY906. PHY906 did not alter radiation-induced weight loss, but resulted in more rapid recovery. PHY906 did not alter tumor growth, local invasion or metastatic spread and did not protect tumors from growth delays produced by single-dose or fractionated irradiation. Conclusion: In this mouse model, PHY906 (KD018) decreased the toxicity of abdominal irradiation without protecting tumors and thereby increased the therapeutic ratio.
Adaptive Interleaved Sampling for Interactive High‐Fidelity Rendering

Recent advances have made interactive ray tracing (IRT) possible on consumer desktop machines. These advances have brought about the potential for interactive global illumination (IGI) with enhanced realism through physically based lighting. IGI, unlike IRT, has a much higher computational complexity. Furthermore, since non‐primary rays constitute the majority of the computation, the rays are predominantly incoherent, making impractical many of the methods that have made IRT possible. Two methods that have already shown promise in decreasing the computational time of the GI solution are interleaved sampling and adaptive rendering. Interleaved sampling is a generalized sampling scheme that smoothly blends between regular and irregular sampling while maintaining coherence. Adaptive rendering algorithms adjust rendering quality, non‐uniformally, using a guidance scheme. While adaptive rendering has shown to provide speed‐up when used for off‐line rendering it has not been utilized in IRT due to its naturally incoherent nature. In this paper, we combine adaptive rendering and interleaved sampling within a component‐based solution into a new approach we term adaptive interleaved sampling. This allows us to tailor new adaptive heuristics for interleaved sampling of the individual components of the GI solution significantly improving overall performance. We present a novel component‐based IGI framework for which we achieve interactive frame rates for a range of effects such as indirect diffuse lighting, soft shadows and single scatter homogeneous participating media.
Machine Learning for Wireless Networks with Artificial Intelligence: A Tutorial on Neural Networks

Next-generation wireless networks must support ultra-reliable, low-latency communication and intelligently manage a massive number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in real-time, within a highly dynamic environment. This need for stringent communication quality-of-service (QoS) requirements as well as mobile edge and core intelligence can only be realized by integrating fundamental notions of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning across the wireless infrastructure and end-user devices. In this context, this paper provides a comprehensive tutorial that introduces the main concepts of machine learning, in general, and artificial neural networks (ANNs), in particular, and their potential applications in wireless communications. For this purpose, we present a comprehensive overview on a number of key types of neural networks that include feed-forward, recurrent, spiking, and deep neural networks. For each type of neural network, we present the basic architecture and training procedure, as well as the associated challenges and opportunities. Then, we provide an in-depth overview on the variety of wireless communication problems that can be addressed using ANNs, ranging from communication using unmanned aerial vehicles to virtual reality and edge caching.For each individual application, we present the main motivation for using ANNs along with the associated challenges while also providing a detailed example for a use case scenario and outlining future works that can be addressed using ANNs. In a nutshell, this article constitutes one of the first holistic tutorials on the development of machine learning techniques tailored to the needs of future wireless networks.
The Relationship Between Supervisor Support and Registered Nurse Outcomes in Nursing Care Units

Workplace social support is a major characteristic related to the Job Demand-Control model of job stress. Organizational and managerial support have an effect on nurse satisfaction and burnout. The relationships between perceived supervisor support and measures of nurse occupation-related outcomes were investigated in 3 nursing units within an academic medical center. Nurses with greater levels of perceived supervisor support experienced more positive job outcomes and less negative outcomes, including less occupational stress, than nurses with less perceived supervisor support. Implications for refocusing the role of the nurse supervisor and its effect on multiple nursing occupation-related outcomes are discussed.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa: changes in antibiotic susceptibility, enzymatic activity, and antigenicity among colonial morphotypes

Colonial variants of Pseudomonas aeruginosa have received renewed interest because of their occurrence in sputum cultures of patients with cystic fibrosis. We encountered 11 strains of P. aeruginosa from various body sites of non-cystic fibrosis patients. The strains showed two to three colonial variants, including smooth, rough, and iridescent morphotypes that arose from subculture of a single colony of P. aeruginosa originating from a primary source. The colonial segregants differed in antibiotic susceptibility (resistance to gentamicin, carbenicillin, chloramphenicol, and tetracycline), presence or absence of exoenzymes (gelatinase and elastase), degree of proteolytic activity (caseinase), pigmentation, and antigenicity. These observations suggest that in vivo dissociation with concomitant changes in enzymatic and surface properties might greatly enhance invasiveness. Concurrent differences in antimicrobial susceptibility among the colonial variants could account in some instances for the failure of antibiotic treatment in P. aeruginosa infections in which one would anticipate a positive therapeutic response.
The Influence of Chronic Heart Failure in Patient-Partner Dyads-A Comparative Study Addressing Issues of Health-Related Quality of Life

Background:Patients with chronic heart failure (HF) and their partners face many challenges associated with heart disease. High social support in a close relationship has been found to improve survival in patients with HF. However, caring for a patient with HF may have negative effects on the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of the partner responsible for the care. The main focus in health care is still on improving patients' HRQOL, but the awareness of partners' and families' role and situation is increasing. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify these issues and the importance of partners in relation to HRQOL of patients with HF. Objectives:To describe and compare HRQOL, quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) weights, symptoms of depression, and perceived control and knowledge in patients with chronic HF and their partners and to compare HRQOL and QALY weights in the partners with an age- and sex-matched group. Methods:Data were collected from 135 patient-partner dyads at 2 Swedish hospitals. Data on the reference group were collected from the same region. Results:Patients had lower HRQOL in all dimensions (P < .001) except in the mental health domain and lower QALY weights compared with their partners (P < .001). Mental health scores were lower in partners compared with the age- and sex-matched references (P < .001). All other HRQOL scores and the QALY weights were comparable between partners and reference group. Patients had more depressive symptoms than did their partners (P < .001). There was no difference in the level of perceived control or knowledge about chronic HF between patients and partners. Conclusions:Our findings confirm that partners of patients with chronic HF have markedly diminished mental health. Interventions focusing on education and psychosocial support may potentially promote mental health in partners and enhance their ability to support the patient.