Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Analysis of FSO Modulation Schemes with Diversity Reception Over Atmospheric Turbulence Channel

Although free space optical (FSO) communication has attracted a wide spectrum of applications since it is a license free and highly bandwidth access technique [1], it has to overcome many challenges that originate from free space propagation media. These challenges may include snow, fog, smog and aerosol scattering, which leave the terrestrial FSO communication link weak to adverse weather conditions. Atmosphere turbulence causing by atmospheric temperature and pressure inhomogeneity is the major impairment in FSO communication and this will lead to optical signal refractive index fluctuations [2]. When the optical signal passes through such a turbulent atmosphere, it will experience random fluctuation in the intensity that’s lead to fluctuations in the received signals' amplitude and phase. This phenomenon is termed as scintillation [3]. Degradation of the FSO communication performance is the direct effect of scintillation due to causing deep signal fades and thus increasing the bit error rate [3].
Using UCODE_2005 and PHREEQC To Determine Thermodynamic Constants from Experimental Data

This article presents a method for estimating chemical thermodynamic constants from experimental data using the two computer programs UCODE_2005 and PHREEQC. As an example, the conditional stability constant for lead (Pb) complexation by a remediation agent (carboxymethyl‐β‐cyclodextrin) is estimated, but the method can be applied to estimate other thermodynamic parameters such as sorption constants and degradation rate constants. Advantages of this technique include estimation of uncertainties associated with estimated parameters, evaluation of information content of observations, statistical evaluation of the appropriateness of the conceptual model, and statistical‐based comparison of different models.
Evidence for Gender‐Specific Endophenotypes in High‐Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder During Empathy

Despite remarkable behavioral gender differences in patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and growing evidence for a diminished male : female ratio for the putative “male disorder” ASD, aspects of gender are not addressed accordingly in ASD research. Our study aims at filling this gap by exploring empathy abilities in a group of 28 patients with high‐functioning ASD and 28 gender‐, age‐ and education‐matched non‐autistic subjects, for the first time by means of functional neuroimaging (fMRI). In an event‐related fMRI paradigm, emotional (“E”) and neutral (“N”) video clips presented actors telling self‐related short stories. After each clip, participants were asked to indicate their own emotion and its intensity as well as the emotion and intensity perceived for the actor. Behaviorally, we found significantly less empathic responses in the overall ASD group compared with non‐autistic subjects, and inadequate emotion recognition for the neutral clips in the female ASD group compared with healthy women. Neurally, increased activation of the bilateral medial frontal gyrus was found in male patients compared with female patients, a pattern which was not present in the non‐autistic group. Additionally, autistic women exhibited decreased activation of midbrain and limbic regions compared with non‐autistic women, whereas there was no significant difference within the male group. While we did not find a fundamental empathic deficit in autistic patients, our data propose different ways of processing empathy in autistic men and women, suggesting stronger impairments in cognitive aspects of empathy/theory of mind for men, and alterations of social reciprocity for women. Autism Res 2013, 6: 506–521. © 2013 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Impact of an Evidence-Based Practice Course on Occupational Therapist's Confidence Levels and Goals

ABSTRACT Confidence levels of 136 Irish occupational therapists were measured before and after an evidence based practice training course. Ranked scores on the evidence based practice confidence scale showed statistically significant improvement in all areas between pre and post course. Goals set by therapists to integrate EBP into their practice following the course were analysed and grouped into categories which included: 1) getting ready to use evidence based practice, 2) examining current and best practices, and 3) promoting a culture of evidence based practice in the workplace. Course feedback using Likert scales identified satisfaction with course content and delivery method.
Evaluation of Possible Failure of the Mononuclear Phagocyte System after Total Splenectomy in Rats

Young and adult Wistar rats were submitted to total splenectomy and compared to animals not submitted to any surgical manipulation in order to evaluate the phagocytic function of spleen. The animals were infected with Escherichia coli labeled with technetium-99m and killed 20 minutes later. Liver, lung, spleen and a blood clot sample were taken. No significant differences were found in the percentage of bacterial radioactivity uptake in mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS) organs in young and adult splenectomized rats. However, phagocytosis index by macrophages of MPS organs was smaller in splenectomized animals than in control group. Splenectomized rats were associated with a higher blood bacterial radioactivity uptake than animals of the control group (p<0.0001) due to a larger bacterial remnant in the bloodstream. This finding suggested that some failure in the MPS occurred in the absence of the spleen, demonstrating the need to develop alternative surgical techniques for total splenectomy.
A cochlear prosthesis: Further clinical observations; preliminary results of physiological studies

A series of simple psychoacoustic studies were conducted on three deaf patients with indwelling scala tympani electrodes to determine better what they hear as a consequence of electrical stimulation. Physiological experiments on cats implanted with a similar electrode were conducted to determine how the sensation heard by these patients is generated and encoded in the auditory nervous system. Some preliminary results of these animal experiments are described. Additional improvements in the surgical implantation procedure are detailed.
Nobody’s Perfect

This paper challenges the cross-linguistic validity of the tense–aspect category ‘perfect’ by investigating 15 languages from eight different families (Atayal, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, German, Gitksan, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Mandarin, Niuean, Québec French, St’át’imcets, Swahili, and Tibetan). The methodology involves using the storyboard ‘Miss Smith’s Bad Day’ to test for the availability of experiential, resultative, recent-past, and continuous readings, as well as lifetime effects, result-state cancellability, narrative progression, and compatibility with definite time adverbials. Results show that the target forms in these languages can be classified into four groups: (a) past perfectives; (b) experientials; (c) resultatives; and (d) hybrids (which allow both experiential and resultative readings). It is argued that the main division is between past perfectives, which contain a ‘pronominal’ tense, on the one hand, and the other three groups on the other, which involve existential quantification, either over times (experiential) or over events (resultative). The methodological and typological implications of the findings are discussed. The main conclusion of the study is that there is no universal category of ‘the perfect’, and that instead, researchers should focus on identifying shared semantic components of tense–aspect categories across languages.
Bayesian prediction of the duration of non-recurring road incidents

Traffic incidents such as accidents or vehicle breakdowns are one of the major causes of traffic congestion in urban areas. Consequently, accurate prediction of duration of these incidents is considered as one of the most important challenges by traffic management authorities. Although data-driven regression methods can predict the duration of these incidents with reasonable precision. However, the prediction performance may vary considerably from one to another. Hence, it is important to provide some measure of confidence associated with the forecast duration of the incidents. Such measures can prove to be highly useful in planning real-time response. To address this issue, we propose Bayesian Support Vector Regression (BSVR), which gives error bars as the measurement of uncertainty along with the predicted duration of incidents. We also evaluate sensitivity and specificity for different error tolerance limit to assess the performance of BSVR.
Lethal Dissemination of H5N1 Influenza Virus Is Associated with Dysregulation of Inflammation and Lipoxin Signaling in a Mouse Model of Infection

ABSTRACT Periodic outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza viruses and the current H1N1 pandemic highlight the need for a more detailed understanding of influenza virus pathogenesis. To investigate the host transcriptional response induced by pathogenic influenza viruses, we used a functional-genomics approach to compare gene expression profiles in lungs from 129S6/SvEv mice infected with either the fully reconstructed H1N1 1918 pandemic virus (1918) or the highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus Vietnam/1203/04 (VN/1203). Although the viruses reached similar titers in the lung and caused lethal infections, the mean time of death was 6 days for VN/1203-infected animals and 9 days for mice infected with the 1918 virus. VN/1203-infected animals also exhibited an earlier and more potent inflammatory response. This response included induction of genes encoding components of the inflammasome. VN/1203 was also able to disseminate to multiple organs, including the brain, which correlated with changes in the expression of genes associated with hematological functions and lipoxin biogenesis and signaling. Both viruses elicited expression of type I interferon (IFN)-regulated genes in wild-type mice and to a lesser extent in mice lacking the type I IFN receptor, suggesting alternative or redundant pathways for IFN signaling. Our findings suggest that VN/1203 is more pathogenic in mice as a consequence of several factors, including the early and sustained induction of the inflammatory response, the additive or synergistic effects of upregulated components of the immune response, and inhibition of lipoxin-mediated anti-inflammatory responses, which correlated with the ability of VN/1203 to disseminate to extrapulmonary organs.
Lattice embeddings into the recursively enumerable degrees

The classification of algebraic structures which can be embedded into ℛ, the uppersemilattice of recursively enumerable degrees, is the key to answering certain questions about Th(ℛ), the elementary theory of ℛ. In particular, these classification problems are important for answering decidability questions about fragments of Th(ℛ). Thus the solutions of Fried berg [F] and Mučnik [M] to Post's problem were easily extended to show that all finite partially ordered sets are embeddable into ℛ, and hence that ∃1 ∩ Th(ℛ), the existential theory of ℛ, is decidable. (The language used is ℒ′, the pure predicate calculus together with a binary relation symbol ≤ to be interpreted as the ordering of ℛ) The problem of determining which finite lattices are embeddable into ℛ has been a long-standing open problem, and is one of the major obstacles to determining whether ∀2 ∩ Th(ℛ), the universal-existential theory of ℛ, is decidable. Shore has obtained some nice partial results in this direction. Embeddings also played a central role in showing that Th(ℛ) is not ℵ0-categorical (Lerman, Shore and Soare [LeShSo]), thus resolving a problem posed by Jockusch. Harrington and Shelah [HS] embedded all 0′-presentable partially ordered sets into ℛ in such a way that the partially ordered sets can be uniformly recovered from four parameters. They used these embeddings to show that Th(ℛ) is undecidable. The first nontrivial extension of the embeddings of Friedberg and Mučnik to lattice embeddings was obtained independently by Lachlan [La1] and Yates [Y] who showed that the four-element Boolean algebra can be embedded into ℛ. Thomason [T] and Lerman independently extended this result to include all finite distributive lattices. The nondistributive case, however, was much more difficult. Lachlan [La2] embedded the two five-element nondistributive lattices M5 and N5 (see Figures 1 and 2) into ℛ, and his proof could easily have been extended to include a larger class of lattices.
Modeling a holonic agent based solution by Petri nets

One of the key design issues for distributed systems is to find proper planning and coordination mechanisms when knowledge and decision capabilities are spread along the system. This contribution refers holonic manufacturing execution systems and highlights the way a proper modeling method - Petri nets - makes evident certain problems that can appear when agents have to simultaneously treat more goals. According to holonic organization the planning phase is mainly dependent on finding an appropriate resource allocation mechanism. The type of weakness is established by means of the proposed Petri net models and further proved by simulation experiments. A solution to make the holonic scheme avoid a failure in resource allocation is mentioned, too.
Treatment with a coinducer of the heat shock response delays muscle denervation in the SOD1-G93A mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

We undertook a longitudinal study of the histological and biochemical changes at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) in muscles of SOD1-G93A mice. We also assessed these functions in mice treated with a known heat shock protein inducer, arimoclomol. Tissue samples of treated and untreated mSOD mice were analysed for AChE and ChAT enzyme activities as markers of neuromuscular function. Sections of hindlimb muscles (TA, EDL and soleus) were also stained for succinate dehydrogenase and silver cholinesterase activities as well as for immunohistochemistry. Hsp70 levels were also measured from muscle samples using ELISA. Results showed that denervation and nerve sprouting were present at symptom onset in fast muscles, although slow muscles remained fully innervated. Cholinergic enzyme activities were reduced prior to denervation and declined further with disease progression. Reduction of endplate size, a slow to fast shift in muscle phenotype was also observed. Treatment with arimoclomol delayed the appearance of these changes, increased innervation, cholinergic enzyme activities and endplate size and reversed muscle fibre transformation. These beneficial effects of arimoclomol in muscles were accompanied by an increase in Hsp70 expression. In conclusion, our results indicate that pharmacological targeting of muscles at early stages of disease may be a successful strategy to ameliorate disease progression in ALS.
Characterization, design, modeling, and model validation of silicon-wafer M:N balun components under matched and unmatched conditions

In this paper, we characterize and model M:N baluns for silicon RFIC design. A modeling methodology is presented based on a geometrically scalable lumped-element approach that incorporates both skin effect and substrate loss. This approach is extended to include the effects of a patterned ground shield under the balun. The modeling approach is validated with measured S-parameters and extracted impedances from various circuit configurations. The impedance transfer characteristics of the model and balun over substrate and over a patterned ground shield are explored. Matching considerations are addressed by evaluating the model accuracy with measured data under matched and unmatched conditions.
Ex vivo bone morphogenetic protein-2 gene delivery using gingival fibroblasts promotes bone regeneration in rats.

AIM The aim of the present study was to investigate bone regeneration following ex vivo bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) gene delivery using human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) in rat calvarial defects. MATERIALS AND METHODS An 8 mm craniotomy defect was created in Sprague-Dawley rats. The animals were divided into four groups: (1) non-grafted group, the defect was left empty; (2) collagen matrix group, the defect was filled with collagen matrix only; (3) HGF group, the defect was filled with non-transduced HGFs on collagen matrix; (4) BMP-2/HGF group, the defect was filled with BMP-2 gene-transduced HGFs on collagen matrix. Animals were sacrificed at 2 and 4 weeks after surgery, and micro-computed tomographic and histologic observations were performed. RESULTS The BMP-2/HGF group showed promoted osseous healing of calvarial defects, as compared with the other groups. At both 2 and 4 weeks, regenerated bone area was significantly greater in the BMP-2/HGF group than the other three groups. Quite a few number of transplanted HGFs were observed within the regenerated bone tissues. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study suggest that ex vivo BMP-2 gene delivery induces prominent bone regeneration in vivo and HGFs may be useful as target cells for ex vivo gene therapy.
p53 Degradation by a Coronavirus Papain-like Protease Suppresses Type I Interferon Signaling*

Background: The molecular mechanism of coronavirus PLPs suppressing the innate immune response remains unclear. Results: PLP2 induces the degradation of p53 through stabilizing MDM2, and IRF7 is a novel target gene of p53. Conclusion: PLP2 inhibits the p53-mediated production of type I IFN and apoptosis to ensure viral growth. Significance: We identify the mechanism with which coronavirus induces the low dosage IFN production. Infection by human coronaviruses is usually characterized by rampant viral replication and severe immunopathology in host cells. Recently, the coronavirus papain-like proteases (PLPs) have been identified as suppressors of the innate immune response. However, the molecular mechanism of this inhibition remains unclear. Here, we provide evidence that PLP2, a catalytic domain of the nonstructural protein 3 of human coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63), deubiquitinates and stabilizes the cellular oncoprotein MDM2 and induces the proteasomal degradation of p53. Meanwhile, we identify IRF7 (interferon regulatory factor 7) as a bona fide target gene of p53 to mediate the p53-directed production of type I interferon and the innate immune response. By promoting p53 degradation, PLP2 inhibits the p53-mediated antiviral response and apoptosis to ensure viral growth in infected cells. Thus, our study reveals that coronavirus engages PLPs to escape from the innate antiviral response of the host by inhibiting p53-IRF7-IFNβ signaling.
Application of the land surface temperature from MODIS in the estimation of gross primary productivity for a subtropical pinus plantation in southern China

In this study, the land surface temperature (LST) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor which was chosen as one scalar temperature directly modifying light use efficiency (LUE), together with the 8-day composited MODIS data and the site measurements of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) of a subtropical evergreen coniferous forest ecosystem in southern China during 2005–2006 are used to estimate the seasonal variations of gross primary production (GPP) with the Production Efficiency Model (PEM). To investigate the possibility of LST instead of atmospheric temperature (T<inf>a</inf>) in the PEM model to estimate the GPP values, the LST predicted GPP (GPP<inf>LST</inf>) and T<inf>a</inf> predicted GPP (GPP<inf>air</inf>) are used to compare the GPP values observed from eddy covariance measurements (GPP<inf>obs</inf>). It was found that the coefficient of determination of the fitted exponential equations between the GPP<inf>obs</inf> and the T<inf>a</inf>(r<sup>2</sup> = 0.89) was slightly higher than that between the GPP<inf>obs</inf> and the LST(r<sup>2</sup> = 0.80), and both variables could explain above 80 % variations of the GPP<inf>obs</inf> in this area. Both the GPP<inf>LST</inf> and GPP<inf>air</inf> agreed well with the observed GPP<inf>obs</inf>. There was a very strong linear relation between GPP<inf>LST</inf> and GPP<inf>air</inf> (r<sup>2</sup> = 0.99), and they both were highly correlated with the GPP<inf>obs</inf> (r<sup>2</sup> = 0.91 and 0.91, respectively). The annual total GPP<inf>LST</inf> and GPP<inf>air</inf> values (1630.6 and 1598.6 g C m<sup>−2</sup> for 2005; 1740.2 and 1660.8 g C m<sup>−2</sup> for 2006, respectively) were slightly lower than the GPP<inf>obs</inf> (1646.8 and 1867.4 g C m<sup>−2</sup>, respectively), and the error of the predicted GPP from LST (0.98% and 6.8% for 2005 and 2006, respectively) was smaller than the predicted GPP from T<inf>a</inf> (2.9% and 11.1% for 2005 and 2006, respectively) for the whole year data. These results demonstrate that the LST can be potentially used to estimate GPP instead of T<inf>a</inf>.
Aportaciones del Análisis de Coordenadas Polares en la descripción de las transformaciones de los contextos de interacción defensivos en fútbol

En el presente estudio se desarrolla un analisis de coordenadas polares aplicado al ambito de la actividad fisica y el deporte, concretamente al futbol. A partir del diseno y configuracion original de un sistema taxonomico, el Sistema de Observacion de la Accion de Juego en el Futbol: el SOCCAF (Castellano, 2000), y despues de haber superado unas pruebas de calidad de los datos, se llevo a cabo un analisis de coordenadas polares escogiendo como conductas focales las categorias de continuacion en la posesion de balon desarrolladas por un equipo de futbol en diferentes contextos de interaccion. Se ha aplicado la tecnica analitica de Sackett (1980) en su variante de retrospectividad genuina propuesta por Anguera (1985, 1997a, 1999). Este analisis nos va a permitir conocer las relaciones que se establecen entre las diferentes categorias del sistema, de forma especifica, entre la conducta tomada como focal y las distintas categorias de apareo disenadas ad hoc, con respecto a su diacronismo, hacia adelante y hacia detras, dentro de la accion de luego. A partir de dichas relaciones se configuran los diferentes mapas conductuales o de coordenadas polares.
Estimation of a large relative rotation between two images of a fast spinning marker-less golf ball

This paper proposes a method of rotation estimation of a fast spinning marker-less golf ball, which rotates up to 60 degrees in a 1-millisecond frame, from two consecutive frames of an infrared video sequence. The proposed method solely relies on the dimple pattern, which has slight irregularity in its configuration providing a clue for alignment, and does not need help of logo marks or fiducial markers on the ball surface. The method first narrows down relative pose candidates by registration of dimple center points, and then chooses the pose that enables best matching of dimple edge pixels. Experimental results show that it achieves 99 % success rate in 0.5 s computational time, which offers a practical solution for a golf simulator system.