Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the period of communication policies for networked control systems, and the question of zero-order holding

We discuss stochastic, linear networked control systems (NCSs) in which only a limited number of the plant's sensors and actuators may communicate with the controller at any one time. We explore the problem of designing an LQG controller and an accompanying periodic communication policy, using recent results that forgo optimal communication for the sake of lowering the complexity of the joint (control-communication) problem. We show that the period of the policies in question can be shorter than previously established, and that policies designed under a simpler NCS model, in which sensors and actuators are "ignored" by the controller when they are not actively communicating, can also be effective in the more complex setting which includes zero-order holding (ZOH). Interestingly, the inclusion of a ZOH - although sometimes practical - does not always lead to better performance.
DESIGN OF RESISTIVE-LOADED TRANSVERSE ELECTROMAGNETIC HORN ANTENNA FOR AIR-COUPLED GROUND PENETRATING RADAR

Design of a resistive-loaded Transverse Electromagnetic (TEM) horn antenna for air-coupled ground penetrating radar (GPR) is proposed in this paper. As the focus is on the application in sensing pavement subsurface, some issues should be considered, such as ultra-bandwidth (UWB) performance, air-coupled detection, high fidelity, compact structure, and simple fabrication. The resistive-loaded horn antenna with a microstrip-type balun was constructed and measured to facilitate the issues. With the radiation towards concrete ground at a height of 0.5 meters, the measured results suggested that the impedance bandwidth of the antenna was 0.5 ∼ 14 GHz with a return loss less than −10 dB. The radiation waveform of the horn antenna also showed a late-time ring. A radar experiment result showed that the antenna performed excellently for pavement layer detection.
Distinct Evolutionary Trajectories of Neuronal and Hair Cell Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors

The expansion and pruning of ion channel families has played a crucial role in the evolution of nervous systems. Remarkably, with a highly conserved vertebrate complement, nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) are unique among ligand-gated ion channels in that members of the family have distinct roles in synaptic transmission in non-overlapping domains, either in the nervous system, the inner ear hair cells or the neuromuscular junction. Here, we performed a comprehensive analysis of vertebrate nAChRs sequences, single cell expression patterns and comparative functional properties of receptors from three representative tetrapod species. We show that hair cell nAChRs underwent a distinct evolutionary trajectory to that of neuronal receptors. These were most likely shaped by different co-expression patterns and co-assembly rules of component subunits. Thus, neuronal nAChRs showed high degree of coding sequence conservation, coupled to greater co-expression variance and conservation of functional properties across tetrapod clades. In contrast, hair cell α9α10 nAChRs exhibited greater sequence divergence, narrow co-expression pattern and great variability of functional properties across species. These results point to differential substrates for random change within the family of gene paralogs that relate to the segregated roles of nAChRs in synaptic transmission. Significance statement Our work exploits several peculiarities of the family of vertebrate nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) to explore the evolutionary trajectories of a ligand-gated ion channel family. By performing a comprehensive comparative analysis of nAChR subunits coding sequences, single cell expression patterns and functional properties we found a contrasting evolutionary history between nAChRs with widespread expression in the nervous system compared to those with isolated expression in the inner ear. Evolutionary changes were focused on differences in co-expression and co-assembly patterns for the former and coding sequences in the latter. This multidisciplinary approach provides further insight into the evolutionary processes that shaped the nervous and sensory systems of extant animals.
Differential responses of proliferative and non-proliferative leukemia cells to oxidative stress

The response of three human leukemia cell lines, the proliferative promonocyte THP-1 and the promyeloid HL60 cells and the non-proliferative phorbol ester-treated HL60 cells (HL60/PMA), to oxidative stress induced by tert-butylhydroperoxide (t-BHP) treatment was analyzed by fluorescence microplate assay, anti-oxidant enzyme activity measurements, high performance liquid chromatography, yopro-1/PI incorporation, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase and caspase 3 cleavages. After t-BHP treatment, the non-proliferative HL60/PMA cells exhibited a weak increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, a better preservation of thiol content, a decrease of glutathione peroxidase activity and a high ability to undergo necrosis rather than apoptosis. Submitted to the same treatment, the proliferative HL60 and THP-1 cells exhibited a high increase of ROS production, a moderate thiol depletion and a high percentage of apoptosis. Under thiol depleting conditions, the oxidative treatment of the HL60/PMA cells resulted in a high ROS production that reached levels similar to those of the two other cell lines and in cell death mainly by necrosis. In conclusion, these results that show proliferative phenotype is essential for cell response towards oxidative stress, are of particular interest in chemotherapy involving an oxidative mechanism.
Neural network based over-segmentation for scene text recognition

Over-segmentation is often used in text recognition to generate candidate characters. In this paper, we propose a neural network-based over-segmentation method for cropped scene text recognition. On binarized text line image, a segmentation window slides over each connected component, and a neural network is used to classify whether the window locates a segmentation point or not. We evaluate several feature representations for window classification and combine sliding window-based segmentation with shape-based splitting. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets demonstrate the superiority and effectiveness of our method in respect of segmentation point detection and word recognition.
Multi-level analysis of knowledge transfer: a knowledge recipient's perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to adopt the recipient’s perspective to explore multi-level antecedents’ effects on knowledge transfer using social capital and social network theories. Design/methodology/approach – Social network and general attribute survey responses from 331 employees were analyzed through hierarchical linear modeling to verify the study’s multi-level research model and hypotheses. Findings – A recipient’s trust in colleagues positively influences knowledge transfer and company tenure has a negative impact. At a dyadic level, the perceived expertise of a source, in addition to strength of ties, exerts a positive effect on knowledge transfer. Additionally, a recipient’s network centrality moderates the effects of dyadic relationships on knowledge transfer. Research limitations/implications – This study deepened the current understanding of the role of social capital in knowledge transfer from a recipient’s perspective. Three dimensions of a recipient’s social capital respectively .
Pathophysiology of Antigen 85 in Patients with Active Tuberculosis: Antigen 85 Circulates as Complexes with Fibronectin and Immunoglobulin G

ABSTRACT Antigen 85 (Ag85) complex proteins are major secretory products ofMycobacterium tuberculosis and induce strong cellular and humoral immune responses in infected experimental animals and human beings. We have previously shown that nanogram doses of these 30- to 32-kDa fibronectin-binding proteins inhibit local expression of delayed hypersensitivity by a T-cell fibronectin-dependent mechanism. Circulating levels of Ag85 might be expected to be elevated in patients with active tuberculosis and possibly to play a role in systemic anergy in these patients. To test this hypothesis, Ag85 was measured in serum and urine by a monoclonal antibody-based dot immunobinding assay in 56 patients and controls with known skin test reactivity. Median serum Ag85 levels were 50- to 150-fold higher in patients with active tuberculosis than in patients with active M. avium-intracellulare disease or other nontuberculous pulmonary disease or in healthy controls (P < 0.001). The median and range of serum Ag85 in patients with active tuberculosis was not significantly different between skin test-positive and -negative subjects. Patients with active M. aviumdisease could be distinguished from those with disease due to M. tuberculosis by monoclonal anti-Ag85 antibodies of appropriate specificities. No increases in urinary Ag85 were detected in any patient, regardless of the Ag85 level in serum. Chromatographic analysis and immunoprecipitation studies of serum revealed that Ag85 existed in the serum of these patients complexed to either fibronectin or immunoglobulin G (IgG). Uncomplexed circulating Ag85 was demonstrable in serum from fewer than 20% of patients with active tuberculosis. In patients with active tuberculosis, Ag85 is therefore likely to circulate primarily as complexes with plasma fibronectin and IgG rather than in unbound form. The existence of Ag85 complexes with plasma proteins would account for its lack of urinary clearance.
Pre- and postexposure protection by passive immunoglobulin but no enhancement of infection with a flavivirus in a mouse model

Antibody-dependent enhancement of flavivirus infection, which except for dengue virus is without clear proof in vivo, is still under debate. Recently, postexposure immunoglobulin prophylaxis against tick-borne encephalitis virus, a flavivirus, was claimed to possibly have worsened the outcome of infection due to antibody-dependent enhancement. In the present study, antibody-dependent enhancement and pre- or postexposure protection by passive administration of tick-borne encephalitis virus immunoglobulin were evaluated in a mouse model. Preexposure treatment with homologous murine or heterologous human immunoglobulin provided complete protection against lethal challenge with tick-borne encephalitis virus. For postexposure treatment with antibody, the degree of protection correlated with the amount of immunoglobulin administered and was inversely related to the time interval between infection and treatment. Indications of enhancement of infection would have been increased lethality or reduced mean survival time, but neither was observed under the conditions used in our experiments despite the broad range of immunoglobulin and virus challenge doses applied. In contrast to these in vivo results, antibody-dependent enhancement of tick-borne encephalitis virus infection of murine peritoneal macrophages was readily demonstrable in vitro. Thus, antibody-dependent enhancement of viral infection in vitro does not necessarily predict enhancement in vivo.
Restructuring Hospital Nursing: Reversing the Trend toward a Professional Work Force

Registered nurses are currently threatened by a new managerial strategy to restructure work on hospital wards through the implementation of “Continuous Quality Improvement” and the “downsizing” of the professional work force. The strategy reintroduces nonprofessional and unlicensed nursing personnel in a manner that may displace large numbers of registered nurses (RNs) and affect patient care adversely. Ironically, not only is this change being implemented principally to reduce hospital costs rather than to improve quality, it reverses the cost-containment strategy implemented in the 1980s when hospitals displaced nonprofessional nursing workers and moved toward a professional work force. In this article, the author reviews the prior shift from “team nursing” with a stratified work force that included licensed practical nurses and nurses' aides to “primary nursing” and the trend toward all-RN staffing, and explains how this trend contributed to the present effort to reverse the process. The author then discusses current work redesign methods that have been adapted from traditional industrial applications to destroy work jurisdictions and further rationalize hospital production through the downsizing of the professional work force and the creation of cross-trained workers in a new team-based management approach. The article concludes by discussing nursing's response to corporate-imposed work restructuring and the significance of these changes.
The Effect of Electronic Tax Payment System on Taxpayer Satisfaction

This study attempts to investigate the effect of using internet to pay tax on taxpayers’ satisfaction. The research population is all taxpayers of Hamedan city of Iran who pay their taxes through electronic. Using Cochran’s statistic, 384 taxpayers were selected as sample. The research data was gathered through a questionnaire. In order to measure the validity of questionnaire and to measure the reliability of questionnaire, content validity coefficient and Cronbach’s alpha were used respectively. The gathered Data was analyzed by structural equation modeling using LISREL software. For this purpose, first confirmatory factor analysis and then path analysis were done. According to the research findings, system quality and service quality have meaningful influence on taxpayers’ satisfaction but information quality has no meaningful influence on taxpayers’ satisfaction that pays their taxes electronically.
Cell invasiveness in sarcomas: a possibly useful clinical correlation.

AIMS AND BACKGROUND The prognosis of each individual patient affected by sarcoma, including those with low histopathologic grading, cannot be reliably predicted at the time of surgery. We have developed an in vitro cell invasion assay on early primary cell cultures derived from surgically removed sarcomas. METHODS Primary cell cultures were subjected to in vitro cell invasion assays by using Boyden chambers, filters coated with matrigel and fetal bovine serum as a source of chemoattractant. For each primary cell culture, the sarcoma cell invasion index was determined in comparison with the percentage of human fibrosarcoma HT1080 cell invasion extent. The cell invasion index of 7 different sarcomas was evaluated in respect to the outcome of the disease, after a follow-up ranging from 14 to 48 months. RESULTS Data evidenced that a low cell invasion index (39.7% +/- 8.9) was retained by tumor cells derived from patients with no progression of the disease and with a longer interval of disease-free survival (21 +/- 0.8 months). However, an increase in cell invasion index (61% +/- 5) was retained by tumor cells derived from patients with progression of the disease and with a shorter disease-free survival (9 +/- 3 months). Overall, although only 7 cases were analyzed, a statistically significant correlation was found between disease-free survival and cell invasion index (P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS Our data support the possibility that cell invasion assays performed in vitro on cells derived from human sarcomas may be predictive of a more aggressive form of the disease.
The hat problem on a union of disjoint graphs

The topic is the hat problem in which each of n players is randomly fitted with a blue or red hat. Then everybody can try to guess simultaneously his own hat color by looking at the hat colors of the other players. The team wins if at least one player guesses his hat color correctly, and no one guesses his hat color wrong; otherwise the team loses. The aim is to maximize the probability of winning. In this version every player can see everybody excluding himself. We consider such a problem on a graph, where vertices correspond to players, and a player can see each player to whom he is connected by an edge. The solution of the hat problem is known for cycles and bipartite graphs. We investigate the problem on a union of disjoint graphs. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 05C99, 91A12.
THE AUDITOR AS AN ECONOMIC AGENT

The purpose of this paper is to present and analyze some fundamental issues which arise when the auditor is modeled as an economic agent. There are many reasons that it is desirable to explicitly model the auditor. As Gjesdal [1981] points out, extant theories of the demand for auditing (see Ng [1978], Ng and Stoeckenius [1979], and Evans [1980]) are incomplete because they ignore the problem of the auditor's incentives. The first step in addressing the issue of the auditor's incentives is to model the auditor explicitly as an expected utility maximizer. As we shall see, this introduces many technical difficulties. At the same time, a new point in the study of the auditor's role in the firm arises; namely, risk-sharing with the auditor. These technical issues, which involve problems with modeling the owner-manager-auditor relationship in a tractable way, must be confronted before the demand for auditing can be fully established. Otherwise, we cannot compare the alternative of hiring an auditor to the owner's other alternatives, such as not hiring the auditor (standing pat), or renting the firm to the manager. Another reason to model the auditor as an expected utility maximizer is the obvious symmetry that such a model provides. If we seek to understand the behavior of owners, managers, and investors by modeling them as expected utility maximizers, why change the approach when studying auditors? Unless we believe that auditors are somehow qualitatively different from the other types of economic agents that we study,
THE SCALING OF PLANT AND ANIMAL BODY MASS, LENGTH, AND DIAMETER

The interspecific scaling exponents of body mass M and diameter D with respect to length L were determined to evaluate the predictions of three scaling hypotheses (geometric, stress, and elastic similitude). The relation between M and L was determined for data from a total of 133 aquatic and terrestrial species (66 plant and 67 animal species); the relation between D and L was determined independently for a total of 753 aquatic and terrestrial species (667 plant and 86 animal species). Organisms were crudely classified as to their geometry (spheres, spheroids, cylinders) and shape (defined as the body slenderness factor, L/D) to examine whether geometry and shape evinced size‐dependent variations. Regression indicated M = 1.29L2.95 (r2 = 0.91, N = 133; αRMA = 3.09 ± 0.088). The stress and elastic similitude (which respectively predict αRMA = 5 and αRMA = 4) were rejected; geometric similitude was not (αRMA = 3). For animals and plants, αRMA = 2.81 ± 0.061 (r2 = 0.98), and αRMA = 2.95 ± 0.093 (r2 = 0.94), respectively. For aquatics and terrestrial organisms, αRMA = 2.82 ±0.134 (r2 = 0.97, N = 36), and αRMA = 3.08 ±0.111 (r2 = 0.89, N = 97), respectively. These results were interpreted to support the hypothesis of geometric similitude. For the pooled plant and animals data, D = 0.05L1. 00 (r2 = 0.95; αRMA = 1.03 ± 0.009), which was compatible with the hypothesis of geometric similitude. For plants, D = 0.05L1. 06 (r2 = 0.95; αRMA = 1.09). For animals, D = 0.29L0.98 (r2 = 0.95; αRMA = 1.01 ± 0.025). Also, for aquatics, αRMA = 0.951 ± 0.151, whereas for terrestrial plants and animals, αRMA = 1.03 ± 0.089. Although the scaling exponent for D differed among individual groupings of animals and plants, the results of regression analyses were interpreted to indicate that, on the average, body diameter scaled isometrically with respect to length as predicted by geometric similitude. For the pooled data set, organic shape varied over 3 orders of magnitude; L varied over 9 orders of magnitude reflecting 22 orders of magnitude of M. In terms of body geometry and the absolute numbers of species in the total data set: spherical shaped species (L = D) < unassigned species < prolate spheroidal species < cylindrical (squat < slender) species. The largest organisms in the data set were slender (L/D > 20) cylindrical plants; the smallest organisms were spherical plants and animals. Although not subject to statistical inference, these data were interpreted to indicate that organic shape and geometry evince size‐dependent variations. These variations as well as size‐dependent changes in bulk density are hypothesized to account for the scaling exponents of M and D determined for individual plant and animal clades and grades.
Closure of the uterine incision with one or two layers after caesarean section: a randomized controlled study in sheep

Abstract Objective: To compare the quality of the uterine scar with one or two layer closure after caesarean section by studying biomechanical and pathological properties of the scar. Methods: A randomized controlled trial performed on eight term pregnant ewes assigned into two groups during caesarean according to type of uterine closure: single-layer or double-layer. Hysterectomy was performed 8 months after caesarean delivery. Tensile strength of all scars and of unscarred myometrium was measured. Pathological properties of the scars were analyzed histologically. Results: The force required to reach the yield point was similar between scarred and unscarred myometrium (p = 0.96), and between the scars in single-layer and double-layer closure groups (p = 0.65). There was a significant increase in fibrosis width on the superficial part of the uterus in the double-layer closure group compared to the single-layer group (p = 0.02). Conclusions: Double-layer uterine closure modified wound healing without significant change in biomechanical properties.
Fast and efficient method to suppress depth ambiguity for Time-of-Flight sensors

This paper presents a fast and efficient method to suppress (i.e. not to unwrap but only to remove) depth ambiguity for Time-of-Flight sensors. Depth and amplitude data for each pixel is obtained by correlating the emitted signal and the reflected signal. Each depth data is classified according to predetermined depth levels and the average amplitude with neighboring pixels is used to determine ambiguous depth beyond the maximum measurable depth. Different amplitude threshold values are used according to the classified depth for the accurate suppression. The proposed method does not require complex computation for edge detection and object segmentation as compared to object segmentation based method. The comparison simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method suppresses the depth ambiguity effectively.
False positive peaks in ChIP-seq and other sequencing-based functional assays caused by unannotated high copy number regions

Motivation: Sequencing-based assays such as ChIP-seq, DNase-seq and MNase-seq have become important tools for genome annotation. In these assays, short sequence reads enriched for loci of interest are mapped to a reference genome to determine their origin. Here, we consider whether false positive peak calls can be caused by particular type of error in the reference genome: multicopy sequences which have been incorrectly assembled and collapsed into a single copy. Results: Using sequencing data from the 1000 Genomes Project, we systematically scanned the human genome for regions of high sequencing depth. These regions are highly enriched for erroneously inferred transcription factor binding sites, positions of nucleosomes and regions of open chromatin. We suggest a simple masking procedure to remove these regions and reduce false positive calls. Availability: Files for masking out these regions are available at eqtl.uchicago.edu Contact: pickrell@uchicago.edu; dgaffney@uchicago.edu; gilad@uchicago.edu; pritch@uchicago.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.