Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary Results on 3D Channel Modeling: From Theory to Standardization

Three dimensional (3D) beamforming (also elevation beamforming) is now gaining interest among researchers in wireless communication. The reason can be attributed to its potential for enabling a variety of strategies such as sector or user specific elevation beamforming and cell-splitting. Since these techniques cannot be directly supported by current LTE releases, the 3GPP is now working on defining the required technical specifications. In particular, a large effort is currently being made to get accurate 3D channel models that support the elevation dimension. This step is necessary as it will evaluate the potential of 3D and full dimensional (FD) beamforming techniques to benefit from the richness of real channels. This work aims at presenting the on-going 3GPP study item “study on 3D-channel model for elevation beamforming and FD-MIMO studies for LTE” and positioning it with respect to previous standardization works.
Perceived Difficulty and Motivated Cognitive Effort in a Computer-Simulated Forest Firefighting Task

Two studies (ns 28 and 55) were conducted to investigate the extent to which proposed relationships between perceived difficulty and motivated cognitive effort generalise to realistic, complex, ill-defined, ongoing situations. A computerised microworld generator, Fire Chief, was used to create an appropriate cognitive task. Using complementary research designs, no significant relationships were obtained between either perceived difficulty or proximity to preferred difficulty and on-task motivated cognitive effort assessed by self-referent importance, intended effort, and subjectively felt arousal. The implications of these findings for expectancy-value approaches to motivation are discussed. Attention is drawn to the extent to which the two studies illustrate the use of the Fire Chief microworld generator for the investigation of psychological phenomena.
Power and control: managing agents for international student recruitment in higher education

This multiple case-based study investigates the relationship between recruiting agents and the UK universities who act as their principals. The current extensive use of agents in UK higher education may be seen as an indicator of the financial impact made by international students. The study analyses the practice of agent management and explores the manner in which power and control interact. The study employed semi-structured interviews and group discussions involving up to 6 respondents from each of the 20 UK case institutions. The qualitative data reveal a considerable variation in the manner in which the universities manage their agency relationships. Through the joint consideration of control measures and use of power, five distinctive approaches have been identified. The study also reveals that over-dependence on agents reduces the power of the principal, and consequently, the principal's ability to exercise control, particularly in highly competitive global and national markets.
Rotational panoramic radiography in epidemiological studies of dental health. Comparison between panoramic radiographs and intraoral full mouth surveys.

In conjunction with an epidemiological study of oral health in women the capacity of the panoramic radiograph to yield information on oral conditions was compared to that of the intraoral full mouth survey including posterior bitewing radiographs. Full mouth surveys and panoramic radiographs of 75 women were compared for gross characteristics such as distribution of teeth, missing teeth, restorations, and endodontic treatment as well as for osteolytic lesions at the root, marginal bone loss and carious lesions. A nearly 100% agreement was found for gross characteristics but also for osteolytic lesions associated with teeth and for marginal bone loss the agreement was good; osteolytic lesions at single rooted teeth 76%, multirooted teeth 90% and a coefficient of correlation of . 96 for individual mean marginal bone scores. Poor agreement was found for carious lesions as only 36% of those extending well into the dentine were found both in the intraoral radiographs and in the panoramic radiographs. It may be included that, except for carious lesions, the panoramic radiographs can be considered a useful tool in epidemiological studies of oral health.
Multiuser receivers that are robust to delay mismatch

We investigate a new robust multiuser signal detector for asynchronous code-division multiple-access uplink channels under delay mismatch. We first formulate a robust decorrelating detector by dividing each user into two virtual users with rectangular chip pulse shapes. To increase the system capacity, a multistage version of the robust decorrelating detector is derived, which can achieve capacity of up to M/(M+1) of the spreading factor, where M is the observation block length. We further propose a robust successive interference cancellation (SIC) implementation. The proposed robust SIC detector adds only a residual error estimation procedure onto the standard SIC detector, so its computational complexity is of the same order of that of the SIC. Performance is investigated via analysis and simulation. Computer simulation results showed that our proposed robust SIC detector outperforms the conventional decorrelating detector when delay estimation error is present, and its performance is close to that of the decorrelating detector with perfect time-delay information. Finally, we generalize the robust SIC detector to the case of nonrectangular chip pulse shapes.
Obstetric complications and schizophrenia: a computed tomographic study

Synopsis All patients aged 16–50 years who had been discharged from the Maudsley Hospital over a 4-year period with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were ascertained retrospectively. Case records were rated blindly for a history of obstetric complications (OCs). Sixty-one patients who satisfied the RDC for schizophrenia had undergone CT scanning. Those with a definite history of OCs presented at an earlier age. In this group widening of cortical sulci and fissures was more strongly correlated with VBR than in subjects without OCs. Moreover, large VBRs when accompanied by widened cortical sulci and fissures occurred more commonly in subjects with OCs than in those without. These results support the hypothesis that OCs, or a factor associated with them, lead to brain damage of aetiological significance in some cases of schizophrenia.
Diffusion LMS filter for distributed estimation of systems with stochastic state transition and observation matrices

We study the problem of distributed state estimation where a set of nodes are required to estimate the state of a system with stochastic state transition matrix based on their observations which have themselves measurement matrices evolving stochastically. We extend previous work on distributed diffusion Kalman filtering to the stochastic case, and propose a diffusion algorithm for linear least mean square (LMS) filtering. As a particular case, we also derive a diffusion LMS algorithm for a linear system under a network of intermittent observations. Convergence of the estimation error covariance is proved under assumption of mean square stability of the plant. The resulting algorithms are robust to node and link failure, scalable, and fully distributed, in the sense that no fusion center is required, and nodes communicate with their neighbors only. We apply the algorithms to the problem of estimating the position of a rotating object in an ad-hoc network. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms.
Phosphorylation of neurofilament H subunit as related to arrangement of neurofilaments

To find out what causes differences in phosphorylation states in neurofilaments (NF), we selected two types of dendrite, one provided with very few NFs (Purkinje cell) and the other with relatively many (anterior horn cell). We examined these with four monoclonal antibodies selected by the Western blot analysis, two (NE14 and SMI31) recongnizing only phosphorylated, SMI32 recognizing only nonphosphorylated, and N52 recognizing phosphorylation‐independent epitopes of NF‐H. The immunoperoxidase labeling of dendrites, and also of perikarya, in both neurons was detectable with all four antibodies. After the tissue was treated with Triton X‐100, the labeling was still detectable with SMI32 or N52, but undetectable with NE14 and SMI31. The brain homogenate Triton‐extracted supernatant after centrifugation at 100,000g for 1 hr showed the staining of NE14, SMI31, and N52 but not that of SMI32. In Purkinje cell dendrite and perikaryon, NFs always appeared singly. In the immunogold labeling, they were labeled only with SMI32 or N52. Labeling by NE14 or SMI31 was distributed throughout the cytoplasm and hardly associated with NFs. In the anterior horn cell dendrite and perikaryon, NFs appeared both single and in bundles. They were predominantly labeled with SMI31 or N52 when they were single, and with NE14, SMI31, or N52 when they were bundled. Even in one NF, portions that appeared single were labeled mostly with SMI32 or N52, while the remainder, to which other NFs approached closely, were labeled mostly with NE14, SMI31, or N52. Thus, when NFs appear singly, NF‐H in their projections or cross‐bridges with other organelles is not phosphorylated, while when NFs are bundled, NF‐H is phosphorylated in crossbridges between NF core filaments. These data may explain why the NF‐H is heavily phosphorylated in axons, where NFs are abundant, and not in dendrites and perikarya, where NFs are sparse. Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Banneker History Project: Historic Investigation of a Once Segregated School

Abstract The Banneker History Project was a service learning project in which students investigated the history of the Benjamin Banneker School, a segregated school that operated from 1915–1951 in a Midwestern college community. This article discusses the research these students conducted and the perceptions they adopted as a result of their work.
Abstractions for recursive pointer data structures: improving the analysis and transformation of imperative programs

Even though impressive progress has been made in the area of optimizing and parallelizing programs with arrays, the application of similar techniques to programs with pointer data structures has remained difficult. In this paper we introduce a new approach that leads to improved analysis and transformation of programs with recursively-defined pointer data structures. We discuss how an abstract data structure description can improve program analysis by presenting an analysis approach that combines an alias analysis technique, path matrix, with information available from an ADDS declaration. Given this improved alias analysis technique, we provide a concrete example of applying a software pipelining transformation to loops involving pointer data structures.
A Survey on Nearest Neighbor Search Methods

ABSTRACT Nowadays, the need to techniques, approaches, and algorithms to search on data is increased due to improvements in computer science and increasing amount of information. This ever increasing information volume has led to time and computation complexity. Recently, different methods to solve such problems are proposed. Among the others, nearest neighbor search is one of the best techniques to this end which is focused by many researchers. Different techniques are used for nearest neighbor search. In addition to put an end to some complexities, variety of these techniques has made them suitable for different applications such as pattern recognition, searching in multimedia data, information retrieval, databases, data mining, and computational geometry to name but a few. In this paper, by opening a new view to this problem, a comprehensive evaluation on structures, techniques and different algorithms in this field is done and a new categorization of techniques in NNS is presented. This categorization is consists of seven groups: Weighted, Reductional, Additive, Reverse, Continuous, Principal Axis and Other techniques which are studied, evaluated and compared in this paper. Complexity of used structures, techniques and their algorithms are discussed, as well.
Temne and Eskimo perceptual skills.

Abstract Aptitudes perceptives des Temne et des Esquimaux. — Des epreuves de discrimination et d'aptitude spatiale ont ete administrees a des sujets appartenant a deux societes differentes, les Temne du Sierra Leone et les Esquimaux de la Terre de Baffin (des sujets ecossais ont ete utilises comme groupe de reference), pour verifier l'hypothese selon laquelle les aptitudes perceptives seraient plus developpees chez les Esquimaux qui vivent de la chasse que chez les Temne, qui sont cultivateurs. La langue, les arts, les techniques et les methodes educatives des deux societes ontjete etudies pour voir si les caracteristiques culturelles peuvent de facon coherente aider a l'emergence des aptitudes requises par le milieu. Bien qu'apparies en ce qui concerne l'acuite visuelle et le degre d'occidentalisation, les sujets des deux populations montrent des differences hautement significatives qui confirment l'hypothese. L'A. en conclut que des differences perceptives doivent exister entre les membres des different.
Are partnership boards really valuing people?

Observations were conducted in three county councils to find out whether the government’s ambition to develop Learning Disability Partnership Boards (as expressed in the White Paper Valuing people) are being realized. All the partnerships practiced various inclusive activities in order to involve people with learning disabilities in public service strategies. However, there appeared to be limited opportunities for citizens to be involved in recommendations or decision‐making for their area. This concurs with other research elsewhere on the involvement of citizens in state provision, i.e. public participation in civic affairs remains in the control of public sector managers. The lack of opportunities for citizens to direct the allocation of resources and strategies at a local level, regardless of their ability to process information, emphasises the limits of New Labour’s citizen–public sector partnerships.
Automatic parameter selection for Eigenfaces

In this paper, we investigate the parameter selection issues for Eigenfaces. Our focus is on the eigenvectors and threshold selection issues. We propose a systematic approach in selecting the eigenvectors based on the relative errors of the eigenvalues. In addition, we have designed a method for selecting the classification threshold that utilizes the information obtained from the training database effectively. Experimentation was conducted on the ORL and AMP face databases with results indicating that the automatic eigenvectors and threshold selection methods provide an optimum recognition in terms of precision and recall rates. Furthermore, we show that the eigenvector selection method outperforms energy and stretching dimension methods in terms of selected number of eigenvectors and computation cost.
A multimedia data base browsing system

Browsing large multimedia databases is becoming a challenging problem, due to the availability of great amounts of data and the complexity of retrieval. In this paper we propose a system that assists a user in browsing a digital collection making useful recommendations. The system combines computer vision techniques and taxonomic classifcations to measure the similarity between objects and adopts an innovative strategy to take into account user behavior.
Comparitive study of predictive controllers for trajectory tracking of non-holonomic mobile robot

The paper deals with predictive control of non-holonomic mobile robot. The basic nonlinear kinematic equation is linearized into two different linear time varying models based on frame of reference — world coordinates and local coordinate of mobile robot. The non-linear model predictive control is applied to the trajectory tracking problem of a non-holonomic mobile robot with these models. The control law is derived from a cost function which penalizes the state tracking error, control effort and terminal state deviation error. Various simulation experiments are conducted and a comparative analysis has been made with respect to state-of-the-art approaches.
Field analysis: getting useful and low-cost interprocedural information

We present a new limited form of interprocedural analysis called field analysis that can be used by a compiler to reduce the costs of modern language features such as object-oriented programming,automatic memory management, and run-time checks required for type safety.Unlike many previous interprocedural analyses, our analysis is cheap, and does not require access to the entire program. Field analysis exploits the declared access restrictions placed on fields in a modular language (e.g. field access modifiers in Java) in order to determine useful properties of fields of an object. We describe our implementation of field analysis in the Swiftoptimizing compiler for Java, as well a set of optimizations thatexploit the results of field analysis. These optimizations include removal of run-time tests, compile-time resolution of method calls, object inlining, removal of unnecessary synchronization, and stack allocation. Our results demonstrate that field analysis is efficient and effective. Speedups average 7% on a wide range of applications, with some times reduced by up to 27%. Compile time overhead of field analysis is about 10%.
Failure of Lamivudine to Reverse Hepatitis B Virus-Associated Changes in ERK, Akt and Cell Cycle Regulatory Proteins

Background Chronic infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major factor associated with the development of hepatocellular carcinoma, but the mechanism by which this occurs is unknown. Treatment of chronic hepatitis B with lamivudine results in virological suppression and histological improvement; however, the role of lamivudine in preventing the development of hepatocellular carcinoma is less well defined. We recently reported that replication of HBV in a cell-culture system was associated with the upregulation of pERK, pAkt, pc-Myc, nuclear cyclin B1, p21cip1 and p53 together with G2 cell cycle arrest. Methods In order to determine whether lamivudine is able to reverse the HBV-induced changes on signal transduction and cell cycle, we infected Huh7 cells with a recombinant adeno-HBV virus in the presence of 0–50 μM of lamivudine. Signal transduction and cell cycle regulatory proteins were analysed by western immunoblot. Results Although lamivudine was able to inhibit HBV replication, it failed to reverse the changes on ERK and Akt phosphorylation. Correspondingly, levels of phospho-GSK3β and p21cip1/waf1 were increased, as were cyclin D1, cyclin B1, p53 and pc-Myc. Conclusions Lamivudine was ineffective in reversing the HBV-induced changes in signal transduction pathways and cell cycle regulatory proteins, indicating that the HBV-infected cells remained primed for oncogenic transformation despite viral suppression.
A new clinical guideline from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health with a national awareness campaign accelerates brain tumor diagnosis in UK children--"HeadSmart: Be Brain Tumour Aware".

BACKGROUND A national survey in 2006 identified that UK referral practice for pediatric CNS tumors ranked poorly in international comparisons, which led to new National Health Service (NHS) Evidence accredited referral guidelines published in 2008 by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a campaign to raise awareness of early features of CNS tumors and the need for timely imaging. METHODS The "HeadSmart: Be Brain Tumour Aware" campaign was launched in June 2011 across the UK as a quality improvement strategy directed at reducing the total diagnostic interval (TDI) from a pre-campaign (2006) median of 14 (mean, 35.4) weeks to a target of 5 weeks in order to equal the best reported internationally. Professional and public awareness was measured by questionnaire surveys. TDI was collected by clinical champions in 18 regional children's cancer centers and the public campaign was coordinated by a national charity, working with a network of community champions. RESULTS The guidelines and campaign raised awareness among pediatricians and were associated with reduction in TDI to a median of 6.7 (mean, 21.3) weeks by May 2013. This change in referral practice was most pronounced in the time from first medical contact to CNS imaging, for which the median was reduced from 3.3 to 1.4 weeks between January 2011 and May 2013 (P = .009). CONCLUSION This strategy to accelerate brain tumor diagnosis by the NHS using a public and professional awareness campaign is a "world first" in pediatric cancer and is being emulated internationally and acknowledged by a series of NHS and charity awards for excellence.
Correlation of COL10A1 induction during chondrogenesis of mesenchymal stem cells with demethylation of two CpG sites in the COL10A1 promoter.

OBJECTIVE Human articular chondrocytes do not express COL10A1 and do not undergo hypertrophy except in close vicinity to subchondral bone. In contrast, chondrocytes produced in vitro from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) show premature COL10A1 expression and cannot form stable ectopic cartilage transplants, which indicates that they may be phenotypically unstable and not suitable for treatment of articular cartilage lesions. CpG methylation established during natural development may play a role in suppression of COL10A1 expression and hypertrophy in human articular chondrocytes. This study was undertaken to compare gene methylation patterns and expression of COL10A1 and COL2A1 in chondrocyte and MSC populations, in order to determine whether failed genomic methylation patterns correlate with an unstable chondrocyte phenotype after chondrogenesis of MSCs. METHODS COL10A1 and COL2A1 regulatory gene regions were computationally searched for CpG-rich regions. CpG methylation of genomic DNA from human articular chondrocytes, MSCs, and MSC-derived chondrocytes was analyzed by Combined Bisulfite Restriction Analysis and by sequencing of polymerase chain reaction fragments amplified from bisulfite-treated genomic DNA. RESULTS The CpG island around the transcription start site of COL2A1 was unmethylated in all cell groups independent of COL2A1 expression, while 9 tested CpG sites in the sparse CpG promoter of COL10A1 were consistently methylated in human articular chondrocytes. Induction of COL10A1 expression during chondrogenesis of MSCs correlated with demethylation of 2 CpG sites in the COL10A1 promoter. CONCLUSION Our findings indicate that methylation-based COL10A1 gene silencing is established in cartilage tissue and human articular chondrocytes. Altered methylation levels at 2 CpG sites of COL10A1 in MSCs and their demethylation during chondrogenesis may facilitate induction of COL10A1 as observed during in vitro chondrogenesis of MSCs.