Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analyzing Social Web Services' Capabilities

This paper looks into ways of supporting social Web services react to the behaviors that their peers expose at run time. Examples of behaviors include selfishness and unfairness. These reactions are associated with actions packaged into capabilities. A capability allows a social Web service to stop exchanging private details with a peer and/or to suspend collaborating with another peer, for example. The analysis of capability results into three types referred to as functional (what a social Web service does), non-functional (how a social Web service runs), and social (how a social Web service reacts to peers). To avoid cross-cutting concerns among these capabilities aspect-oriented programming is used for implementing a system.
LEARNING IN INDOOR LOCALIZATION

This work addresses the fundamental issue of online channel learning in indoor localization systems. We describe a novel algorithm for unsupervised channel learning where the path loss exponent in the Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) region is adapted online while positioning.The algorithm has scalable complexity and is shown to provide significant improvement over non-adaptive systems.
QRD-based MU-MIMO transmission scheme towards evolved LTE TDD system

With the active evolvement of 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) system, advanced multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) transmission schemes attract more and more interests in engineering field. However, in order to bring advanced MU-MIMO techniques from theory to practice, there are two major obstacles to overcome, i.e., how to obtain accurate channel state information at the transmitter side (CSIT) and how to achieve high spectrum efficiency with low computational complexity. In this paper, we propose QR decomposition (QRD) based MU-MIMO transmission scheme towards evolved LTE time division duplex (TDD) system, which can orthogonalize the multiple data streams to/from multiple users in downlink/uplink with TDD ping-pong transmission to realize high spectrum efficiency, thanks to the accurate downlink/uplink CSIT obtained via the channel reciprocity and the downlink/uplink reference signal (RS) in evolved LTE TDD system. Furthermore, it only needs low-complexity QRD operation, which can simplify the transceiver structure significantly to facilitate its implementation in practice. Computer simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal and suggest it a promising candidate of advanced MU-MIMO transmission schemes towards evolved LTE TDD system.
Wideband radar cross-section reduction by electromagnetic band-gap surfaces

A novel radar cross-section reducer surface based on combination of four different electromagnetic band-gap structures is proposed. These periodic structures exhibit a destructive interference resulting in redirection of scattering fields from a target. The dimensions of four square unit cells are optimized in order to achieve a thin broadband planar surface for at least 10dB RCS reduction in comparison to a PEC plate. Consequently, the reduction is realized up to 75% over the C band.
Glenohumeral relationships during physiologic shoulder motion and stress testing: initial experience with open MR imaging and active imaging-plane registration.

PURPOSE To test the hypotheses that open dynamic magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can (a) be used to evaluate and define normal shoulder motion in active joint motion and muscle contraction and (b) be used in conjunction with physical examination. MATERIALS AND METHODS With an open-configuration, 0.5-T MR imaging system and active image-plane tracking, 10 shoulders were studied in five asymptomatic subjects to establish normal patterns of glenohumeral motion during abduction and adduction and internal and external rotation. Preliminary studies of physical examination during MR imaging, in which a physician examiner applied mechanical force to the humeral head, were also performed. RESULTS During abduction and adduction and internal and external rotation maneuvers with active subjects muscle contraction, the humeral head remained precisely centered on the glenoid fossa in all asymptomatic subjects, which is in agreement with findings of previous radiographic studies. Application of force to the humeral head by an examiner was associated with as much as 6 mm of anterior translation and 13 mm of posterior translation. CONCLUSION Dynamic MR imaging of the glenohumeral joint is possible over a wide range of physiologic motion in vertically open systems. Use of an MR tracking coil enabled accurate tracking of the anatomy of interest. These preliminary measurements of normal glenohumeral motion patterns begin to establish normal ranges of motion and constitute a necessary first step in characterizing pathologic motion in patients with common clinical problems such as instability and impingement.
Radial head replacement with pyrocarbon prosthesis: early clinical results

Comminuted radial head fractures are challenging to treat with open reduction and internal fixation. Radial head arthroplasty is a favourable technique for the treatment of complex radial head fractures. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the functional and radiological outcomes of radial head arthroplasty using modular pyrocarbon radial head prosthesis.
Closed-loop digital pre-distortion with memory effects using genetic algorithms

This paper continues our investigation of genetic pre-distortion algorithms to linearize power amplifiers (PA) with strong memory effects. In previous work, we reported simulation results of an adaptive algorithm that requires only a measure of out-of-band emission to sequentially adapt polynomial functions. Compared to traditional algorithms that require wideband feedback, the proposed algorithm is implemented using only narrowband feedback, affording a large savings in analog to digital converters and high dynamic range downconverter components. The paper describes the hardware implementation of this algorithm on a typical basestation configuration. Hardware results indicate substantial reduction in adjacent channel interference when operating on RF power amplifiers with strong memory effects. The fast convergence rate suggests that this technique can be employed as a low-cost solution to meet regulatory requirements.
Effectiveness of Day Treatment for Disruptive Behaviour Disorders: What is the Long-term Clinical Outcome for Children?

OBJECTIVE The present study investigates the clinical long-term outcomes (2½ to 4 years post-discharge) of children aged 12 and under with a primary diagnosis of a Disruptive Behaviour Disorder (DBD) who attended a short-term day treatment program using best-practice treatment strategies. This study compared children's admission, discharge, and follow-up test scores on standardized measures of behaviour and functioning, as rated by parents. METHOD Measures of clinical symptoms in the children and parent report of stress were used. To test for treatment effects across time, two repeated-measures ANOVAs were calculated. RESULTS There was significant treatment change across time points on measures of social problems, externalizing symptoms, levels of aggression, intensity of problems, and symptoms of ADHD. CONCLUSIONS Children with DBD who attended a short-term day treatment program using best-practice treatment strategies showed significant improvement in their behaviour at home. These improvements were relatively long lasting. The current study lends support to the effectiveness of day treatment and the idea that severe DBD can be treated using multi-modal, intensive, and evidence-based treatment techniques resulting in long-term change.
CCR5 expression and duration of high risk sexual activity among HIV-seronegative men who have sex with men

Objectives:To test the hypothesis that in comparison with those with shorter risk duration, individuals with longer HIV risk duration would have reduced susceptibility to HIV-1 infection as measured by CCR5 expression, and to evaluate whether variation in CCR5 expression could be explained by known genetic polymorphisms. Design and methods:A cross-sectional study of HIV-1 exposed but uninfected men who have sex with men. The risk duration was estimated from self-reported years since first receptive anal intercourse. CCR5 expression on peripheral blood CD4+ monocytes and T cells was determined by flow cytometry. The CCR5-Δ32 mutation and polymorphisms in the CCR5 promoter and CCR2 as well as the copy number of CCL3L1 were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction. Plasma levels of MIP-1α (CCL3), MIP-1β (CCL4) and RANTES (CCL5) were also measured. As risk duration varied with age, analyses were restricted to 67 individuals aged 30–49 years. Results:Multiple linear regression analyses, adjusted for age and race, showed a significant negative association between HIV risk duration and CCR5 expression on monocytes (P = 0.01), and in a separate model, a similar negative association with CCR5 expression on T cells (P = 0.03). Low CCR5 expression was attributable mainly to CCR5-Δ32 heterozygosity and the CCR5-59029G allele. Conclusions:We confirmed a role for reduced CCR5 expression in HIV-1 resistance. CCR5-Δ32 heterozygosity and the CCR5-59029G allele were significant predictors of low CCR5 expression. Individuals with high CCR5 expression who resisted infection despite long HIV risk duration form an interesting group within which to search for additional mechanisms of resistance to HIV infection.
Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism

A far-reaching history of terrorism across the world, from its beginnings to the modern day, from the highly acclaimed author of 'Sacred Causes' and 'Earthly Powers'. The paperback edition will be updated to cover recent events - including the recent terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 and the continued military clash in Gaza in early 2009. Basing his study on a wide range of sources and key players from the world of terrorism, Burleigh explains and defines the meaning of terrorism and marks its progression from its hard-to-trace beginnings to the modern day. Burleigh takes us from the origins of terrorism in the Irish Republican Brotherhood - the precursors of the IRA - on to look at Tsarist Russia, where the 'intelligentsia' launched attacks on organs of state, and left-wing fighting against 'Fascism' and 'Nazism' in the 1970s and 1980s in western Germany and Italy. But such nationalist terrrorism has in turn been eclipsed by international jihadist violence, largely driven by widespread resentment of the successful societes of the West. Burleigh explores the background and the milieu of people engaged in careers of political violence, and examines their various mindsets as revealed by their actions rather than their words. He makes clear that the West has considerable resources to comprehend and combat terrorism and shows how history enables us to see how terrrorism can be effectively contained and countered - if only by avoiding some of the major mistakes of the past. An unrivalled study that sheds an insightful new light on a plight that threatens to affect the world at large for many years to come, 'Blood and Rage' establishes Michael Burleigh as one of the most original, learned and important historians of our time.
The role of omega-3 dietary supplementation in blepharitis and meibomian gland dysfunction (an AOS thesis).

PURPOSE Blepharitis and meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) are common sources of complaints from patients. To evaluate the effect on ocular symptoms, ocular findings, and serum and meibomian gland contents, patients with blepharitis and MGD were prospectively evaluated to determine the effects of dietary supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids. METHODS In a prospective randomized placebo-controlled masked trial, patients with simple obstructive MGD and blepharitis, who had discontinued all topical medications and tetracyclines, received oral omega-3 dietary supplementation consisting of two 1000-mg capsules 3 times a day. Patients were examined every 3 months for 1 year with the Ocular Surface Disease Index (OSDI) objective clinical measures, including tear production and stability, ocular surface and meibomian gland health, and biochemical plasma, red blood cell (RBC), and meibum evaluation. Primary outcome measures were change in tear breakup time (TBUT), meibum score, and overall OSDI score at 1 year. RESULTS At 1 year, the omega-3 group had a 36% and 31% reduction in their omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acid ratios in RBCs and plasma, respectively (P = .3), whereas the placebo group demonstrated no change. At 12 months, the omega-3 group had an improvement in TBUT, OSDI score, and meibum score. Changes in meibum content were observed in the omega-3 group (P = .21); the level of meibum saturated fatty acids decreased. CONCLUSIONS This trial demonstrated a decrease in the RBC and plasma ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 in patients taking omega-3 dietary supplementation, as compared to controls, and improvements in their overall OSDI score, TBUT, and meibum score. This is the first demonstration of an induced change in the fatty acid saturation content in meibum as a result of dietary supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids.
NC-Link: A New Linkage Method for Efficient Hierarchical Clustering of Large-Scale Data

In various disciplines, hierarchical clustering (HC) has been an effective tool for data analysis due to its ability to summarize hierarchical structures of data in an intuitive and interpretable manner. A run of HC requires multiple iterations, each of which needs to compute and update the pairwise distances between all intermediate clusters. This makes the exact algorithm for HC inevitably suffer from quadratic time and space complexities. To address large-scale data, various approximate/parallel algorithms have been proposed to reduce the computational cost of HC. However, such algorithms still rely on conventional linkage methods (such as single, centroid, average, complete, or Ward’s) for defining pairwise distances, mostly focusing on the approximation/parallelization of linkage computations. Given that the choice of linkage profoundly affects not only the quality but also the efficiency of HC, we propose a new linkage method named NC-link and design an exact algorithm for NC-link-based HC. To guarantee the exactness, the proposed algorithm maintains the quadratic nature in time complexity but exhibits only linear space complexity, thereby allowing us to address million-object data on a personal computer. To underpin the extensibility of our approach, we showthat the algorithmic nature of NC-link enables single instruction multiple data (SIMD) parallelization and subquadratic-time approximation of HC. To verify our proposal, we thoroughly tested it with a number of large-scale real and synthetic data sets. In terms of efficiency, NC-link allowed us to perform HC substantially more space efficiently or faster than conventional methods: compared with average and complete linkages, using NC-link incurred only 0.7%–1.75% of the memory usage, and the NC-link-based implementation delivered speedups of approximately 3.5 times over the centroid and Ward’s linkages. With regard to clustering quality, the proposed method was able to retrieve hierarchical structures from input data as faithfully as in the popular average and centroid linkage methods. We anticipate that the existing approximation/parallel algorithms will be able to benefit from adopting NC-link as their linkage method for obtaining better clustering results and reduced time and space demands.
A pooled analysis of the efficacy of desvenlafaxine for the treatment of major depressive disorder in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women.

BACKGROUND Few studies in the literature have examined the efficacy of antidepressant drugs in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women. The objective of the current study was to assess the efficacy of desvenlafaxine (administered as desvenlafaxine succinate) separately in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with major depressive disorder (MDD). METHODS Data were pooled from two double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials enrolling perimenopausal and postmenopausal women (40-70 years old) diagnosed with MDD. Patients were randomly assigned to receive desvenlafaxine 100 to 200 mg/day or placebo (8 weeks) or desvenlafaxine 50 mg/day or placebo (10 weeks). The primary efficacy end point for each trial was change from baseline in Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D17) total score at week 8. Secondary end points included change from baseline in Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS) and Menopause Rating Scale (MRS) scores. Changes from baseline in continuous variables were analyzed using analysis of covariance with treatment, region, and baseline in the model. All treatment comparisons were carried out separately in perimenopausal or postmenopausal women, in individual studies, and in the pooled population, adjusting for menopausal status and study. RESULTS A total of 798 patients were included in the full analysis set (perimenopausal, n=252; postmenopausal, n=546). Desvenlafaxine significantly reduced HAM-D17 total scores versus placebo at week 8 in both perimenopausal (-10.3 vs. -6.5; p<0.001) and postmenopausal women (-10.1 vs. -7.6; p<0.001). Significant improvements in SDS and MRS total scores were also observed for desvenlafaxine versus placebo in perimenopausal (p ≤ 0.024) and postmenopausal women (p ≤ 0.009). A significant treatment by menopausal status interaction was observed for SDS only (p=0.036). CONCLUSIONS Desvenlafaxine demonstrated antidepressant efficacy in both perimenopausal and postmenopausal subgroups of women with MDD. DISCLAIMER In September 2011, Pfizer received a Complete Response Letter from the United States Food and Drug Administration on its application for approval to market desvenlafaxine for the treatment of moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms associated with menopause. The Complete Response Letter states that the data included in the application are not sufficient to establish an acceptable risk/benefit profile for the treatment of vasomotor symptoms in the general population of postmenopausal women, and therefore desvenlafaxine is not approved for the treatment of vasomotor symptoms in the United States at this time. This decision does not impact desvenlafaxine's approval for the treatment of MDD in adults.
Caregiver burden, patients' self‐perceived burden, and preference for palliative care among cancer patients and caregivers

Recently, caregiver burden (CB) has emerged as an important issue in the area of palliative medicine. However, patients' feelings related to being a burden to their families (i.e., self‐perceived burden [SPB]) is also a significant issue. We evaluated the relation of CB and SPB as preference for palliative care.
Gamma‐aminobutyric acid (GABA)‐mediated neural connections in the Drosophila antennal lobe

Inhibitory synaptic connections mediated by γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) play important roles in the neural computation of the brain. To obtain a detailed overview of the neural connections mediated by GABA signals, we analyzed the distribution of the cells that produce and receive GABA in the Drosophila adult brain. Relatively small numbers of the cells, which form clusters in several areas of the brain, express the GABA synthesis enzyme Gad1. On the other hand, many cells scattered across the brain express ionotropic GABAA receptor subunits (Lcch3 and Rdl) and metabotropic GABAB receptor subtypes (GABA‐B‐R1, ‐2, and ‐3). To analyze the expression of these genes in distinct identified cell types, we focused on the antennal lobe, where GABAergic neurons play important roles in odor coding. By combining fluorescent in situ hybridization and immunolabeling against GFP expressed with cell‐type‐specific GAL4 driver strains, we quantified the percentage of the cells that produce or receive GABA for each cell type. GABA was synthesized in the middle antennocerebral tract (mACT) projection neurons and two types of local neurons. Among them, mACT neurons had few presynaptic sites in the antennal lobe, making the local neurons essentially the sole provider of GABA signals there. On the other hand, not only these local neurons but also all types of projection neurons expressed both ionotropic and metabotropic GABA receptors. Thus, even though inhibitory signals are released from only a few, specific types of local neurons, the signals are read by most of the neurons in the antennal lobe neural circuitry. J. Comp. Neurol. 514:74–91, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Syndesmosis Sprains of the Ankle

A retrospective review of the clinical records and radiographs of 1344 ankle sprains occurring over a 41-month period at the United States Military Academy was performed. The incidence and severity of these sprains did not differ significantly from other studies with the exception of those injuries involving the tibiofibular ligaments. Those patients sustaining incomplete injuries to the ankle syndesmosis had a recovery time of almost twice that of those patients with severe (3rd degree) ankle sprains (55 vs. 28 days). Eight of 13 patients with 10 of 15 incomplete syndesmosis injuries were available for follow-up examination and radiographs at an average time of 20 months postinjury (range of 7–39 months). All patients with this injury had a positive “squeeze test” (compression of the fibula to the tibia at mid-calf) at the time of initial examination. Nine of 10 patients developed ossification of the syndesmosis in follow-up radiographs. None of these patients had developed chronic ankle instability, loss of motion, or arthritic changes of the joint at the time of final followup.
Grasping Spatial Relationships: Failure to Demonstrate Allocentric Visual Coding in a Patient with Visual Form Agnosia

The cortical visual mechanisms involved in processing spatial relationships remain subject to debate. According to one current view, the "dorsal stream" of visual areas, emanating from primary visual cortex and culminating in the posterior parietal cortex, mediates this aspect of visual processing. More recently, others have argued that while the dorsal stream provides egocentric coding of visual location for motor control, the separate "ventral" stream is needed for allocentric spatial coding. We have assessed the visual form agnosic patient DF, whose lesion mainly affects the ventral stream, on a prehension task requiring allocentric spatial coding. She was presented with transparent circular disks. Each disk had circular holes cut in it. DF was asked to reach out and grasp the disk by placing her fingers through the holes. The disks either had three holes (for forefinger, middle finger, and thumb) or two holes (for forefinger and thumb). The distance between the forefinger and thumb holes, and the orientation of the line formed by them, were independently varied. DF was quite unable to adjust her grip aperture or her hand orientation in the three-hole task. Although she was able to orient her hand appropriately for the two-hole disks, she still remained unable to adjust her grip aperture to the distance between the holes. These findings are consistent with the idea that allocentric processing of spatial information requires a functioning ventral stream, even when the information is being used to guide a motor response.