Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A semiparametric Bayesian approach for mark-recapture estimation

This paper describes a semiparametric Bayesian approach for modelling mark-recapture data. A main assumption in modelling mark-recapture data is that survival probabilities are homogeneous. We relax this assumption by modelling survival probabilities as a function of two parameters which explain variations due to unknown biological and environmental reasons. The heterogeneity in travel times and survival probabilities is accounted using the Dirichlet process. The Dirichlet process also provides a clustering mechanism which is often suitable for mark-recapture data where groups of animals can be thought of as arising from the same cohort. The approach is highlighted using actual data arising from thed Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) project. Log-pseudo marginal likelihood (LPML) model selection procedure indicates that the proposed model performs better over conventional alternative methods.
Identification of Acetate-Assimilating Microorganisms under Methanogenic Conditions in Anoxic Rice Field Soil by Comparative Stable Isotope Probing of RNA

ABSTRACT Acetate is the most abundant intermediate of organic matter degradation in anoxic rice field soil and is converted to CH4 and/or CO2. Aceticlastic methanogens are the primary microorganisms dissimilating acetate in the absence of sulfate and reducible ferric iron. In contrast, very little is known about bacteria capable of assimilating acetate under methanogenic conditions. Here, we identified active acetate-assimilating microorganisms by using a combined approach of frequent label application at a low concentration and comparative RNA-stable isotope probing with 13C-labeled and unlabeled acetate. Rice field soil was incubated anaerobically at 25°C for 12 days, during which 13C-labeled acetate was added at a concentration of 500 μM every 3 days. 13C-labeled CH4 and CO2 were produced from the beginning of the incubation and accounted for about 60% of the supplied acetate 13C. RNA was extracted from the cells in each sample taken and separated by isopycnic centrifugation according to molecular weight. Bacterial and archaeal populations in each density fraction were screened by reverse transcription-PCR-mediated terminal restriction fragment polymorphism analysis. No differences in the bacterial populations were observed throughout the density fractions of the unlabeled treatment. However, in the heavy fractions of the 13C treatment, terminal restriction fragments (T-RFs) of 161 bp and 129 bp in length predominated. These T-RFs were identified by cloning and sequencing of 16S rRNA as from a Geobacter sp. and an Anaeromyxobacter sp. , respectively. Apparently these bacteria, which are known as dissimilatory iron reducers, were able to assimilate acetate under methanogenic conditions, i.e., when CO2 was the predominant electron acceptor. We hypothesize that ferric iron minerals with low bioavailability might have served as electron acceptors for Geobacter spp. and Anaeromyxobacter spp. under these conditions.
Histopathology of Carotid Atherosclerotic Disease

STROKE IS THE third leading cause of death in the United States, constituting approximately 700,000 cases each year, of which about 500,000 are first attacks and 200,000 are recurrent attacks. Ischemic stroke accounts for the majority of all strokes (88%), followed by intracerebral hemorrhage (9%) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (3%). Patients with substantial carotid narrowing are at increased risk for major stroke; however, recent studies suggest that factors other than the degree of carotid stenosis are involved in ischemic stroke pathogenesis. Atherosclerotic plaque of the stenotic carotid artery is the underlying cause of the majority of ischemic strokes and specific plaque characteristics have been associated with ischemic brain injury. Several studies have demonstrated that the mechanisms of plaque instability in the carotid circulation are similar to those in the coronary circulation. The purpose of this review is to characterize atherosclerotic carotid disease in light of our knowledge of coronary atherosclerosis and relate carotid plaque morphology to cerebral ischemic syndromes. Histological examination of the carotid plaque specimen should provide insights into the underlying plaque morphology that is responsible for the disease and should help determine the potential treatments that are likely to be beneficial in the prevention of a subsequent event.
Derating line voltages to limit steady overvoltages and enhance network operational efficiency

Under light loading conditions of networks, steady overvoltages can result. This is because at low loading there is not enough consumption of reactive power generated by the lines, with the consequence that excessive capacitive current flows in the system, and active power losses become high. Ultimately, this leads to increased costs of supply which have to be borne by customers. In this paper the authors have investigated the feasibility of using step down transformers in derating operating voltages of lines in a load centre as a potential solution for resolving overvoltages. These transformers are placed at the ends of a corridor, thereby derating the operating voltages of the lines between them. Loadflows were carried out for cases without (Case A) and with (Case B) the step down transformers. The inclusion of step down transformers showed a decrease in the reactive power flow in the lines, lesser steady voltages, and a reduction in active power losses. The proposed use of step down transformers is thus a feasible solution for solving steady overvoltage concerns and should be considered among other options when such problems arise.
The Case Study Approach: Some Theoretical, Methodological and Applied Considerations

Abstract : In support of the aims of the Defence Army Learning Organisation (DALO) research programme, examining learning in the Australian Army, this report presents an outline of the case study approach. In doing so, the report provides an overview of the following: (1) case study research and its theoretical underpinnings; (2) methodological considerations, including the purpose of case studies and the rationale for their use in social research; (3) the types of case studies and issues concerning sampling, data collection, and analysis; and (4) different approaches to reporting case study research. In addition, the report provides examples of some of the ways in which the case study approach has been employed by researchers to examine the significance of learning in Defence, wider military, and organisational contexts.
On the Deceleration of CMEs in the Corona and Interplanetary Medium deduced from Radio and White‐Light Observations

It is generally acknowledged that CMEs, especially the faster ones, must deceleration somewhere between the high corona and interplanetary medium. However, the detailed characteristics and spatial region over which this deceleration occurs is still largely unknown. Simultaneous radio and white‐light observations can provide information on the speed profiles of the CME or CME/shock in the high corona and/or interplanetary medium. These observations are consistent with constant deceleration for most CMEs. From the theoretical or modelling point of view, it is usually assumed that the deceleration of CMEs is due to a drag term, which is usually taken to be proportional to the relative speed of the CME compared to that of the solar wind or to this relative speed squared. We point out that such a form for the drag force on the CME inevitably leads to speed profiles that are inconsistent with both the radio and white‐light observations.
The Curse of Cainan (Jub. 8.1-5): Genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 11 and a Mathematical Pattern

This study suggests that Cainan (LXX Gen. 10.24; Gen. 11.12; [LXX A] 1 Chron. 1.18; Jub. 8.1-5; Lk. 3.36-37), the missing thirteenth patriarch from Adam in the genealogical table in Masoretic text (MT) and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP) was known to the authors of the proto-MT, and the proto-SP. Using textual and chrono-genealogical analysis, it offers evidence to show that the thirteenth generation from the thirteenth generation from Adam had to contend with a curse. An arithmetical test on the variant chrono-genealogical data in Gen. 5 and Gen. 11 in the MT, SP, LXX Vaticanus (B), LXX Alexandrinus (A) and the Peshitta show that the ages and `begetting' ages of the ancestors across the recensions create an integrated mathematical model. It would appear that the variant data in the texts was compiled by the same mathematical school of Jewish scholars, probably in Palestine and Alexandria. The arithmetical paradigm takes into account Cainan's presence in LXX B and LXX A and his absence in the proto-MT, proto-SP and the Peshitta. It is likely that the Gen. 5 and Gen. 11 chrono-genealogies can be dated to between the compilation of the LXX Genesis, in the third century BCE and the schism between the Samaritans and the Jews in the second century BCE.
Ideomotor Apraxia: a Call to Action

Although ideomotor apraxia (IM) has been a topic of investigation since the early 20th century, progress in studying the models of various investigative groups. As a result, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the expected performance of IM patients on various tests of praxis (e.g. pantomime, single object use, gesture imitation, and naturalistic action); the relationship of IM to ideational apraxia (IA); the degree to which specific error types are diagnostic of one or the other disorder; the relationship of semantic knowledge to gesture representations; and the role of spatiomotor systems external to the stored gesture representation system. Here an updated model of IM is presented, informed by recent physiological and functional neuroimaging literature, as a step towards resolving some of these concerns. The model is intended to lay the groundwork for future investigations of specific performance patterns in different subtypes of IM.
Design of an optimal fuzzy logic controller using response surface methodology

When the fuzzy logic controller (FLC)-designed based on the plant model-is applied to the real control system, satisfactory control performance may not be attained due to modeling errors from the plant model. Also, a controller that is designed under specific circumstances may not show satisfactory control performance when applied to other circumstances. In such cases, the control parameters of the controller must be adjusted to enhance control performance. Until now, the trial and error method has been used, consuming much time and effort. Also, the set of adjusted values is not guaranteed to be optimal. To resolve such problems, response surface methodology (RSM), a method of adjusting the control parameters of the controller, is suggested. This method is more systematic than the previous trial and error method, thus, optimal solutions can be provided with less tuning. First, the initial values of the control parameters are determined through the plant model and the optimization algorithm. Then designed experiments are performed in the region around the initial values, determining the optimal values of the control parameters that satisfy both the rise time and overshoot simultaneously.
Plasma proteasome level is a potential marker in patients with solid tumors and hemopoietic malignancies

Proteasomes are nonlysosomal proteolytic structures that have been implicated in cell growth and differentiation. Abnormal expression levels of proteasomes have been described in tumor cells, and proteasomes can be detected and measured in plasma. The objective of this study was to characterize differences in proteasome levels between normal, healthy donors and patients with neoplastic disease and to correlate the findings with clinical status and other biologic markers of disease spread.
On Accuracy of Early Traffic Classification

The widely employment of traffic encryption, tunneling and other protection/obfuscation mechanisms in modern network applications, prompts the emergence of traffic behavior (i.e., packet direction pattern, size, and inter-arrival time) based classification approaches. Some proposals even demonstrate its potential for on-line early traffic classification - using the first 4-6 data packets at the beginning of a TCP connection to identify the corresponding application. Nevertheless, the related accuracy issues on early classification are still unclear when forged packets exist. The performance of such mechanism under malicious environment, where sophisticated forged data packets injection techniques are presented, had not been addressed. This work aims to touch the above issues, especially when forged packets are inserted before actual application transaction started. Our contributions are two-folded: (1) confirm the discrimination power of early classification as revealed by previous study; (2) explore it's accuracy vulnerability to forged packets - the experiments on both simulated and real SSH tunnel traces show the accuracy declines when forged packets are injected. Our findings show that the intellective early classification methods still deserve further investigation before actual deployment.
Wideband SAW-Less Receiver Front-End With Harmonic Rejection Mixer in 65-nm CMOS

A wideband direct-conversion receiver front-end featuring a new harmonic rejection technique is demonstrated in 65-nm CMOS. The circuit consists of a two-stage low-noise amplifier, the first stage with capacitive feedback, a harmonic rejection mixer using 25% and 50% duty cycle local oscillator signals, and a third-order channel-select filter with configurable bandwidth. The receiver front-end is intended for surface-acoustic-wave-less cellular applications, and its performance was measured at 900- and 1800-MHz bands. The average harmonic rejection over GSM and LTE channel bandwidths is between 60 and 70 dB. Peak harmonic rejection exceeds 80 dB. The noise figures (NFs) are 3.3 and 3.9 dB for the complete receiver front-end in low band and high band, respectively, with an S11 below -15 dB from 500 MHz to 2.5 GHz. The 1-dB received signal compression points with a blocker present at 20/80 MHz offset for low/high band are 0 and +2 dBm, respectively. The NF with 0-dBm blocker is 13 dB. For low band, the in-band IIP3 and IIP2 are -14.8 and > 49 dBm, respectively, and, for high band, -18.2 and > 44 dBm. The circuit worst case consumes 80 mW of power.
Thin and Compact Dual-Band Four-Element Broadside Patch Antenna Arrays

This letter presents two configurations of thin and compact dual-band four-element broadside patch antenna arrays. They are built by feeding four dual-band patch radiating elements through a feeding patch by parasitic coupling. Similar to the electrically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR), a driven element is directly excited from the power source, and then a number of passive radiating elements are excited through mutual coupling. The proposed dual-band arrays have the advantages of simple single-layer structure, ease of fabrication, low profile, light weight, and high gain. The performances of the dual-band arrays are analyzed in terms of antenna gain, radiation pattern, impedance matching and total efficiency, thereby validating the dual-band array configurations.
Galvanic vestibular stimulator for fMRI studies

INTRODUCTION: Areas of the brain that are associated with the vestibular system can be activated using galvanic vestibular stimulation. These areas can be studied through a combination of galvanic vestibular stimulation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In order to provide an appropriate sequence of galvanic stimulation synchronous with the MRI pulse sequence, a specific electronic device that was built and assessed is presented. METHODS: The electronic project of the GVS is divided in analog and digital circuits. The analog circuits are mounted in an aluminum case, supplied by sealed batteries, and goes inside the MRI room near to the feet of the subject. The digital circuits are placed in the MRI control room. Those circuits communicate through each other by an optical fiber. Tests to verify the GVS-MRI compatibility were conducted. Silicone (in-house) and Ag/AgCl (commercial) electrodes were evaluated for maximum balance and minimal pain sensations. fMRI experiments were conducted in eight human volunteers. RESULTS: GVS-MRI compatibility experiments demonstrate that the GVS did not interfere with the MRI scanner functionality and vice versa. The circular silicone electrode was considered the most suitable to apply the galvanic vestibular stimulation. The 1 Hz stimulation sinusoid frequency produced the biggest balance and the less pain sensations when compared to 2 Hz. The GVS was capable of eliciting activation in the precentral and postcentral gyri, in the central sulcus, in the supplementary motor area, in the middle and inferior frontal gyri, in the inferior parietal lobule, in the insula, in the superior temporal gyrus, in the middle cingulate cortex, and in the cerebellum. CONCLUSION: This study shows the development and description of a neurovestibular stimulator that can be safely used inside the MRI scanner room without interfering on its operation and vice versa. The developed GVS could successfully activate the major areas involved with multimodal functions of the vestibular system, demonstrating its validity as a stimulator for neurovestibular research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that shows the development and the construction of a galvanic vestibular stimulator that could be safely used inside the MRI room.
Cross-Reactive Surface Epitopes on Chondroitin Sulfate A-Adherent Plasmodium falciparum-Infected Erythrocytes Are Associated with Transcription of var2csa

ABSTRACT Malaria in pregnancy is associated with placental accumulation of Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes (IE) that adhere to chondroitin sulfate A (CSA). Adhesion is mediated by P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1), a variant parasite protein expressed on the surface of IE and encoded by var genes. Rabbit antiserum was generated against the CSA-adherent P. falciparum line CS2, in which the dominant var transcribed is var2csa, a relatively conserved var gene that has been associated with CSA adhesion. Anti-CS2 recognized genetically distinct CSA-adherent P. falciparum lines but not CD36-adherent parent lines. Reactivity with anti-CS2 correlated with the level of adhesion to CSA. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting according to binding of anti-CS2 showed reactivity was associated with CSA adhesion and transcription of var2csa. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that var2csa encodes a PfEMP1 expressed on the surface of IE, which mediates adhesion to CSA and is relatively conserved between genetically distinct strains of P. falciparum.
Reporter cell lines are useful tools for monitoring biological activity of nuclear receptor ligands.

To characterize the specificity of synthetic compounds for nuclear receptors, we established stable cell lines expressing the luciferase gene and different wild-type or chimaeric receptors. MCF-7 cells, which express the oestrogen receptor alpha (ER alpha), and HeLa cells, which do not express the oestrogen receptor, were transfected with a plasmid containing the luciferase gene downstream from a minimum promoter (beta-globin) and an oestrogen-responsive element, generating the MELN and the HELN cell lines, respectively. MELN cells enabled the detection of compounds that bind to the ER alpha or interfere with its pathway. HELN cells were used to establish stable transfectants expressing different nuclear receptors containing the DNA-binding domain of the oestrogen receptors. We thus established ER alpha or ER beta reporter cell lines by transfecting ER alpha or ER beta expression plasmids, and also retinoic acid receptor alpha, beta or gamma reporter cell lines by transfecting the chimaeric RAR gene, in which the DNA-binding domain was replaced by the ER alpha DNA-binding domain.
Duality Based Energy-Efficient Beamforming Design for Multiuser Downlink Systems

In this letter, we consider energy efficient beamforming for the broadcast multiple antenna channel. The optimization problem is formulated as maximizing the ratio of the achievable sum-rate to the total power consumption subject to given power and SINR constraints, which is non-convex and hard to tackle. In contrast to existing approaches, we first derive a virtual uplink problem that is dual to the primal downlink problem, which extends the conventional uplink-downlink duality into energy efficiency region. Owing to the fact that the optimal receive beamforming vectors in the uplink have analytical solutions, we then propose an efficient algorithm to solve the dual problem and convert its solution to the primal problem. Our complexity analysis shows that the proposed algorithm has much lower complexity than the existing solutions. Numerical results finally confirm the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm and illustrate its advantage over the conventional approaches.
An accurate frequency offset estimator in the intermediate frequency for the satellite-based AIS signals

This paper investigates an accurate frequency offset estimator in the intermediate frequency for the satellite-based AIS signals. Using Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) modulation for transmission, the AIS signal is shown to be a plane wave with the modulated phase information and carrier frequency resulting from the Doppler effects. Hence, the phase information can be eliminated with a re-modulated signal, and the frequency offset can be estimated by the ratio of the maximum spectral amplitude and its neighbor spectral amplitude based on the FFT interpolation. The estimator has low complexity, and it is easy to implement. Computer simulations are used to assess the estimation performance of the estimator.
Reducing unwanted pregnancies In Greenland

Objectives. In 2002 the number of births in Greenland was 940 and the number of abortions 821. The Home Rule Government in Greenland and PAARISA, The Department of Health (Ministry of Health) have the goal to reduce the abortion rate in Greenland with 50% within the next 5 years. In spring 2003 an internal campaign was carried out in 8 communities/hospitals: Ittoqqortoormiit, Upernavik, Ilulissat, Aasiaat, Maniitsoq, Paamiut, Narsaq and Qaqortoq. The aim of the campaign was to recognize the problems and wishes for the future effort from the perspective of professionals (health professionals, teachers, preventive workers). Study design. Descriptive analyses of possibilities and barriers among professionals and lay people. Methods. Participating observations, individual and group interviews. Results. Though there are local variations, many problems are identical in the different communities. The general problems are related to collaboration, sexual supervision, education and mediation, contraceptive methods, access to contraceptive methods and moral standards in communities and the society in general. Conclusion. Increased collaboration between professionals, lay people and key persons in the community; improved quality and focus on sexual education; awareness on contraceptive methods used; new strategies in access to (desirable) condoms and increased focus on the problems related to unwanted pregnancies in society.