Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Fluid Shifts of Body Compartments using Both Bioimpedance Analysis and Blood Volume Monitoring

Fluid shifts are commonplace in chronic hemodialysis patients during the intra- and interdialytic periods. In this study, we evaluated fluid shifts of body compartments using both bioimpedance spectroscopy and blood volume monitoring from the start to the end of hemodialysis. 24 stable hemodialysis patients were included on the study. Relative change of blood volume was progressively reduced from the start to the end of hemodialysis (1 hr, -7.22±3.23%; 2 hr, -9.78±4.69%; 3 hr, -12.88±5.65%; 4 hr, -15.41±6.54%, respectively). Mean % reduction of intracellular fluid was not significantly different to that of extracellular fluid at the end of hemodialysis (Δ ICF, -6.58±5.34% vs. Δ ECF, -7.07±5.12%). Mean % fluid reduction of arms, legs and trunk was -11.98±6.76%, -6.43±4.37% and -7.47±4.56%, respectively at the end of hemodialysis. There were 3 characteristic patterns in blood-volume change. Similar amounts of fluid were removed from the extracellular and intracellular compartments during hemodialysis, with the arms showing the greatest loss in terms of body segments. The pattern of blood volume change measured by blood volume monitoring may be useful for more accurate determination of dry-weight and for correcting volume status in hemodialysis patients.
HEID Working Paper No : 11 / 2008 Current Account Adjustment and Financial Integration

The paper investigates whether higher financial integration leads in general to slower current account adjustments. The study estimates theoretically founded trade balance reaction functions for a panel of seventy countries from 1970-2004. The empirical analysis finds that adjustment in integrated economies is slower. Consistent with the presented theory the trade balance of integrated economies is more persistent, responds less strongly to net foreign assets, and is more sensitive to fluctuations in net output. A sufficiently strong response to net foreign assets is also a condition for external sustainability. Under high integration countries appear to stay close to the sustainability limit. © The Authors. All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced without the permission of the authors. Current Account Adjustment and Financial Integration
Parallel Scheduling Algorithm based on Complex Coloring for Input-Queued Switches

This paper explores the application of a new algebraic method of edge coloring, called complex coloring, to the scheduling problems of input queued switches. The proposed distributed parallel scheduling algorithm possesses two important features: optimality and rearrangeability. Optimality ensures that the algorithm always returns a proper coloring with the minimum number of required colors, and rearrangeability allows partially re-coloring the existing connection patterns if the underlying graph only changes slightly. The running time of the proposed scheduling algorithm is on the order of $O(\log^2 N)$ per frame, and the amortized time complexity, the time to compute a matching per timeslot, is only $O(\log N)$. The scheduling algorithm is highly robust in the face of traffic fluctuations. Since the higher the variable density, the higher the efficiency of the variable elimination process, complex coloring provides a natural adaptive solution to non-uniform input traffic patterns. The proposed scheduling algorithm for packet switching can achieve nearly 100% throughput.
Structure and Polymorphism of the Major Histocompatibility Complex Class II Region in the Japanese Crested Ibis, Nipponia nippon

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is a highly polymorphic genomic region that plays a central role in the immune system. Despite its functional consistency, the genomic structure of the MHC differs substantially among organisms. In birds, the MHC-B structures of Galliformes, including chickens, have been well characterized, but information about other avian MHCs remains sparse. The Japanese Crested Ibis (Nipponia nippon, Pelecaniformes) is an internationally conserved, critically threatened species. The current Japanese population of N. nippon originates from only five founders; thus, understanding the genetic diversity among these founders is critical for effective population management. Because of its high polymorphism and importance for disease resistance and other functions, the MHC has been an important focus in the conservation of endangered species. Here, we report the structure and polymorphism of the Japanese Crested Ibis MHC class II region. Screening of genomic libraries allowed the construction of three contigs representing different haplotypes of MHC class II regions. Characterization of genomic clones revealed that the MHC class II genomic structure of N. nippon was largely different from that of chicken. A pair of MHC-IIA and -IIB genes was arranged head-to-head between the COL11A2 and BRD2 genes. Gene order in N. nippon was more similar to that in humans than to that in chicken. The three haplotypes contained one to three copies of MHC-IIA/IIB gene pairs. Genotyping of the MHC class II region detected only three haplotypes among the five founders, suggesting that the genetic diversity of the current Japanese Crested Ibis population is extremely low. The structure of the MHC class II region presented here provides valuable insight for future studies on the evolution of the avian MHC and for conservation of the Japanese Crested Ibis.
A low-voltage 12GHz VCO in 0.13/spl mu/m CMOS for OFDM applications

A low voltage 12GHz VCO is fabricated in a 0.13mum CMOS process. The VCO with a 0.8V supply consumes 6mA. The measured phase noise is -84dBc/Hz at 100kHz and -106dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from the center frequency. Design optimization techniques for high performance VCOs in a low voltage CMOS process are discussed
RigidFinder: A fast and sensitive method to detect rigid blocks in large macromolecular complexes

Advances in structure determination have made possible the analysis of large macromolecular complexes (some with nearly 10,000 residues, such as GroEL). The large‐scale conformational changes associated with these complexes require new approaches. Historically, a crucial component of motion analysis has been the identification of moving rigid blocks from the comparison of different conformations. However, existing tools do not allow consistent block identification in very large structures. Here, we describe a novel method, RigidFinder, for such identification of rigid blocks from different conformations—across many scales, from large complexes to small loops. RigidFinder defines rigidity in terms of blocks, where inter‐residue distances are conserved across conformations. Distance conservation, unlike the averaged values (e.g., RMSD) used by many other methods, allows for sensitive identification of motions. A further distinguishing feature of our method, is that, it is capable of finding blocks made from nonconsecutive fragments of multiple polypeptide chains. In our implementation, we utilize an efficient quasi‐dynamic programming search algorithm that allows for real‐time application to very large structures. RigidFinder can be used at a dedicated web server (http://rigidfinder.molmovdb.org). The server also provides links to examples at various scales such as loop closure, domain motions, partial refolding, and subunit shifts. Moreover, here we describe the detailed application of RigidFinder to four large structures: Pyruvate Phosphate Dikinase, T7 RNA polymerase, RNA polymerase II, and GroEL. The results of the method are in excellent agreement with the expert‐described rigid blocks. Proteins 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An acceptance of 4G (Fourth Generation) mobile network in Malaysia

New technology makes possible for anyone and no doubt that the acceptance and usage of this interactive form of communication are auspicious. The launched of latest technology known as 4G in Malaysia provides the potential to change how a person works, live as well as communicates. The objectives of this paper are to assess the acceptance of 4G mobile network and to examine the factors that stimulate the usage of it. The researcher applied qualitative focus group and in-depth interview approach to collect data. A total of 15 informants is selected randomly. The findings indicated that the informants are contented and enthusiastic to use it in the future. The results from this research can be used to support as well as to develop upcoming 4G mobile network application. Further study concerning 4G mobile network is needed due to this technology is in its preliminary stage. The 4G mobile network seems to be a very promising invention of mobile communications and technology as it provides masses of interactive features and this may transform Malaysians’ life as well their acuities of the wireless communication epoch.
Determinants of Currency Crises: A Conflict of Generations?

Crespo Cuaresma and Slacik (2007) show that macroeconomic fundamentals are rather fragile determinants of currency crises under model uncertainty. The objective of the present follow-up study is to search for empirical support for the first- and second-generation models of currency crises in emerging economies using a larger dataset that includes crisis episodes of the 1980s and 1990s, while explicitly taking into account model uncertainty in a Bayesian manner. In line with the propositions made in the theoretical literature, our results suggest that crisis episodes in the 1980s were driven predominantly by adverse developments of macroeconomic fundamentals, while the results for crises in the 1990s might well be interpreted as empirical support for the second-generation type of crises. In addition, our estimation results stand in contradiction to the popular bipolar view and suggest that de facto intermediate exchange rate arrangements considerably reduce the risk of a speculative currency attack.
A N-gram approach to overcome time and parameter independence assumptions of HMM for speech recognition

There is significant interest in developing new acoustic models for speech recognition that overcome traditional HMM restrictions. In this work, we propose to use a N-gram based augmented HMM. Two approaches are presented. The first one consists on overcoming the parameter independence assumption. This is achieved by modelling the dependence between the different acoustic parameters, using N-gram modelling. Then, the input signal is mapped to the new probability space. The second proposal tries to overcome the time independence assumption, by modelling temporal dependencies of each acoustic parameter. Different configurations have been tested, results showing that adding long span information is beneficial for ASR performance.
Multivariate Dimensionality Reduction Approaches to Identify Gene-Gene and Gene-Environment Interactions Underlying Multiple Complex Traits

The elusive but ubiquitous multifactor interactions represent a stumbling block that urgently needs to be removed in searching for determinants involved in human complex diseases. The dimensionality reduction approaches are a promising tool for this task. Many complex diseases exhibit composite syndromes required to be measured in a cluster of clinical traits with varying correlations and/or are inherently longitudinal in nature (changing over time and measured dynamically at multiple time points). A multivariate approach for detecting interactions is thus greatly needed on the purposes of handling a multifaceted phenotype and longitudinal data, as well as improving statistical power for multiple significance testing via a two-stage testing procedure that involves a multivariate analysis for grouped phenotypes followed by univariate analysis for the phenotypes in the significant group(s). In this article, we propose a multivariate extension of generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction (GMDR) based on multivariate generalized linear, multivariate quasi-likelihood and generalized estimating equations models. Simulations and real data analysis for the cohort from the Study of Addiction: Genetics and Environment are performed to investigate the properties and performance of the proposed method, as compared with the univariate method. The results suggest that the proposed multivariate GMDR substantially boosts statistical power.
Generalization capability of neural networks based on fuzzy operators

This paper discusses the generalization capability of neural networks based on various fuzzy operators introduced earlier by the authors as Fuzzy Flip-Flop based Neural Networks (FNNs), in comparison with standard (e.g. tansig function based, MATLAB Neural Network Toolbox type) networks in the frame of simple function approximation problems. Various fuzzy neurons, one of them based on a pair of new fuzzy intersection and union, and several other selected well known fuzzy operators ( £ ukasiewicz and Dombi operators) combined with standard negation have been proposed as suitable for the construction of novel FNNs. We brieﬂy present the sigmoid function generators derived from fuzzy J-K and D ﬂip-ﬂops. An advantage of such FNNs is their easy hardware implementability. The experimental results show that these FNNs provide rather good generalization performance, with far better mathematical stability than the standard tansig based neural networks and are more suitable to avoid overﬁtting in the case of test data containing noisy items in the form of outliers.
Gamut-adaptive correction in color image processing

In color image processing, an image is usually processed in a color space consisting of luminance and chrominance components. The processed result is then converted to the RGB color space for display. However, a straightforward color space conversion can cause color distortion due to gamut difference between the two color spaces. In order to alleviate this gamut problem, we propose two gamut-adaptive correction schemes. For the chrominance component processing, we propose the gamut-adaptive clipping scheme to effectively solve the out-of-gamut problem. For the luminance component processing of a color image, we propose the gamut-adaptive scaling scheme to alleviate both the out-of-gamut and under-saturation problems. The proposed methods can be applied for image processing in any color space since the proposed correction is performed in the RGB color space. Experimental results show that the proposed methods can preserve the luminance and hue values and provide rich colors by adaptively controlling the saturation value according to the luminance component value.
A Study on Students Acquisition of IT Knowledge and Its Implication on M-Learning

The boom in mobile technology has seen a dramatic rise in its usage. This has led to usage of mobiles even in the academic context for further learning. Although the advantages of m-learning (mobile learning) are visible, studies are required to address the aspects that shape its virtual expectations. The acceptance of mobile technology relies mostly on how the students feel about mobile technology fitting into their requirements. Yet, in spite of the significance in the potential of m-learning, research studies have only inadequate data to identify the factors that influence their decision to adapt the mobile technology for the purpose of learning. To deal with this space, the present study was undertaken to correlate the IT skills of students with their impact on their acceptance of m-learning. The research study found that the perceived usability along with the usefulness of m-learning impacts the association between IT expertise and the objective of learners' acceptance of m-learning. A survey of 892 students from Engineering, Arts, and Science Colleges found that IT skills influence student's acquisition of m-learning technology. Specialized and advanced skills in mobile technology along with basic skills play a significant role in influencing a student to accept m-learning. But no specific substantiation has been established to support the statement that highly developed IT skills have influenced the students to accept m-learning.
Pull-in curves determined with monolithic FEM models

This paper gives an overview of the different monolithic approaches to compute the pull-in curve for discretized models of electrostatically actuated microsystems that are currently available in the literature. A method to implement monolithic charge loading combined with path-following is proposed. The performance of the algorithms is tested with some numerical experiments: FEM models of microbeams, used to model micro-switches. The results show that the charge loading scheme provides a fast converging alternative to the traditional path-following approaches. Finally it is shown that the algorithm can be easily extended to handle bifurcations.
Negative affect as a predisposing factor for cortisol release after an acute stress—the impact of unpleasant priming

Glucocorticoids have a key role in stress responses. There are, however, substantial differences in cortisol reactivity among individuals. We investigated if affective trait and mood induction influence the reactivity to psychological stress in a group of 63 young adults, male (n = 27) and female (n = 36), aged ca. 21 years. On the experimental day the participants viewed either a block of pleasant or unpleasant pictures for 5 min to induce positive or negative mood, respectively. Then, they had 5 min to prepare a speech to be delivered in front of a video-camera. Saliva samples were collected to measure cortisol, and questionnaire-based affective scales were used to estimate emotional states and traits. Compared to basal levels, a cortisol response to the acute speech stressor was only seen for those who had first viewed unpleasant pictures and scored above the average on the negative affect scale. There were no sex differences. In conclusion, high negative affect associated with exposure to an unpleasant context increased sensitivity to an acute stressor, and was critical to stimulation of cortisol release by the speech stressor.
Chronic Heat Stress Weakened the Innate Immunity and Increased the Virulence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Virus H5N1 in Mice

Chronic heat stress (CHS) can negatively affect immune response in animals. In this study we assessed the effects of CHS on host innate immunity and avian influenza virus H5N1 infection in mice. Mice were divided into two groups: CHS and thermally neutral (TN). The CHS treatment group exhibited reduced local immunity in the respiratory tract, including the number of pulmonary alveolar macrophages and lesions in the nasal mucosa, trachea, and lungs. Meanwhile, CHS retarded dendritic cells (DCs) maturation and reduced the mRNA levels of IL-6 and IFN-β significantly (P < .05). After the CHS treatment, mice were infected with H5N1 virus. The mortality rate and viral load in the lungs of CHS group were higher than those of TN group. The results suggest that the CHS treatment could suppress local immunity in the respiratory tract and innate host immunity in mice significantly and moderately increased the virulence in H5N1-infected mice.
Interfacial Tension of a Liquid Crystalline Polymer in an Isotropic Polymer Matrix

We investigated the interfacial tension of a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) embedded in a flexible isotropic matrix, poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), using a modified deformed droplet retraction method (MDDR). The thermotropic polymer employed, PSHQ-6,12, was nematic and featured a well-defined nematic−isotropic clearing transition temperature so that MDDR experiments could be conducted over a temperature range spanning nematic, isotropic, or biphasic regions for the droplet phase. Our results showed that the interfacial tension for temperatures in the nematic range of the droplet is ∼5 mN/m and increases slightly with temperature. Within the isotropic phase, the interfacial tension is significantly higher, starting at a value greater than 20 mN/m and decreasing with temperature with a slope of −0.3 mN/(m K). On crossing the transition from a nematic to isotropic phase for the LCP, the interfacial tension increases in a nearly stepwise manner. Imaging of both retardance and orientation with c.
Patterning approaches and system power efficiency considerations for organic LED displays

In this paper we will focus on the various issues which reduce the power efficiency of a complete display system vs. that of a single isolated organic LED, and then discuss the impact of these issues on display integration and design. Critical issues are the necessity of an active matrix design for high definition displays, and the desire for a power- efficient approach for full color. Both dry-etching and ink jet printing will be described as options for achieving patterned films.
The Utilization of the Five Factor Model of Personality In the Prediction of Cooperative Education

The Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality is obtaining construct validation, recognition, and practical consideration across a broad domain of fields, including clinical psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and health psychology (Widiger & Tull, 1997). One of the five personality factors in the FFM, conscientiousness and its specific subpersonality traits has been associated with the prediction of job success. However, no research has been conducted to assess the prediction of coop success using the FFM of personality. This study aimed to address conscientiousness in relation to coop success by analyzing 1,399 employer evaluations from UW-Stout students enrolled in a coop position. The results of this study indicated that work quality, judgment, motivation, and accuracy were high predictors of 2 coop success. This study suppOlied the hypothesis that conscientiousness would be predictive of coop performance. Limitations and recommendations of the study are addressed. The Graduate School University of Wisconsin Stout Menomonie, WI Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Career Services depar1ment for their patience and assistance while I was gathering the necessary data for my thesis . I would also like to thank my internship supervisor for making space for me in the Career Services depa11ment and the opp0l1unity to conduct research for such a friendly and welcoming environment. I would also like to thank my family and friends. I am extremely grateful to have the supp0l1 of my family and friends for without them I would have never challenged myself throughout my education. I would like to thank Dr. Kristina Gorbatenko-Roth, my research advisor, for her knowledge, commitment, and patience in overseeing this research study. J have grown professionally because of the 3 commitment and dedication of the MSAP program faculty. It has been a long and enduring process and I thank everyone who has been involved.