Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SAGE based channel estimation and delay tracking scheme in OFDM systems

Pilot subcarriers based channel estimation is necessary in high rate and high speed OFDM systems. In this paper, we present a new channel estimation and delay tracking method in a SAGE (space alternating generalized expectation maximization) framework. The proposed method uses much fewer pilots with special positions that are related to the path number and path delays. The method considered not only the sample-spaced path delays but also the non-sample spaced path delays. The non-sample spaced delay is a more practical situation in wireless communications and this situation will generate an error floor for the traditional channel estimation methods. When the path delay profile changes, a feedback channel is required to inform the transmitter to change the pilot pattern. Analytical results and simulations comparing to the low pass LS channel estimation are given at last.
Determinants of tax administration efficiency: A study of Bauchi State, Nigeria

This study examines the determinants of tax administration efficiency. Tax is a medium which countries across the globe depend upon so as to carry out the mandate of their citizens. Unfortunately, the Nigerian tax system is faced with challenges, such as loss of revenue through high level of tax defaulters from both the legislative arm of the government and public institutions, corruption and financial irregularities and limited government administrative capability. Tax, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), contributes only seven percent to the Nigerian economy which is below the minimum benchmark of 15% of low income African countries. Therefore, this study examines the influence of autonomy of the State Board of Internal Revenue (SBIR), use of information and communications technology, public enlightenment, strong auditing practice, motivation and incentives and perceived corruption on tax administration efficiency in Nigeria. A mixed research design was used, and data was collected through survey and interview. A total of 124 questionnaires were collected out of 144 questionnaires that were administered. The data was analysed to answer the research questions. The study revealed that there is a significant relationship between tax administration efficiency and: autonomy of board of internal revenue, information and communications technology and public enlightenment. The study further revealed that there is no significant relationship between tax administration efficiency and strong audit practice and motivation and incentives and perceived corruption. The qualitative findings of this study indicate that reformation and restructuring of the tax system and granting of autonomy can help to boost revenue generation and administration efficiency. The qualitative findings further reveal that autonomy, public enlightenment and use of information and communications technology are some of the determinants of tax administration efficiency. Given the findings from the study, it is recommended that government should put an effective measure in place to collect taxes from tax defaulters across the different groups of the economy.
Timing of Software Replacement

Analogous to the replacement of an old machine, such as a car, replacing an aged softwitre may contain its escalating cost of maintenance. Prior research has assumed that increasing maintenance cost is due to the deterioration of the system maintainability. However, cost of maintenance depends also on the number of incoming maintenance requests. While software maintainability is determined by its complexity and development environment, number of maintenance requests is affected by the business environment. This distinction is significant in analyzing economic tradeoffs in software maintenance because replacement improves system maintainability but will not affect the number of maintenance requests. Unlike replacement of hardware, rewriting software takes an extended length of time, Thus, the old software must still be maintained before the new software is ready. We develop an economic model that considers the number of maintenance requests and the rewriting period explicitly. The model is an extension of Gode, Barua, and Mukhopadhyay (1990), which assumes a constant number of maintenance requests and instantaneous replacement. Our model allows us to draw some additional policy implications about software inaintenatice aild replacement. For instance, we show that in certain situations delaying a system replacement can be inore cost effective when the user environment changes more rapidly, contrary to our intuition. Moreover, it is shown that rewriting should begin earlier when the instantane(,us replacement assumption is relaxed.
Doing well and doing good: a multi-dimensional puzzle

Socially responsible firms are expected by European regulators to create shared value for their shareholders, their stakeholders and society. Yet how to generate profits while providing public good is still academically debated. This paper argues that corporate social responsibility encompasses many diversified policies with variant effects on profitability. Which policy most matters economically? As theoretical guidance lacks, this multidimensional puzzle typically encounters model uncertainty. To account for it, model averaging is presented and applied to a unique database matching the economic and social performances of large European firms. Resultssupport that socially responsible corporate policies do not equally matter to do well and do good. In particular, good business behaviors with customers and suppliers appear core. Strong support is also brought to the co-existence of policies monotonically related to profitability (human resources) and policies with an optimal level (environmental policies). Consequences for business and policy makers are discussed.
Multifunctionality in agriculture and development of cooperative credit banks: a comparative analysis in Italy and Ireland.

Cooperative credit banks in Italy and Credit Unions in Ireland are financial co-ops based on people, with the aim to save and to lend money not for profit. Comparing Italy to Ireland it has been possible to observe a different development of cooperative credit banks, tightly linked to a distinct level of participation of people and public authorities in financial activities. The main goals of this research have been to analyse, from 2000 to 2010, using a quantitative approach, by a panel data statistical model with balanced random effects (GLS), which socio-economic variables have had an action on the growth of credit co-ops; in particular, the aim of this paper has been to estimate if the multifunctionality in agriculture, in terms of numbers of farms and agro-tourism enterprises, has had some direct effects on the development and growth of credit co-ops in Italy and in Ireland. The main results have underlined a meaningful growth of Credit Unions in many Irish rural counties. In Italy the multifunctionality in agriculture has been able to increase the development of cooperative credit banks in the countryside and to get better living conditions in rural territories, lessening socio-economic and financial exclusion.
Use of mood stabilizers for hospitalized psychotic and bipolar disorder patients

Treatments given to patients with primary psychotic disorders include mood stabilizers (MSs) combined with other psychotropics, despite the limited evidence of efficacy, safety, and lack of regulatory approval. We analyzed records of 636 inpatients at the McLean Hospital (2002–2009), who were diagnosed with bipolar disorder (n=318), a schizoaffective disorder (n=210), or schizophrenia (n=108), to evaluate MS-usage, drug-selections, combinations and doses, improvement, adverse-effect risks, associated factors, and secular trends. Between 2002 and 2009, the use of MSs increased from 53 to 94% of patients, MSs per patient increased by 74%, and the total final doses (lithium-equivalents in milligrams/day) increased by 35%. The most commonly prescribed MSs ranked: valproate, lithium, lamtogrine. With the use of MSs, the duration of hospitalization was longer by an average of 18%, Clinical Global Impression ratings improved by 55%, and adverse-effects risk was lower by 22%. In multivariate logistic modeling, treatment with a MS was associated with: (i) most recent year of sampling, (ii) more psychotropics per patient at discharge, (iii) diagnosis (schizophrenia < schizoaffective or bipolar disorders), (iv) longer period of hospitalization, and (v) somewhat younger age. MSs, usually in combination with antipsychotics, were used increasingly for inpatients over the past decade, including for patients with primary psychotic disorders. The effectiveness and safety of this practice remain to be evaluated adequately.
Factors Affecting the Regional Pig Meat Productivity of Commercial Pig Units in Greece

The effect of characteristics of pig enterprise and its owner, along with management applied in farms on regional pig meat productivity of commercial pig units in Greece was examined. The results showed that most of the enterprises were family operated, belonging to a sole owner of old age and low educational level, whose children were not involved or plan to get involved with the enterprise. The analysis of a generalised linear model showed that only the "Age of farm's equipment" and "Size class of sow herd' were significant in explaining the variation of pig meat productivity.
GSI 3DVar-Based Ensemble-Variational Hybrid Data Assimilation for NCEP Global Forecast System: Single-Resolution Experiments

AbstractAn ensemble Kalman filter–variational hybrid data assimilation system based on the gridpoint statistical interpolation (GSI) three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3DVar) system was developed. The performance of the system was investigated using the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Global Forecast System model. Experiments covered a 6-week Northern Hemisphere winter period. Both the control and ensemble forecasts were run at the same, reduced resolution. Operational conventional and satellite observations along with an 80-member ensemble were used. Various configurations of the system including one- or two-way couplings, with zero or nonzero weights on the static covariance, were intercompared and compared with the GSI 3DVar system. It was found that the hybrid system produced more skillful forecasts than the GSI 3DVar system. The inclusion of a static component in the background-error covariance and recentering the analysis ensemble around the variational analysis di.
Infarct Tissue Heterogeneity by Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Is a Novel Predictor of Mortality in Patients With Chronic Coronary Artery Disease and Left Ventricular Dysfunction

Background—Strategies for prevention of sudden cardiac death focus on severe left ventricular (LV) dysfunction, although most sudden cardiac death postmyocardial infarction occurs in patients with mild/moderate LV dysfunction. We tested the hypothesis that infarct heterogeneity by cardiac magnetic resonance is associated with mortality beyond LV ejection fraction (LVEF) in patients with coronary artery disease and LV dysfunction. In addition, we examined the association between infarct heterogeneity and mortality in those with LVEF >35%. Methods and Results—We studied 301 patients with coronary artery disease and LV dysfunction referred for cardiac magnetic resonance. We quantified total infarct mass, infarct core mass, and peri-infarct zone (PIZ) normalized for total infarct mass (%PIZ) using signal-intensity criteria of >2 SDs, >3 SDs, and 2- to -3 SDs above remote myocardium, respectively. Mean LVEF was 41±14%. After 3.9 years median follow-up, 66 (22%) patients died (13 sudden cardiac death; 33 with LVEF >35%). In patients with LVEF >35%, below-median %PIZ carried an annual death rate of 2.8% versus 12% in patients with above-median %PIZ (P<0.001). In a multivariable model, %PIZ maintained strong association with mortality adjusted to patient age, LVEF, right ventricular ejection fraction, prolonged QT interval, and total infarct size and resulted in improve risk reclassification 0.492 (95% confidence interval, 0.183–0.817). Conclusions—Cardiac magnetic resonance infarct heterogeneity has a strong association with mortality independent of LVEF in patients with coronary artery disease and LV dysfunction, particularly in patients with mild or moderate LV dysfunction. Further studies incorporating cardiac magnetic resonance in clinical decision making for defibrillator therapy are warranted.
The role of human resources as a business partner in the execution of effective change management in the mergers and acquisitions process

The past twenty years have seen rapid technological advancements coupled with increased globalisation (Armenakis and Harris, 2009 cited in Appelbaum et al, 2012, p.764). To gain competitive advantage and adapt to the modern business world organisations are radically modifying their structures and systems (Barratt-Pugh, Bahn and Gakere, 2013, p.748). M&As allow organisations to adapt by gaining new products, market share, profitability, strategic capabilities and entrance to new geographical regions (Weber, Oberg and Tarba, 2014, p.1). M&A activity has remained steady yet failure rates stand at around 60-75% (Deutsch and West, 2010, p.3). Addressing corporate culture is an area that tends to be overlooked with softer issues such as communication and individual employee roles being ignored (Barratt-Pugh, Bahn and Gakere, 2013, p.748). See Figures 1 and 2. Culture refers to a shared set of values and norms that fosters a sense of community and is unique to each organisation (Bijlsma-Frankema, 2001, p.194). Schraeder and Self (2003, pp.517-518) put forth that involving HR from an early stage to formulate a “solid people plan” leads to higher success rates. Thus this research sought to examine the following:
Extracellular DNA facilitates the formation of functional amyloids in Staphylococcus aureus biofilms

Persistent staphylococcal infections often involve surface‐associated communities called biofilms. Staphylococcus aureus biofilm development is mediated by the co‐ordinated production of the biofilm matrix, which can be composed of polysaccharides, extracellular DNA (eDNA) and proteins including amyloid fibers. The nature of the interactions between matrix components, and how these interactions contribute to the formation of matrix, remain unclear. Here we show that the presence of eDNA in S. aureus biofilms promotes the formation of amyloid fibers. Conditions or mutants that do not generate eDNA result in lack of amyloids during biofilm growth despite the amyloidogeneic subunits, phenol soluble modulin peptides, being produced. In vitro studies revealed that the presence of DNA promotes amyloid formation by PSM peptides. Thus, this work exposes a previously unacknowledged interaction between biofilm matrix components that furthers our understanding of functional amyloid formation and S. aureus biofilm biology.
Treatment of advanced Hodgkin's disease with COPP/ABV/IMEP versus COPP/ABVD and consolidating radiotherapy: final results of the German Hodgkin's Lymphoma Study Group HD6 trial.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of the hybrid chemotherapeutic regimen COPP/ABV/IMEP (cyclophosphamide-vincristine-procarbazine-prednisone-doxorubicin-bleomycin-vinblastine-ifosfamide-methotrexate-etoposide) (CAI) with that of the standard regimen COPP/ABVD (COPP/ABV, dacarbacine) (CA) in the treatment of advanced-stage Hodgkin's disease (HD). PATIENTS AND METHODS Between January 1988 and January 1993, 588 eligible patients with HD in stages IIIB and IV were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. The treatment group received four cycles of CAI over a complete cycle duration of 43 days. The control group received four cycles of CA over 57 days. Both groups then received consolidating radiotherapy. RESULTS Five hundred and eighty-four patients were suitable for arm comparison. Patients in each group were similar in age, sex, histological subtype and clinical risk factors. Complete remission rates, overall survival and freedom from treatment failure at 7 years were similar for the two groups: 77% versus 78%, 73% versus 73% and 54% versus 56% for CAI and CA, respectively. Differences in acute chemotherapy-related toxicity were significant, however. Prognostic factor analysis confirmed the relevance of the International Prognostic Index and revealed that stage IVB, low hemoglobin, low lymphocyte count, high age and male gender were associated with a poor prognosis CONCLUSION The rapidly alternating hybrid CAI did not give superior results when compared with the standard regimen CA in advanced-stage HD.
Trajectory analysis via a geometric feature space approach

This study aimed to organize a body of trajectories in order to identify, search for and classify both common and uncommon behaviors among objects such as aircraft and ships. Existing comparison functions such as the Fréchet distance are computationally expensive and yield counterintuitive results in some cases. We propose an approach using feature vectors whose components represent succinctly the salient information in trajectories. These features incorporate basic information such as the total distance traveled and the distance between start/stop points as well as geometric features related to the properties of the convex hull, trajectory curvature and general distance geometry. Additionally, these features can generally be mapped easily to behaviors of interest to humans who are searching large databases. Most of these geometric features are invariant under rigid transformation. We demonstrate the use of different subsets of these features to identify trajectories similar to an exemplar, cluster a database of several hundred thousand trajectories and identify outliers.
Correlation of scanning and transmission electron microscopy on the same tissue sample.

Tissue processed for scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in a critical point bomb utilizing Freon-13 showed excellent subsurface preservation when prepared for transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The critical point method is the only commercially available SEM preparation technique in which the quality of preservation will not limit microscopists in efforts to correlate SEM and TEM observations.
Source identification and separation using sub-band ICA of sEMG

Source identification and separation of number of active muscles during a complex action is useful information to identify the action, and to determine pathologies. Biosignals such as surface electromyogram are a result of the summation of electrical activity of a number of sources. The complexity of the anatomy and actions results difficulty in identifying the number of active sources from the multiple channel recordings. ICA has been applied to sEMG to separate the signals originating from different sources. But it is often difficult to determine the number of active sources that may vary between different actions and gestures. This paper reports research conducted to evaluate the use of sub-band ICA for the separation of bioelectric signals when the number of active sources may not be known. The paper proposes the use of value of the determinant of the global matrix generated using sub-band ICA for identifying the number of active sources. The results indicate that the technique is successful in identifying the number of active muscles for complex hand gestures.
Large‐scale computational identification of HIV T‐cell epitopes

Bioinformatics‐driven T‐cell epitope‐identification methods can enhance vaccine target selection significantly. We evaluated three unrelated computational methods to screen Pol, Gag and Env sequences extracted from the Los Alamos HIV database for HLA‐A∗0201 and HLA‐B∗3501 T‐cell epitope candidates. The hidden Markov model predicted 389 HLA‐B∗3501‐restricted candidates from 374 HIV‐1 and 97 HIV‐2 sequences. The artificial neural network (ANN) model, and Bioinformatics and Molecular Analysis Section (BIMAS) quantitative matrix predictions for A∗0201 yielded 1122 HIV‐1 and 548 HIV‐2 candidates. The overall sequence coverage of the predicted A∗0201 T‐cell epitopes was 2.7% (HIV‐1) and 3.0% (HIV‐2). HLA‐B∗3501‐predicted epitopes covered 0.9% (HIV‐1) and 1.4% (HIV‐2) of the total sequence. Comparison of 890 ANN‐ and 397 BIMAS‐derived HIV‐1 A∗0201‐restricted epitope candidates showed that only 13‐19% of the predicted and 26% of the experimentally confirmed T‐cell epitopes were captured by both methods. Extrapolating these results, we estimated that at least 247 predicted HIV‐1 epitopes are yet to be discovered as active A∗0201‐restricted T‐cell epitopes. Adequate comparison and combined usage of various predictive bioinformatics methods, rather than uncritical use of any single prediction method, will enable cost‐effective and efficient T‐cell epitope screening.
Robust transform learning

Dictionary learning follows a synthesis framework; the dictionary is learnt such that the data can be synthesized / re-generated from the coefficients. Transform learning on the other hand is based on analysis formulation; it learns a transform so as to generate the coefficients. The basic formulations of dictionary learning and transform learning employ a Euclidean cost function for the data fidelity term. Such cost functions are optimal when the noise / error in the system is Normally distributed, but not in the presence of sparse but large outliers. For such heavy tailed noise distributions, minimizing the absolute distance is more robust. There are several papers on robust dictionary learning. This work introduces robust transform learning. Experiments carried out on image analysis and impulse denoising elucidate the superiority of our method.
Validation of the inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire IBDQ-D, German version, for patients with ileal pouch anal anastomosis for ulcerative colitis.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The inflammatory bowel disease questionnaire (IBDQ) is the standard instrument for assessment of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. It has not been validated for patients with ileal pouch anal anastomosis (IPAA) and ulcerative colitis (UC). METHODS To determine acceptance (percentage of completed items), reliability (Cronbach's alpha of the IBDQ-D subscales) and convergent validity (correlations of the IBDQ subscales with the questionnaires used for validation) 61 patients with UC (age 52.7 +/- 13.9 years; 47 % female, 53 % male) and IPAA completed the German (Competence Network IBD) version of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ-D), the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale German Version (HADS-D) and the Giessener Symptom List (GBB 24). Face validity was assessed by a physicians' and patients' panel. All 37 patients underwent endoscopy making it possible to differentiate between patients with and without pouchitis (discriminant validity). RESULTS With 97.7 % completed items the acceptance was high. Cronbach's alpha value for the subscales ranged from 0.71 to 0.93. Missing items covering extraintestinal manifestations of IBD were criticized by patients. The correlation coefficients with comparable subscales of other instruments ranged between 0.41 and 0.76. Patients with clinical pouchitis scored significantly lower in all subscales than patients without pouchitis (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION The IBDQ-D has good acceptance, reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, but limited face and construct validity in patients with IPAA and UC.