Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Highly Linear 60-GHz SiGe Downconversion/Upconversion Mixers

A linear RF to IF downconversion and IF to RF upconversion mixers for 60-GHz transceivers were implemented in 0.13-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> SiGe technology. The mixers were implemented using a mixing core only topology for enhanced linearity, with no local oscillator (LO) buffers and a transformer-based matching network for IF frequencies. The downconversion mixer at full attenuation shows a minimum of 10-dBm IIP3 and maximum measured loss of 6.5 dB within the entire 57–66 GHz frequency band. Without attenuation, the conversion gain is above 4 dB, with better than 2-dBm IIP3 and a noise figure maximum value of 14 dB within the band. The transmit mixer exhibits less than 2.5-dB conversion loss, better than 7.5-dBm OIP3 with minimal temperature variations. For improved LO to RF isolation, separated dc bias control is used in the mixing devices providing over 46-dBc LO suppression within the band. The mixers occupy only 0.47 and 0.22 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\mathrm {\mathbf {2}}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> consuming 56 mW for downconversion mixer with IF amplifier and 27 mW for upconversion mixer.
Design of a miniaturized Butler matrix in IPD process for 60 GHz switched-beam antenna arrays

In this paper, we present the design and realization of a miniaturized Butler matrix for 60 GHz applications. The matrix is realized using the IPD process from ST Microelectronics, Tours. Using new miniaturized branchline couplers and the IPD process, the Butler size is reduced by 90%. Simulation results show an insertion loss of 2.25 ± 0.95 dB and a maximum phase error of 10° in the whole 57-66 GHz band.
Histone H4 post‐translational modifications in chordate mitotic and endoreduplicative cell cycles

Histone post‐translational modifications mark distinct structural and functional chromatin states but little is known of their involvement in the progression of different cell cycle types across phylogeny. We compared temporal and spatial dynamics of histone H4 post‐translational modifications during both mitotic and endoreduplicative cycles of the urochordate, Oikopleura dioica, and proliferating mammalian cells. Endocycling cells showed no signs of chromosome condensation or entry into mitosis. They exhibited an evolution of replication patterns indicative of reduced chromatin compartmentalization relative to proliferating mammalian cells. In the latter cells, published cell cycle profiles of histone H4 acetylated at lysine 16 (H4AcK16) or dimethylated at lysine 20 (H4Me2K20) are disputed. Our results, using different, widely used H4AcK16 antibodies, revealed significant antibody‐specific discrepancies in spatial and temporal cell cycle regulation of this modification, with repercussions for interpretation of previous immunofluorescence and immunoprecipitation data based on these reagents. On the other hand, three different antibodies to H4Me2K20 revealed similar cell cycle profiles of this modification that were conserved throughout the mitotic cell cycle in urochordate and mammalian cells, with accumulation at mitosis and a decrease during S‐phase. H4Me2K20 also cycled in endocycles, indicating that dynamics of this modification are not strictly constrained by the mitotic phase of the cell cycle and suggesting additional roles during G‐ and S‐phase progression. This article contains Supplementary Material available at http://www.mrw. interscience.wiley. com/suppmat/0730‐2312/suppmat/2005/95/spada.html. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Specific Double-Stranded RNA Interference in Undifferentiated Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells

ABSTRACT Specific mRNA degradation mediated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) interference (RNAi) is a powerful way of suppressing gene expression in plants, nematodes, and fungal, insect, and protozoan systems. However, only a few cases of RNAi have been reported in mammalian systems. Here, we investigated the feasibility of the RNAi strategy in several mammalian cells by using the enhanced green fluorescent protein gene as a target, either by in situ production of dsRNA from transient transfection of a plasmid harboring a 547-bp inverted repeat or by direct transfection of dsRNA made by in vitro transcription. Several mammalian cells including differentiated embryonic stem (ES) cells did not exhibit specific RNAi in transient transfection. This long dsRNA, however, was capable of inducing a sequence-specific RNAi for the episomal and chromosomal target gene in undifferentiated ES cells. dsRNA at 8.3 nM decreased the cognate gene expression up to 70%. However, RNAi activity was not permanent because it was more pronounced in early time points and diminished 5 days after transfection. Thus, undifferentiated ES cells may lack the interferon response, similar to mouse embryos and oocytes. Regardless of their apparent RNAi activity, however, cytoplasmic extracts from mammalian cells produced a small RNA of 21 to 22 nucleotides from the long dsRNA. Our results suggest that mammalian cells may possess RNAi activity but nonspecific activation of the interferon response by longer dsRNA may mask the specific RNAi. The findings offer an opportunity to use dsRNA for inhibition of gene expression in ES cells to study differentiation.
Transcendental and Social Accountability in Productive Waqf Assets

Objective - The objective of the study is to formulate a concept of transcendental and social accountability in the management of waqf assets as a trust worthiness from God (Triyuwono, 2004). The concept is expected to be an Islamic accountability which is religious and social in nature (Hameed, 2000). Methodology/Technique - The study uses tawhidic post-phenomenology, a modified post-phenomenology based on the basic tenet of Islam, as an instrument to analyze data. The method is actually the development and combination of philosophy of technology (Ihde, 1993) and Ibn Arabi's philosophy of being (Dobie, 2007). Financial statements of waqf institutions, in this study, are regarded as a technology and additional are collected by interviewing four informants in the Regional Board of Muhammadiyah in Gresik. Findings - The study finds a da'i (preacher) metaphor as a form of accountability. This metaphor indicates that waqf assets functioned, firstly, as an instrument for doing Islamic missionary efforts with good practices (dakwah bi al-hikmah) such as helping orphans, the poor and the needy, and overcoming natural disaster; secondly, as a spot for Islamic missionary efforts with good advices (dakwah bi al-mau'ihatul hasanah) for patients, employees, and people at large; and thirdly as an instrument for taking care of environmental health. Novelty - The study suggests transcendental and social accountability in the management of waqf assets as a trust worthiness from God. Type of Paper - Empirical.
Resistance Exercise Reduces Muscular Substrates in Women

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the influence of an acute bout of resistance exercise (RE) on intramuscular triglyceride (IMTG) and muscle glycogen concentrations and intracellular signaling in women with high body fat content. Six overweight women with a high percent body fat (age 29+/-3 yr; BMI 28+/-3 kg/m(2), body fat 38+/-4%) performed 6 sets of 10 repetitions of knee extension exercise at 70% 1RM. Muscle biopsies were obtained from the vastus lateralis before, 1 min after (POST1), and 2 h after (POST2) exercise. Acute RE reduced (p<0.05) IMTG content approximately 40% at POST1 and POST2 (75+/-5; 45+/-6; 50+/-10 mmol/kg/dry wt). Muscle glycogen was also reduced (p<0.05) approximately 25% at POST1 and remained lower at POST2 (317+/-14; 241+/-30; 235+/-26 mmol/kg/dry wt). ERK1/2, SAPK/JNK, and p38 phosphorylation were increased (p<0.05) approximately 2-3-fold at POST1 and ERK1/2 remained elevated and POST2 whereas SAPK/JNK and p38 returned to basal levels. AMPKalpha phosphorylation was unchanged in response to RE. These results show that both IMTG and muscle glycogen stores serve as an important energy source during RE in overweight women and the MAP kinase signaling response to RE is not compromised by high levels of body fat.
FlexProtect: A SDN-based DDoS Attack Protection Architecture for Multi-tenant Data Centers

With the recent advances in software-defined networking (SDN), the multi-tenant data centers provide more efficient and flexible cloud platform to their subscribers. However, as the number, scale, and diversity of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is dramatically escalated in recent years, the availability of those platforms is still under risk. We note that the state-of-art DDoS protection architectures did not fully utilize the potential of SDN and network function virtualization (NFV) to mitigate the impact of attack traffic on data center network. Therefore, in this paper, we exploit the flexibility of SDN and NFV to propose FlexProtect, a flexible distributed DDoS protection architecture for multi-tenant data centers. In FlexProtect, the detection virtual network functions (VNFs) are placed near the service provider and the defense VNFs are placed near the edge routers for effectively detection and avoid internal bandwidth consumption, respectively. Based on the architecture, we then propose FP-SYN, an anti-spoofing SYN flood protection mechanism. The emulation and simulation results with real-world data demonstrates that, compared with the traditional approach, the proposed architecture can significantly reduce 46% of the additional routing path and save 60% internal bandwidth consumption. Moreover, the proposed detection mechanism for anti-spoofing can achieve 98% accuracy.
Three exceptions in the calculation of relic abundances.

The calculation of relic abundances of elementary particles by following their annihilation and freeze-out in the early Universe has become an important and standard tool in discussing particle dark-matter candidates. We find three situations, all occurring in the literature, in which the standard methods of calculating relic abundances fail. The first situation occurs when another particle lies near in mass to the relic particle and shares a quantum number with it. An example is a light squark with neutralino dark matter. The additional particle must be included in the reaction network, since its annihilation can control the relic abundance. The second situation occurs when the relic particle lies near a mass threshold. Previously, annihilation into particles heavier than the relic particle was considered kinematically forbidden, but we show that if the mass difference is \ensuremath{\sim}5-15%, these "forbidden" channels can dominate the cross section and determine the relic abundance. The third situation occurs when the annihilation takes place near a pole in the cross section. Proper treatment of the thermal averaging and the annihilation after freeze-out shows that the dip in relic abundance caused by a pole is not nearly as sharp or deep as previously thought.
A structured ontology construction by using data clustering and pattern tree mining

Ontology is used to express the concepts of domain knowledge. It can provide a common representation for different agents to share and communicate knowledge for conducting unified opinions. Nowadays ontology construction method is divided into man-made and machine-made mechanisms. The former constructs the ontology topology by domain expert. Generally the constructed ontology can fit human expectation but it needs more development time to construct the whole structure. The latter uses semi-automatic or automatic methods, such as statistic or machine learning, to build the ontology. The efficient ontology construction is the main advantage for machine-made method. However, the advantage is that it is easily influenced by the category and type of domain concepts to generate unbalanced or skewed ontology topology. This will increase the time complexity to search and retrieve the concept from the constructed ontology structure. The situation worsens from being unable to use the ontology properly. An important problem is constructing a reasonable and balanced ontology topology systematically and automatically. This paper proposes a structured ontology construction based on data clustering and pattern tree mining. The construction method uses data clustering and formal concept analysis to group similar documents for constructing ontology trees of each group individually. Then the method uses pattern tree mining to build an integrated ontology topology from partial ontology trees.
Oxytocin promotes altruistic punishment

Abstract The role of neuromodulators in the enforcement of cooperation is still not well understood. Here, we provide evidence that intranasal applied oxytocin, an important hormone for modulating social behavior, enhances the inclination to sanction free-riders in a social dilemma situation. Contrary to the notion of oxytocin being a pro-social hormone, we found that participants treated with oxytocin exhibited an amplification of self-reported negative social emotions such as anger towards free-riders, ultimately resulting in higher magnitude and frequency of punishment of free-riders compared to placebo. Furthermore, we found initial evidence that oxytocin contributes to the positive effects of a punishment institution by rendering cooperation preferable in the oxytocin condition for even the most selfish players when punishment was available. Together, these findings imply that the neural circuits underlying altruistic punishment are partly targeted by the oxytonergic system and highlight the importance of neuromodulators in group cohesion and norm enforcement within social groups.
A recurrent encoder-decoder approach with skip-filtering connections for monaural singing voice separation

The objective of deep learning methods based on encoder-decoder architectures for music source separation is to approximate either ideal time-frequency masks or spectral representations of the target music source(s). The spectral representations are then used to derive time-frequency masks. In this work we introduce a method to directly learn time-frequency masks from an observed mixture magnitude spectrum. We employ recurrent neural networks and train them using prior knowledge only for the magnitude spectrum of the target source. To assess the performance of the proposed method, we focus on the task of singing voice separation. The results from an objective evaluation show that our proposed method provides comparable results to deep learning based methods which operate over complicated signal representations. Compared to previous methods that approximate time-frequency masks, our method has increased performance of signal to distortion ratio by an average of 3.8 dB.
Estimation of the Electricity Consumption Function Case of the Tunisian Regions

The purpose of this study is to estimate the electricity demand from the residential sector in Tunisia. We use the Conditional Demand Analysis (DCA) developed by Party and Party (1980) as the basic methodological framework. The DCA's approach is to disaggregate the total electricity consumption of the sampled households into as exhaustive a list as possible of electrical uses, while linking these characteristics to the characteristics of households and their housing that can influence demand for electricity. We empirically validate the total consumption of electricity for twenty Tunisian regions during a study period from 2000-2014 by the static and dynamic panel technique.
Stroke thrombolysis in England, Wales and Northern Ireland: how much do we do and how much do we need?

Background Data are limited on the proportion of stroke patients nationally appropriate for thrombolysis either within the 3 h time window or the recently tested 4.5 h. This information is important for the redesign of services. Methods Data on case mix, eligibility for thrombolysis, treatment and outcomes were extracted from the National Sentinel Stroke 2008 Audit dataset. This contains retrospective data on up to 60 consecutive stroke admissions from each acute hospital in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1 April and 30 June 2008. Findings All relevant hospitals participated, submitting data on 11 262 acute stroke patients. 2118 patients arrived within 2 h and 2596 within 3 h of the onset of symptoms and 587 people were already in hospital. Therefore, 28% (3183) were potentially eligible for thrombolysis based on a 3 h time criterion. Of these, 1914 were under 80 years and 2632 had infarction with 14% (1605) meeting all three National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke study criteria and so being potentially eligible for thrombolysis. If the time window is increased to 4.5 h then only another 2% became eligible. If the age limit was removed for treatment, the percentage potentially appropriate for tissue plasminogen activator increased to 23% within 3 h and 26% within 4.5 h. Overall, 1.4% (160) of patients were thrombolysed. Interpretation Thrombolysis rates are currently low in the UK. 14% of patients in this sample were potentially suitable for thrombolysis using the 3 h time window. This would only increase marginally if thrombolysis was extended to include those up to 4.5 h. The greatest impact on increasing the proportion of patients suitable for thrombolysis would be to increase the number of patients presenting early and by demonstrating that the treatment is safe and effective in patients over 80 years of age.
The multifunction automated crawling system (MACS)

A new robotic crawler is being developed for inspection of large aircraft external surfaces. The multifunction automated crawling system (MACS) has been designed and fabricated to carry miniature instrumentation to perform a wide variety of tasks while being attached to an aircraft's surface. The immediate application of MACS is inspection of the exterior of large military aircraft such as the C-5. Various inspection payload modules could be incorporated onto the MACS crawler to perform the desired inspections. MACS employs ultrasonic motors for mobility and suction cups for surface adherence. MACS has two legs for linear motion and a rotation element for turning, enabling any simultaneous combination of motion from linear to rotation about a central axis.
Depressive symptoms after lung cancer surgery: their relation to coping style and social support

Lung cancer patients may experience greater emotional distress than patients with other cancers. Studies have shown social support to predict adjustment in other cancers, but findings among lung cancer patients have been equivocal. Coping style has been shown to predict distress among lung cancer patients, but has not been examined in the context of social support. We examined coping style and social support as predictors of depressive symptoms one week after surgery among 119 patients with non‐small cell lung cancer. The Beck Depression Inventory was the primary outcome measure. Predictors included age, ECOG performance status, stage of disease, and measures of adaptive coping, less adaptive coping, Directive instrumental social support and Nondirective instrumental social support. Results indicated that 29% of lung cancer patients had scores above a standard cutoff for clinically significant depression. Results also showed that depressive symptoms were directly related to use of less adaptive coping methods and Directive instrumental social support, inversely related to age and use of adaptive coping methods, and unrelated to nondirective social support, stage of disease and performance status. Results extend previous findings by showing that adaptive coping methods are related to severity of distress, and that the benefits of social support may depend on the characteristics of that support. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Expression of Nitric Oxide Synthase Isoforms in Bone and Bone Cell Cultures

Recent work has shown that nitric oxide (NO) acts as an important mediator of the effects of proinflammatory cytokines and mechanical strain in bone. Although several bone‐derived cells have been shown to produce NO in vitro, less is known about the isoforms of NO synthase (NOS), which are expressed in bone or their cellular distribution. Here we investigated the expression, cellular localization, and regulation of NOS mRNA and protein in cultured bone‐derived cells and in bone tissue sections. We failed to detect inducible NOS (iNOS) protein in normal bone using immunohistochemical techniques, even though low levels of iNOS mRNA were detected by sensitive reverse transcribed polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) assays in RNA extracted from whole bone samples. Cytokine stimulation of bone‐derived cells and bone explant cultures caused dramatic induction of iNOS mRNA and protein in osteoblasts and bone marrow macrophages, but no evidence of iNOS expression was seen in osteoclasts by immunohistochemistry or in situ hybridization. Endothelial NOS (ecNOS) mRNA was also detected by RT‐PCR in whole bone, and immunohistochemical studies showed widespread ecNOS expression in bone marrow cells and trabecular lining cells in vivo. Related studies in vitro confirmed that ecNOS was expressed in cultured osteoblasts, stromal cells, and osteoclasts. Neuronal NOS mRNA was detected by RT‐PCR in whole bone, but we were unable to detect nNOS protein in bone cells in vivo or in studies of cultured bone‐derived cells in vitro. In summary, our data show that mRNAs for all three NOS isoforms are expressed in bone and provide evidence for differential expression and regulation of the enzymes in different cell types. These findings confirm the likely importance of the L‐arginine–NO pathway as a physiological mediator of bone cell function and demonstrate that it may be possible to exert differential effects on osteoblast and osteoclast activity in vivo by differential targeting of constitutive and inducible NOS isoforms by selective NOS inhibitors.
In vivo Therapeutic Synergism of Anti–Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor and Anti-HER2 Monoclonal Antibodies against Pancreatic Carcinomas

Purpose: Pancreatic carcinoma is highly resistant to therapy. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and HER2 have been reported to be both dysregulated in this cancer. To evaluate the in vivo effect of binding both EGFR and HER2 with two therapeutic humanized monoclonal antibodies (mAb), we treated human pancreatic carcinoma xenografts, expressing high EGFR and low HER2 levels. Experimental Design: Nude mice, bearing xenografts of BxPC-3 or MiaPaCa-2 human pancreatic carcinoma cell lines, were injected twice weekly for 4 weeks with different doses of anti-EGFR (matuzumab) and anti-HER2 (trastuzumab) mAbs either alone or in combination. The effect of the two mAbs, on HER receptor phosphorylation, was also studied in vitro by Western blot analysis. Results: The combined mAb treatment significantly inhibited tumor progression of the BxPC-3 xenografts compared with single mAb injection (P = 0.006) or no treatment (P = 0.0004) and specifically induced some complete remissions. The two mAbs had more antitumor effect than 4-fold greater doses of each mAb. The significant synergistic effect of the two mAbs was confirmed on the MiaPaCa-2 xenograft and on another type of carcinoma, SK-OV-3 ovarian carcinoma xenografts. In vitro, the cooperative effect of the two mAbs was associated with a decrease in EGFR and HER2 receptor phosphorylation. Conclusions: Anti-HER2 mAb has a synergistic therapeutic effect when combined with an anti-EGFR mAb on pancreatic carcinomas with low HER2 expression. These observations may open the way to the use of these two mAbs in a large panel of carcinomas expressing different levels of the two HER receptors.