Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metabolic Imaging of Ischemic Stroke: The Present and Future

SUMMARY: Measures of cerebral metabolism may be useful in the selection of patients for reperfusion therapies and as end points in clinical trials. However, there are currently no clinically routine techniques that provide such data directly. We review how imaging modalities in current clinical use may provide surrogate markers of metabolic activity. Promising techniques for metabolic imaging that are currently in the pipeline are reviewed.
A scalable method for automatically measuring pharyngeal pumping in C. elegans

We describe a scalable automated method for measuring the pharyngeal pumping of Caenorhabditis elegans in controlled environments. Our approach enables unbiased measurements for prolonged periods, a high throughput, and measurements in controlled yet dynamically changing feeding environments. The automated analysis compares well with scoring pumping by visual inspection, a common practice in the field. In addition, we observed overall low rates of pharyngeal pumping and long correlation times when food availability was oscillated.
Towards an International Classification for Patient Safety: a Delphi survey

Objective Interpretation and comparison of patient safety information have been compromised by the lack of a common understanding of the concepts involved. The World Alliance set out to develop an International Classification for Patient Safety (ICPS) to address this, and to test the relevance and acceptability of the draft ICPS and progressively refine it prior to field testing. Design Two-stage Delphi survey. Quantitative and qualitative analyses informed the review of the ICPS. Setting International web-based survey of expert opinion. Participants Experts in the fields of patient safety, health policy, reporting systems, safety and quality control, classification theory and development, health informatics, consumer advocacy, law and medicine; 253 responded to the first round survey, 30% of whom responded to the second round. Results In the first round, 14% felt that the conceptual framework was missing at least one class, although it was apparent that most respondents were actually referring to concepts they felt should be included within the classes rather than the classes themselves. There was a need for clarification of several components of the classification, particularly its purpose, structure and depth. After revision and feedback, round 2 results were more positive, but further significant changes were made to the conceptual framework and to the major classes in response to concerns about terminology and relationships between classes. Conclusions The Delphi approach proved invaluable, as both a consensus-building exercise and consultation process, in engaging stakeholders to support completion of the final draft version of the ICPS. Further refinement will occur.
Phosphorus and nitrogen in coral reef sediments

The occurrence of P and N in the sediments has been investigated on Davies Reef in the central region of the Great Barrier Reef Complex. Concentrations of inorganic P and N in the water were typical of nutrient-depleted tropical surface water. Carbonate sediments were found to contain a uniform pool of P (300 ppm by wt), principally in the form of inorganic phosphate. The interstitial water of the surface layer of sediment contained micromolar concentrations of inorganic P and even higher concentrations of inorganic N, principally as ammonium. These nutrient concentrations should allow high rates of uptake of N and P by epilithic algae. Arsenate concentrations were considered too low to compete significantly with the uptake of available phosphate into algae. The presence of ammonium and soluble P was associated with anaerobic redox potentials in the sediments just below the surface. Soluble phosphorus was in equilibrium with a small, rapidly exchangeable fraction of the sedimentary pool of inorganic phosphate. Analyses of P in growing tips of Halimeda and corals (which supply more than half of reef sediments) suggested that the skeletons provide a biological mechanism for the replenishment of at least some of the sedimentary pool. Ratios of C:N:P for a selection of benthic algae were used as a preliminary indicator of their N and P status.
Comparing Local and Sequential Models for Statistical Incremental Natural Language Understanding

Incremental natural language understanding is the task of assigning semantic representations to successively larger prefixes of utterances. We compare two types of statistical models for this task: a) local models, which predict a single class for an input; and b), sequential models, which align a sequence of classes to a sequence of input tokens. We show that, with some modifications, the first type of model can be improved and made to approximate the output of the second, even though the latter is more informative. We show on two different data sets that both types of model achieve comparable performance (significantly better than a baseline), with the first type requiring simpler training data. Results for the first type of model have been reported in the literature; we show that for our kind of data our more sophisticated variant of the model performs better.
"The rich are just like us, only richer." Poverty functions or consumption functions? Evidence from Uganda

The concept of a poverty function is introduced, modelling the shortfall of household consumption from the poverty line as a function of reduced form determinants such as human capital and land holdings. The model is estimated using a tobit and data from Uganda. Parameters from the model are found to be similar to those from consumption functions, indicating that the poor receive comparable rates of return on their assets to the non-poor. Education of both men and women appears to raise the welfare of the poor as well as the non-poor, in both urban and rural areas.
Joint Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding and Frequency-Domain Equalization for Broadband Single-Carrier Transmission

The performance of single-carrier (SC) transmission in a frequency-selective fading channel degrades due to a severe inter-symbol interference (ISI). Using frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion can improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of SC transmission. However, the residual ISI after FDE limits the performance improvement. In this paper, we propose a joint use of Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) and FDE to remove the residual ISI. An approximate conditional BER analysis is presented for the given channel condition. The achievable average BER performance is evaluated by Monte-Carlo numerical computation method using the derived conditional BER. The BER analysis is confirmed by computer simulation of the signal transmission.
Adaptive matching for compact MIMO systems

Compact MIMO systems using closely spaced antennas are faced with the well-known problem of antenna mutual coupling (MC) that can degrade the performance. Previous studies have shown that a proper choice of antenna load impedances can maximise the MIMO capacity or received power in the presence of MC. However, to calculate this optimum load, prior knowledge of the propagation channel matrix and the MC model, which is difficult to measure practically, are required. In this paper, we present an adaptive matching approach for the receiver that directly deals with the received signals rather than the channel and MC models, to find optimum load impedances which maximise the MIMO capacity or received power.
Selective attention to the parameters of a physically informed sonic model

Two experiments tested listeners’ ability to attend selectively to the properties of a physical model comprising collisions between multiple independent sound-producing objects. A probe signal paradigm measured attention to two properties—resonant frequency and number of colliding objects. Listeners completed a baseline task measuring absolute sensitivity at each stimulus against a background noise. Subsequently, stimuli served as both cues and targets; cue validity was probabilistic. When cue and target were generated by the same object (Experiment 1), greater detectability occurred with valid cues for both resonant frequency and object number, implying the presence of attentional mechanisms for these properties. When cue and target were generated by different objects (Experiment 2), selective attention persisted for object number but not for resonant frequency.
Universiteit Leiden Opleiding Informatica Coverability Tree Constructions

The Coverability Tree is a useful tool for the behavioural analysis of Petri nets. A powerful extension of Petri nets are inhibitor arcs, but these introduce non-monotonicity. Because of this, the classical construction for a Coverability Tree needs to be modiﬁed. In this paper it is investigated which constructions are available for Petri nets with inhibitor arcs. For the most obvious modiﬁcation, it was known that it may not always terminate for Petri nets with 3 or more inhibitor places. Here it is proved that it also does not always terminate in case of 2 inhibitor places. Also a comprehensive overview is presented of what is known concerning the reachability problem and the coverability problem for both Petri nets with and without inhibitor arcs, under the sequential and the (a priori) step semantics. To do this two constructions from [10] are reconsidered. First the construction to reduce step to sequential semantics for Petri nets with a single inhibitor arc is discussed. And next a general construction to reduce Petri nets with weighted (inhibitor) arcs to Petri nets with only unweighted (inhibitor) arcs.
News That Matters: Television and American Opinion

Almost twenty-five years ago, Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder first documented a series of sophisticated and innovative experiments that unobtrusively altered the order and emphasis of news stories in selected television broadcasts. Their resulting book, "News That Matters", now hailed as a classic by scholars of political science and public opinion alike, is here updated for the twenty-first century, with a new preface and epilogue by the authors. Backed by careful analysis of public opinion surveys, the authors show how, despite changing American politics, those issues that receive extended coverage in the national news become more important to viewers, while those that are ignored lose credibility. Moreover, those issues that are prominent in the news stream continue to loom more heavily as criteria for evaluating the president and for choosing between political candidates.
The Portable Assembly Language C-- : A Critical Review and a GCC Based Prototype

Many research activities deal directly or indirectly with the design and implementation of high level language concepts. These concepts are developed not only in the context of programming languages, but also in other fields such as distributed operating systems. The proper implementation of new language concepts is usually very complex and requires modifications of existing compilers if not writing new ones. Demands for compatibility and portability further intensify this problem. As a result, compromises sacrificing either efficiency or the quality of the concepts have to be made. Hence, it is not surprising, that using C as an intermediate target has become popular, although C often provides only a poor inefficient match. To improve this situation, C-was designed as a more flexible target language for compiler writers. It abstracts from hardware details and provides a few basic building blocks along with dedicated support for tasks such as garbage collection. Obviously, the success of the C-approach strongly depends on the C-compiler and the suitability of C--’s abstractions to fulfill future requirements. In this paper, GNU GCC is used to investigate both aspects. First, GCC provides a rich and diverse set of concepts on different levels of abstraction. These concepts are compared with the abstractions provided by C-to detect potential advantages and shortcomings of both worlds. Second, the feasibility of a GCC based realization of C-is discussed and the implementation of a first prototype is described. While most of C--’s features can easily be mapped to GCC back-end concepts, the C-tailcall feature proves to be very difficult to implement, requiring in-depth knowledge of several parts of the compiler as well as significant changes. It is argued, that performing these extensive modifications is still superior to writing a new compiler.
On Small‐Sample Confidence Intervals for Parameters in Discrete Distributions

Summary. The traditional definition of a confidence interval requires the coverage probability at any value of the parameter to be at least the nominal confidence level. In constructing such intervals for parameters in discrete distributions, less conservative behavior results from inverting a single two‐sided test than inverting two separate one‐sided tests of half the nominal level each. We illustrate for a variety of discrete problems, including interval estimation of a binomial parameter, the difference and the ratio of two binomial parameters for independent samples, and the odds ratio.
Wearable battery-free active paper printed RFID tag with human-energy scavenger

The embodiment of wearable battery-free, active, paper printed RFID tags provided with energy scavenging capabilities is presented. In this research, extraction of electrical energy from human body movement is obtained by a piezoelectric energy scavenger powering up an active RFID tag module implemented on flexible organic substrate. The application dealt with hereafter testifies a promising approach useful for a vast variety of applications where wearable electronics is required.
Coarse-fine spectrum sensing for Cognitive Radio for minimum sensing time

In this paper we investigate the reduction in sensing time that can be gained by using a coarse-fine sensing scheme. Since the speed gains that can be obtained are dependent upon the SNR distribution across the bands, we generate an example SNR distribution based on the Irish DTV network for use in this paper. The coarse-fine sensing scheme in this system uses an energy detector first to order the channels based on the expectation of occupancy. We derive an expression for the probability of occupancy of each of these ordered channels. Using this expression we generate design curves for the coarse-fine sensing scheme. Simulation results are then provided that will confirm these design curves. Using these curves, designers can then select the optimum value for the number of coarse detector samples.
Ray Casting on a SOPC : Algorithm and Memory Hierarchy Trade-Off

This paper focuses on the Ray casting Acceleration which is both control and brute-force computing intensive. The aim of Ray Casting is to propagate lines in a 3D grid in order to compute a line integral for tasks such as 3D data visualisation (i.e 3D projection to 2D) or algorithmic steps for iterative 3D reconstruction in medical imaging. The main proposition we focus on are : - To model ray casting in projective geometry which allow fixed point computations - The re-ordering of computations in order to "generate" 3D spatial and temporal locality and allow parallelism - The use of a semi-general purpose 3D-Adaptive and predictive hierarchical cache (3D-AP Cache) tuned for this application A suitable modeling of grid traversal allows to overcome usual numerical instability in ray-plane intersections computations and allows fixed point arithmetic. This ray casting process is implemented as a hardware unit which gets data from an efficient 3D cache tuned for this application and allows a parametrized trade-off between embedded memory amount and data throughput. All units are designed and we give an evaluation of their complexity and performance for a typical application.
Isolating Mechanisms: Can Managers Protect Rent Generating, Knowledge Based Assets?

In a tape cassette having a slider which is freely forward and backward movably provided to a cassette shell in which a tape reel having a tape-shaped recording medium wound therearound is accommodated, the cassette shell comprises an upper shell constituting substantially the upper side portion thereof and a lower shell constituting substantially the lower side portion thereof, and the upper shell and the lower shell are temporarily coupled to each other through the slider by butting the lower shell and the upper shell against each other after the upper shell and the slider are coupled to each other and moving the slider, and then the upper shell and the lower shell are really coupled to each other.
THE CYCLICAL PROPERTIES OF CEMENT PRICES Yearly Data from 1947 to 1981 Dependent

This paper studies implicitly colluding oligopolists facing fluctuating demand. The credible threat of future punishments provides the discipline that facilitates collusion. However, we find that the temptation to unilaterally deviate from the collusive outcome is often greater when demand is high. To moderate this temptation, the optimizing oligopoly reduces its profitability at such times, resulting in lower prices. If the oligopolists' output is an input to other sectors, their output may increase too. This explains the co-movements of outputs which characterize business cycles. The behavior of the railroads in the 1880' 3, the automobile industry in the 1950's and the cyclical behavior of cement prices and price-cost margins support our theory. (j.E.L. Classification numbers: 020, 130, 610).
High-quality spatial climate data-sets for Australia

Recent years have seen much of Australia suffer from severe meteorological drought and a series of climatic extremes (e.g. Bureau of Meteorology 2008a, 2008b). As a result, water resources have widely fallen to record lows, and agricultural production in southern and eastern parts of Australia has been poor with a series of crop failures (e.g. Murray-Darling Basin Commission 2007; Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics 2007). High-quality national climate information is clearly needed to place these climatedriven events in a proper historical perspective and to provide a context for understanding the associated impacts on humans and the environment. A key to better management of Australia’s physical resources is ensuring that expectation and demand match the long-term supply. Matching a demand to the available resource is clearly required in the case of water, where the idea of sustainable yields is fairly well developed (e.g. Chiew et al. 2008). However, it is also clear that other climate variables such as temperature can be considered as a resource, with agricultural productivity (for example) being closely tied to temperature in much the same way as it is to rainfall (Cline 2007). A better characterisation of Australia’s climate and associated variability should lead to better risk management and improved decision-making processes. High-quality spatial climate data-sets for Australia
Recursive Cut and Stitch : Fast All-Pairs Shortest Paths Computation for Subset of Nodes

We present a practical algorithm for computing all pairs shortest paths for subset of nodes on road networks. It provides an important improvement for applications such as traffic analysis, where recomputation of shortest paths is the most expensive step that has to be repeated many times. We propose an algorithm that recursively cuts the graph until pieces are small enough to compute shortest paths fast, and then combines partial shortest path distances bottom-up. Theoretical worst-case running time of our algorithm is slightly slower than Dijkstra, but in practice, our algorithm is significantly faster.
Identification of Immune Related LRR-Containing Genes in Maize (Zea mays L.) by Genome-Wide Sequence Analysis

A large number of immune receptors consist of nucleotide binding site-leucine rich repeat (NBS-LRR) proteins and leucine rich repeat-receptor-like kinases (LRR-RLK) that play a crucial role in plant disease resistance. Although many NBS-LRR genes have been previously identified in Zea mays, there are no reports on identifying NBS-LRR genes encoded in the N-terminal Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) motif and identifying genome-wide LRR-RLK genes. In the present study, 151 NBS-LRR genes and 226 LRR-RLK genes were identified after performing bioinformatics analysis of the entire maize genome. Of these identified genes, 64 NBS-LRR genes and four TIR-NBS-LRR genes were identified for the first time. The NBS-LRR genes are unevenly distributed on each chromosome with gene clusters located at the distal end of each chromosome, while LRR-RLK genes have a random chromosomal distribution with more paired genes. Additionally, six LRR-RLK/RLPs including FLS2, PSY1R, PSKR1, BIR1, SERK3, and Cf5 were characterized in Zea mays for the first time. Their predicted amino acid sequences have similar protein structures with their respective homologues in other plants, indicating that these maize LRR-RLK/RLPs have the same functions as their homologues act as immune receptors. The identified gene sequences would assist in the study of their functions in maize.
Abnormal Heart Development and Lung Remodeling in Mice Lacking the Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-Related Basic Helix-Loop-Helix PAS Protein NEPAS

ABSTRACT Hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) are crucial for oxygen homeostasis during both embryonic development and postnatal life. Here we show that a novel HIF family basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) PAS (Per-Arnt-Sim) protein, which is expressed predominantly during embryonic and neonatal stages and thereby designated NEPAS (neonatal and embryonic PAS), acts as a negative regulator of HIF-mediated gene expression. NEPAS mRNA is derived from the HIF-3α gene by alternative splicing, replacing the first exon of HIF-3α with that of inhibitory PAS. NEPAS can dimerize with Arnt and exhibits only low levels of transcriptional activity, similar to that of HIF-3α. NEPAS suppressed reporter gene expression driven by HIF-1α and HIF-2α. By generating mice with a targeted disruption of the NEPAS/HIF-3α locus, we found that homozygous mutant mice (NEPAS/HIF-3α−/−) were viable but displayed enlargement of the right ventricle and impaired lung remodeling. The expression of endothelin 1 and platelet-derived growth factor β was increased in the lung endothelial cells of NEPAS/HIF-3α-null mice. These results demonstrate a novel regulatory mechanism in which the activities of HIF-1α and HIF-2α are negatively regulated by NEPAS in endothelial cells, which is pertinent to lung and heart development during the embryonic and neonatal stages.
The charged inflaton and its gauge fields: preheating and initial conditions for reheating

We calculate particle production during inflation and in the early stages of reheating after inflation in models with a charged scalar field coupled to Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields. A detailed analysis of the power spectra of primordial electric fields, magnetic fields and charge fluctuations at the end of inflation and preheating is provided. We carefully account for the Gauss constraints during inflation and preheating, and clarify the role of the longitudinal components of the electric field. We calculate the timescale for the back-reaction of the produced gauge fields on the inflaton condensate, marking the onset of non-linear evolution of the fields. We provide a prescription for initial conditions for lattice simulations necessary to capture the subsequent nonlinear dynamics. On the observational side, we find that the primordial magnetic fields generated are too small to explain the origin of magnetic fields on galactic scales and the charge fluctuations are well within observational bounds for the models considered in this paper.