Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variable length segmental-transmission-line and its parameter optimization based on GA

Waveform distortion is a serious problem in higher-frequency signals on printed circuit boards (PCB). In order to overcome this problem, the segmental transmission line (STL) has already been proposed. However, the STL requires segments of wide-range widths. The wide-range line-width impedes higher optimization of waveforms and it also causes cost-increment in the PCB manufacturing. In this paper, we propose a novel STL with variable length segments in order to overcome the difficulties in previous work. We also develop a design methodology using a GA to determine the parameters for the proposed STL. We apply our new STL to the clock line in the actual PCB, and show its effectiveness compared with the previously proposed STL.
The Determinants of Medical Tourism Intentions: Applying the Theory of Planned Behavior

This study introduces the theory of planned behavior to health care marketers by extending and replicating a prior study that predicted student's intention to engage in medical tourism. Based on a sample of 164 usable survey responses, our findings suggested that the MEDTOUR scale (developed and introduced a prior study) is robust and works reasonably well with a national sample. Based on these findings, MEDTOUR appears to be worthy of further consideration by health marketing scholars.
A technical note on variable inter-frame interval as a cause of non-physiological experimental artefacts in ultrasound

Ultrasound (US) imaging is a well-recognized technique for the study of static tissues but its suitability for studying tissue dynamics depends upon accurate frame time information, which may not always be available to users. Here we present methods to quantify the inter-frame interval (IFI) variability, and evaluate different procedures for collecting temporal information from two US-imaging devices. The devices tested exhibited variable IFIs that could only be confirmed by direct measures of timing signals, available by means of electrical signals (triggers) and/or temporal information contained in the software used for the US data collection. Interpolating frame-by-frame measures of dynamic changes within image sequences using individual IFI values provided improved synchronization between measures of skeletal muscle movement and activation; validating US as a valuable technique for the study of musculoskeletal tissue dynamics, when correctly implemented.
Regel-basierte Kategorisierung mit dem Hierarchischen Dirichlet Prozess

Der Hierarchische Dirichlet Prozess (HDP), ein rationales Kategorisierungsverfahren, welches auch als Klassifikator fur autonome Roboter vorgeschlagen wurde (Nakamura, Nagai & Iwahashi, 2011; Nakamura, Yoshiki, Takayuki & Masahide, 2015), wird anhand eines klassischen Phanomens der menschlichen Kategorisierungsleistung evaluiert und mit alternativen Modellen aus der psychologischen Forschung verglichen. Ziel des Vorhabens ist es sowohl zu einer Reduzierung des Evaluationsdefizits prominenter Kategorisierungsmodelle beizutragen, zu welchen der HDP gerechnet werden kann, als auch Verbesserungspotential des Modells zu ermitteln (Pothos & Wills, 2011; Wills & Pothos, 2012). Gegenstand der Evaluation ist die experimentell ermittelte Lernschwierigkeit von sechs unterschiedlichen Kategorisierungsregeln aus Nosofsky, Gluck, Palmeri, McKinley und Glauthier (1994b). Die Gegenuberstellung der vom HDP vorhergesagten Lernschwierigkeit mit der tatsachlichen Schwierigkeit zeigen ein klassisches Defizit des Modells, wie es haufig auch in alteren Modellen zu menschlichen Kategorisierung festgestellt wurde. Es werden mogliche Ursachen fur die ungenugende Modellierungsleistung des HDP benannt.
Monte Carlo Localization using the Global Appearance of Omnidirectional Images - Algorithm Optimization to Large Indoor Environments

In this paper we deal with the problem of robot localization using the visual information provided by a single omnidirectional camera mounted on the robot, using techniques based on the global appearance of panoramic images. Our main objective consists in showing the feasibility of the appearance-based approaches in a localization task in a relatively large and real environment. First, we study the approaches that permit us to describe globally the visual information so that it represents with accuracy locations in the environment. Then, we present the probabilistic approach we have used to compute the most probable pose of the robot when it performs a trajectory within the map. At the end, we describe the kind of environments and maps we have used to test our localization algorithms and the final results. The experimental results we show have been obtained using real indoor omnidirectional images, captured in an office building under real conditions.
Generating Semantic Aspects for Queries

We present an approach to explore news archives by automatically generating semantic aspects for their navigation. Given a keyword query as an input, we utilize semantic annotations present in the pseudo-relevant set of documents for generating the aspects. Our approach to generate the aspects considers the salience of the annotations by modeling their semantics as well as considering their co-occurrence in the pseudo-relevant set of documents. The generated aspects are also beneficial for representing documents in a structured manner. We show preliminary results on two news archives demonstrating the quality of the generated aspects over a testbed of more than 5,000 aspects derived from Wikipedia.
Role of Dietary Habits in the Development of Esophageal Cancer in Assam, the North-Eastern Region of India

The etiology of esophageal cancer remains largely unknown. In recent years, the role of dietary habits in the development of esophageal cancer has received much attention. Prevalence of esophageal cancer in Assam is highest among all the states of India. To identify the possible risk factors, a hospital-based case-control study was conducted with 502 cases and 1,004 controls. "Kalakhar," a unique and locally made food item, has emerged as a significant risk factor (odds ratio = 8.0, 95% confidence interval = 5.1-11.5, p < 0.001). Consumption of very spicy foods, hot foods and beverages, a diet containing high amounts of chili, and leftover food was positively associated with the risk of esophageal cancer. Green leafy vegetables and fruits were protective for esophageal cancer. The risk factors associated with consumption of locally prepared food items, e.g., kalakhar, and some dietary practices did not decrease, even after adjustments with different confounding factors. However, further studies are required to conclusively implicate these factors in causation of esophageal cancer.
Heuristics-based algorithm to dynamically adapt icon sizes and layouts on touch devices

This work1 provides an intelligent algorithm that analyzes the success (and failure) rate of a touch gesture in order to determine best size and layout of icons. Dynamic adaptation of icon size is done to best match device user's finger impression size resulting into reduction in failed tapings which would have otherwise occurred due to variations between icon size and finger's impression. Gravity of the said problem is analyzed by conducting a survey amongst 100 plus users. The implementation is also tested by building an android gaming application. The game is then released to limited set of users where dynamic icons sizes are generated based on user's score on successful taps on rapidly changing icons.
Improving profinet IRT frame packing using ethernet control characters

Profinet IRT makes use of dynamic frame packing (DFP) in order to support very short cycle times. The applied packing order is highly dependent on the network topology, and thus the scheduling must be recalculated offline every time the network structure is changed. This study presents a proposal for an automatic packing mechanism (APM) that is based on subframes with delimiters using control characters. As a consequence the subframe positions can be recognized by each device, which makes a scheduling dispensable. Furthermore, APM achieves better performance than DFP, especially in star or tree topology. The paper also presents experimental validation results.
THE EFFECT OF PROGESTERONE, OESTROGENS AND HYDROCORTISONE ON THE MITOGENIC RESPONSE OF LYMPHOCYTES TO PHYTOHAEMAGGLUTININ IN PREGNANT AND NON‐PREGNANT WOMEN

The mitogenic response to phytohaemagglutinin of lymphocytes from women in the third trimester of pregnancy is not inhibited by progesterone, oestriol or oestradiol even at much greater than normal physiological levels. There was no difference in the response of lymphocytes from pregnant or non‐pregnant women. Inhibition in the mitogenic response to phytohaemagglutinin was achieved with hydrocortisone but not at the physiological levels found in pregnancy. The results from this in vitro study would not support the view that the level of steroid hormones in pregnancy significantly affects the immunological status of the mothers.
Distributed downlink power control for the non-orthogonal multiple access system with two interfering cells

This paper investigates the power control problem for the downlink of a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with two cells. The problem, called p-Opt, aims to minimizes the total transmit power of the base stations subject to the data rate requirements of the users. The feasibility and optimality properties of p-Opt is first characterized. It is proved that the feasible power region of p-Opt can be represented by the feasible regions of four power control subproblems that constitute a related optimization problem called q-Opt. Furthermore, the optimal solution to p-Opt can be obtained by solving the corresponding instance of q-Opt. A distributed algorithm to solve q-Opt is designed and the underlying iteration is shown to be a standard interference function. According to Yates's power control framework, the algorithm always converges to the optimal solution if exists. Numerical results validate the convergence of the distributed algorithm and quantify the improvement of NOMA over its orthogonal multiple access counterparts in terms of power consumption and outage probability.
Brief report. The karyotype of the caudate amphibian Andrias davidianus.

Andrias davidianus (Blanchard, 1871)(Cryptobranchidae, Caudata)is a large amphibian that inhabits mountain brooks in south-western and eastern China. It has no been found outside China. The People's Republic of China has classified it as a second-class protected animal and it has an endangered status. Here we characterize the karyotype using blood cell preparations. The chromosome number is 2n=60. There are 19 pairs of telocentric chromosomes and the pair 30 is heteromorphic. These results differ from the ones previously published.
Health Status of Traffic Police Personnel in Brahmapur City

Health is not something that one possesses as a commodity, but connotes rather a way of functioning within one's environment (work, recreation, and living). The work environment constitutes an important part of man's total environment, so health to a large extent is affected by work conditions. (1) Though several types of environment exist, it is the physical environment, which plays an important bearing on health. Air, noise, heat, radiation, etc., are the main sites of environment pollution and this is more so in urban areas. Occupational environment too plays a major role on the health of the exposed. The health hazards get more severe when the duration of exposure increases. This fact is more important in situations as the personnel engaged in traffic duty. These personnel have to undergo physical strain in an environment polluted by fumes, exhaust of vehicles, use of blowing horns, blow of dust in the air by a speeding vehicle, etc. The personnel also pursue a near-sedentary type of work as they only stand at one place for long hours or just walk a few meters, only when necessity arises. The aforementioned factors pose as a health hazard. Still little has been done to assess their health status and suggest preventive measures for the upliftment of their health. A study was thereby conducted to assess the health status of the traffic police personnel of the Berhampur city and to find out the related risk factors so that appropriate preventive measures can be recommended for safe guarding the health.
Compressive sensing based time-varying channel estimation for millimeter wave systems

Channel estimation for millimeter wave (mmWave) systems over time-varying channels is a challenging problem, since a large number of channel coefficients need to be estimated. In this paper, by exploiting the sparsity of mmWave channel in the angular domain, we propose an efficient sparse channel estimation scheme based on compressive sensing (CS) theory. Specifically, considering that the angles of arrival/departure (AoAs/AoDs) vary more slowly than the path gains, we formulate the channel estimation into a block-sparse signal recovery problem, and then propose a novel greedy algorithm consistent with the block structure to estimate AoAs/AoDs. Based on the estimated angles, we design optimal training hybrid precoders and combiners to maximize array gains, followed by estimating the path gains utilizing the least square (LS) method. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme performs better than the existing mmWave channel estimators in both estimation accuracy and spectral efficiency over time-invariant channels, and further verify that our proposed scheme is suitable for time-varying channels.
Targeted approaches for gene therapy and the emergence of engineered meganucleases

Background: In spite of significant advances in gene transfer strategies in the field of gene therapy, there is a strong emphasis on the development of alternative methods, providing better control of transgene expression and insertion patterns. Objective: Several new approaches consist of targeting a desired transgene or gene modification in a well defined locus, and we collectively refer to them as ‘targeted approaches’. The use of redesigned meganucleases is one of these emerging technologies. Here we try to define the potential of this method, in the larger scope of targeted strategies. Methods: We survey the different types of targeted strategies, presenting the achievements and the potential applications, with a special emphasis on the use of redesigned endonucleases. Conclusion: redesigned endonucleases represent one of the most promising tools for targeted approaches, and the opening of a clinical trial for AIDS patients has recently shown the maturity of these strategies. However, there is still a ‘quest’ for the best reagents, that is the endonucleases providing the best efficacy:toxicity ratio. New advances in protein design have allowed the engineering of new scaffolds, such as meganucleases, and the landscape of existing methods is likely to change over the next few years.
Result-reconstruction method to return useful XML elements

Purpose – Nowadays there are a large number of XML documents on the web. This means that information retrieval techniques for searching XML documents are very important and necessary for internet users. Moreover, it is often said that users of search engines want to browse only relevant content in each document. Therefore, an effective XML element search aims to produce only the relevant elements or portions of an XML document. Based on the demand by users, the purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate a method for obtaining more accurate search results in XML search.Design/methodology/approach – The existing approaches generate a ranked list in descending order of each XML element's relevance to a search query; however, these approaches often extract irrelevant XML elements and overlook more relevant elements. To address these problems, the authors' approach extracts the relevant XML elements by considering the size of the elements and the relationships between the elements. Next, the authors scor.
Recent selection for self‐compatibility in a population of Leavenworthia alabamica

The evolution of self‐compatibility (SC) is the first step in the evolutionary transition in plants from outcrossing enforced by self‐incompatibility (SI) to self‐fertilization. In the Brassicaceae, SI is controlled by alleles of two tightly linked genes at the S‐locus. Despite permitting inbreeding, mutations at the S‐locus leading to SC may be selected if they provide reproductive assurance and/or gain a transmission advantage in a population when SC plants self‐ and outcross. Positive selection can leave a genomic signature in the regions physically linked to the focus of selection when selection has occurred recently. From an SC population of Leavenworthia alabamica with a known nonfunctional mutation at the S‐locus, we collected sequence data from a ∼690 Kb region surrounding the S‐locus, as well as from regions not linked to the S‐locus. To test for recent positive selection acting at the S‐locus, we examined polymorphism and the site‐frequency spectra. Using forward simulations, we demonstrate that recent selection of the strength expected for SC at a locus formerly under balancing selection can generate patterns similar to those seen in our empirical data.
Eating Style and Food Storage Habits in the Home

Two home observations of eating styles and food storage and food cues in eight obese and eight nonobese families were conducted. Obese and nonobese children and their respective obese and nonobese parents were observed at dinner time and assessed on several different eating behaviors. Observers also recorded foods visible in the home and foods found on the first shelves of the freezer, refrigerator, and the most frequently used cupboard. Results did not reveal a different eating style between obese and nonobese families, although obese daughters appeared to eat differently than nonobese daughters. There were also similarities and differences in eating behaviors between children and parents, independent of individuals' weight status. Caloric totals of food storage, visible foods, and calories consumed appeared to be higher in obese households at the first observation, although obese families reduced the quantity of visible foods, and food consumption at observation two. The validity of socially desirable behaviors collected from more than one observation period and implications of the variability of the target behaviors when assessing obese families' eating styles and food habits are discussed.
The Hantavirus Glycoprotein G1 Tail Contains Dual CCHC-type Classical Zinc Fingers*

Hantaviruses are distributed worldwide and can cause a hemorrhagic fever or a cardiopulmonary syndrome in humans. Mature virions consist of RNA genome, nucleocapsid protein, RNA polymerase, and two transmembrane glycoproteins, G1 and G2. The ectodomain of G1 is surface-exposed; however, it has a 142-residue C-terminal cytoplasmic tail that plays important roles in viral assembly and host-pathogen interaction. Here we show by NMR, circular dichroism spectroscopy, and mutagenesis that a highly conserved cysteine/histidine-rich region in the G1 tail of hantaviruses forms two CCHC-type classical zinc fingers. Unlike classical zinc fingers, however, the two G1 zinc fingers are intimately joined together, forming a compact domain with a unique fold. We discuss the implication of the hantaviral G1 zinc fingers in viral assembly and host-pathogen interaction.
In search of predictive endophenotypes in addiction: insights from preclinical research

Drug addiction is widely recognized to afflict some but not all individuals by virtue of underlying risk markers and traits involving multifaceted interactions between polygenic and external factors. Remarkably, only a small proportion of individuals exposed to licit and illicit drugs develop compulsive drug‐seeking behavior, maintained in the face of adverse consequences and associated detrimental patterns of drug intake involving extended and repeated bouts of binge intoxication, withdrawal and relapse. As a consequence, research has increasingly endeavored to identify distinctive neurobehavioral mechanisms and endophenotypes that predispose individuals to compulsive drug use. However, research in active drug users is hampered by the difficulty in categorizing putatively causal behavioral traits prior to the initiation of drug use. By contrast, research in experimental animals is often hindered by the validity of approaches used to investigate the neural and psychological mechanisms of compulsive drug‐seeking habits in humans. Herein, we survey and discuss the principal findings emanating from preclinical animal research on addiction and highlight how specific behavioral endophenotypes of presumed genetic origin (e.g. trait anxiety, novelty preference and impulsivity) differentially contribute to compulsive forms of drug seeking and taking and, in particular, how these differentiate between different classes of stimulant and non‐stimulant drugs of abuse.
A simple, graphical method to evaluate laboratory assays.

Evaluation methods of laboratory assays often fail to predict the large, infrequent errors that are a major source of clinician complaints. We present a simple, graphical method to evaluate laboratory assays, which focuses on detecting large, infrequent errors. Our method, the folder empirical cumulative distribution plot or, more simply, mountain plot, is prepared by computing a percentile for each ranked difference between the new and reference method. To get a folded plot, one performs the following subtraction for all percentiles over 50: percentile = 100 - percentile. Percentiles (y axis) are then plotted against differences or percent differences (x axis). The calculations and plots are simple enough to perform in a spreadsheet. We also offer Windows based software to perform all calculations and plots. The mountain plot compared to the difference plot focuses attention on two features of the data: the center and the tails. We prefer the mountain plot over other graphical techniques because: 1. It is easier to find the central 95% of the data. 2. It is easier to estimate percentile for large differences (e.g., percentiles greater than 95%). 3. Unlike a histogram, the plot shape is not a function of the intervals. 4. Comparing different distributions is easier. 5. The plot is easier to interpret than a standard empirical cumulative distribution plot. Difference and mountain plots each provide complementary perspectives on the data. We recommend both plots. This method can also be used with data from a wide variety of other applications such as clinical trials and quality control.