Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Noncoherent Multiantenna Receivers for Cognitive Backscatter System with Multiple RF Sources.

Cognitive backscattering, an integration of cognitive radio and backsatter modulation, is emerging as a potential candidate for green Internet of Things (IoT). In cognitive backscatter systems, the backscatter device (BD) shares not only the same spectrum, but also the same radio-frequency (RF) source with the legacy system. In this paper, we investigate the signal transmission problem, in which a basic transmission model is considered which consists of K RF sources, one BD and one reader equipped with M antennas. A non-cooperative scenario is considered, where there is no cooperation between the legacy systems and the backscatter system, and no pilots are transmitted from the RF sources or BD to the reader. The on-off keying differential modulation is adopted to achieve noncoherent transmission. Firstly, through the capacity analyses, we point out that high-throughput backscatter transmission can be achieved when the number of the receive antennas satisfies M>K. The Chernoff Information (CI) is also derived to predict the detection performance. Next, we address the signal detection problem at the reader. The optimal soft decision (SD) and suboptimal hard decision (HD) detectors are designed based on the maximum likelihood criterion. To tackle the non-cooperation challenge, a fully blind channel estimation method is proposed to learn the detection-required parameters based on clustering. Extensive numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed detectors and the channel estimation method. In addition, it is illustrated that the increase of K may not necessarily lead to performance degradation when multiple receive antennas are exploited.
Fluorescence microscopy imaging of a neurotransmitter receptor and its cell membrane lipid milieu

Hampered by the diffraction phenomenon, as expressed in 1873 by Abbe, applications of optical microscopy to image biological structures were for a long time limited to resolutions above the ∼200 nm barrier and restricted to the observation of stained specimens. The introduction of fluorescence was a game changer, and since its inception it became the gold standard technique in biological microscopy. The plasma membrane is a tenuous envelope of 4 nm–10 nm in thickness surrounding the cell. Because of its highly versatile spectroscopic properties and availability of suitable instrumentation, fluorescence techniques epitomize the current approach to study this delicate structure and its molecular constituents. The wide spectral range covered by fluorescence, intimately linked to the availability of appropriate intrinsic and extrinsic probes, provides the ability to dissect membrane constituents at the molecular scale in the spatial domain. In addition, the time resolution capabilities of fluorescence methods provide complementary high precision for studying the behavior of membrane molecules in the time domain. This review illustrates the value of various fluorescence techniques to extract information on the topography and motion of plasma membrane receptors. To this end I resort to a paradigmatic membrane-bound neurotransmitter receptor, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR). The structural and dynamic picture emerging from studies of this prototypic pentameric ligand-gated ion channel can be extrapolated not only to other members of this superfamily of ion channels but to other membrane-bound proteins. I also briefly discuss the various emerging techniques in the field of biomembrane labeling with new organic chemistry strategies oriented to applications in fluorescence nanoscopy, the form of fluorescence microscopy that is expanding the depth and scope of interrogation of membrane-associated phenomena.
A comparison of the effects of cinnamon, ginger, and metformin consumption on metabolic health, anthropometric indices, and sexual hormone levels in women with poly cystic ovary syndrome: A randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled clinical trial

Background/objectives Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a prevalent endocrine disorder in women that can alter blood glucose, lipid profile and sexual hormonal level. Therefore, the evaluation of potential therapeutic agents in this population is important. The aim of the study was to determine the effects of cinnamon, ginger, and metformin intake on improvement of sex hormones level, metabolic health (lipid profiles, insulin level and fasting blood glucose) and anthropometric indices (weight, body mass index (BMI), etc.) in women with PCOS. Methods A total of 100 women with PCOS were randomly assigned to one of the following four groups: cinnamon (500 mg of cinnamon, 3 × day), ginger (500 mg of ginger, 3 × day), metformin (500 mg of metformin 3 × day) or placebo. However, 17 participants were excluded for various reasons and consequently, 83 participants were considered for analysis. Sexual hormones, anthropometrics, glycemic and lipid markers were evaluated before and after the 8-week intervention. Results Weight and BMI decreased significantly in all intervention groups. The consumption of metformin and cinnamon significantly decreased insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in comparison to the placebo and ginger groups (P < 0.05). Moreover, a significant decrease in FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) and LH (Luteinizing hormone) levels were observed in the ginger compared to the placebo group. While metformin and cinnamon significantly lowered testosterone levels (P < 0.05), none of the groups experienced a significant change in DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone). Conclusion Our findings suggest that in women with PCOS, cinnamon supplementation causes similar reductions in insulin resistance and testosterone level to that of metformin. Ginger supplementation decreased FSH and LH, hormonal effects not seen following metformin consumption. Overall, cinnamon and ginger supplementations may potentially be used as alternative treatment in women with PCOS. Clinical trial registration [https://www.irct. ir/trial/28548], identifier [IRCT20171227038105N1].
A Framework for Measuring Urban Sustainability in an Emerging Region: The City of Duhok as a Case Study

The City of Duhok in Iraq, as one of the Kurdistan Region’s (KR) main cities, is concerned about sustainability but lacks the measures to guide urban policies. This study bridges this gap and offers an example of the use of urban sustainability indicators in an emerging region that experiences rapid urbanization and growth. The substantial objective of this study was to develop a functional framework of indicators to assess and measure urban sustainability for the city after KR’s declaration of autonomy in 1991 until 2010. That is, we limited our investigation to examining previous research, which decisively contains the approach to “measuring urban sustainability”. The study followed a three-step approach to examine urban sustainability as an integration of a few other relevant studies. The study concluded with two facts: First, the lack of progress on urban sustainability in the first decades resulted from the destabilized era that left the city administratively fragmented. Second, the political and economic watershed led to steady progress towards urban sustainability post-2005. The study highlights nine urban sustainability indicators, from a total of 39 indicators, that played an important role in navigating the general trend of urban sustainability in the city and how they can be used to promote future sustainable practices.
A new order, Entrophosporales, and three new Entrophospora species in Glomeromycota

As a result of phylogenomic, phylogenetic, and morphological analyses of members of the genus Claroideoglomus, four potential new glomoid spore-producing species and Entrophospora infrequens, a new order, Entrophosporales, with one family, Entrophosporaceae (=Claroideoglomeraceae), was erected in the phylum Glomeromycota. The phylogenomic analyses recovered the Entrophosporales as sister to a clade formed by Diversisporales and Glomeraceae. The strongly conserved entrophosporoid morph of E. infrequens, provided with a newly designated epitype, was shown to represent a group of cryptic species with the potential to produce different glomoid morphs. Of the four potential new species, three enriched the Entrophosporales as new Entrophospora species, E. argentinensis, E. glacialis, and E. furrazolae, which originated from Argentina, Sweden, Oman, and Poland. The fourth fungus appeared to be a glomoid morph of the E. infrequens epitype. The physical association of the E. infrequens entrophosporoid and glomoid morphs was reported and illustrated here for the first time. The phylogenetic analyses, using nuc rDNA and rpb1 concatenated sequences, confirmed the previous conclusion that the genus Albahypha in the family Entrophosporaceae sensu Oehl et al. is an unsupported taxon. Finally, the descriptions of the Glomerales, Entrophosporaceae, and Entrophospora were emended and new nomenclatural combinations were introduced.
Systemic Risk and Heterogeneous Mean Field Type Interbank Network

We study the system of heterogeneous interbank lending and borrowing based on the relative average of log-capitalization given by the linear combination of the average within groups and the ensemble average and describe the evolution of log-capitalization by a system of coupled diffusions. The model incorporates a game feature with homogeneity within groups and heterogeneity between groups where banks search for the optimal lending or borrowing strategies through minimizing the heterogeneous linear quadratic costs in order to avoid to approach the default barrier. Due to the complicity of the lending and borrowing system, the closed-loop Nash equilibria and the open-loop Nash equilibria are both driven by the coupled Riccati equations. The existence of the equilibria in the two-group case where the number of banks are sufficiently large is guaranteed by the solvability for the coupled Riccati equations as the number of banks goes to infinity in each group. The equilibria are consisted of the mean-reverting term identical to the one group game and the group average owing to heterogeneity. In addition, the corresponding heterogeneous mean filed game with the arbitrary number of groups is also discussed. The existence of the $\epsilon$-Nash equilibrium in the general $d$ heterogeneous groups is also verified. Finally, in the financial implication, we observe the Nash equilibria governed by the mean-reverting term and the linear combination of the ensemble averages of individual groups and study the influence of the relative parameters on the liquidity rate through the numerical analysis.
The Effectiveness of Scientific and Scaffolding Approaches in Teaching Writing

: This research aims to describe the effectiveness of scientific, scaffolding and conventional approaches in teaching writing of descriptive texts for VII grade students at SMP N 1 Brebes. This research used quasi-experimental method using pre-test and post-test. The population was all students of VII grade at SMP N 1 Brebes consisting of seven classes in the even semester of the academic year 2016/2017. The sample was students of VII D, E and G classes determined by using simple cluster random sampling technique. The instrument was writing test in the form of an essay. The validity of the instrument was content validity which was obtained through the consultation with experts (expert judgment). The inter-rater technique was used to test the reliability of the instrument with Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Normality test and homogeneity test were performed as the analysis of the test. Kolmogorov-Smirnov was used to test normality and Levene test was used to test homogeneity. Data analysis technique used was One Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) followed by Scheffe test supported by SPSS 16.0 for windows program. The result of this research indicates that scientific, scaffolding and conventional approaches have a significant difference in effectiveness in teaching writing of descriptive texts for VII grade students at SMP N 1 Brebes indicated by (p) lower than 0.05.
Chip-Scale Molecular Clock

An ultra-stable time-keeping device is presented, which locks its output clock frequency to the rotational-mode transition of polar gaseous molecules. Based on a high-precision spectrometer in the sub-terahertz (THz) range, our new clocking scheme realizes not only fully electronic operation but also implementations using mainstream CMOS technology. Meanwhile, the small wavelength of probing wave and high absorption intensity of our adopted molecules (carbonyl sulfide, <sup>16</sup>O<sup>12</sup>C<sup>32</sup>S) also enable miniaturization of the gas cell. All these result in an “atomic-clock-grade” frequency reference with small size, power, and cost. This paper provides the architectural and chip-design details of the first proof-of-concept molecular clock using a 65-nm CMOS bulk technology. Using a 231.061-GHz phase-locked loop (PLL) with frequency-shift keying (FSK) modulation and a sub-THz FET detector with integrated lock-in function, the chip probes the accurate transition frequency of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) gas inside a single-mode waveguide, and accordingly adjusts the 80-MHz output of a crystal oscillator. The clock consumes only 66 mW of dc power and has a measured Allan deviation of 3.8 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 10<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{-10}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> at an averaging time of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tau =1000$ </tex-math></inline-formula> s.
How Gender Integration Can Reduce the Income-Inequality Gap

The labour force participation rates in India stands at 27.2 % for women in comparison to 78.8% for men whereas globally, the gender gap in the labour force participation rate is 26.5% as per the report published by ILO (2017). The employment conditions are also reported to be vulnerable for the women in terms of fewer working hours; usually not by choice, access to social protection and ambiguous employment contract. Gender integration in the workforce is facilitated through developmental policies of the government such as cluster development and associated “rurbanisation” i.e. transformation of rural to urban areas. Sustainable economic growth requires greater women participation for the enhanced income of these “rurban” areas. Even though the economic necessity may lead to no choice but to work; for women, the gains from income may not lead to her overall well-being. To optimize these results of socio-economic policies, the policy-makers should be able to gauge the benefits as well as the loop-holes of investment and its impact on human development. This study assesses whether the stimulation to local economic development through income generation leads to narrowing gaps in areas of income, literacy and gender gap in the workforce. The paper also uses textual analysis to explore the idea and perception of gender integration at the workplace of the women natives of the rurban clusters of Greater Noida which has undergone a shift in the structure of its major economic activities. The study presents the perceptual findings of women and their preference towards work the balance between work and family, similar opportunities as men and obstacles at work. The socio-economic development of women is assessed to examine the role of rurbanisation in reducing the income-inequality gap.
Optimising the usage of cloud resources for executing bag-of-tasks applications

Cloud computing has been widely adopted by many organisations, due to its flexibility in resource provisioning and on-demand pricing models. Entire clusters of machines can now be dynamically provisioned to meet the computational demands of users. By moving operations to the cloud, users hope to reduce the costs of building and maintaining a computational cluster without sacrificing the quality of service. However, cloud computing has presented challenges in scheduling and managing the usage of resources, which users of more traditional resource pooling models, such as grid and clusters, have never encountered before. Firstly, the costs associated with resource usage changes dynamically, and is based on the type and duration of resources used; this prevents users from greedily acquiring as many resources as possible due to the associated costs. Secondly, the cloud computing marketplace offers an assortment of on-demand resources with a wide range of performance capabilities. Given the variety of resources, this makes it difficult for users to construct a cluster which is suitable for their applications. As a result, it is challenging for users to ensure the desired quality of service while running applications on the cloud. The research in this thesis focuses on optimising the usage of cloud computing resources. We propose approaches for scheduling the execution of applications on to the cloud, such that the desired performance is met whilst the incurred monetary cost is minimised. Furthermore, this thesis presents a set of mechanisms which manages the execution at runtime, in order to detect and handle unexpected events with undesirable consequences, such as the violation of quality of service, or cost overheads. Using both simulated and real world experiments, we validate the feasibility of the proposed research by executing applications on the cloud with low costs without sacrificing performance. The key result is that it is possible to optimise the usage of cloud resources for user applications by using the research reported in this thesis.
The Role of Global Citizenship Values in Education: The Case of Secondary Stage EFL Textbooks in Jordan

Global citizenship values has established universal values for learners as a code of behavior which affords strength to the structure of society as it empowers students to be better world citizens. The current research sheds light on the role of integrating global citizenship values on Jordanian secondary stage English textbooks. Of possibly greater interest, global citizenship concerns may be transported to life in language classrooms. Thus, global citizenship values of human rights, peace, identity and diversity, and participation and accountability were picked up for the purpose of this study. Textbooks content analysis, survey questionnaire and interviews were used for gathering data distinctly from teachers' perspectives along with the available values in the textbooks through content analysis procedures. Reliability and validity of the study instruments were checked. The present study reported that the utmost merit of global citizenship education values had maximal occurrences across the textbooks understudy. Yet, the study found out that the absolute number of participating teachers perceived the teaching of such values as unimportant in EFL classes, stressing language skill instead is of much greater importance.
Distributed algorithms for optimized resource management of LTE in unlicensed spectrum and UAV-enabled wireless networks

Next-generation wireless cellular networks are morphing into a massive Internet of Things (IoT) environment that integrates a heterogeneous mix of wirelessenabled devices such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and connected vehicles. This unprecedented transformation will not only drive an exponential growth in wireless traffic, but it will also lead to the emergence of new wireless service applications that substantially differ from conventional multimedia services. To realize the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks vision, a new wireless radio technology paradigm shift is required in order to meet the quality of service requirements of these new emerging use cases. In this respect, one of the major components of 5G is self-organized networks. In essence, future cellular networks will have to rely on an autonomous and self-organized behavior in order to manage the large scale of wireless-enabled devices. Such an autonomous capability can be realized by integrating fundamental notions of artificial intelligence (AI) across various network devices. In this regard, the main objective of this thesis is to propose novel selforganizing and AI-inspired algorithms for optimizing the available radio resources in next-generation wireless cellular networks. First, heterogeneous networks that encompass licensed and unlicensed spectrum are studied. In this context, a deep reinforcement learning (RL) framework based on long short-term memory cells is introduced. The proposed scheme aims at proactively allocating the licensed assisted access LTE (LTE-LAA) radio resources over the unlicensed spectrum while ensuring an efficient coexistence with WiFi. The proposed deep learning algorithm is shown to reach a mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, when it converges. Simulation results using real data traces show that the proposed scheme can yield up to 28% and 11% gains over a conventional reactive approach and a proportional fair coexistence mechanism, respectively. In terms of priority fairness, results show that an efficient utilization of the unlicensed spectrum is guaranteed when both technologies, LTE-LAA and WiFi, are given equal weighted priorities for transmission on the unlicensed spectrum. Furthermore, an optimization formulation for LTE-LAA holistic traffic balancing across the licensed and the unlicensed bands is proposed. A closed form solution for the aforementioned optimization problem is derived. An attractive aspect of the derived solution is that it can be applied online by each LTE-LAA small base station (SBS), adapting its trans-
Moral Effects of Physical Cleansing and Pro-environmental Hotel Choices

Cultivating pro-environmental choices and behaviors is an important concern for tourism research and practice. Informed by recent developments in psychological research on embodied cognition and the moral effects of physical cleansing, we elicit novel insights about the causal relationship between the embodied experience of physical cleansing and pro-environmental travel choices. Across four experiments, we show that when one’s moral self-regard is heightened by the virtue of physical cleansing, it can motivate consumers to engage in pro-environmental travel choices. Importantly, we show that such an effect occurs because, after physical cleansing, consumers experience more expected guilt for not choosing a morally preferred environmentally friendly travel option within the evoked set of travel alternatives. Our study offers a novel way to understand how consumers can be “nudged” to choose pro-environmental travel options beyond fostering positive attitudes toward sustainability per se. Important implications for tourism research and practice are discussed.