Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Wireless MAC Protocol with Collision Detection

The most popular strategies for dealing with packet collisions at the medium access control (MAC) layer in distributed wireless networks use a combination of carrier sensing and collision avoidance. When the collision avoidance strategy fails, such schemes cannot detect collisions and corrupted data frames are still transmitted in their entirety, thereby wasting the channel bandwidth and significantly reducing the network throughput. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new wireless MAC protocol capable of collision detection. The basic idea of the proposed protocol is the use of pulses in an out-of-band control channel for exploring channel condition and medium reservation and achieving both collision avoidance and collision detection. The performance of the proposed MAC protocol has been investigated using extensive analysis and simulations. Our results show that, as compared with existing MAC protocols, the proposed protocol has significant performance gains in terms of node throughput. Additionally, the proposed protocol is fully distributed and requires no time synchronization among nodes.
Cognitive Reserve and Alzheimer Disease

Epidemiologic evidence suggests that individuals with higher IQ, education, occupational attainment, or participation in leisure activities have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer disease (AD). The concept of cognitive reserve (CR) posits that individual differences in how tasks are processed provide differential reserve against brain pathology or age-related changes. This may take 2 forms. In neural reserve, preexisting brain networks that are more efficient or have greater capacity may be less susceptible to disruption. In neural compensation, alternate networks may compensate for pathology's disruption of preexisting networks. Imaging studies have begun to identify the neural substrate of CR. Because CR may modulate the clinical expression of AD pathology, it is an important consideration in studies of “preclinical” AD and treatment studies. There is also the possibility that directly enhancing CR may help forestall the diagnosis of AD.
Robust and Non-fragile H ∞ State Feedback Controller Design for Time Delay Systems

This paper describes the synthesis of robust and non-fragile H ∞ state feedback controllers for linear varying systems with time delay and affine parameter uncertainties, as well as static state feedback controller with structural uncertainty. The sufficient condition of controller existence, the design method of robust and non-fragile H ∞ static state feedback controller, and the region of controllers satisfying non-fragility are presented. Also, using some change of variables and Schur complements, the obtained conditions can be rewritten as parameterized Linear Matrix Inequalities (PLMIs), that is, LMIs whose coefficients are functions of a parameter confined to a compact set. We show that the resulting controller guarantees the asymptotic stability and disturbance attenuation of the closed loop system in spite of time delay and controller gain variations within a resulted polytopic region.
VLSI Implementation of fully pipelined multiplierless 2D DCT/IDCT architecture for JPEG

The Discrete Cosine transform is widely used as the core of digital image compression. Discrete cosine transforms attempts to de-correlate the image data. After decor relation, each transform coefficient can be encoded independently without losing compression efficiency. In this paper we present VLSI Implementation of fully pipelined multiplierless architecture of 8×8 2D DCT/IDCT. This architecture is used as the core of JPEG compression hardware. The 2-D DCT calculation is made using the 2-D DCT separability property, such that the whole architecture is divided into two 1-D DCT calculations by using a transpose buffer. The architecture described to implement 1-D DCT is based on Binary-Lifted DCT. The 2-D DCT architecture achieves an operating frequency of 166 MHz. One input block of 8×8 samples each of 8 bits each is processed in 0. 198µs. The pipeline latency of proposed architecture is 45 Clock cycles.
Winner-Take-All Memetic Differential Evolution for Genetic Interaction: Parameter Identification

The emerging large-scale biological tools (e.g., micro array) challenge biologists to realize the connectivity of genes and/or proteins at the system level (global view). Having advantages in good generalization and showing the direct interaction of genes and/or proteins, the S-system becomes one of the popular models, which is able to capture the dynamic behavior of the biological system. Differential evolution (DE) and its variants have recently applied to solve various optimization problems in engineering fields. However, the exploitative and explorative abilities are insufficient. In this study, we propose a winner-take-all memetic differential evolution scheme to infer the parameters of the S-type gene regulatory networks. This method was tested with a genetic-branch pathway and a twenty-gene network. The learning was implemented in a wide search space ([0, 100] for rate constants and [-100, 100] for kinetic orders) with a bad initial start (All parameters were randomly initialized at the neighborhood of 80). Simulation results show high-accuracy solutions are obtained.
How Do Researchers in Ubiquitous Learning View Adoption of Their Technology?

Ubiquitous learning technologies will play a key role in smart learning cities. However, despite the hype, the degree of adoption of ubiquitous learning systems, even in controlled academic environments, has perhaps not reached its full potential. Consequently, there is a need to understand the adoption behavior of key stakeholders. This paper presents a first step in this direction by asking researchers who have published recently in the area of 'ubiquitous learning' about which adoption factors the future users of their technology would prefer. The results indicate that for students, teachers and administrators, the researchers believe that social influence was the key variable affecting adoption. However, in addition to social influence, for teachers and administrators, performance expectation and effort expectation, respectively, were also considered important. Surprisingly, researchers did not agree on performance expectation as a key driver of the adoption of ubiquitous learning technologies.
Channel Integration towards Omnichannel Management: a literature Review

The evolution of technology and the constant digitalisation strongly influence how consumers behave, how markets develop, and how companies and consumers interact. By offering many channels, companies attempt to react to these developments. In recent years, researchers as well as practitioners have proposed omnichannel management as the best approach to offer several channels. An omnichannel strategy enables consumers to use channels seamlessly and interchangeably and experience the channels uniquely. However, reality looks different: many channel management approaches coexist in practice, and in research, terms to describe different concepts are used without clear distinctions. This paper seeks to eliminate ambiguities regarding the term omnichannel management. By delimiting the term from related approaches and understanding current topics discussed by omnichannel management research, this paper creates a common basis from which to fully understand the concept. Omnichannel management has shown relevance in many areas, but particularly in retailing, marketing, and information systems (IS) research. IS plays an important role in the implementation of the omnichannel approach because obstacles are often technology-related and companies are strongly dependent on information technology (IT). To move research on omnichannel management forward, this paper proposes directions for further research.
Interim Guidance for the Use of Human Papillomavirus DNA Testing as an Adjunct to Cervical Cytology for Screening

Human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use as an adjunct to cytology for cervical cancer screening. To help provide guidance to clinicians and patients when using HPV DNA testing as an adjunct to cervical cytology for screening, a workshop was cosponsored by the National Institutes of Health–National Cancer Institute, American Society of Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology (ASCCP), and American Cancer Society. Consensus was reached based on a literature review, expert opinion, and unpublished results from large ongoing screening studies. The conclusions of the workshop were that HPV DNA testing may be added to cervical cytology for screening in women aged 30 years or more. Women whose results are negative by both HPV DNA testing and cytology should not be rescreened before 3 years. Women whose results are negative by cytology, but are high-risk HPV DNA positive, are at a relatively low risk of having high-grade cervical neoplasia, and colposcopy should not be performed routinely in this setting. Instead, HPV DNA testing along with cervical cytology should be repeated in these women at 6 to 12 months. If test results of either are abnormal, colposcopy should then be performed. This guidance should assist clinicians in utilizing HPV DNA testing in an effective manner, while minimizing unnecessary evaluations and treatments.
Glanzmann thrombasthenia secondary to a Gly273-->Asp mutation adjacent to the first calcium-binding domain of platelet glycoprotein IIb.

We studied the defect responsible for Glanzmann thrombasthenia in a patient whose platelets expressed < 5% of the normal amount of GPIIb-IIIa. Genetic and biochemical evidence indicated that the patient's GPIIIa genes were normal. However, DNA analysis revealed the patient homozygous for a G818-->A substitution in her GPIIb genes, resulting in a Gly273-->Asp substitution adjacent to the first GPIIb calcium-binding domain. To determine how this mutation impaired GPIIb-IIIa expression, recombinant GPIIb containing the mutation was coexpressed with GPIIIa in COS-1 cells. The GPIIb mutant formed stable GPIIb-IIIa heterodimers that were not immunoprecipitated by either of two heterodimer-specific monoclonal antibodies, indicating that the mutation disrupted the epitopes for these antibodies. Moreover, the GPIIb in the heterodimers was not cleaved into heavy and light chains, indicating that the heterodimers were not transported from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi complex where GPIIb cleavage occurs, nor were the mutant heterodimers expressed on the cell surface. These studies demonstrate that a Gly273-->Asp mutation in GPIIb does not prevent the assembly of GPIIb-IIIa heterodimers, but alters the conformation of these heterodimers sufficiently to impair their intracellular transport. The impaired GPIIb-IIIa transport is responsible for the thrombasthenia in this patient.
From cells to coastlines: how can we use physiology to forecast the impacts of climate change?

SUMMARY The interdisciplinary fields of conservation physiology, macrophysiology, and mechanistic ecological forecasting have recently emerged as means of integrating detailed physiological responses to the broader questions of ecological and evolutionary responses to global climate change. Bridging the gap between large-scale records of weather and climate (as measured by remote sensing platforms, buoys and ground-based weather stations) and the physical world as experienced by organisms (niche-level measurements) requires a mechanistic understanding of how `environmental signals' (parameters such as air, surface and water temperature, food availability, water flow) are translated into signals at the scale of the organism or cell (e.g. body temperature, food capture, hydrodynamic force, aerobic capacity). Predicting the impacts of how changing environments affect populations and ecosystems further mandates an understanding of how organisms `filter' these signals via their physiological response (e.g. whether they respond to high or low frequencies, whether there is a time lag in response, etc.) and must be placed within the context of adult movement and the dispersal of larvae and gametes. Recent studies have shown that patterns of physiological stress in nature are far more complex in space and time than previously assumed and challenge the long-held paradigm that patterns of biogeographic distribution can be based on simple environmental gradients. An integrative, systems-based approach can provide an understanding of the roles of environmental and physiological variability in driving ecological responses and can offer considerable insight and predictive capacity to researchers, resource managers and policy makers involved in planning for the current and future effects of climate change.
Network MIMO With Linear Zero-Forcing Beamforming: Large System Analysis, Impact of Channel Estimation, and Reduced-Complexity Scheduling

We consider the downlink of a multicell system with multiantenna base stations and single-antenna user terminals, arbitrary base station cooperation clusters, distance-dependent propagation pathloss, and general “fairness” requirements. Base stations in the same cooperation cluster employ joint transmission with linear zero-forcing beamforming, subject to sum or per-base station power constraints. Intercluster interference is treated as noise at the user terminals. Analytic expressions for the system spectral efficiency are found in the large-system limit where both the numbers of users and antennas per base station tend to infinity with a given ratio. In particular, for the per-base station power constraint, we find new results in random matrix theory, yielding the squared Frobenius norm of submatrices of the Moore-Penrose pseudo-inverse for the structured non-i.i. d. channel matrix resulting from the cooperation cluster, user distribution, and path-loss coefficients. The analysis is extended to the case of nonideal Channel State Information at the Transmitters obtained through explicit downlink channel training and uplink feedback. Specifically, our results illuminate the trade-off between the benefit of a larger number of cooperating antennas and the cost of estimating higher-dimensional channel vectors. Furthermore, our analysis leads to a new simplified downlink scheduling scheme that preselects the users according to probabilities obtained from the large-system results, depending on the desired fairness criterion. The proposed scheme performs close to the optimal (finite-dimensional) opportunistic user selection while requiring significantly less channel state feedback, since only a small fraction of preselected users must feed back their channel state information.
Impact of Health Care Information Technology on Hospital Productivity Growth: a Survey in 17 Acute University Hospitals

The quantification of the added value of information technologies (IT) in the health sector is a major issue for decision-makers and health care professionals. This paper relates the application of an economic production function in hospitals with different integration levels of their clinical information systems (CIS). The study concerns 17 university hospitals within the Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris group that were followed from 1998 to 2005. Using an extended Cobb-Douglas production function, yearly incomes (Y) were correlated with three inputs: capital (K), labor (L) and IT expenses (T). The results indicate that incomes are significantly and positively associated with the three input variables with elasticity coefficients: alpha, beta and gamma of 0.81, 0.17, and 0.09 that appear to be in the range of values found in secondary and tertiary sectors. The IT elasticity coefficient (gamma) is higher in the subgroup of 6 hospitals that integrate, or started to integrate, a complete CIS within the study period than in the 11 reference hospitals. In a general production function, hospital costs appear to be positively connected to the level of IT expenses, capital and labor. Calculations in two subgroups of AP-HP hospitals divided according to the importance of the IT integration level seem to indicate that the more the clinical information system is integrated, the more its influence is positive in hospital production. The results of this first survey are sufficiently encouraging to try to refine them (better granularity) and to spread them in time (over a longer period) and space (to other hospital structures).
Functions and Traversals in Combination

In this paper we describe a new traversal organization inspired by ideas behind type-generic traversals that clearly separates traversal code and computation, implemented in an object-oriented setting. By delegating portions of the traversal and computation to separate functions we provide a library and methodology to develop succinct solutions to data-structure transformation problems. Because we provide an implementation of these new traversals via reflection in Java, all previous tools and libraries are still available and functionality can be extended and composed to deal with data structure reorganization using inheritance and encapsulation. We demonstrate the use of these abstractions by solving a few prototypical language problems: calculation of de Bruijn indices and type-checking.
Predictability: Beginning from the information entropy

We have established the Markov model for long range correlated time series (LRCS), by analyzing their evolutionary characteristics, then defined a physical effective correlation length (ECL) of the LRCS, which reflects the predictability of the LRCS, and find that the ECL has a better power law relation with the long range correlated exponent (LRCE) of the LRCS. We apply the power law relation between ECL and LRCE to the daily maximum temperature series (DMTS) at 740 stations in China for the period 1960–2005, calculate the ECL of the DMTS, and the results show the remarkable regional distributive features that the ECL is about 10–14 days in west, northwest and northern China and about 5–10 days in east, southeast and southern China. Namely, the predictability of the DMTS is higher in central-west China than in east and southeast China.
Globalisation, New Managerialism, Academic Capitalism and Entrepreneurialism in Universities: Is the local dimension still important?

The paper examines the importance of global and local factors in the current development of universities in Western countries. Globalisation is a fashionable theoretical stance but care needs to be taken in applying it to education, not least because social theorists cannot agree on definitions and implications. Three concepts dealing with recent changes to universities--new managerialism, academic capitalism and entrepreneurial universities--are examined for their usefulness in explaining what is happening to universities in Europe and North America. Following a critical analysis of the theoretical and empirical basis of Slaughter & Leslie's 'Academic Capitalism' and Clark's 'Creating Entrepreneurial Universities', it is suggested that, in searching for similarities and convergence in universities in different countries, more localised factors affecting higher education institutions may be under-emphasised. Furthermore, some of the data used in the comparative case-studies of universities analysed in the paper do not provide methodologically robust evidence to support all of the claims being made. It is suggested that in future comparative work on trends in higher education, more attention should be paid both to methodological matters and to the local-global axis.
Neurovascular MRA Techniques , Pitfalls , and Problem Solving

TOF MRA relies on a fast, limited flip angle gradient echo sequence, with contrast between vessel and background generated from inflow of fresh unsaturated spins between pulses while the background becomes saturated. PC methods rely on motion-induced phase shifts as well as saturation of the background to generate contrast. This method can also be used to measure velocity and/or volumetric flow rates in vessels, and this can include the direction or vector of flow. Contrast is generated in CEMRA methods by imaging the vessel as a T1-shortening agent like a gadolinium-based contrast agent moves through it, making this method less sensitive to flow-related artifacts. These sequences are fast and have a very short TE, both of which help to minimize flow-related artifacts as well. There are advantages and disadvantages to each; for example, for the unenhanced techniques, 2D TOF and PC methods are more sensitive to slow flow, while 3D TOF MRA is better for fast and/or disordered flow[1-3]. A fourth category of bright-blood MRA methods consists of modifications to 3D CEMRA, incorporating techniques (or combinations of techniques) such as keyhole imaging, parallel imaging, and undersampled back projection[4]. Also, in addition to the bright blood techniques, there is also a role for “black blood” techniques (lumen dark compared to vessel wall or background), which can be very useful for evaluating the wall of the artery (e.g., carotid plaque or intramural thrombus in the setting of acute dissection). With the proliferation of newer multidetector scanners, CT angiography or CTA is also becoming routine for noninvasive vascular imaging. Issues of ionizing radiation and iodinated contrast of course remain, but risk is still low and the technique is robust. It is often better tolerated by patients, more accessible, and easier to implement in some patients, particularly those who are unstable. An extensive discussion of the technical aspects is beyond the scope of this lecture but can be found in many excellent reference texts and articles, a few of which are listed below (but please note that the list is by no means comprehensive). The emphasis
The Control of the Attentional Focus

We conducted three experiments to examine the characteristics of focal attention. Experiments 1A, 1B and 1C confirmed previous results showing an inverse relation between size of the attentional focus and efficiency of processing. However, we also found attentional benefits with a comparatively short stimulus onset asynchrony. In addition, our results suggested that focusing attention is an exogenously driven reaction: Given a proper stimulus, the attentional system automatically produces a focusing response. Experiments 2 and 3 suggested that the appearance of new objects is a critical factor to capture attention. When the size of the cue that was used for focusing attention was kept constant across trials, attentional benefits disappeared. These results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that attentional capture is contingent on an attentional control setting.
Enhancing Student Performance Using Tablet Computers

Tablet PCs have the potential to change the dynamics of classroom interaction through wireless communication coupled with pen-based computing technology that is suited for analyzing and solving engineering problems. This study focuses on how tablet PCs and wireless technology can be used during classroom instruction to create an Interactive Learning Network (ILN) that is designed to enhance the instructor's ability to solicit active participation from all students during lectures, to conduct immediate and meaningful assessment of student learning, and to provide needed real-time feedback and assistance to maximize student learning. This interactive classroom environment is created using wireless tablet PCs and a software application, NetSupport School. Results from two separate controlled studies of the implementation of this model of teaching and learning in a sophomore-level Introductory Circuit Analysis course show a statistically significant positive impact on student performance. Additionally, results of student surveys show overwhelmingly positive student perception of the effects of this classroom environment on their learning experience. These results indicate that the interactive classroom environment developed using wireless tablet PCs has the potential to be a more effective teaching pedagogy in problem-solving intensive courses compared with traditional instructor-centered teaching environments.