Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel ML estimation of m parameter of the noisy Nakagami-m channel

The Nakagami-m distributions is very useful for modeling radio links and characterizing the envelop distribution over different fading channels due to multipath fading in wireless communications. Robust and accurate estimation of m is very useful and necessary in many applications. The problem of estimating parameter m of Nakagami-m distribution in noisy environment is considered in this paper. Unlike most previous proposed estimators derived in noiseless or high-SNR (signal to noise ratio) channel, the novel estimator proposed in this paper estimates the parameter m in noisy environment by using correction factor. The performance of the novel estimator is compared with that of the reported estimators. It is showed that the new estimator performs better than the existing estimators, especially in the low-SNR channel. The simulation results confirm our analysis.
An empirical study to analyze the feasibility of WIFI for VANETs

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are the relevant form of ubiquitous computing. Several protocols are being developed for V2R (vehicle to road side) and V2V (vehicle to vehicle) communication and the notion of intelligent vehicles is nurturing very rapidly. We have tested the existing WIFI protocol for V2V communication especially at high speed. We have proved, with the help of real life experiments and analytical justification, that WIFI is a successful means of communication between vehicles even at very high speed (i.e. 120 mph relative). Furthermore, several useful and novel applications (like parking, tourist information center, congestion control, advertisement campaign, shortest route, weather reporting, file sharing and on-board gaming) are suggested.
Why do we care what others think about us

A cable drive mechanism for opening and closing a sliding box car door includes a high friction drive pulley carrying a cable which is anchored at opposite ends to the sides of the box car and a low friction guide pulley which is in aligning relation to the drive pulley. The drive pulley is manually rotated for sliding the box car door between open and closed positions.
High Expression of Methylotrophic Yeast-Derived Recombinant Human Erythropoietin in a pH-Controlled Batch System

To accomplish the worldwide demand for recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEpo) as a therapeutic, application of cost-efficient expression system of methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris (P. pastoris) rather than mammalian cells is indispensable. Herein, a report on high levels secreted-expression of Pichia-derived rHuEpo by batch fermentation in a pH stabilized format is presented. The full length cDNA of rHuEpo was inserted into pPICZαA vector under control of AOX1 promoter, downstream of the secretion-α-factor and electroporated into P. pastoris strain X33. The highest expression transformant was selected by screening among the colonies surviving high concentration of Zeocin (1.0 mg/ml), followed by comparative small scale expression analysis by ELISA. Stabilization of pH around 6.0 by adding phosphoric acid into the culture media during induction period, improved the yield of expression to 150 mg/l of the media. Single-step Nickel-affinity chromatography was employed for purification of rHuEpo-6xHis to 80% purity. Analyses by SDS-PAGE, Western blot and N-terminal protein sequencing confirmed the authenticity of the 33 kDa expressed rHuEpo with a native N-terminal indicating the proper cleavage of secretion-signal. Results of this study, further confirmed the possibility of employing methylotrophic yeast for scaled up production aims of rHuEpo as a cost-efficient expression system when provided evidence for higher expression yields through application of pH-controlled systems.
Anion Selectivity of Slow Anion Channels in the Plasma Membrane of Guard Cells (Large Nitrate Permeability)

Closing of stomatal pores in the leaf epidermis of higher plants is mediated by long-term release of potassium and the anions chloride and malate from guard cells and by parallel metabolism of malate. Previous studies have shown that slowly activating anion channels in the plasma membrane of guard cells can provide a major pathway for anion efflux while also controlling K+ efflux during stomatal closing: Anion efflux produces depolarization of the guard cell plasma membrane that drives K+ efflux required for stomatal closing. The patch-clamp technique was applied to Vicia faba guard cells to determine the permeability of physiologically significant anions and halides through slow anion channels to assess the contribution of these anion channels to anion efflux during stomatal closing. Permeability ratio measurements showed that all tested anions were permeable with the selectivity sequence relative to Cl- of NO3- > Br- > F- ~ Cl- ~ I- > malate. Large malate concentrations in the cytosol (150 mM) produced a slow down-regulation of slow anion channel currents. Single anion channel currents were recorded that correlated with whole-cell anion currents. Single slow anion channels confirmed the large permeability ratio for nitrate over chloride ions. Furthermore, single-channel studies support previous indications of multiple conductance states of slow anion channels, suggesting cooperativity among anion channels. Anion conductances showed that slow anion channels can mediate physiological rates of Cl- and initial malate efflux required for mediation of stomatal closure. The large NO3- permeability as well as the significant permeabilities of all anions tested indicates that slow anion channels do not discriminate strongly among anions. Furthermore, these data suggest that slow anion channels can provide an efficient pathway for efflux of physiologically important anions from guard cells and possibly also from other higher plant cells that express slow anion channels.
A Model for Matrix Multiplication Performance on FPGAs

Computations involving matrices form the kernel of a large spectrum of computationally demanding applications for which FPGAs have been utilized as accelerators. Their performance is related to their underlying architectural and system parameters such as computational resources, memory and I/O bandwidth. A simple analytic model that gives an estimate of the performance of FPGA-based sparse matrix-vector and matrix-matrix multiplication is presented, dense matrix multiplication being a special case. The efficiency of existing implementations are compared to the model and performance trends for future technologies examined.
Towards a Peer-to-Peer Content Discovery and Delivery Architecture for Service Provisioning

Service provisioning includes systems and infrastructures designed for the sharing of services and any other data between users. Before services can be used, they have to be published, discovered and downloaded. These operations are supported by content distribution systems. Moreover the peer-to-peer (P2P) approach circumvents many problems of the client-server approach and offers an attractive alternative to exchange services over networked nodes. In this paper we first examine issues related to service provisioning systems. Then we present the design and the implementation of a platform allowing users to share contents like services in a P2P network. The platform is composed of a set of modules that provide means to advertise contents and discover others available on the network. The realized API can be integrated into more sophisticated application-level services. We conducted several experiments to assess the performance of the platform. Results show the efficiency and the effectiveness of our approach
Relatedness of tetracycline resistance plasmids among species of coagulase-negative staphylococci

Four isolates of Staphylococcus aureus and 98 isolates of coagulase-negative staphylococci representing six species all obtained from endocervical cultures were examined for antimicrobial susceptibility and for the presence of plasmids. More than 80% of the isolates were susceptible to each of 12 antimicrobial agents tested, whereas only 33% were susceptible to penicillin G, 30% were susceptible to cadmium chloride, and 41% were susceptible to tetracycline. Although no species-related susceptibility or plasmid patterns were detected, 77 isolates contained at least one plasmid and 43 contained a plasmid similar in mass to a 2.7-megadalton tetracycline resistance plasmid previously reported in staphylococci. Association of tetracycline resistance with plasmids of this size in four species was determined from curing experiments. No plasmids homologous with the tetracycline resistance locus of the Escherichia coli plasmid pBR322 were found among 11 isolates examined by DNA hybridization. Homology with a 2.7-megadalton plasmids (pRC701) from an endocervical isolate of S. aureus, however, was apparent for 2.7-megadalton plasmids harbored by six isolates as well as with larger plasmids harbored by three isolates. Restriction analysis revealed that pRC701 shared structural identity with two plasmids of a similar mass from two species of coagulase-negative staphylococci as well as with a previously characterized tetracycline resistance plasmid originating in S. aureus.
Bidirectional synaptic mechanisms of ocular dominance plasticity in visual cortex

As in other mammals with binocular vision, monocular lid suture in mice induces bidirectional plasticity: rapid weakening of responses evoked through the deprived eye followed by delayed strengthening of responses through the open eye. It has been proposed that these bidirectional changes occur through three distinct processes: first, deprived-eye responses rapidly weaken through homosynaptic long-term depression (LTD); second, as the period of deprivation progresses, the modification threshold determining the boundary between synaptic depression and synaptic potentiation becomes lower, favouring potentiation; and third, facilitated by the decreased modification threshold, open-eye responses are strengthened via homosynaptic long-term potentiation (LTP). Of these processes, deprived-eye depression has received the greatest attention, and although several alternative hypotheses are also supported by current research, evidence suggests that α-amino-3- hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionate (AMPA) receptor endocytosis through LTD is a key mechanism. The change in modification threshold appears to occur partly through changes in N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor subunit composition, with decreases in the ratio of NR2A to NR2B facilitating potentiation. Although limited research has directly addressed the question of open-eye potentiation, several studies suggest that LTP could account for observed changes in vivo. This review will discuss evidence supporting this three-stage model, along with outstanding issues in the field.
Reduction of non-stationary noise using a non-negative latent variable decomposition

We present a method for suppression of non-stationary noise in single channel recordings of speech. The method is based on a non-negative latent variable decomposition model for the speech and noise signals, learned directly from a noisy mixture. In non-speech regions an over complete basis is learned for the noise that is then used to jointly estimate the speech and the noise from the mixture. We compare the method to the classical spectral subtraction approach, where the noise spectrum is estimated as the average over non-speech frames. The proposed method significantly outperforms the classic approach, especially when the noise is highly non-stationary and at low signal-to-noise ratios.
DNA surveillance: web-based molecular identification of whales, dolphins, and porpoises.

DNA Surveillance is a Web-based application that assists in the identification of the species and population of unknown specimens by aligning user-submitted DNA sequences with a validated and curated data set of reference sequences. Phylogenetic analyses are performed and results are returned in tree and table format summarizing the evolutionary distances between the query and reference sequences. DNA Surveillance is implemented with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region sequences representing the majority of recognized cetacean species. Extensions of the system to include other gene loci and taxa are planned. The service, including instructions and sample data, is available at http://www.dna-surveillance.auckland. ac.nz.
LE CONTRÔLE DE GESTION EN ROUMANIE - UN ESSAI D'IDENTIFICATION DES PRATIQUES ET PROPOSITIONS DE RECHERCHE

Les changements radicaux dans l'environnement interne et externe de l'entreprise ont cree des nouvelles exigences et possibilites pour faire de la recherche en controle de gestion dans les economies en transition. Cet article se propose d'identifier quelques directions pour faire de la recherche en controle de gestion en Roumanie. Dans ce but, on realise une revue des etudes menees dans d'autres economies en transition et on essaie d'identifier des pratiques de controle de gestion utilisees en Roumanie en examinant 48 annonces d'offres d'emploi dans ce domaine.
Incidental Lewy body disease and preclinical Parkinson disease.

BACKGROUND The significance of Lewy bodies detected at autopsy in the brains of clinically normal individuals is uncertain but may represent preclinical Parkinson disease (PD). OBJECTIVE To determine whether diminished striatal dopaminergic innervation and nigral cell loss are present in incidental Lewy body disease (iLBD), as one might expect if it is a forerunner of PD. DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING Medical records and archival brain tissue were obtained from a tertiary medical center for further study. PARTICIPANTS Brains from clinically healthy individuals older than 60 years with alpha-synuclein-immunoreactive Lewy bodies (iLBD; n = 12) were compared with those from clinically healthy individuals with no alpha-synuclein pathologic findings (n = 31) and patients with PD (n = 25). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Striatal dopaminergic integrity assessed in sections of putamen by immunofluorescence for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), neuronal loss score in the substantia nigra, and distribution of Lewy bodies according to PD stage. RESULTS Among the participants with iLBD, decreased striatal dopaminergic immunoreactivity was documented for both TH (33%) and VMAT2 (42%), compared with the pathologically normal subjects; as expected, the reductions were even greater in PD (73% decrease for TH and 96% decrease for VMAT2). Substantia nigra neuronal loss inversely correlated with both striatal TH (r = -0.84) and VMAT2 (r = -0.77). In addition, PD stage inversely correlated with both striatal VMAT2 (r = -0.85) and TH (r = -0.85). CONCLUSIONS The results indicate that iLBD has nigrostriatal pathological features that are intermediate between those in pathologically normal persons and those with PD. The findings suggest that iLBD probably represents presymptomatic PD, rather than nonspecific, age-related alpha-synuclein pathological changes.
ACTH and cortisol plasma levels in cancer patients treated with medroxyprogesterone acetate at high dosages.

The effects of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) at high dosages on ACTH and cortisol plasma levels have been studied on seven patients which were carriers of ER+ and PR+ neoplasm. ACTH and cortisol plasma levels were studied at 8:00 a.m., before and after a 4-week treatment with MPA at dosages of 1000 mg/die at basal conditions and after a metyrapone stimulation test. The results obtained show that the MPA treatment causes a highly significant drop of both cortisol and ACTH plasma levels. The metyrapone stimulation test performed before and after MPA treatment confirms the suppressive effect of MPA on the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal gland axis. These data suggest a cortisol-like action of MPA with a negative feed-back mechanism on the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal gland axis.
Fault tolerant planar communication networks

Planar communication networks are used to facilitate communications in VLSI chips. Rearrangeable networks and superconcentrators are two principal planar communication networks of theoretical importance. We describe such networks in terms of graphs. One seeks such networks with as few edges (i.e., switching elements) and as small degree for each vertex as possible satisfying the communication requests. In this paper, we study planar communication networks under the assumption of independent random switch failures. We construct planar rearrangeable networks and superconcentrators with concerns not only of the size (the number of edges, i.e., switches in the networks) and the degrees of vertices, but also of the degree of fault tolerance. We show that any fault tolerant planar rearrangeable n-network (network failing to be a planar rearrangeable n-network with probability approaching O as n co) and any fault tolerant planar n-superconcentrator must contain Cl(n) vertices, each having fl(log n) degree. And we construct fault tolerant planar rearrangeable n-networks with size O(na) and maximum degree O(log n), and having O(n) vertices with degree Cl(log n); we construct fault tolerant planar n-superconcentrators with size O(n2) and maximum degree O(log n), and having O(n) vertices with degree fl(log n). In both cases, the sizes are asymptotically optimal.
Free-joint manipulators: motion control under second-order nonholonomic constraints

The control problem for robot manipulators having some unactuated joints is addressed. The nonholonomic nature of the constraint expressing the dynamics of the free joints is recognized in the general case, and conditions are derived to identify special cases in which such a constraint is integrable. In contrast to most examples in the literature, the free-joint dynamics is an instance of second-order nonholonomic constraint. It is shown that smooth feedback stabilization to a single equilibrium point is not possible. A feedback scheme achieving stabilization to a manifold of equilibrium positions is proposed. Its correctness is established theoretically as well as confirmed by simulation results. <<ETX>>
Evaluation of Charging Profile and Thermal Behaviour of Lead Acid Battery

Article history: Received 12 September 2018 Received in revised form 6 December 2018 Accepted 3 February 2019 Available online 11 April 2019 This paper discusses about the impact of battery charging rate towards lead acid battery. Selecting wrong battery charger may result in premature failure of the batteries. This experiment provides a technical analysis which helps the user to determine suitable charger for their respective application. Two different charger was with similar algorithm and different charging rate were tested on 48V series 12 V cells lead acid battery. The charging current, voltage and temperature were logged and analysed. The measurement design of experiment is presented in detail as well. The experiment was repeated for 4 times. The data taken from the higher charging rate and lower charging rate were compared. Fast charging of lead acid battery demonstrate in this paper shows it can reduce the charging time between 30 minutes to 1 hour. However, its capacity only reach 97.3% of the full battery capacity compares to the slower charger while the thermal behaviour for both charger were comparable during the charging process.
High-intensity focused ultrasound for the treatment of allergic rhinitis using nasal endoscopy

The present study aimed to observe the therapeutic effect of high-intensity focused ultrasound for the treatment of allergic rhinitis (AR) using nasal endoscopy. A total of 72 patients with perennial AR received treatment using the CZB ultrasonic therapeutic instrument with nasal endoscopy. A scoring method was adopted for evaluation of effectiveness according to the AR therapeutic principles and recommendations described in Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) in 2001. The patients were followed up between 2 and 6 months after treatment. The excellence rate was 34.7% (25/72), the effective rate was 62.5% (45/72) and the ineffective rate was 2.8% (2/72). The total effective rate reached 97.2% high (70/72). Endoscopic high-intensity focused ultrasound for the treatment of AR is a non-invasive method and has the advantages of simple manipulation, a short course, high safety and a clear short-term effect.
Use of the Heated Gel Mattress and Its Impact on Admission Temperature of Very Low Birth‐Weight Infants

PURPOSEThe purpose of this investigation was to describe the ability of a transport mattress (TransWarmer Infant Transport Mattress), produced by Cooper Surgical (Trumbull, Connecticut), to reduce hypothermia in a group of very low birth-weight infants. SUBJECTSConvenience sample of 115 infants weighing less than 1500 g who were born at Women & Infants' Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island, and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. DESIGNA quality assurance study using a nonrandomized experimental design. Infants placed on the TransWarmer Infant Transport Mattress were compared with those treated with standard care. METHODSCharts were reviewed and data abstracted on the 115 very low birth-weight infants delivered at Women & Infants' Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island. MAIN OUTCOME MEASUREHypothermia was significantly lower in the mattress group than for controls (52.5% vs 77.3% using a definition of hypothermia as body temperature less than 97.4°F, P = .01). The difference resulted despite the fact that the mattress group was at increased risk based on various risk factors, lower mean age (26 vs 28.5 wk, P = .001), a lower birth weight (876 vs 1091 g, P = .004), and a higher proportion of Apgar scores of less than 5 at 5 minutes (13.2% vs 6.4%, P = .29) compared with controls. A linear regression model adjusted for birth weight, gender, and gestational age showed that the use of the heated gel mattress raised body temperatures by a mean of 0.7°F per infant (P < .001). PRINCIPAL RESULTSThe occurrence of hypothermia was significantly lower in the mattress group. CONCLUSIONThe results of this investigation suggest that further research of the TransWarmer Transport Mattress is warranted using an adequately powered randomized controlled trial. Information on the safety and cost-effectiveness is needed. Long-term follow-up evaluating admission temperatures and long-term outcomes is also warranted.