Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Bayesian Filtering Framework for accurate extracting of the non-invasive FECG morphology

Introduction: The electrocardiogram (ECG) allows for interpretation of the electrical activity of the heart. The information which can be derived from the foetal ECG (FECG) goes beyond heart rate and heart rate variability. However morphological analysis of the FECG waveform is usually not performed in clinical practice. Methods: A Bayesian Filtering Framework based on an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for extracting the FECG from a single abdominal channel is described using a training database of 20, one minute maternal-foetal mixtures and evaluated on 200, one minute mixtures. (Data was generated using the simulator, fecgsyn, used to generate a subset of the signals of the Physionet Challenge 2013.) A single pass of the EKF (EKFS) was performed to cancel out the maternal ECG (MECG) in order to build an average FECG morphology. A dual EKF (EKFD, i.e. where both the MECG and FECG cycle morphology were modelled) was then applied to separate the three sources present in the signal mixture (noise, MECG and FECG). A normalised root mean square error and absolute QT error after EKFS and EKFD were calculated. Results: An SNR improvement of 1.97 dB after EKFS and 14.14 dB after EKFD on the test set were achieved. Median absolute error on QT measurement was 17.0 ms for the EKFS and 4.0 ms for the EKFD. Conclusion: This work is a proof of concept that the EKFD allows accurate beat to beat extraction of the FECG morphology from abdominal recordings.
A Linear Programming Driven Genetic Algorithm for Meta-Scheduling on Utility Grids

The user-level brokers in grids consider individual application QoS requirements and minimize their cost without considering demands from other users. This results in contention for resources and sub-optimal schedules. Meta-scheduling in grids aims to address this scheduling problem, which is NP hard due to its combinatorial nature. Thus, many heuristic-based solutions using genetic algorithm (GA) have been proposed, apart from traditional algorithms such as greedy and FCFS. We propose a Linear Programming/Integer Programming model (LP/IP) for scheduling these applications to multiple resources. We also propose a novel algorithm LPGA (linear programming driven genetic algorithm) which combines the capabilities of LP and GA. The aim of this algorithm is to obtain the best meta-schedule for utility grids which minimize combined cost of all users in a coordinated manner. Simulation results show that our proposed integrated algorithm offers the best schedule having the minimum processing cost with negligible time overheard.
The Periplasmic Molecular Chaperone Protein SurA Binds a Peptide Motif That Is Characteristic of Integral Outer Membrane Proteins*

The Escherichia coli SurA protein is a periplasmic molecular chaperone that facilitates correct folding of outer membrane porins. The peptide binding specificity of SurA has been characterized using phage display of heptameric peptides of random sequence. The consensus binding pattern of aromatic-polar-aromatic-nonpolar-proline amino acids emerges for both SurA and a SurA “core domain,” which remains after deletion of a peripheral peptidyl-proline isomerase domain. Isothermal titration calorimetry with a high affinity heptameric peptide of sequence WEYIPNV yields peptide affinities in the range of 1-14 μm for both SurA and its core domain. Although the peptide consensus aromatic-polar-aromatic-nonpolar-proline occurs infrequently in E. coli proteins, the less restrictive tripeptide motif aromatic-random-aromatic appears with greater-than-random frequency in outer membrane proteins and is prevalent in the “aromatic bands” of the porin β barrel structures. Thus, SurA recognizes a peptide motif that is characteristic of integral outer membrane proteins.
Cellular Mechanism of Endothelin‐1 Release by Angiotensin and Vasopressin

Release of endothelin-1, a novel potent vasoconstrictor peptide originally isolated from endothelial cells, from cultured bovine endothelial cells has been shown to be stimulated by arginine vasopressin and angiotensin II. To elucidate the cellular mechanism by which endothelin-1 is released by these vasoconstrictors, we tested the effects of several compounds on the agonist-induced endothelin-1 release and studied the changes of cytosolic free Ca2+ concentrations and phosphoinositide breakdown by these agonists in cultured bovine endothelial cells. Protein kinase C inhibitors (H-7, staurosporine), an intracellular Ca2+ chelator, and an inhibitor of phospholipase C (neomycin), all abolished the agonist-induced endothelin-1 release, whereas the Ca2+ channel blocker nicardipine was ineffective. Although synthetic 1,2-diglyceride (diolein) dose dependency stimulated endothelin-1 release, downregulation of protein kinase C after pretreatment with phorbol ester resulted in decreased effects to increase endothelin-1 release by the agonists. Both arginine vasopressin and angiotensin II induced immediate and transient increases in intracellular Ca2+ levels of fura-2-loaded endothelial cells as well as formation of inositol trisphosphate; the agonist-induced intracellular Ca2+ increases were not affected either by nicardipine or by chelating extracellular Ca2+. The arginine vasopressin- and angiotensin U-induced intracellular Ca2+ increases, inositol trisphosphate formation, and endothelin-1 release were completely abolished by V,-receptor antagonist and saralasin, respectively. It is concluded that arginine vasopressin and angiotensin II stimulate the release of endothelin-1 by a common mechanism, involving receptormediated mobilization of intracellular Ca2+ and activation of protein kinase C in endothelial cells.
The deoxyribose assay: an assay both for 'free' hydroxyl radical and for site-specific hydroxyl radical production.

similar to that suggested for deoxyribose can be invoked. The OH scavengers would bind the metal and compete for it with the detector molecule. This would result in the decreased site-specific generation ofOH on deoxyribose, in the formation of the OH scavenger radical and in its successive oxidation by the Fe3" generated by the Fenton reaction. This mechanism explains the apparent reaction of thiourea with H202 reported by Cederbaum et al. (1979), as in that paper H202 concentration was measured by the thiocyanate method, i.e. measuring Fe3" produced by Fenton reaction. The lack of correlation observed in the presence of formate may be due to the insufficient reactivity to induce Fe3" of the secondary radical produced by OH' attack on this scavenger. This agrees with the known inertness of carbonyl radicals to oxidation by Fe3" (Walling, 1975). The effects of OH scavengers on deoxyribose damage and Fe21 oxidation are both pH-dependent. When the reactions are conducted in Mops buffer, pH 7 or 7.4, a parallel decreased inhibition, by all OH' scavengers, of the two phenomena is observed. However the dependence of the effects of the various OH scavengers on the pH greatly differs. A rough order of sensitivity is ethanol, butan1-ol, methanol, formate > thiourea > mannitol. In summary, our results indicate that the ability of classical OH' scavengers to inhibit deoxyribose degradation correlates with their ability to decrease Fe21 oxidation by H202. If the mechanism that can explain the present findings is that proposed by Haber & Willstatter (1931) and by Walling (1975), some conclusions can be drawn. Not only mannitol and thiourea but other classical OH scavengers can affect OH*dependent damage to detector molecules by binding Fe2 . All these OH scavengers act predominantly by this mechanism, as they are practically unable to protect against the damage produced by OH radical generated at specific sites (Gutteridge, 1984) in experimental conditions where they do not interact with Fe2+. As it appears more and more evident that OH generation by the Fenton reaction in biological systems is site-specific, the suggested use of OH' scavengers to indicate the involvement of OH in such systems (Halliwell & Gutteridge, 1985) becomes questionable.
Patterns in Open String Field Theory Solutions

In open string field theory the kinetic operator mixes matter and ghost sectors, and thus the ghost structure of classical solutions is not universal. Nevertheless, we have found from numerical analysis that certain ratios of expectation values for states involving pure ghost excitations appear to be universal. We give an analytic expression for these ratios and find good evidence that they are common to all known solutions of open string field theory, including the tachyon vacuum solution, lump solutions and string fields representing marginal deformations. We also draw attention to a close correspondence between the expectation values for the pure matter components in the tachyon vacuum solution and those in the solution of a simpler equation for a ghost number zero string field. Finally we observe that the action of L0 on the tachyon condensate gives a state that is approximately factorized into a matter and a ghost part.
Rapid Emergence of Echinocandin Resistance during Candida kefyr Fungemia Treatment with Caspofungin

ABSTRACT Echinocandin drugs are widely used for the treatment of candidemia. Resistance is considered rare, and only a few cases of breakthrough candidiasis in patients receiving echinocandin have been reported worldwide. We report here for the first time a Candida kefyr isolate that acquired echinocandin resistance very rapidly after the initiation of caspofungin treatment for candidemia. We characterized the FKS gene mutation responsible for the resistance via the comparison of isolates sampled before and during treatment.
A New Framework to Understand Social Class in Counseling: The Social Class Worldview Model and Modern Classism Theory.

Because social class and classism remain elusive constructs in psychology, this 2-part article first lays the foundation for the Social Class Worldview Model and then the Modern Classism Theory. A case example is used for illustration. The authors also provide counseling applications and recommendations for future research. Debido a que la clase social y el clasismo continuan siendo unos conceptos evasivos en la psicologia, este articulo de 2 partes establece una fundacion para el Modelo de Cosmovision de Clase Social y la Teoria Moderna del Clasismo. Se utiliza un caso de ejemplo para su ilustracion. Los autores tambien proporcionan aplicaciones para la consejeria y recomendaciones para investigaciones futuras.
Is there Evidence for Artificial Cranial Deformation at the Willandra Lakes?

Abstract Webb (1989) contends that the morphology of the WLH 67 cranium suggests that this individual had been artificially deformed. A reanalysis of this cranium shows that WLH 67 was reconstructed improperly. The unusual cranial contours of this individual result from the inaccurate reconstruction, not from any cultural practice. As this individual was the only purported example of this practice at the Willandra Lakes, there is currently no evidence to suggest that artificial deformation was practised there during the late Pleistocene or early Holocene.
Sexual Assault Education Programs: A Meta-Analytic Examination of Their Effectiveness

Meta-analyses of the effectiveness of college sexual assault education programs on seven outcome measure categories were conducted using 69 studies that involved 102 treatment interventions and 18,172 participants. Five of the outcome categories had significant average effect sizes (i.e., rape attitudes, rape-related attitudes, rape knowledge, behavioral intent, and incidence of sexual assault), while the outcome areas of rape empathy and rape awareness behaviors did not have average effect sizes that differed from zero. A significant finding of this study is that longer interventions are more effective than brief interventions in altering both rape attitudes and rape-related attitudes. Moderator analyses also suggest that the content of programming, type of presenter, gender of the audience, and type of audience may also be associated with greater program effectiveness. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Proactive reconfiguration of wireless sensor networks

Network dynamics, such as mobility and increase in network load, can influence the performance of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). In this paper, we introduce a method which exploits design-time knowledge of the application scenario dynamics to construct a proactive run-time reconfiguration approach. The approach anticipates for the impact that predefined dynamic events can have on the performance of the WSN by switching between various modes of operation defined at design-time. A mode defines the values for the controllable parameters of the network protocol stack. Our approach explicitly differentiates between parameters that can be adapted locally, per node, and those that should be considered globally for the whole WSN. Design-time definition of modes results in a very low run-time overhead as we only require detection of the mode to use and a low overhead synchronization to change global parameters. The approach is made robust by using a recovery approach for nodes unaware of their global mode after, for example, (re-)joining the network. Experiments with an office monitoring deployment and extensive simulations of a cow-health monitoring scenario show that our approach can easily be adopted by practical WSN deployments and results in a significant reduction in resource usage, e.g., power consumption in our examples, at a very low run-time overhead cost.
The Gender Relations: Masculine Aspect

The article deals with the issues within the field of the sociology of gender. Attention is focused on th e importance of men’s studies, as the masculine aspec t of gender issues is frequently given less attention th an feminine problems. The article presents the results of an empirical study carried out in Lithuania; the findings of the study allow describing the criteria of masculinity that are currently dominant. In additio n, the article attempts to disclose limitations faced by men when they aim to match the stereotypical roles atta ched to them .
Multispectral quantification of tissue types in a RIF‐1 tumor model with histological validation. Part I

Accurate assessments of therapeutic efficacy are confounded by intra‐ and intertumor heterogeneity. To address this issue we employed multispectral (MS) analysis using the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC), T2, proton density (M0), and k‐means (KM) clustering algorithm to identify multiple compartments within both viable and necrotic tissue in a radiation‐induced fibrosarcoma (RIF‐1) tumor model receiving single‐dose (1000 cGy) radiotherapy. Optimization of the KM method was achieved through histological validation by hematoxylin‐eosin (H&E) staining and hypoxia‐inducible factor‐1α (HIF‐1α) immunohistochemistry. The optimum KM method was determined to be a two‐feature (ADC, T2) and four‐cluster (two clusters each of viable tissue and necrosis) segmentation. KM volume estimates for both viable (r = 0.94, P < 0.01) and necrotic (r = 0.69, P = 0.07) tissue were highly correlated with their H&E counterparts. HIF‐1α immunohistochemistry showed that the intensity of HIF‐1α expression tended to be concentrated in perinecrotic regions, supporting the subdivision of the viable tissue into well‐oxygenated and hypoxic regions. Since both necrosis and hypoxia have been implicated in poor treatment response and reduced patient survival, the ability to quantify the degree of necrosis and the severity of hypoxia with this method may aid in the planning and modification of treatment regimens. Magn Reson Med 57:501–512, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Superregenerative QPSK Receiver

In this paper we present a description and experimental verification of a superregenerative receiver (SR) for QPSK signals. Exploiting the fact that a conventional SR generates pulses which preserve the input phase information, we take N 1-bit samples of each generated pulse. A suitable choice of the sampling frequency gives as a result a bit vector containing a sub-sampled version of each PSK pulse. Extremely simple digital processing of the vectors from two consecutive pulses allows symbol decision, together with information on signal quality and frequency displacements. Although presented for the QPSK case, the principle may be applied to the M-PSK case with obvious changes. Experimental results on a 20 kbit/s proof-of concept receiver in the 27 MHz band, achieving a sensitivity of -103 dBm, with an FPGA-based implementation of the digital part, validate the proposed approach.
Individual social capital and health-related quality of life among older rural Chinese

ABSTRACT No study based on the Resource Generator has explored the association between individual social capital and health-related quality of life among older adults. This study aims to evaluate the validity and reliability of the adapted Resource Generator-China, and examine the association between individual social capital measured by the Resource Generator-China and health-related quality of life of older rural-dwelling Chinese people. A field survey including 975 rural-dwelling people aged between 60 and 75 years was conducted in three counties of the Shandong Province of China in 2013. Quality of life was measured by the Chinese version of the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36): scores of Physical Component Summary and Mental Component Summary. Cumulative scale analyses were performed to analyse the homogeneity and reliability of the Resource Generator-China. We constructed generalised linear models by gender to examine the associations of social capital with health-related quality of life. Our findings suggest that the adapted instrument for older rural-dwelling Chinese people can be a reliable and valid measure of access to individual social capital. There were positive associations between individual social capital (total scores and sub-scale scores) and health-related quality of life. Individual social capital had a stronger association with mental health among women than men. Future studies should be improved through a longitudinal design with a larger and randomised sample covering large geographical rural areas in China.
Improving image sets through sense disambiguation and context ranking

Current approaches to automatic, class specific, image retrieval from the World Wide Web (WWW) by linguistic query often make use of an image's internal characteristics and file meta-data to augment and improve result accuracy. We propose that, in extension, improvement can be achieved in relevance, noise-reduction and completeness through sense disambiguation and contextual meta-data prepossessing. Our schemes exploits a linguistic ontology identifying query relevant homographs used to construct sense specific keyword sets allowing for enhanced image search and result ranking via the calculation of relatedness between query homographs and image context prior to any additional filtering. Within the paper we investigate different schemes for keyword set construction; ontology exclusive and authority extended, along with three differing ranking mechanisms.
Resonant amplification of quantum fluctuations with a spinor gas

The nature of the vacuum state and its fluctuations is one of the most fascinating aspects of modern physics. Despite their non-intuitive character, these vacuum fluctuations play an important role for our understanding of physics. In particular the parametric amplification of such fluctuations is crucial for phenomena ranging from nonlinear optical processes [1], to positronium annihilation [2], and Universe inflation [3].
Increasing pose estimation performance using multi-cue integration

We have developed a system which integrates the information output from several pose estimation algorithms and from several views of the scene. It is tested in a real setup with a robotic manipulator. It is shown that integrating pose estimates from several algorithms increases the overall performance of the pose estimation accuracy as well as the robustness as compared to using only a single algorithm. It is shown that increased robustness can be achieved by using pose estimation algorithms based on complementary features, so called algorithmic multi-cue integration (AMC). Furthermore it is also shown that increased accuracy can be achieved by integrating pose estimation results from different views of the scene, so-called temporal multi-cue integration (TMC). Temporal multi-cue integration is the most interesting aspect of this paper
Distance Based Leakage Alignment for Side Channel Attacks

Side Channel Attack (SCA) recovers secret information from an embedded device with implementation of cryptographic algorithm by exploiting its physical leakages. For most SCA methods to achieve good performance, the measured leakages are often desired to be well aligned. However, due to some specific reasons such as inaccurate measurements or carefully designed countermeasures, misalignment of leakages frequently occurs in practice. Misalignment significantly reduces the efficiency of SCA methods, or even makes them fail. To address this issue, two alignment approaches are proposed: a local alignment based on shotgun distance and a global alignment based on weighted edit distance. Compared with previous methods, the proposed methods are capable of keeping the secret dependant leakages, while not introducing any redundant information. In addition, the proposed methods could also reduce the negative effects of noise, which is another factor seriously decreasing the efficiency of SCA methods. Interestingly, it is pretty easy to set appropriate parameters for these two methods. Practical experiments show that the proposed methods outperform previous methods in three different circumstances and different noise levels.
NRXN3 Is a Novel Locus for Waist Circumference: A Genome-Wide Association Study from the CHARGE Consortium

Central abdominal fat is a strong risk factor for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. To identify common variants influencing central abdominal fat, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association analysis for waist circumference (WC). In total, three loci reached genome-wide significance. In stage 1, 31,373 individuals of Caucasian descent from eight cohort studies confirmed the role of FTO and MC4R and identified one novel locus associated with WC in the neurexin 3 gene [NRXN3 (rs10146997, p = 6.4×10−7)]. The association with NRXN3 was confirmed in stage 2 by combining stage 1 results with those from 38,641 participants in the GIANT consortium (p = 0.009 in GIANT only, p = 5.3×10−8 for combined analysis, n = 70,014). Mean WC increase per copy of the G allele was 0.0498 z-score units (0.65 cm). This SNP was also associated with body mass index (BMI) [p = 7.4×10−6, 0.024 z-score units (0.10 kg/m2) per copy of the G allele] and the risk of obesity (odds ratio 1.13, 95% CI 1.07–1.19; p = 3.2×10−5 per copy of the G allele). The NRXN3 gene has been previously implicated in addiction and reward behavior, lending further evidence that common forms of obesity may be a central nervous system-mediated disorder. Our findings establish that common variants in NRXN3 are associated with WC, BMI, and obesity.
Opamp with 106 dB DC gain in 120nm digital CMOS

A three-stage operational amplifier employing only regular-threshold devices in a 120nm digital CMOS technology with a gain-boosted folded-cascode input stage and a class AB rail-to-rail output stage is presented. The gain boost results in a low-frequency differential gain of 106dB at a supply voltage of 1.2V. A bulk regulator of the input transistors increases the input-voltage range to -0.1. +1.0V. A gain-bandwidth product of 57MHz and a phase margin of 71/spl deg/ are measured for loads of 5.5pF.