Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuel cell power system and high power DC-DC converter

This paper discusses the principle and electrical characteristics of the fuel cell, designs an innovative hybrid power system, and proposes a new DC/DC converter scheme to combine the fuel cell with the storage system. An effective converter scheme for the fuel cell is obtained by analyzing the high efficient topology as well as the phase shifted pulse-width modulation. Through comparing several different control modes of converters, a 75-kW prototype system is constructed, moreover, which steady-state operating characteristics are illustrated and discussed in detail. At last, experimental results are also shown to verify the proposed scheme.
Potential new Culicoides vector of bluetongue virus in northern Europe

have swept across the Mediterranean Basin and affected 15 countries, many of which had never experienced the disease previously (Purse and others 2005). In August 2006, following an unprec-edented warm summer, bluetongue took a significant ‘leap’ northwards, appearing unexpectedly in northern Europe and affecting parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and northern France. To date, the disease has spread across approximately 100,000 km
Asynchronous Tracking System Based on Multi-Path Profile Fingerprinting and Particle Filter

Indoor positioning technique has been attracting more and more attention in recent years. In this paper, we propose a multi-path profile fingerprinting localization system based on software defined radio (SDR) platform. The system initially calibrates the multi-path profile (MP) and received signal strength (RSS) information to construct a fingerprint database. In the online positioning phase, the terminal is firstly located into a coarse area via RSS pattern matching algorithm. Then, the system matches the multi-path profile fingerprint to obtain the fine location estimation. An improved particle filter technique based on map information is proposed to obtain the accurate trajectory. The system does not need any synchronization among the transceivers, and the motion model measured by inertial measurement unit (IMU) is also not necessary in the proposed filter. In addition, the proposed method can be easily implanted into existing WiFi based positioning system. Numerical results show that the proposed system can obtain better localization accuracy, and can reach up to 1- meter-level accuracy performance.
Mediating Effects of Blame Attributions on Feelings of Anger

Two structural equation models are presented to examine the relationship between anger and blame. In the first model, attributions of blame mediate the relationship between feelings of anger and attributions concerning the provoker's intentions to harm, his or her justification in harming, and the amount of harm done. In the second model, anger and blame exist in a reciprocal relationship. The self-reports of 158 individuals concerning an incident in which they had been harmed were analyzed using LISREL VIII. Both models showed satisfactory fit to the data; however, on the basis of theory and past research, the second model is proposed as more acceptable. Additional analyses demonstrated that interactional injustice was the most often reported type of injustice and that men were more likely to be reported as the offender than women. Implications of the research are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented.
Contributions of Religious Experience to Psychological and Physical Well-Being: Research Evidence and an Explanatory Model

Religious experiences may be a resource in primary preventive care. Using Tillich's model, in which ontological anxiety contributes to psychological and physical illness, this paper proposes that religious experience can contribute to well-being. Data supporting these relationships, drawn from studies of psychotherapeutic workshop participants, medical outpatients and divinity school students, are reviewed. Further evidence is reviewed which suggests that the development of an internally-focussed perceptual orientation may facilitate the occurrence of religious experience.
Expression of a transformation-related protein (p53) in the malignant stage of Friend virus-induced diseases

Stage 1 (pre-malignant) and stage 2 (malignant) cells derived from mice infected with Friend murine leukemia virus or polycythemia-inducing Friend virus complex were examined and compared for the expression of a transformation-related cellular protein, p53. Stage 2 cells were found to express high levels of p53, whereas stage 1 cells did not express detectable levels of this protein. These results indicate that p53 may be a marker for transformed cells present in the second stage of diseases induced by Friend murine leukemia virus or polycythemia-inducing Friend virus complex.
The Effect of Antiepileptic Drugs on Cognition: Patient Perceived Cognitive Problems of Topiramate versus Levetiracetam in Clinical Practice

Summary: Introduction: Neurocognitive complaints may interfere with long‐term antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment and are an important issue in clinical practice. Most data about drug‐induced cognitive problems are derived from highly controlled short‐term clinical trials. We analyzed such cognitive complaints for the two most commonly used AEDs in a clinical setting using patient perceived problems as primary outcome measure.
PAPR reduction using block coding combined with companding

One of the main disadvantages of OFDM (Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) is its high PAPR (Peak to Average Power Ratio). In this paper we propose a method for reducing PAPR using encoding and companding techniques. Several codes were used such as BCH, RS codes and Reed-Muller. The effect of modulation BPSK and QAM16 on the PAPR has been studied, μ-law companding has been used and the influence of the parameter μ studied and μ=255 was retained thereafter. This technique can reduce the PAPR to less than ldB using the code of Reed-Muller
CD83 expression on dendritic cells and T cells: Correlation with effective immune responses

Human CD83 is a marker molecule for mature dendritic cells (DC) and is also expressed on activated B and T cells. Although CD83 has been implicated in immune responses, its function on DC and T cells remains unclear. In this study, we wanted to assess the role of CD83 expressed on DC and T cells in the immune response. Down‐regulation of CD83 expression on human DC through RNA interference (RNAi) results in a less potent induction of allogeneic T cell proliferation, reduced IFN‐γ secretion by established T cells and decreased capacity in the priming of functional tumor antigen‐specific CD8+ T lymphocytes. In addition, CD83 mRNA‐electroporated DC are stronger T cell stimulators. However, CD83 overexpression on Melan‐A/MART‐1‐specific tumor‐infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) circumvents the need for CD83 expression on DC. Co‐culture of immature DC with TIL or K562 cells overexpressing CD83 results in the production of enhanced levels of pro‐inflammatory cytokines, whereas this production is less pronounced or even absent in co‐cultures with non‐modified TIL or K562 cells. In conclusion, we demonstrate that CD83 expression on T cells and DC modulates the immune response by activating DC and by delivering costimulatory signals for the stimulation of naive and memory T cells, respectively.
Listening to and involving young children: a review of research and practice

This paper sets out an international review of literature and practice concerning listening to and consulting with young children in early childhood institutions. Most of the existing literature on children's participation has focused on children over five years old; however, a small number of studies have been undertaken with young children. Beginning with an examination of understandings of listening, the paper describes methodologies for gathering young children's perspectives, including traditional research methods and participatory approaches. Key themes will be described which have emerged from studies undertaken to date. Illustrative case studies undertaken as part of the review are used to support the limited published material in this field. The paper raises issues for policy, research and practice concerning the implications of listening to young children.
Combined PET and low-dose, noncontrast CT scanning obviates the need for additional diagnostic contrast-enhanced CT scans in patients undergoing staging or restaging for lymphoma.

BACKGROUND Positron emission tomography (PET) is more accurate than computed tomography (CT) in staging and restaging of lymphoma, but both are considered necessary. Increasingly, PET is carried out with a low-dose CT scan. Many patients undergo both PET/CT and standard diagnostic CT. The clinical utility of performing both studies in patients with lymphoma was evaluated. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with lymphoma who underwent concurrent PET/CT and diagnostic CT (a scan pair) were identified, and findings detected in either scan but not both were documented. Discrepancies were considered significant if they were related to either lymphoma or another disease process which potentially required intervention. RESULTS Eighty-seven scan pairs were identified. PET/CT detected additional lesions over diagnostic CT in 30 patients, of which 11 demonstrated increased clinical stage. Lymphoma therapy changed based on PET/CT in two patients, and one occult rectal cancer was detected. In contrast, diagnostic CT detected five relevant findings, including two incidental findings (venous thrombosis) and three patients with splenic lesions, none of which could be confirmed as lymphoma. No patient had change of stage or lymphoma therapy based on diagnostic CT. CONCLUSION In our series, diagnostic CT did not add value to staging or restaging of lymphoma when carried out concurrently with PET/CT.
Intention of Continuing to use the Hospital Information System: Integrating the elaboration-likelihood, social influence and cognitive learning

Introduction Anticipating effective factors in information system acceptance by using persuasive messages, is one of the main issues less focused on so far. This is one of the first attempts at using the elaboration-likelihood model combined with the perception of emotional, cognitive, self-efficacy, informational and normative influence constructs, in order to investigate the determinants of intention to continue use of the hospital information system in Iran. Methods The present study is a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2014. 600 nursing staff were chosen from clinical sectors of public hospitals using purposive sampling. The questionnaire survey was in two parts: Part one was comprised of demographic data, and part two included 52 questions pertaining to the constructs of the model in the study. To analyze the data, structural equation model using LISREL 8.5 software was applied. Result The findings suggest that self-efficacy (t= 6.01, β= 0.21), affective response (t= 5.84, β= 0.23), and cognitive response (t= 4.97, β= 0.21) explained 64% of the variance for the intention of continuing to use the hospital information system. Furthermore, the final model was able to explain 0.46 for self-efficacy, 0.44 for normative social influence, 0.52 for affective response, 0.55 for informational social influence, and 0.53 for cognitive response. Conclusion Designing the necessary mechanisms and effective use of appropriate strategies to improve emotional and cognitive understanding and self-efficacy of the nursing staff is required, in order to increase the intention of continued use of the hospital information system in Iran.
Polysubstance Use and School Engagement: A Longitudinal Investigation

Supervisory Committee Dr. Gordon E. Barnes, (School of Child and Youth Care) Supervisor Dr. Jessica Ball, (School of Child and Youth Care) Departmental Member Dr. Deborah Begoray, (Curriculum and Instruction) Outside Member Youth substance use is a major social problem and concurrent experimentation with alcohol and other substances is becoming more common. In this investigation, a secondary analysis was performed on a Canadian database of 580 youth. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between sociodemographic factors, parenting practices, peer affiliation patterns, and school engagement in predicting the trajectory of polysubstance use in a sample of Victoria youth. In this study, polysubstance use (PSU) is the use of at least two substances in the same time period. Data were extracted from the Healthy Youth Survey, and the prevalence and predictors of polysubstance use were investigated through correlational and structural equation modeling techniques. Polysubstance users tended to be older, be less engaged with school, and report having friends who took part in risky activities such as drinking or doing drugs. School engagement protected against all forms of substance use and over time most strongly protected against polysubstance use.
Developing realistic capstone projects in conjunction with industry

The information technology (IT) industry has the expectation that graduates of IT programs should be productive from day one with little or no additional training. In order to provide graduates who can meet this expectation, experiential learning activities are essential for today's undergraduate student. Experiential learning activities are beneficial at all course levels; however, experiences that occur early in a program are limited by the students' lack of broad-based knowledge in the field and do not provide a capstone experience. While internships and cooperative experiences are perhaps the easiest way to provide such learning activities, they may not be practical for all students. This paper addresses the benefits of developing capstone projects in conjunction with industry and how the authors develop such projects.
Lombard Speech Recognition : A Comparative Study

In this paper, new approaches to recognition of speech under Lombard effect are proposed. Performances of front ends with modified filter banks, multiresolution RASTA features, voice conversion and acoustic models adaptation to talking style and speaker are evaluated and compared to the common recognition schemes. The presented experiments are carried out on Czech SPEECON and CLSD’05 databases. It is shown that under Lombard effect, all proposed approaches outperform the standard HMM system with MFCC or PLP features.
An improved algorithm for nucleic acid secondary structure display

An improved algorithm for the display of nucleic acid secondary structures is presented. It is particularly suitable for large sequence segments and it automatically generates an aesthetically pleasing display of the structure with very limited overlap of strands. Structural similarities in different structures are conserved in the display thus greatly aiding structural homology comparisons. Using the algorithm, we illustrate the effect of ribosome translocation on the secondary structure of a rat neuropeptide messenger RNA.
Genetic Diversity of Toll-Like Receptors and Immunity to M. leprae Infection

Genetic association studies of leprosy cohorts across the world have identified numerous polymorphisms which alter susceptibility and outcome to infection with Mycobacterium leprae. As expected, many of the polymorphisms reside within genes that encode components of the innate and adaptive immune system. Despite the preponderance of these studies, our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie these genetic associations remains sparse. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) have emerged as an essential family of innate immune pattern recognition receptors which play a pivotal role in host defense against microbes, including pathogenic strains of mycobacteria. This paper will highlight studies which have uncovered the association of specific TLR gene polymorphisms with leprosy or tuberculosis: two important diseases resulting from mycobacterial infection. This analysis will focus on the potential influence these polymorphic variants have on TLR expression and function and how altered TLR recognition or signaling may contribute to successful antimycobacterial immunity.
Relation extraction from clinical texts using domain invariant convolutional neural network

In recent years extracting relevant information from biomedical and clinical texts such as research articles, discharge summaries, or electronic health records have been a subject of many research efforts and shared challenges. Relation extraction is the process of detecting and classifying the semantic relation among entities in a given piece of texts. Existing models for this task in biomedical domain use either manually engineered features or kernel methods to create feature vector. These features are then fed to classifier for the prediction of the correct class. It turns out that the results of these methods are highly dependent on quality of user designed features and also suffer from curse of dimensionality. In this work we focus on extracting relations from clinical discharge summaries. Our main objective is to exploit the power of convolution neural network (CNN) to learn features automatically and thus reduce the dependency on manual feature engineering. We evaluate performance of the proposed model on i2b2-2010 clinical relation extraction challenge dataset. Our results indicate that convolution neural network can be a good model for relation exaction in clinical text without being dependent on expert's knowledge on defining quality features.
Consonant weakening in Florentine Italian: A cross-disciplinary approach to gradient and variable sound change

ABSTRACT Few acoustic studies of the intervocalic consonant lenition in central Italian dialects (a process known as Gorgia Toscana) have been undertaken. This study examines speech data from Florentine Italian in order to describe the process of Gorgia Toscana quantitatively and to assess the roles of physiological, perceptual, phonological, and social factors in the process. Results of acoustic and statistical analysis indicate gradient and variable output, with certain patterns occurring in the variation. The observations that emerge from the data cannot all be accounted for if Gorgia Toscana is characterized as a purely phonetic, phonological, or socially driven process of sound change. Rather, different aspects of the process are attributed to different motivators: gradience and velar preference to articulator movements, resistance of nonvelar lenition to perceptual constraints, targeting of a natural class and categorical weakening to abstract featural representations, and intersubject variation in velar lenition to external social factors.
Top Squarks and Bottom Squarks in the MSSM with Complex Parameters

We present a phenomenological study of top squarks (˜1,2) and bottom squarks (˜b1,2) in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) with complex parameters At,Ab,µ and M1. In particular we focus on the CP phase dependence of the branching ratios of ˜1,2 and ˜1,2 decays. We give the formulae of the two-body decay widths and present numerical results. We find that the effect of the phases on the ˜1,2 and ˜1,2 decays can be quite significant in a large region of the MSSM parameter space. This could have important implications for ˜1,2 and ˜1,2 searches and the MSSM parameter determination in future collider experiments. We have ˜
Corporal Punishment’s Influence on Children’s Aggressive and Delinquent Behavior

Studies show that children subjected to corporal punishment may engage in more aggression and delinquent behaviors than those who are not. Past research, however, is limited methodologically. This is largely the result of a lack of matched corporally punished and nonpunished children. To address this limitation, a propensity score matching analysis was used to estimate the effects of corporal punishment on children’s behaviors. Using data from the longitudinal study of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, findings indicate that (a) a large amount of selection bias exists, indicating that child and family characteristics of those subjected to corporal punishment are substantially different from characteristics of those not punished, and (b) when children exposed to corporal punishment (vs. those who are not) are matched on their propensities of being punished, the relationship between punishment and subsequent aggression and delinquency become statistically nonsignificant and substantively small. Findings are discussed in light of past research on corporal punishment, and limitations of the current study and ways of overcoming them in the future are discussed.
Nestling growth and song repertoire size in great reed warblers: evidence for song learning as an indicator mechanism in mate choice

Females of many songbird species show a preference for mating with males that have larger song repertoires, but the advantages associated with this preference are uncertain. We tested the hypothesis that song complexity can serve as an indicator of male quality because the development of the brain regions underlying song learning and production occurs when young birds typically face nutritional and other stresses, so that song reflects how well a male fared during post–hatch development. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that variation in nestling condition should correspond to variation in the adult song repertoires of individuals. We used data from a long–term study of the great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) to test this prediction, correlating two measures of nestling development with subsequent repertoire size of males. We found that the length of the innermost primary feather, a standard measure of development, significantly predicted first–year repertoire size. The relationship between repertoire size and body mass was nearly significant, in spite of the large variance inherent in this measure. These data support the idea that song may provide females with information about a male's response to developmental stress, which in turn is expected to correlate with indirect or direct benefits she might receive.
Wholemeal versus wholegrain breads: proportion of whole or cracked grain and the glycaemic response.

STUDY OBJECTIVE--To determine the effect on the glycaemic response to bread of the ratio of whole cereal grains to milled flour. DESIGN--Randomised assignment of groups of diabetic volunteers to test and control meals, taken after an overnight fast. Test foods were also analysed for in vitro digestion with human saliva. SETTING--Tertiary care centre. PATIENTS--Groups of six drawn from pool of 16 volunteers with diabetes mellitus (11 men, five women; mean age 64 (SE 3); 10 taking insulin, five taking oral agents, one controlled by diet; other characteristics comparable). INTERVENTIONS--All patients took standard white bread control meals on three occasions spanning the study and on different mornings took test meals containing varying ratios of whole cereal grains (barley or cracked wheat) to milled flour (75:25, 50:50, 0:100). All meals contained 50 g available carbohydrate and were eaten in 15 minutes. Capillary blood samples were taken for determination of glucose concentrations every 30 minutes for three hours. END POINT--Glycaemic index of foods (= increase in area under blood glucose concentration curve for test food divided by increase in area under curve for white bread control X 100). MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS--Significant trend to lower glycaemic index with increasing proportion of whole cereal grains in test bread (p less than 0.05) and lower in vitro digestibility (p less than 0.001). Breads containing up to 75% whole grain were considered palatable. CONCLUSIONS--Breads containing a high proportion of whole cereal grains may be useful in reducing the postprandial blood glucose profile in diabetics because they are more slowly digested. These breads should be called "wholegrain" in distinction to "wholemeal" breads made from milled flour.