Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design, analysis, and implementation of analog complex filter for low-IF Wireless LAN application

The design and implementation of an analog complex filter for low-IF WLAN 802.11a receiver is described. An IF of 20 MHz is chosen as a trade off between image-rejection and power consumption. The specified bandwidth is 20 MHz. Baseband processing requires low group-delay variation in the received signal to meet bit error rate (BER) specification. This requires a design of high frequency, wide bandwidth and high attenuation filter. To resolve these issues, fifth-order complex transitional Bessel-Chebyshev filter is implemented to compromise between high attenuation and low group-delay variation. Measured results show the designed filter provides 30 dB to 40 dB image rejection and 18 dB adjacent channel rejection, while keeping a low group-delay variation of below 6.0 ns within the pass-band. High frequency and wide bandwidth filter also requires stringent design specification of the circuitries. Differential inverter transconductor is optimized for this continuous-time filter design. The complete filter including on-chip tuning circuit and bandgap consumes only 7.5 mA with 1.8 V single supply voltage. The circuit is fabricated using 0.18 /spl mu/m, 6-metal-single-poly CMOS process.
Hypotheses on the Potential of Rice Bran Intake to Prevent Gastrointestinal Cancer through the Modulation of Oxidative Stress

Previous studies have suggested the potential involvement of oxidative stress in gastrointestinal cancers. In light of this, research efforts have been focused on the potential of dietary antioxidant intake to prevent gastrointestinal cancer through the modulation of oxidative stress. Rice bran, a by-product of rice milling, has been shown to contain an abundance of phytochemicals, which are dietary antioxidants. To date, a number of studies have shown the antioxidative effect of rice bran intake, and some demonstrated that such an effect may contribute to gastrointestinal cancer prevention, largely through the antioxidative properties of rice bran phytochemicals. In addition, these phytochemicals were shown to provide protection against cancer through mechanisms linked to oxidative stress, including β-catenin-mediated cell proliferation and inflammation. The present article provides an overview of current evidence for the antioxidative properties of rice bran and its phytochemicals, and for the potential of such properties in cancer prevention through the oxidative-stress-linked mechanisms mentioned above. The article also highlights the need for an evaluation of the effectiveness of rice bran dietary interventions among cancer survivors in ameliorating oxidative stress and reducing the level of gastrointestinal cancer biomarkers, thereby establishing the potential of such interventions among these individuals in the prevention of cancer recurrence.
A preliminary study on sodium hyaluronate loaded polyvinyl alcohol nanofiber webs obtained via roller electrospinning

The aim of this study was to investigate whether it is possible to integrate cosmetic grade sodium hyaluronate or hyaluronic acid (HA) into polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofiber matrix, as well as to analyse how different concentrations of HA effects the viscosity and conductivity of the spinning solution, fiber diameters, morphology and mechanical properties of the nanowebs.
2016 Ieee International Conference on Big Data (big Data) Experiences with Smart City Traffic Pilot

— The infrastructure built in the City of Oulu provides rich information about the city environment and objects moving in it. We utilize this infrastructure in building an IoT system for data-intensive smart city services; by collecting data from real city environment and developing analysis methods for these data. We are building Smart City Traffic Pilot on top of the infrastructure to provide the functionality to collect the data and perform the analysis. Based on this experience, we present in this article requirements for data-intensive smart city services. Moreover, we describe four implemented use cases for utilizing rich data sources available in the smart city: situational picture, driving coach, real time reasoning, and mobile code. A lively collaboration between a large number of different actors is essential in realizing these use cases. Finally, we discuss how the use cases fulfill the requirements and the lessons we have learnt.
Codebook: discovering and exploiting relationships in software repositories

Large-scale software engineering requires communication and collaboration to successfully build and ship products. We conducted a survey with Microsoft engineers on inter-team coordination and found that the most impactful problems concerned finding and keeping track of other engineers. Since engineers are connected by their shared work, a tool that discovers connections in their work-related repositories can help. Here we describe the Codebook framework for mining software repositories. It is flexible enough to address all of the problems identified by our survey with a single data structure (graph of people and artifacts) and a single algorithm (regular language reachability). Codebook handles a larger variety of problems than prior work, analyzes more kinds of work artifacts, and can be customized by and for end-users. To evaluate our framework's flexibility, we built two applications, Hoozizat and Deep Intellisense. We evaluated these applications with engineers to show effectiveness in addressing multiple inter-team coordination problems.
Molecular Effects of the CTG Repeats in Mutant Dystrophia Myotonica Protein Kinase Gene

Myotonic Dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a multi-system disorder characterized by muscle wasting, myotonia, cardiac conduction defects, cataracts, and neuropsychological dysfunction. DM1 is caused by expansion of a CTG repeat in the 3´untranslated region (UTR) of the Dystrophia Myotonica Protein Kinase (DMPK) gene. A body of work demonstrates that DMPK mRNAs containing abnormally expanded CUG repeats are toxic to several cell types. A core mechanism underlying symptoms of DM1 is that mutant DMPK RNA interferes with the developmentally regulated alternative splicing of defined pre-mRNAs. Expanded CUG repeats fold into ds(CUG) hairpins that sequester nuclear proteins including human Muscleblind-like (MBNL) and hnRNP H alternative splicing factors. DM1 cells activate CELF family member CUG-BP1 protein through hyperphosphorylation and stabilization in the cell nucleus. CUG-BP1 and MBNL1 proteins act antagonistically in exon selection in several pre-mRNA transcripts, thus MBNL1 sequestration and increase in nuclear activity of CUG-BP1 both act synergistically to missplice defined transcripts. Mutant DMPK-mediated effect on subcellular localization, and defective phosphorylation of cytoplasmic CUG-BP1, have additionally been linked to defective translation of p21 and MEF2A in DM1, possibly explaining delayed differentiation of DM1 muscle cells. Mutant DMPK transcripts bind and sequester transcription factors such as Specificity protein 1 leading to reduced transcription of selected genes. Recently, transcripts containing long hairpin structures of CUG repeats have been shown to be a Dicer ribonuclease target and Dicer-induced downregulation of the mutant DMPK transcripts triggers silencing effects on RNAs containing long complementary repeats. In summary, mutant DMPK transcripts alter gene transcription, alternative splicing, and translation of specific gene transcripts, and have the ability to trigger gene-specific silencing effects in DM1 cells. Therapies aimed at reversing these gene expression alterations should prove effective ways to treat DM1.
Canine hip dysplasia: phenotypic scoring and the role of estimated breeding value analysis

Abstract Canine hip dysplasia (CHD) is a developmental orthopaedic disease of the coxofemoral joints with a multifactorial mode of inheritance. Multiple gene effects are influenced by environmental factors; therefore, it is unlikely that a simple genetic screening test with which to identify susceptible individuals will be developed in the near future. In the absence of feasible methods for objectively quantifying clinical CHD, radiographic techniques have been developed and widely used to identify dogs for breeding which are less affected by the disease. A hip-extended ventrodorsal view of the pelvis has been traditionally used to identify dogs with subluxation and/or osteoarthritis of the coxofemoral joints. More recently, there has been emphasis on the role of coxofemoral joint laxity as a determinant of CHD and methods have been developed to measure passive hip laxity. Though well-established worldwide, the effectiveness of traditional phenotypic scoring schemes in reducing the prevalence of CHD has been variable. The most successful implementation of traditional CHD scoring has occurred in countries or breeding colonies with mandatory scoring and open registries with access to pedigree records. Several commentators have recommended that for quantitative traits like CHD, selection of breeding stock should be based on estimated breeding values (EBV) rather than individual hip score/grade. The EBV is a reflection of the genetic superiority of an animal compared to its counterparts and is calculated from the phenotype of an individual and its relatives and their pedigree relationship. Selecting breeding stock on the basis of a dog's genetic merit, ideally based on a highly predictive phenotype, will confer the breeder with greater selection power, accelerate genetic improvement towards better hip conformation and thus more likely decrease the prevalence of CHD.
Effort-induced changes in the maximum frequency of tapping in women aged between 65 and 70

INTRODUCTION The maximum frequency of movements depends mainly on the capabilities of human neural centres controlling antagonistic muscle groups. These capa-bilities are greatly affected by the process of aging. Christianson [3] observed significant differences (p≤0.001) in the frequency of finger tapping using the dominant hand between groups of 25-39 year olds and 55-70 year olds. The test using the non-dominant hand showed a significant difference between the 55-70 year olds and all three younger groups. Cousins et al. [4] compared 10 seconds-long finger tapping between 75 and 18 year olds. Response initiation time and duration time were much longer in the older group. Early symptoms of fatigue in elderly people follow the decrease in neuro-muscular coordination. The rate of fatigue could be associated with weakening of muscles; with atrophy of muscles and more intensive engagement of muscles in physical activity. It is due to age-related dysfunction in the neural system [2]. The main aim of this study was to examine effort-induced changes in the maximum frequency of tapping performed by women between 65 and 70 years of age. METHODS This study involved 34 women, aged between 65 and 70 (
Hardware Enforced Statistical Privacy

The Internet of Things will result in users generating vast quantities of data, some of it sensitive. Results from the statistical analysis of sensitive data across wide ranges of demographics will become ever more useful to data analysts and their clients. The competing needs of the two groups-data generators with their desire for privacy and analysts with their desire for inferred statistics-will be met through the use of statistical privacy techniques. The question, then, is how can we ensure that the statistical methods are applied in a trustable manner? In this paper we discuss some of the complications and consequences of ensuring both trust and privacy through the immutability of hardware, providing a desiderata for a hardware privacy platform.
Patch2Vec: Globally Consistent Image Patch Representation

Many image editing applications rely on the analysis of image patches. In this paper, we present a method to analyze patches by embedding them to a vector space, in which the Euclidean distance reflects patch similarity. Inspired by Word2Vec, we term our approach Patch2Vec. However, there is a significant difference between words and patches. Words have a fairly small and well defined dictionary. Image patches, on the other hand, have no such dictionary and the number of different patch types is not well defined. The problem is aggravated by the fact that each patch might contain several objects and textures. Moreover, Patch2Vec should be universal because it must be able to map never‐seen‐before texture to the vector space. The mapping is learned by analyzing the distribution of all natural patches. We use Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) to learn Patch2Vec. In particular, we train a CNN on labeled images with a triplet‐loss objective function. The trained network encodes a given patch to a 128D vector. Patch2Vec is evaluated visually, qualitatively, and quantitatively. We then use several variants of an interactive single‐click image segmentation algorithm to demonstrate the power of our method.
On-line on-board wind estimation system for small UAVs

This paper describes the status, achieved results and future research plans related to a student's project of an on-line on-board wind estimation system. The system is planned to augment functionality and improve performance of existing small UAV flight control system units, developed within students activities at the Department of Control Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague. Simulated data are prepared based on realistic flight mechanics models. Simple algorithms are adopted from literature and tailored for our case and their sensitivity to measurement errors is carefully analyzed. Finally, performance of the algorithms is demonstrated in realistic simulation scenarios. Related hardware components are also introduced and discussed in brief and the future plans are elaborated.
Lip Contour Extraction Based on Support Vector Machine Add Support

Lip contour extraction was a useful technique for obtaining a mouth shape in an image, and was one of the most important techniques for human-machine interface applications, such as lip reading and speech recognition. In this paper, a new method to extract lip contour from video was propose based on the fact that the lip color and skin-color was varied in the different color spaces. We first extracted frames from digital video first; then we classified face into lip area and non-lip area by the Support Vector Machine. At last we obtained some parameters from the lip area to reconstruct the lip contour. The experiment results proved that the proposed method was accurate and robust.
Childhood maltreatment, complex trauma symptoms, and unresolved attachment in an at-risk sample of adolescent mothers

Abstract Associations between unresolved attachment, abuse history, and a wide range of trauma-related symptomatology were examined in an at-risk sample (N = 62). Fifty percent reported severe childhood physical and/or sexual abuse. An independent trauma interview elicited more reports of childhood sexual abuse than the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI); conversely, the AAI elicited more reports of physical abuse. Childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse, and general maltreatment were associated with unresolved status. Furthermore, sexual abuse history and general maltreatment predicted unresolved loss, suggesting that they adversely affected the integration of other emotional and/or traumatic experiences. Women classified as Unresolved reported higher levels of dissociation, confusion regarding self-identity, and relationship problems. Findings complement and extend empirical support for the theorized association between dissociative processes and unresolved attachment.
A component based approach for modeling expert knowledge in engine testing automation systems

Test automation systems used for developing combustion engines comprise hardware components and software functionality they depend on. Such systems usually perform similar tasks; they comprise similar hardware and execute similar software. Regarding their details, however, literally no two systems are exactly the same. In order to support such variations, the automation system has to be customized accordingly. Without a tools that properly supports both, customization as well as standardization of functionality, customization can be time consuming and error-prone. In this paper we describe a modeling driven approach that is based on components with hard- and software view that allows defining standard functionality for physical hardware. We show how this way most of the automation system's standard functionality can be generated automatically, while still allowing to add custom functionality.
Geographic scope modeling for web documents

Geographic Information Retrieval (GIR) has become a very attractive area of research. GIR is a specialization of a traditional information retrieval system, which may index and search Web documents based on their spatial footprints. Research in this new field may be categorized into crawling spatial-related documents, modeling the geographic scope of a document, indexing these documents using textual and spatial features, and the building of spatially-enabled searching and ranking. This paper presents a method for modeling the geographic scope. The proposed model is based on both the statistics collected from the detected references; and the spatial distribution of the places involved in a given document. This model aims to simplify the indexing and searching processes. Furthermore, the number of spatial operations is reduced, as a consequence the overall performance is improved.
Author ' s personal copy Exposure of the snail Potamopyrgus antipodarum to herbicide boosts output and survival of parasite infective stages q

Anthropogenic stressors such as pollutants can modulate levels of parasitic infections in aquatic animals by suppressing host immunity or through some other mechanisms. One such mechanism could involve increases in either the quantity or quality of infective stages produced by parasites. We investigated the effect of exposure of infected snails, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, to different concentrations of the widelyused herbicide glyphosate, on (i) the production of infective cercariae by three trematode species, Coitocaecum parvum, Apatemon sp. and an undescribed renicolid, and (ii) the survival of cercariae of the latter species. For all three trematode species, infected snails exposed over a month to low (0.36 mg a.i. L ) or medium (3.6 mg a.i. L ) formulated glyphosate concentrations released between 1.5 and 3 times more cercariae per day than snails under control conditions. The similar pattern seen in all trematodes suggests a general weakening of the host benefiting any of its parasites rather than some parasite species-specific mechanism. In addition, the survival of renicolid cercariae improved with increasing glyphosate concentrations, with cercariae living about 50% longer in the medium concentration (3.6 mg a.i. L ) than in control conditions. Our results demonstrate a clear interaction between glyphosate pollution and parasitism by trematodes in freshwater systems, occurring at glyphosate concentrations recorded in aquatic habitats, and within the environmental exposure limit allowed in New Zealand freshwaters. Future risk assessments and toxicity tests need to consider indirect impacts resulting from infections to invertebrate and vertebrate species penetrated by cercariae and serving as second intermediate hosts of trematodes. 2012 Australian Society for Parasitology Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
DBI in the sky

We analyze the spectrum of density perturbations generated in models of the recently discovered ''D-cceleration'' mechanism of inflation. In this scenario, strong coupling quantum field theoretic effects sum to provide a DBI-like action for the inflaton. We show that the model has a strict lower bound on the non-Gaussianity of the CMBR power spectrum at an observable level, and is thus falsifiable. This in particular observationally distinguishes this mechanism from traditional slow roll inflation generated by weakly interacting scalar fields. The model also favors a large observable tensor component to the CMBR spectrum.
Table of Contents.

Modelling Motion: Tracking, Analysis and Inverse Kinematics p. 104 The Lie Model for Euclidean Geometry p. 115 On the Geometric Structure of Spatio-temporal Patterns p. 134 Learning Geometric Transformations with Clifford Neurons p. 144 Hurwitzion Algebra and Its Application to the FFT Synthesis p. 154 Diffusion-Snakes Using Statistical Shape Knowledge p. 164 The Multidimensional Isotropic Generalization of Quadrature Filters in Geometric Algebra p. 175
Video summary of D.R.O.P. the Durable Reconnaissance and Observation Platform

This video introduces a small, new reconnaissance robot that can climb concrete surfaces up to 85° at a rate of 25cm*s-1, make rapid horizontal to vertical transitions, carry an audio/visual payload, and survive impacts from 3m. The robot can travel over 45 cm*s-1 on flat ground, and turn in place. The Durable Reconnaissance and Observation Platform, D.R. O.P., is manufactured using a combination of selective laser sintering (SLS) and shape deposition manufacturing (SDM) techniques. The enabling feature of DROP is the use of microspines in a rotary configuration, increasing climbing and walking speed over previous microspine-based robots by more than 5x. The robot uses a 180mAh LiPo battery, Baby Orangutan microprocessor, and two brushed DC motors.
Reovirus Induces and Benefits from an Integrated Cellular Stress Response

ABSTRACT Following infection with most reovirus strains, viral protein synthesis is robust, even when cellular translation is inhibited. To gain further insight into pathways that regulate translation in reovirus-infected cells, we performed a comparative microarray analysis of cellular gene expression following infection with two strains of reovirus that inhibit host translation (clone 8 and clone 87) and one strain that does not (Dearing). Infection with clone 8 and clone 87 significantly increased the expression of cellular genes characteristic of stress responses, including the integrated stress response. Infection with these same strains decreased transcript and protein levels of P58IPK, the cellular inhibitor of the eukaryotic initiation factor 2α (eIF2α) kinases PKR and PERK. Since infection with host shutoff-inducing strains of reovirus impacted cellular pathways that control eIF2α phosphorylation and unphosphorylated eIF2α is required for translation initiation, we examined reovirus replication in a variety of cell lines with mutations that impact eIF2α phosphorylation. Our results revealed that reovirus replication is more efficient in the presence of eIF2α kinases and phosphorylatable eIF2α. When eIF2α is phosphorylated, it promotes the synthesis of ATF4, a transcription factor that controls cellular recovery from stress. We found that the presence of this transcription factor increased reovirus yields 10- to 100-fold. eIF2α phosphorylation also led to the formation of stress granules in reovirus-infected cells. Based on these results, we hypothesize that eIF2α phosphorylation facilitates reovirus replication in two ways—first, by inducing ATF4 synthesis, and second, by creating an environment that places abundant reovirus transcripts at a competitive advantage for limited translational components.