Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Single-Chip 900-MHz Spread-Spectrum Wireless Transceiver in 1m CMOS — Part II : Receiver Design

A 900-MHz direct-conversion receiver to detect a frequency-hopped carrier with frequency shift keying (FSK) modulation at 160 kb/s is integrated on the same chip as the transmitter. The receiver combines a low-noise amplifier with downconversion mixers and low-pass channel-select filters in quadrature channels. A digital correlating detector makes the data decisions. The received signal is dehopped when it is downconverted. The cascade noise figure is 8.6 dB, and the cascade IIP3 is 8.3 dBm. In active mode, the receiver takes 120 mA from 3 V.
RFID Distance Bounding Protocols

Almost all existing RFID tag/reader authentication protocols are vulnerable to mafia attacks and/or terrorist attacks from adversaries because of their inability to verify location of the tag. Several protocols have been proposed that purport to alleviate these forms of attacks. However, vulnerabilities have been identified in most of these protocols. We present and evaluate a modified distance bounding protocol.
Residual-based speech modification algorithms for text-to-speech synthesis

The paper presents a set of novel algorithms for the signal modification component of concatenative text-to-speech systems. The algorithms described are based around the LPC analysis/synthesis framework, and achieve prosodic modification by time-domain processing of the LPC residual. The modified residual is then recombined with the all-pole spectral estimate to synthesise the new speech signal. The methods differ in the processing applied to the residual signal. The first method uses a modified version of TD-PSOLA, relying on assumptions of decorrelation and spectral flatness to avoid spectral distortion. The second method uses multiple windowing within each pitch period, enabling a given pitch modification to be realised by shifting several windowed segments by small amounts rather than a large shift of a single window. Again the aim is to reduce phase distortion introduced by the time-shifting process. The third method is based on a smoothly varying resampling of the residual, rather than windowed overlap-add. TD-PSOLA and the residual-based methods were subject a informal listening tests both with pitch and time-scaled natural speech, and also integrated into the signal processing stage of the BT Laureate text-to-speech system.
Longitudinal study of amygdala volume and joint attention in 2- to 4-year-old children with autism.

CONTEXT Cerebral cortical volume enlargement has been reported in 2- to 4-year-olds with autism. Little is known about the volume of subregions during this period of development. The amygdala is hypothesized to be abnormal in volume and related to core clinical features in autism. OBJECTIVES To examine amygdala volume at 2 years with follow-up at 4 years of age in children with autism and to explore the relationship between amygdala volume and selected behavioral features of autism. DESIGN Longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging study. SETTING University medical setting. PARTICIPANTS Fifty autistic and 33 control (11 developmentally delayed, 22 typically developing) children between 18 and 35 months (2 years) of age followed up at 42 to 59 months (4 years) of age. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Amygdala volumes in relation to joint attention ability measured with a new observational coding system, the Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale; group comparisons including total tissue volume, sex, IQ, and age as covariates. RESULTS Amygdala enlargement was observed in subjects with autism at both 2 and 4 years of age. Significant change over time in volume was observed, although the rate of change did not differ between groups. Amygdala volume was associated with joint attention ability at age 4 years in subjects with autism. CONCLUSIONS The amygdala is enlarged in autism relative to controls by age 2 years but shows no relative increase in magnitude between 2 and 4 years of age. A significant association between amygdala volume and joint attention suggests that alterations to this structure may be linked to a core deficit of autism.
Identifying Black Swans in NextGen: Predicting Human Performance in Off-Nominal Conditions

Objective: The objective is to validate a computational model of visual attention against empirical data—derived from a meta-analysis—of pilots’ failure to notice safety-critical unexpected events. Background: Many aircraft accidents have resulted, in part, because of failure to notice nonsalient unexpected events outside of foveal vision, illustrating the phenomenon of change blindness. A model of visual noticing, N-SEEV (noticing— salience, expectancy, effort, and value), was developed to predict these failures. Method: First, 25 studies that reported objective data on miss rate for unexpected events in high-fidelity cockpit simulations were identified, and their miss rate data pooled across five variables (phase of flight, event expectancy, event location, presence of a head-up display, and presence of a highway-in-the-sky display). Second, the parameters of the N-SEEV model were tailored to mimic these dichotomies. Results: The N-SEEV model output predicted variance in the obtained miss rate (r = .73). The individual miss rates of all six dichotomous conditions were predicted within 14%, and four of these were predicted within 7%. Conclusion: The N-SEEV model, developed on the basis of an independent data set, was able to successfully predict variance in this safety-critical measure of pilot response to abnormal circumstances, as collected from the literature. Applications: As new technology and procedures are envisioned for the future airspace, it is important to predict if these may compromise safety in terms of pilots’ failing to notice unexpected events. Computational models such as N-SEEV support cost-effective means of making such predictions.
Learning Strategies of Secondary School Students as Correlates of Academic Achievement and Gender

The objectives of the study were: (i) to study the learning strategies of Secondary school students, (ii) to study gender differences in the learning strategies of secondary school students (iii) to study the relationship between learning strategies and academic achievement of secondary school students.1200 secondary school students of Punjab were administered Motivational Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich et al, 1991) The results show that significant differences have not been found between high and low achievers as well as between male and female school students on the rehearsal, elaboration, organization, critical thinking and meta-cognitive of self-regulation of learning strategies. Even the interaction effect of gender and academic achievement was not found significant on these dimensions except the last one i.e. meta-cognitive self-regulation dimension.
Learning by Self-Explaining

Artificial intelligence (AI) research has a long track record of drawing inspirations from findings from biology, in particular human intelligence. In contrast to current AI research that mainly treats explanations as a means for model inspection, a somewhat neglected finding from human psychology is the benefit of self-explaining in an agents' learning process. Motivated by this, we introduce a novel learning paradigm, termed Learning by Self-Explaining (LSX). The underlying idea is that a learning module (learner) performs a base task, e.g. image classification, and provides explanations to its decisions. An internal critic module next evaluates the quality of these explanations given the original task. Finally, the learner is refined with the critic's feedback and the loop is repeated as required. The intuition behind this is that an explanation is considered"good"if the critic can perform the same task given the respective explanation. Despite many implementation possibilities the structure of any LSX instantiation can be taxonomized based on four learning modules which we identify as: Fit, Explain, Reflect and Revise. In our work, we provide distinct instantiations of LSX for two different learner models, each illustrating different choices for the various LSX components. We broadly evaluate these on several datasets and show that Learning by Self-Explaining not only boosts the generalization abilities of AI models, particularly in small-data regimes, but also aids in mitigating the influence of confounding factors, as well as leading to more task specific and faithful model explanations. Overall, our results provide experimental evidence of the potential of self-explaining within the learning phase of an AI model.
Removal Efficiency of Cr6+ by Indigenous Pichia sp. Isolated from Textile Factory Effluent

Resistance of the indigenous strains P. jadinii M9 and P. anomala M10, to high Cr6+ concentrations and their ability to reduce chromium in culture medium was studied. The isolates were able to tolerate chromium concentrations up to 104 μg mL−1. Growth and reduction of Cr6+ were dependent on incubation temperature, agitation, Cr6+ concentration, and pH. Thus, in both studied strains the chromium removal was increased at 30°C with agitation. The optimum pH was different, with values of pH 3.0 and pH 7.0 in the case of P. anomala M10 and pH 7.0 using P. jadinii M9. Chromate reduction occurred both in intact cells (grown in culture medium) as well as in cell-free extracts. Chromate reductase activity could be related to cytosolic or membrane-associated proteins. The presence of a chromate reductase activity points out a possible role of an enzyme in Cr6+ reduction.
Mos limits the number of meiotic divisions in urochordate eggs

Mos kinase is a universal mediator of oocyte meiotic maturation and is produced during oogenesis and destroyed after fertilization. The hallmark of maternal meiosis is that two successive M phases (meiosis I and II) drive two rounds of asymmetric cell division (ACD). However, how the egg limits the number of meioses to just two, thereby preventing gross aneuploidy, is poorly characterized. Here, in urochordate eggs, we show that loss of Mos/MAPK activity is necessary to prevent entry into meiosis III. Remarkably, maintaining the Mos/MAPK pathway active after fertilization at near physiological levels induces additional rounds of meiotic M phase (meiosis III, IV and V). During these additional rounds of meiosis, the spindle is positioned asymmetrically resulting in further rounds of ACD. In addition, inhibiting meiotic exit with Mos prevents pronuclear formation, cyclin A accumulation and maintains sperm-triggered Ca2+ oscillations, all of which are hallmarks of the meiotic cell cycle in ascidians. It will be interesting to determine whether Mos availability in mammals can also control the number of meioses as it does in the urochordates. Our results demonstrate the power of urochordate eggs as a model to dissect the egg-to-embryo transition.
Evaluation of protective equipment for prevention of injuries in rugby union.

BACKGROUND Rugby union has a high rate of injury. The increased use of protective equipment may help mitigate these injuries. This study investigated the injury prevention effectiveness of the protective equipment used in rugby union. METHODS A cohort of 304 rugby players in Dunedin, New Zealand was followed weekly during the 1993 club season to assess protective equipment use, participation in rugby, and injury outcomes. Generalized Poisson regression was used to model the rate of injury while adjusting for covariates such as level of competition, playing position, and injury history. RESULTS The use of mouthguards appeared to lower the risk of orofacial injury [rate ratio (RR) = 0.56, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.07-4.63], and padded headgear tended to prevent damage to the scalp and ears (RR = 0.59, 95% CI: 0.19-1.86). Support sleeves tended to reduce the risk of sprains and strains (RR = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.26-1.27). The risk of concussion was not lessened by the use of padded headgear (RR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.40-3.16) or mouthguards (RR = 1.62, 95% CI: 0.51-5.11). There was no evidence of protective effects for any other equipment item (taping, shinguards, and grease). CONCLUSIONS The protective equipment used in rugby union has limited effectiveness in preventing injuries. The results are supportive, however, of a role for mouthguards and padded headgear in preventing orofacial and scalp injuries, respectively, and for support sleeves in preventing sprains and strains.
Judicial precedent as a dynamic rationale for axiomatic bargaining theory

Axiomatic bargaining theory (e.g., Nash’s theorem) is static. We attempt to provide a dynamic justification for the theory. Suppose a judge or arbitrator must allocate utility in an (infinite) sequence of two-person problems; at each date, the judge is presented with a utility possibility set in R 2 . He/she must choose an allocation in the set, constrained only by Nash’s axioms, in the sense that a penalty is paid if and only if a utility allocation is chosen at date T that is inconsistent, according to one of the axioms, with a utility allocation chosen at some earlier date. Penalties are discounted with t and the judge chooses any allocation, at a given date, that minimizes the penalty he/she pays at that date. Under what conditions will the judge’s chosen allocations converge to the Nash allocation over time? We answer this question for three canonical axiomatic bargaining solutions—Nash, Kalai–Smorodinsky, and “egalitarian”—and generalize the analysis to a broad class
Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power and Square Wave Voltammetry for Assay of Low Molecular Weight Antioxidants in Blood Plasma: Performance and Comparison of Methods

The purpose of the present study was to employ two methods—square wave voltammetry (SWV) performed on screen printed sensors and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP)—as suitable tools for the assay of low-molecular-weight antioxidants (LMWAs). LMWAs were assayed by both methods and the resulting data were statistically compared. Plasma samples from five Cinereous vultures accidentally intoxicated with lead were used to represent real biological matrices with different levels of LMWAs. Blood was collected from the birds prior to and one month after treatment with Ca-EDTA. SWV resulted in two peaks. The first peak, with the potential value of 466 ± 15 mV, was recognized as ascorbic and uric acids, while the second one (743 ± 30 mV) represented glutathione, tocopherol, ascorbic acid and in a minor effect by uric acid, too. Contribution of individual antioxidants was recognized by separate assays of LMWA standards. Correlation between peaks 1 and 2 as well as the sum of the two peaks and FRAP was analysed. While peak 1 and the sum of peaks were in close correlation to FRAP results (correlation coefficient of 0.97), the relation between peak 2 and FRAP may be expressed using a correlation coefficient of 0.64. The determination of thiols by the Ellman assay confirmed the accuracy of SWV. Levels of glutathione and other similar structures were stable in the chosen model and it may be concluded that SWV is appropriate for assay of LMWAs in plasma samples. The methods employed in the study were advantageous in minimal sample volume consumption and fast acquisition of results.
Vitamin C deficiency in early postnatal life impairs spatial memory and reduces the number of hippocampal neurons in guinea pigs.

BACKGROUND The neonatal brain is particularly vulnerable to imbalances in redox homeostasis because of rapid growth and immature antioxidant systems. Vitamin C has been shown to have a key function in the brain, and during states of deficiency it is able to retain higher concentrations of vitamin C than other organs. However, because neurons maintain one of the highest intracellular concentrations of vitamin C in the organism, the brain may still be more sensitive to deficiency despite these preventive measures. OBJECTIVE The objective was to study the potential link between chronic vitamin C deficiency and neuronal damage in newborn guinea pigs. DESIGN Thirty 6- to 7-d-old guinea pigs were randomly assigned to 2 groups to receive either a vitamin C-sufficient diet or the same diet containing a low concentration of vitamin C (but adequate to prevent scurvy) for 2 mo. Spatial memory was assessed by the Morris Water Maze, and hippocampal neuron numbers were quantified by stereologic techniques. RESULTS The results showed a reduction in spatial memory (P < 0.05) and an increased time to first platform hit (P < 0.05) in deficient animals compared with controls. The deficient animals had a lower total number of neurons in hippocampal subdivisions (dentate gyrus, cornu ammonis 1, and cornu ammonis 2-3) than did the normal controls (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Our data show that vitamin C deficiency in early postnatal life results in impaired neuronal development and a functional decrease in spatial memory in guinea pigs. We speculate that this unrecognized effect of vitamin C deficiency may have clinical implications for high-risk individuals, such as in children born from vitamin C-deficient mothers.
Dyskryminacja słuchowa w zakresie częstotliwości, intensywności i czasu trwania dźwięku – podstawy teoretyczne – przegląd literatury

The auditory discrimination, as one of the auditory functions, allows the identification, recognition, differentiation and understanding of sounds, especially speech sounds. The auditory discrimination is the measure of the ability of the auditory system to distinguish sensations associated with changes in certain physical features of sounds – frequency, intensity and duration. The ability of the auditory discrimination is particularly important for speech understanding. The aim of this paper was to discuss theoretical basis of auditory discrimination and to indicate available tests and assessment methods.
Cost-Effectiveness Study of Three Antimalarial Drug Combinations in Tanzania

Background As a result of rising levels of drug resistance to conventional monotherapy, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international organisations have recommended that malaria endemic countries move to combination therapy, ideally with artemisinin-based combinations (ACTs). Cost is a major barrier to deployment. There is little evidence from field trials on the cost-effectiveness of these new combinations. Methods and Findings An economic evaluation of drug combinations was designed around a randomised effectiveness trial of combinations recommended by the WHO, used to treat Tanzanian children with non-severe slide-proven malaria. Drug combinations were: amodiaquine (AQ), AQ with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (AQ+SP), AQ with artesunate (AQ+AS), and artemether-lumefantrine (AL) in a six-dose regimen. Effectiveness was measured in terms of resource savings and cases of malaria averted (based on parasitological failure rates at days 14 and 28). All costs to providers and to patients and their families were estimated and uncertain variables were subjected to univariate sensitivity analysis. Incremental analysis comparing each combination to monotherapy (AQ) revealed that from a societal perspective AL was most cost-effective at day 14. At day 28 the difference between AL and AQ+AS was negligible; both resulted in a gross savings of approximately US$1.70 or a net saving of US$22.40 per case averted. Varying the accuracy of diagnosis and the subsistence wage rate used to value unpaid work had a significant effect on the number of cases averted and on programme costs, respectively, but this did not change the finding that AL and AQ+AS dominate monotherapy. Conclusions In an area of high drug resistance, there is evidence that AL and AQ+AS are the most cost-effective drugs despite being the most expensive, because they are significantly more effective than other options and therefore reduce the need for further treatment. This is not necessarily the case in parts of Africa where recrudescence following SP and AQ treatment (and their combination) is lower so that the relative advantage of ACTs is smaller, or where diagnostic services are not accurate and as a result much of the drug goes to those who do not have malaria.
Linear stability of flow in a differentially heated cavity via large‐scale eigenvalue calculations

Locates the onset of oscillatory instability in the fluid flow inside a differentially heated cavity with aspect ratio 2 by computing a steady‐state and analyzing the stability of the system via eigenvalue approximation. Discusses the choice of parameters for the Cayley transformation so that the calculation of selected eigenvalues of the transformed system will reliably answer the question of stability. Also presents an argument that due to the symmetry of the problem, the first two unstable modes will have eigenvalues that are nearly identical, and the numerical experiments confirm this. Finally, locates a co‐dimension 2 bifurcation signifying where there is a switch in the mode of initial instability. The results were obtained using a parallel finite element CFD code (MPSalsa) along with an Arnoldi‐based eigensolver (ARPACK), a preconditioned Krylov method code for the necessary linear solves (Aztec), and a stability analysis library (LOCA).
Cachet: a decentralized architecture for privacy preserving social networking with caching

Online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook and Google+ have transformed the way our society communicates. However, this success has come at the cost of user privacy; in today's OSNs, users are not in control of their own data, and depend on OSN operators to enforce access control policies. A multitude of privacy breaches has spurred research into privacy-preserving alternatives for social networking, exploring a number of techniques for storing, disseminating, and controlling access to data in a decentralized fashion. In this paper, we argue that a combination of techniques is necessary to efficiently support the complex functionality requirements of OSNs. We propose Cachet, an architecture that provides strong security and privacy guarantees while preserving the main functionality of online social networks. In particular, Cachet protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of user content, as well as the privacy of user relationships. Cachet uses a distributed pool of nodes to store user data and ensure availability. Storage nodes in Cachet are untrusted; we leverage cryptographic techniques such as attribute based encryption to protect the confidentiality of data. For efficient dissemination and retrieval of data, Cachet uses a hybrid structured-unstructured overlay paradigm in which a conventional distributed hash table is augmented with social links between users. Social contacts in our system act as caches to store recent updates in the social network, and help reduce the cryptographic as well as the communication overhead in the network. We built a prototype implementation of Cachet in the FreePastry simulator. To demonstrate the functionality of existing OSNs we implemented the "newsfeed" application. Our evaluation demonstrates that (a) decentralized architectures for privacy preserving social networking are feasible, and (b) use of social contacts for object caching results in significant performance improvements.
Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods Misspecification of Variants of Autoregressive Garch Models and Effect on In-sample Forecasting Misspecification of Variants of Autoregressive Garch Models and Effect on In-sample Forecasting

Generally, in empirical financial studies, the determination of the true conditional variance in GARCH modelling is largely subjective. In this paper, we investigate the consequences of choosing a wrong conditional variance specification. The methodology involves specifying a true conditional variance and then simulating data to conform to the true specification. The estimation is then carried out using the true specification and other plausible specification that are appealing to the researcher, using model and forecast evaluation criteria for assessing performance. The results show that GARCH model could serve as better alternative to other asymmetric volatility models.