Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Empirical Study of the Transmission Power Setting for Bluetooth-Based Indoor Localization Mechanisms

Nowadays, there is a great interest in developing accurate wireless indoor localization mechanisms enabling the implementation of many consumer-oriented services. Among the many proposals, wireless indoor localization mechanisms based on the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) are being widely explored. Most studies have focused on the evaluation of the capabilities of different mobile device brands and wireless network technologies. Furthermore, different parameters and algorithms have been proposed as a means of improving the accuracy of wireless-based localization mechanisms. In this paper, we focus on the tuning of the RSSI fingerprint to be used in the implementation of a Bluetooth Low Energy 4.0 (BLE4.0) Bluetooth localization mechanism. Following a holistic approach, we start by assessing the capabilities of two Bluetooth sensor/receiver devices. We then evaluate the relevance of the RSSI fingerprint reported by each BLE4.0 beacon operating at various transmission power levels using feature selection techniques. Based on our findings, we use two classification algorithms in order to improve the setting of the transmission power levels of each of the BLE4.0 beacons. Our main findings show that our proposal can greatly improve the localization accuracy by setting a custom transmission power level for each BLE4.0 beacon.
Comparison of the expression and function of Lin28A and Lin28B in colon cancer

Lin28A and Lin28B are highly conserved RNA binding proteins with similar structure and functions. Recent studies demonstrated that both of them act as oncogenes and promote cancer progression. However, few researches compared the expression and functions of both oncogenes in human malignant tumors at same time. Additionally, although the expression and role of Lin28B in colon cancer is frequently reported, the expression and functions of Lin28A in colon cancer are largely unknown. In this study, we have systematically evaluated the expressional pattern, mutation status and correlation of both Lin28A and Lin28B in colon cancer tissues for the first time, and compared the roles of Lin28A and Lin28B in the proliferation, migration, invasion and apoptosis of colon cancer cells in vitro. We have showed that they are co-expressed and have functional similarities, however, the molecular mechanisms underlying their similar functions may not be identical. This study contributes to clarify the similarities and differences of Lin28A and Lin28B in colon cancer progression.
Spontaneous and Drug-induced Arteritis/Polyarteritis in the Göttingen Minipig—Review

Arteritis/polyarteritis occurs spontaneously in many species used in preclinical toxicology studies. In Göttingen minipigs, arteritis/polyarteritis is an occasionally observed background change. In the minipig, this finding differs in frequency and nature from age-related polyarteritis nodosa in rats or monkeys, and Beagle pain syndrome in dogs. In minipigs, it can be present in a single small- or medium-sized artery of an organ or a few organs and is most commonly recorded in the cardiac and extracardiac blood vessels, vagina, oviduct, rectum, epididymis, spinal cord, pancreas, urinary bladder, kidneys, and stomach. The etiology is unknown although it has been considered in minipigs as well as in rats, dogs, and monkeys to be possibly immune mediated. This background change is important with respect to its nature and distribution in the minipig in order to distinguish it from drug-induced vascular changes, which might occur in similar locations and have similar morphologic features. This review summarizes the morphology, incidence, and predilection sites of arteritis as a spontaneously occurring background change and as a drug-induced vasculopathy in the minipig, and also describes the main aspects to consider when evaluating vascular changes in Göttingen minipig toxicity studies and their human relevance.
Platform Architecture for Decentralized Positioning Systems

A platform architecture for positioning systems is essential for the realization of a flexible localization system, which interacts with other systems and supports various positioning technologies and algorithms. The decentralized processing of a position enables pushing the application-level knowledge into a mobile station and avoids the communication with a central unit such as a server or a base station. In addition, the calculation of the position on low-cost and resource-constrained devices presents a challenge due to the limited computing, storage capacity, as well as power supply. Therefore, we propose a platform architecture that enables the design of a system with the reusability of the components, extensibility (e.g., with other positioning technologies) and interoperability. Furthermore, the position is computed on a low-cost device such as a microcontroller, which simultaneously performs additional tasks such as data collecting or preprocessing based on an operating system. The platform architecture is designed, implemented and evaluated on the basis of two positioning systems: a field strength system and a time of arrival-based positioning system.
The effect of liquor licensing restrictions on assault: a quasi‐experimental study in Sydney, Australia

AIMS To determine whether restrictions on the availability of alcohol in two inner-city entertainment areas in Sydney, Australia (1) reduced the incidence of assault in those areas, (2) increased the incidence of assault in nearby areas (where the restrictions did not apply), (3) resulted in a net reduction in overall levels of assault (4) and/or whether the reductions in assault were most pronounced during the daily time-periods when liquor trading restrictions were in operation. DESIGN Structural time-series modelling was used to estimate and compare trends in assault in areas/times affected by the new restrictions on alcohol availability with trends in assault in areas unaffected by the new restrictions. SETTING Sydney, Australia. PARTICIPANTS/MEASUREMENTS The primary outcome measure was the police-recorded monthly incidence of non-domestic assault in the 78 months between January 2009 and June 2015. FINDINGS Following the reforms, we found reductions in assaults of 45% [beta = -0.599, 95% confidence interval (CI) = -1.107, -0.091] and 22% (beta =0.260, 95% CI = -0.397, -0.123), respectively, in the Kings Cross and Sydney CBD Entertainment Precincts. In the Kings Cross Entertainment Precinct, reductions in assault were observed in all three daily time-periods. In the Sydney CBD Entertainment Precinct reductions in assault were observed only in the second and third daily time-periods. Assaults did not increase in entertainment areas adjacent to or within easy reach of the target areas. CONCLUSION Restrictions on the availability of alcohol appear to reduce the incidence of assault.
Non-rigid image deformation algorithm based on MRLS-TPS

In this paper, we propose a novel closed-form transformation estimation method based on moving regularized least squares optimization with thin-plate spline (MRLS-TPS) for non-rigid image deformation. The method takes the user-controlled point-offset-vectors as the input data, and estimates the spatial transformation about the two control point sets for each pixel. To achieve a realistic deformation, we formulates the transformation estimation as a vector-field interpolation problem by a moving regularized least squares method. Unlike MLS, the mapping function is modeled by a non-rigid function thin-plate spline with regularization technique, such that the deformation can satisfy both global linear affine motion and local non-rigid warping. We derive a closed-form solution of the transformation and achieve a fast implementation. In addition, the proposed method can give a wonderful user experience, fast and convenient manipulating. Extensive experiments on real images demonstrated the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods and the commercial software Adobe PhotoShop CS 6, especially in case of flexible object motion.
Argumentation mining: How can a machine acquire common sense and world knowledge?

Argumentation mining is an advanced form of human language understanding by the machine. This is a challenging task for a machine. When sufﬁcient explicit discourse markers are present in the language utterances, the argumentation can be interpreted by the machine with an acceptable degree of accuracy. However, in many real settings, the mining task is difﬁcult due to the lack or ambiguity of the discourse markers, and the fact that a substantial amount of knowledge needed for the correct recognition of the argumentation, its composing elements and their relationships is not explicitly present in the text, but makes up the background knowledge that humans possess when interpreting language. In this article 1 we focus on how the machine can automatically acquire the needed common sense and world knowledge. As very few research has been done in this respect, many of the ideas proposed in this article are tentative, but start being researched. We give an overview of the latest methods for human language understanding that map language to a formal knowledge representation that facilitates other tasks (for instance, a representation that is used to visualize the argumentation or that is easily shared in a decision or argumentation support system). Most current systems are trained on texts that are manually annotated. Then we go deeper into the new ﬁeld of representation learning that nowadays is very much studied in computational linguistics. This ﬁeld investigates methods for representing language as statistical concepts or as vectors, allowing straightforward methods of compositionality. The methods often use deep learning and its underlying neural network technologies to learn concepts from large text collections in an unsupervised way (i.e., without the need for manual annotations). We show how these methods can help the argumentation mining process, but also demonstrate that these methods need further research to automatically acquire the necessary background knowledge and more speciﬁcally common sense and world knowledge. We propose a number of ways to improve the learning of common sense and world knowledge by exploiting textual and visual data, and touch upon how we can integrate the learned knowledge in the argumentation mining process.
H∞ Robust Control of a Large-Piston MEMS Micromirror for Compact Fourier Transform Spectrometer Systems

Incorporating linear-scanning micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) micromirrors into Fourier transform spectral acquisition systems can greatly reduce the size of the spectrometer equipment, making portable Fourier transform spectrometers (FTS) possible. How to minimize the tilting of the MEMS mirror plate during its large linear scan is a major problem in this application. In this work, an FTS system has been constructed based on a biaxial MEMS micromirror with a large-piston displacement of 180 μm, and a biaxial H∞ robust controller is designed. Compared with open-loop control and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) closed-loop control, H∞ robust control has good stability and robustness. The experimental results show that the stable scanning displacement reaches 110.9 μm under the H∞ robust control, and the tilting angle of the MEMS mirror plate in that full scanning range falls within ±0.0014°. Without control, the FTS system cannot generate meaningful spectra. In contrast, the FTS yields a clean spectrum with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) spectral linewidth of 96 cm−1 under the H∞ robust control. Moreover, the FTS system can maintain good stability and robustness under various driving conditions.
Damage monitoring of carbon fibre reinforced composites using acoustic emission

This work is aimed at practical damage assessment in large composite panels with a view to long-term monitoring of such components. Three sets of experiments have been carried out on a carbon fibre epoxy composite to assess the possibilities for source location and also to characterise the AE associated with impacts and with various damage modes. AE wave propagation was studied using a Hsu-Nielsen source on a one-metre square CFRC plate and a new approach using features of the Gabor Wavelet Transform was developed to determine the resulting wave speeds and modes. Next, a series of tests were carried out with low speed impacts and the time and frequency features identified as a function of the incident energy, size and material of the impacting particle. In particular, it was found that the time difference between two peaks in the Gabor Transform Contour Plot could be used as a measure of the impact contact time. Finally, a set of destructive tests (tension, tearing and bending) were carried out while measuring AE to identify fibre breakage, matrix cracking and fibre/matrix de-bonding. Using a classification scheme based on the modal analysis developed in the propagation studies, the proportions of the various damage modes could be assessed. The research concludes overall that modal AE analysis, aided by the novel signal processing schemes developed here is an efficient way of identifying and locating damage in CFRC panels in a way that reduces the reliance on energy methods and the consequent problems that this raises with calibration.
A Comparison of Approaches to Mitigate Hypothetical Bias

We compare two approaches to mitigating hypothetical bias. The study design includes three treatments: an actual payment treatment, a contingent valuation (CV) treatment with a follow-up certainty question, and a CV treatment with a cheap talk script. Our results suggest that both the follow-up certainty treatment and the cheap talk treatment produce willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates consistent with the actual payment treatment. However, the follow-up certainty treatment provides response distributions at all offer amounts that are statistically similar to the actual payment treatment, while the cheap talk treatment provides similar responses only at some offer amounts. Furthermore, the cheap talk treatment is effective only for inexperienced individuals. We conclude that the follow-up certainty approach is more consistent than the cheap talk approach for eliminating hypothetical bias.
Low profile patch antenna on cement substrate for indoor applications

A novel microstrip antenna on cement substrate is presented. Cement as substrate provides scope for low profile, low cost antenna deployment for indoor communications including WLAN, Fibre to the Home (FTTH) and Wireless sensors for IoT applications. A rectangular patch resonating at 1 GHz is simulated employing Ansoft HFSS. An omni directional pattern with an appreciable return loss of −30 dB is observed. The reduced gain of −3 dB can be attributed to substrate conductivity. The antenna dimensions are scaled geometrically to obtain gain enhancement without return loss deterioration. Ageing alters the dielectric properties of cement significantly. The impact on antenna performance is analysed by simulating antenna parameters for aged substrate. The relative permittivity and conductivity are altered, maintaining the designed patch dimensions. There is a tolerable increase in return loss to around −10 dB that warrants attention. Further research includes optimizing return loss to appreciable levels and experimental verification of the simulated results. Exploring materials as filler in cement mortar to reduce conductivity promises attractive scope for material research.
Vacancy and interstitial defects in hafnia

We have performed plane wave density functional theory calculations of atomic and molecular interstitial defects and oxygen vacancies in monoclinic hafnia $({\mathrm{HfO}}_{2}). $ The atomic structures of singly and doubly positively charged oxygen vacancies, and singly and doubly negatively charged interstitial oxygen atoms and molecules are investigated. We also consider hafnium vacancies, substitutional zirconium, and an oxygen vacancy paired with substitutional zirconium in hafnia. Our results predict that atomic oxygen incorporation is energetically favored over molecular incorporation, and that charged defect species are more stable than neutral species when electrons are available from the hafnia conduction band. The calculated positions of defect levels with respect to the bottom of the silicon conduction band demonstrate that interstitial oxygen atoms and molecules and positively charged oxygen vacancies can trap electrons from silicon.
SEARCH FOR NEUTRINOS IN SUPER-KAMIOKANDE ASSOCIATED WITH GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE EVENTS GW150914 AND GW151226

We report the results from a search in Super-Kamiokande for neutrino signals coincident with the first detected gravitational-wave events, GW150914 and GW151226, as well as LVT151012, using a neutrino energy range from 3.5 MeV to 100 PeV. We searched for coincident neutrino events within a time window of ±500 s around the gravitational-wave detection time. Four neutrino candidates are found for GW150914, and no candidates are found for GW151226. The remaining neutrino candidates are consistent with the expected background events. We calculated the 90% confidence level upper limits on the combined neutrino fluence for both gravitational-wave events, which depends on event energy and topologies. Considering the upward-going muon data set (1.6 GeV–100 PeV), the neutrino fluence limit for each gravitational-wave event is 14–37 (19–50) cm−2 for muon neutrinos (muon antineutrinos), depending on the zenith angle of the event. In the other data sets, the combined fluence limits for both gravitational-wave events range from 2.4 × 104 to 7.0 × 109 cm−2.
Coping: Impact of Gender and Stressful Life Events in Middle and in Old Age

ABSTRACT Objectives: This study seeks to identify different life events that participants considered stressful and to study the joint effect of gender, age group, and main stressful life events on the use of different coping strategies.Methods: The sample comprised 243 men and women, 55 to 99 years old, who attended senior activity centers. Analyses were conducted using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). Results: Three main categories of stressful life events were identified: health problems, family problems, and other problems. Significant main effects of gender and stressful life events, and marginal effects of age group on coping strategies were found. Furthermore, an interaction between gender and age group, and also between gender and stressful life events emerged in some of the coping strategies analyzed.Conclusions: Age, gender or type of stressful situation impact on the coping strategies used by older people. Older men and women were found to use different strategies depending upon the situation they are facing and upon their age group. The results may prove useful to practitioners and clinicians who directly work with older people and may help clinicians provide effective coping strategies to address the specific life events that older adults find stressful.
Phenotype of GABA-transaminase deficiency

Objective: We report a case series of 10 patients with γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)–transaminase deficiency including a novel therapeutic trial and an expanded phenotype. Methods: Case ascertainment, literature review, comprehensive evaluations, and long-term treatment with flumazenil. Results: All patients presented with neonatal or early infantile-onset encephalopathy; other features were hypotonia, hypersomnolence, epilepsy, choreoathetosis, and accelerated linear growth. EEGs showed burst-suppression, modified hypsarrhythmia, multifocal spikes, and generalized spike-wave. Five of the 10 patients are currently alive with age at last follow-up between 18 months and 9.5 years. Treatment with continuous flumazenil was implemented in 2 patients. One patient, with a milder phenotype, began treatment at age 21 months and has continued for 20 months with improved alertness and less excessive adventitious movements. The second patient had a more severe phenotype and was 7 years of age at initiation of flumazenil, which was not continued. Conclusions: GABA-transaminase deficiency presents with neonatal or infantile-onset encephalopathy including hypersomnolence and choreoathetosis. A widened phenotypic spectrum is reported as opposed to lethality by 2 years of age. The GABA-A benzodiazepine receptor antagonist flumazenil may represent a therapeutic strategy.
Title Providing perioperative care for patients with hip fractures

Providing perioperative care for patients with hip fractures can present major challenges for the anaesthesiologist. These patients often have multiple comorbidities, the deterioration of any one of which may have precipitated the fall. A careful balance has to be achieved between minimising the time before operation and spending time to optimise their medical status. This review will present insights into preoperative patient assessment and optimization in this group of patients from the anaesthesiologists’ perspective. In particular, it will highlight important medical issues of concern that may alter anaesthetic risks and management. With a greater understanding of what these issues are, potentially a more prompt and integrated approach to managing these patients may be made. Hopefully, this would result in minimising last minute cancellations due to medical reasons for these patients.
Porphyrin Homeostasis Maintained by ABCG2 Regulates Self-Renewal of Embryonic Stem Cells

Background Under appropriate culture conditions, undifferentiated embryonic stem (ES) cells can undergo multiple self-renewal cycles without loss of pluripotency suggesting they must be equipped with specific defense mechanisms to ensure sufficient genetic stability during self-renewal expansion. The ATP binding cassette transporter ABCG2 is expressed in a wide variety of somatic and embryonic stem cells. However, whether it plays an important role in stem cell maintenance remains to be defined. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we provide evidence to show that an increase in the level of ABCG2 was observed accompanied by ES colony expansion and then were followed by decreases in the level of protoporphyrin IX (PPIX) indicating that ABCG2 plays a role in maintaining porphyrin homoeostasis. RNA-interference mediated inhibition of ABCG2 as well as functional blockage of ABCG2 transporter with fumitremorgin C (FTC), a specific and potent inhibitor of ABCG2, not only elevated the cellular level of PPIX, but also arrest the cell cycle and reduced expression of the pluripotent gene Nanog. Overexpression of ABCG2 in ES cells was able to counteract the increase of endogenous PPIX induced by treatment with 5-Aminolevulinic acid suggesting ABCG2 played a direct role in removal of PPIX from ES cells. We also found that excess PPIX in ES cells led to elevated levels of reactive oxygen species which in turn triggered DNA damage signals as indicated by increased levels of γH2AX and phosphorylated p53. The increased level of p53 reduced Nanog expression because RNA- interference mediated inhibition of p53 was able to prevent the downregulation of Nanog induced by FTC treatment. Conclusions/Significance The present work demonstrated that ABCG2 protects ES cells from PPIX accumulation during colony expansion, and that p53 and γH2AX acts as a downstream checkpoint of ABCG2-dependent defense machinery in order to maintain the self-renewal of ES cells.
DNA Methylation in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

Despite the high efficiency of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia, 20-25% of patients develop drug resistance resulting in therapy failure. Besides mutations of the BCR-ABL1 kinase domain, the abnormal epigenetic regulation of the expression of critical genes for cell proliferation and survival has a central role in the disease pathogenesis and progression towards the drug resistant phenotype. Such epigenetic changes have the potential to be modulated by specific drugs including demethylating agents and histone deacetylase inhibitors. Here the current knowledge on the BCR-ABL1-associated methylation status is reviewed.