Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Low-Overhead Channel Sounding Protocol for Downlink Multi-User MIMO in IEEE 802.11ax WLAN

The next generation wireless LAN standard IEEE 802.11ax aims to provide improved throughput performance in dense environments. We have proposed an efficient channel sounding mechanism for DL-MU-MIMO that has been adopted as a new sounding protocol in the 802.11ax standard. In this paper, we evaluate the overhead reduction in the 802.11ax sounding protocol compared with the 802.11ac sounding protocol. Sounding is frequently performed to obtain accurate channel information from the associated stations in order to improve overall system throughput. However, there is a trade-off between accurate channel information and the overhead incurred due to frequent sounding. Therefore, the sounding interval is an important factor that determines system throughput in DL-MU-MIMO transmission. We also evaluate the effect of sounding interval on the system throughput performance using both sounding protocols and provide a comparative analysis of the performance improvement. key words: channel sounding protocol, DL-MU-MIMO, IEEE 802.11ax, wireless LANs
The Impact of Antenna Height Difference on the Performance of Downlink Cellular Networks

Capable of significantly reducing cell size and enhancing spatial reuse, network densification is shown to be one of the most dominant approaches to expand network capacity. Due to the scarcity of available spectrum resources, nevertheless, the over-deployment of network infrastructures, e.g., cellular base stations (BSs), would strengthen the inter-cell interference as well, thus in turn deteriorating the system performance. On this account, we investigate the performance of downlink cellular networks in terms of user coverage probability (CP) and network spatial throughput (ST), aiming to shed light on the limitation of network densification. Notably, it is shown that both CP and ST would be degraded and even diminish to be zero when BS density is sufficiently large, provided that practical antenna height difference (AHD) between BSs and users is involved to characterize pathloss. Moreover, the results also reveal that the increase of network ST is at the expense of the degradation of CP. Therefore, to balance the tradeoff between user and network performance, we further study the critical density, under which ST could be maximized under the CP constraint. Through a special case study, it follows that the critical density is inversely proportional to the square of AHD. The results in this work could provide helpful guideline towards the application of network densification in the next-generation wireless networks.
Meet-in-the-Middle Attacks on Reduced-Round GOST

The block cipher GOST (GOST 28147-89) is a Russian standard for encryption and message authentication that is included in OpenSSL 1.0. 0. In this paper, we present meet-in-the-middle attacks on several block ciphers, each consisting of 22 or fewer rounds of GOST. Our 22-round attack on rounds 10–31 requires only 5 known plaintexts and a computational effort equivalent to testing about 2 keys for a success probability of 1− 2. This attack is the best (going by the number of rounds) low data complexity key-recovery attack on GOST.
[Objective and subjective prospective memory in patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis].

INTRODUCTION prospective memory is the ability to remember actions in the future or remember delayed intentions. OBJECTIVE to study the relationship between prospective memory complaints with an objective measure of prospective memory and affective-emotional variables such as depression and anxiety. SUBJECTS AND MATERIALS 51 patients with multiple sclerosis relapsing-remitting and 46 participants in the control group were evaluated with a prospective memory task called El Condor, a questionnaire on subjective complaints of prospective memory, a depression inventory and an anxiety inventory. RESULTS the control group performed better in El Condor than patients with multiple sclerosis, t = 6263, df = 95, p = 0.000. The prospective memory questionnaire correlated with the depression and the anxiety inventories, but not with El Condor. CONCLUSIONS subjective prospective memory is associated with depression and anxiety and not with the objective prospective memory in a group of multiple sclerosis patients. The results indicate that the subjective and objective prospective memory must be studied as separate entities or different phenomena.
NURBS: A NEW SHAPE DESCRIPTOR FOR SHAPE-BASED IMAGE RETRIEVAL

The representation, matching and analysis of objects of interest are of prime importance in shape-based retrieval systems. In the large image repositories, there arises a problem to find a set of images that are relevant to the user’s needs. This necessitates an effective retrieval approach that resembles the human capability to retrieving images that are relevant to a query from a database. Perceiving a shape is to capture prominent elements of an object. For the purpose of retrieval by shape similarity, representation is preferred such that the salient perceptual aspects of a shape are captured and are able to imitate the human perception in perceiving shapes. The representation method is important, because the effectiveness of the representation will determine the accuracy of the retrieval results. Thus, there is a need to have an effective and accurate representation method. The representation features are then used to compute the similarity score between two images. In this paper, we present a new shape descriptor to represent all possible shapes using Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline (NURBS). We also present NURBS-Warping method, which is similar to elastic matching, to obtain similarity score in the retrieval process. We run two sets of experiments to show the efficiency of NURBS shape representation and NURBS-Warping method over B-Spline representation.
Detecting Symptom Exaggeration in College Students Seeking ADHD Treatment: Performance Validity Assessment Using the NV-MSVT and IVA-Plus

ABSTRACT The symptoms of ADHD are highly subjective, and there is ample empirical evidence that demonstrates the ease with which impairments in attention can be feigned on many commonly used subjective and objective measures of attention. We examined the combination of two assessment measures, NV-MSVT and IVA+, to screen for performance validity and ADHD symptoms in college students. Results indicated that the NV-MSVT was effective in differentiating between students with potential high impairment, such as ADHD, and possible malingerers. In addition, in vivo clinical data (N = 350) resulted in lower validity cut-off scores on the IVA+ than had been previously suggested. Clinical implications and future research are also discussed.
TBCD Links Centriologenesis, Spindle Microtubule Dynamics, and Midbody Abscission in Human Cells

Microtubule-organizing centers recruit α- and β-tubulin polypeptides for microtubule nucleation. Tubulin synthesis is complex, requiring five specific cofactors, designated tubulin cofactors (TBCs) A–E, which contribute to various aspects of microtubule dynamics in vivo. Here, we show that tubulin cofactor D (TBCD) is concentrated at the centrosome and midbody, where it participates in centriologenesis, spindle organization, and cell abscission. TBCD exhibits a cell-cycle-specific pattern, localizing on the daughter centriole at G1 and on procentrioles by S, and disappearing from older centrioles at telophase as the protein is recruited to the midbody. Our data show that TBCD overexpression results in microtubule release from the centrosome and G1 arrest, whereas its depletion produces mitotic aberrations and incomplete microtubule retraction at the midbody during cytokinesis. TBCD is recruited to the centriole replication site at the onset of the centrosome duplication cycle. A role in centriologenesis is further supported in differentiating ciliated cells, where TBCD is organized into “centriolar rosettes”. These data suggest that TBCD participates in both canonical and de novo centriolar assembly pathways.
Automated deconvolution of structured mixtures from heterogeneous tumor genomic data

With increasing appreciation for the extent and importance of intratumor heterogeneity, much attention in cancer research has focused on profiling heterogeneity on a single patient level. Although true single-cell genomic technologies are rapidly improving, they remain too noisy and costly at present for population-level studies. Bulk sequencing remains the standard for population-scale tumor genomics, creating a need for computational tools to separate contributions of multiple tumor clones and assorted stromal and infiltrating cell populations to pooled genomic data. All such methods are limited to coarse approximations of only a few cell subpopulations, however. In prior work, we demonstrated the feasibility of improving cell type deconvolution by taking advantage of substructure in genomic mixtures via a strategy called simplicial complex unmixing. We improve on past work by introducing enhancements to automate learning of substructured genomic mixtures, with specific emphasis on genome-wide copy number variation (CNV) data, as well as the ability to process quantitative RNA expression data, and heterogeneous combinations of RNA and CNV data. We introduce methods for dimensionality estimation to better decompose mixture model substructure; fuzzy clustering to better identify substructure in sparse, noisy data; and automated model inference methods for other key model parameters. We further demonstrate their effectiveness in identifying mixture substructure in true breast cancer CNV data from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Source code is available at https://github.com/tedroman/WSCUnmix
Bacterial isolates exhibiting multidrug resistance, hemolytic activity, and high 16S rRNA gene similarity with well‐known pathogens found in camel milk samples of Riyadh region

Customary consumption of unpasteurized milk by the population in the central Najed region of Saudi Arabia may pose a health risk. Therefore, 80 camel milk samples were collected aseptically from seven different stations of Riyadh region. The biochemical and microbiological properties of these milk samples were determined. Nutrient agar and brain heart infusion agar were used to determine mesophilic aerobic counts (MACs). The MAC in each mL of milk varied from 60 to 16 × 104 CFU/mL on nutrient agar. Based on the colony morphology, 176 colonies were collected from different samples, and these isolates were de‐replicated into 80 unique isolates using rep‐PCR analysis. Surprisingly, the 16S rRNA sequence analysis of these strains revealed that more than one‐third of the collected milk samples contained strains that share maximum sequence similarities with well‐known pathogens, such as Brucella, Bacillus anthracis, Listeria monocytogenes, and MRSA. Furthermore, many strains exhibit 16S rRNA gene similarity with opportunistic pathogens such as Citrobacter freundii and Kytococcus schroeteri. Many strains exhibit β‐hemolytic activity and resistant to six different antibiotics. Our study suggested that consumption of raw camel milk from this region constitutes a great health risk.
A fast Bayesian algorithmic enhancement for real time bit error ratio test (BERT)

Continuous, real-time bit error ratio (BER) test of modern communication and storage channels is a ubiquitous problem: the noises tend to vary in space and time, and are difficult to fully characterize offline. Traditional method requires time consuming accumulation of samples for which Bayesian method has shown its promise in alleviating by incorporating a priori knowledge. However, the method has so far depended on a simplistic linear search algorithm that suffers from long running time which defeats the purpose of sample reduction. In this paper, we reveal the existence of a convex solution space for the problem generally thought to be non-convex. This results in an improved performance by orders of magnitude.
Adherence to Childhood Tuberculosis Treatment in Mozambique

Background There is limited literature regarding adherence rates for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) in children. We aimed to describe TB treatment outcomes and adherence as well as to evaluate associated factors to poor adherence in Mozambican children. Methods This is a sub-study of a community TB incidence study among children <3 years of age. Incomplete adherence included the sum of lost-to-follow-up cases plus those with a delay of > 3 weeks to treatment completion. Results Fifty TB treatments were assessed. Forty-four (88.0%) patients completed treatment, two (4.0%) died during treatment and four (8.0%) were lost to follow-up. Incomplete adherence was observed in 31.3% (15 of 48) of cases and was associated with malnutrition or history of a migrant mother. Conclusion Although treatment outcome is overall good, there is still a significant proportion of incomplete adherence. Further larger paediatric TB cohorts and qualitative approaches are needed to assess and confirm potential factors for non-adherence.
Health App Possession Among Smartphone or Tablet Owners in Hong Kong: Population-Based Survey

Background Health apps are increasingly used with important implications for health. Hong Kong is one of the most technologically advanced and connected cities—smartphone ownership and Internet access rates are among the highest in the world. Objective We investigated the prevalence of health app possession and related sociodemographic factors and health behaviors among smartphone or tablet owners in Hong Kong. Methods A territory-wide population-based dual (landline and mobile) telephone survey was conducted in 2016. Respondents were asked whether they had health-related apps on their smartphones or tablets and what functions were available on the apps (eg, tracking physical activity and logging health records). Logistic regression was used to calculate the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) and 95% CI of health app possession for different demographic characteristics, socioeconomic position (education, employment, and income), health behaviors (smoking, alcohol, and physical activity) and health (body mass index and chronic diseases). Results Of the 4129 smartphone or tablet owners (81.28%, 4129/5080 respondents), 995 (24.10%) had a health app. Tracking physical activity (67.0% of 995) and logging health records (43.0% of 995) were the most common functions of the health apps. Overall, younger age, higher education, and household income were associated with having health apps (all P<.001). Compared with physical inactivity, engaging in moderate physical activity ≥1 day/week was associated with having health apps (aOR 1.45 [95% CI 1.20-1.75] for 1-3 days/week, and aOR 1.32 [95% CI 1.07-1.62] for ≥4 days/week). Having a history of chronic diseases was associated with having health apps (aOR 1.36 [95% CI 1.11-1.68]). Conclusions We have shown a lower prevalence of use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in respondents with lower education and income in the most developed Chinese city. This could be seen as a confirmation of the “Inverse information law,” which suggests that those most in need have less use of services and hence receive less benefits from advancements in medicine and health related ICTs.
Optimized pulse shaping for OFDM multi-user communications over doubly dispersive channels

In multiple access OFDM systems, the division of the different users is achieved by exploiting the orthogonality of the sub-carriers. However, this orthogonality may be lost if pulse shapes used in the modulation and demodulation processes are badly localized in time and frequency and the channel is doubly dispersive. Hence a big amount of self and inter-user interference will arise and severely panelize system performance. This problem becomes more critical in the uplink, where users have different time offsets due to different propagation delays and different frequency offsets due to misalignment in carrier frequencies and different Doppler shifts. In this paper we present a pulse-shaped OFDM based analysis of inter-symbol/inter-carrier interference for synchronous downlink and asynchronous uplink of multi-user systems. We propose an optimization procedure for designing pulses maximizing the SIR. We show that system performances can visibly be improved by inserting frequency guard intervals between adjacent users, while making a convenient trade-off with spectral efficiency.
One-year assessment of physical activity level in adult Qatari females: a pedometer-based longitudinal study

Background Physical inactivity is a growing health concern and has been identified as the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality. The Arab region includes countries with some of the world’s highest physical inactivity levels, such as Qatar, more specifically the Qatari female population. Objective The objective of this study is to assess the physical activity levels of Qatari national female adults during a 1-year pedometer-based program. Materials and methods A total of 549 Qatari national females aged between 18 years and 64 years were included. Data extracted from “Step into Health” program web database in Qatar were used for analyses. Daily habitual physical activity (daily total step count and aerobic steps) was assessed through the Omron HJ-324U pedometer. Step counts were classified as follows: <5,000 steps/d, sedentary; 5,000–7,499 steps/d, low active; and ≥7,500 steps/d, physically active. Statistical significance was set at P-value ≤0.05. Descriptive statistics were used, and habitual physical activity was calculated through repeated measures analysis of variance to determine the difference across the monitored days. Results Mean age was 37.4±11.7 years, and median body mass index of 28.8 kg/m2 (interquartile range 24.8–33.5). Daily steps for the overall population ranged from 3,505 steps/d to 10,010 steps/d, with a median of 6,008 steps/d. A total of 242 (44.1%) females were sedentary, 178 (32.4%) were low active, and 129 (23.5%) were physically active. The physically active group showed a median of 927 aerobic steps/d (interquartile range 0–4,248). Conclusion Based on the results of this study, Qatari females are not meeting the global recommendations of physical activity. Future research might need to consider barriers to physical activity as well as social, cultural, and environmental factors.
The Cytoskeletal Adapter Protein Spinophilin Regulates Invadopodia Dynamics and Tumor Cell Invasion in Glioblastoma

Glioblastoma is a primary brain cancer that is resistant to all treatment modalities. This resistance is due, in large part, to invasive cancer cells that disperse from the main tumor site, escape surgical resection, and contribute to recurrent secondary lesions. The adhesion and signaling mechanisms that drive glioblastoma cell invasion remain enigmatic, and as a result there are no effective anti-invasive clinical therapies. Here we have characterized a novel adhesion and signaling pathway comprised of the integrin αvβ8 and its intracellular binding partner, Spinophilin (Spn), which regulates glioblastoma cell invasion in the brain microenvironment. We show for the first time that Spn binds directly to the cytoplasmic domain of β8 integrin in glioblastoma cells. Genetically targeting Spn leads to enhanced invasive cell growth in preclinical models of glioblastoma. Spn regulates glioblastoma cell invasion by modulating the formation and dissolution of invadopodia. Spn-regulated invadopodia dynamics are dependent, in part, on proper spatiotemporal activation of the Rac1 GTPase. Glioblastoma cells that lack Spn showed diminished Rac1 activities, increased numbers of invadopodia, and enhanced extracellular matrix degradation. Collectively, these data identify Spn as a critical adhesion and signaling protein that is essential for modulating glioblastoma cell invasion in the brain microenvironment. Implications: Tumor cell invasion is a major clinical obstacle in glioblastoma and this study identifies a new signaling pathway regulated by Spinophilin in invasive glioblastoma. Mol Cancer Res; 14(12); 1277–87. ©2016 AACR.
Evaluation of preferences of women and healthcare professionals in Singapore for implementation of noninvasive prenatal testing for Down syndrome.

INTRODUCTION Invasive prenatal diagnosis (IPD) has long been used to prenatally diagnose Down syndrome (DS), but it is associated with a small risk of miscarriage. Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is a highly sensitive screening test using cell-free DNA in maternal blood for detection of DS without the risk of miscarriage, but it confers a small risk of false-positive and false-negative results. The implementation of these procedures into clinical practice requires an understanding of stakeholder preferences. METHODS A total of 69 health professionals (HPs) and 301 women took part in a discrete choice experiment (DCE) in which preferences for four prenatal test attributes - accuracy, time of results, risk of miscarriage and amount of information provided - were assessed. Conditional logit regression was used to analyse the data. Data on demographics and ranked preferences for test attributes was collected, and a direct choice question regarding NIPT, IPD or neither test was posed to participants. RESULTS The women showed a preference for test safety, whereas HPs prioritised test accuracy above all other attributes. When offered a direct choice of NIPT, IPD or neither test, women aged 35 years and older, those with previous miscarriage or who knew a child with DS were more likely to choose NIPT. Chinese women preferred NIPT, whereas Indian women preferred IPD. CONCLUSION Our data highlights the need for patient-specific counselling, taking into account previous experiences and cultural factors. Since women and HPs prioritise different test attributes, it is essential that HPs recognise these differences in order to provide non-biased counselling.
Inferring human microbial dynamics from temporal metagenomics data: Pitfalls and lessons

The human gut microbiota is a very complex and dynamic ecosystem that plays a crucial role in health and well‐being. Inferring microbial community structure and dynamics directly from time‐resolved metagenomics data is key to understanding the community ecology and predicting its temporal behavior. Many methods have been proposed to perform the inference. Yet, as we point out in this review, there are several pitfalls along the way. Indeed, the uninformative temporal measurements and the compositional nature of the relative abundance data raise serious challenges in inference. Moreover, the inference results can be largely distorted when only focusing on highly abundant species by ignoring or grouping low‐abundance species. Finally, the implicit assumptions in various regularization methods may not reflect reality. Those issues have to be seriously considered in ecological modeling of human gut microbiota.