Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DNA and Protein Co-Immunization Improves the Magnitude and Longevity of Humoral Immune Responses in Macaques

We tested the concept of combining DNA with protein to improve anti-HIV Env systemic and mucosal humoral immune responses. Rhesus macaques were vaccinated with DNA, DNA&protein co-immunization or DNA prime followed by protein boost, and the magnitude and mucosal dissemination of the antibody responses were monitored in both plasma and mucosal secretions. We achieved induction of robust humoral responses by optimized DNA vaccination delivered by in vivo electroporation. These responses were greatly increased upon administration of a protein boost. Importantly, a co-immunization regimen of DNA&protein injected in the same muscle at the same time induced the highest systemic binding and neutralizing antibodies to homologous or heterologous Env as well as the highest Env-specific IgG in saliva. Inclusion of protein in the vaccine resulted in more immunized animals with Env-specific IgG in rectal fluids. Inclusion of DNA in the vaccine significantly increased the longevity of systemic humoral immune responses, whereas protein immunization, either as the only vaccine component or as boost after DNA prime, was followed by a great decline of humoral immune responses overtime. We conclude that DNA&protein co-delivery in a simple vaccine regimen combines the strength of each vaccine component, resulting in improved magnitude, extended longevity and increased mucosal dissemination of the induced antibodies in immunized rhesus macaques.
Hyper-X Flight Engine Ground Testing for X-43 Flight Risk Reduction

Airframe-integrated scramjet engine testing has been completed at Mach 7 flight conditions in the NASA Langley 8-Foot High Temperature Tunnel as part of the NASA Hyper-X program. This test provided engine performance and operability data, as well as design and database verification, for the Mach 7 flight tests of the Hyper-X research vehicle (X-43), which will provide the first-ever airframe-integrated scramjet data in flight. The Hyper-X Flight Engine, a duplicate Mach 7 X-43 scramjet engine, was mounted on an airframe structure that duplicated the entire three-dimensional propulsion flowpath from the vehicle leading edge to the vehicle trailing edge. This model was also tested to verify and validate the complete flight-like engine system. This paper describes the subsystems that were subjected to flight-like conditions and presents supporting data. The results from this test help to reduce risk for the Mach 7 flights of the X-43.
Convolutional Neural Network Simplification Based on Feature Maps Selection

We present a feature maps selection method for convolutional neural network (CNN) which can keep the classifier performance when CNN is used as a feature extractor. This method aims to simplify the last subsampling layer of CNN by cutting the number of feature maps with Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). It is shown that our method can stabilize the classification accuracy and achieve runtime reduction by removing some feature maps of the last subsampling layer which have worst separability. And the result also lay the foundation for further simplification of CNN.
Iodine Deficiency in 2007: Global Progress since 2003

Background Iodine deficiency is a global public health problem, and estimates of the extent of the problem were last produced in 2003. Objectives To provide updated global estimates of the magnitude of iodine deficiency in 2007, to assess progress since 2003, and to provide information on gaps in the data available. Methods Recently published, nationally representative data on urinary iodine (UI) in school-age children collected between 1997 and 2006 were used to update country estimates of iodine nutrition. These estimates, alongside the 2003 estimates for the remaining countries without new data, were used to generate updated global and regional estimates of iodine nutrition. The median UI was used to classify countries according to the public health significance of their iodine nutrition status. Progress was measured by comparing current prevalence figures with those from 2003. The data available for pregnant women by year of survey were also assessed. Results New UI data in school-age children were available for 41 countries, representing 45.4% of the world's school-age children. These data, along with previous country estimates for 89 countries, are the basis for the estimates and represent 91.1% of this population group. An estimated 31.5% of school-age children (266 million) have insufficient iodine intake. In the general population, 2 billion people have insufficient iodine intake. The number of countries where iodine deficiency is a public health problem is 47. Progress has been made: 12 countries have progressed to optimal iodine status, and the percentage of school-age children at risk of iodine deficiency has decreased by 5%. However, iodine intake is more than adequate, or even excessive, in 34 countries: an increase from 27 in 2003. There are insufficient data to estimate the global prevalence of iodine deficiency in pregnant women. Conclusions Global progress in controlling iodine deficiency has been made since 2003, but efforts need to be accelerated in order to eliminate this debilitating health issue that affects almost one in three individuals globally. Surveillance systems need to be strengthened to monitor both low and excessive intakes of iodine.
2-step algorithm for enhancing effectiveness of sender-based message logging

Sender-based message logging allows each message to be logged in the volatile storage of its corresponding sender. This behavior avoids logging messages on the stable storage and results in lower failure-free overhead than receiver-based message logging. However, in the message logging approach, each process should keep in its limited volatile storage the log information of its sent messages for recovering their receivers. In this paper, we propose a 2-step algorithm to efficiently remove logged messages from the volatile storage while ensuring the consistent recovery of the system in case of process failures. As the first step, the algorithm eliminates useless log information in the volatile storage with no extra message and forced checkpoint. But, even if the step has been performed, the more empty buffer space for logging messages in future may be required. In this case, the second step forces the useful log information to become useless by maintaining a vector to record the size of the information for every other process. This behavior incurs fewer additional messages and forced checkpoints than existing algorithms.
A low-complex peak-to-average power reduction scheme for OFDM based massive MIMO systems

An Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based multi-user massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system is considered. The problem of high Peak-to-Average Ratio (PAR) in OFDM based systems is well known and the large number of antennas (RF-chains) at the Base Station (BS) in massive MIMO systems aggravates this further, since large numbers of these Power Amplifiers (PAs) are used. High PAR necessitates linear PAs, which have a high hardware cost and are typically power inefficient. In this paper we propose a low-complex approach to tackle the issue. The idea is to deliberately clip signals sent to one set of antennas, while compensating for this by transmitting correction signals on a set of reserved antennas (antenna-reservation). A reduction of 4dB in PAR is achieved by reserving 25% of antennas, with only a 15% complexity overhead.
The condition of poverty: a case study of low socioeconomic status on Chinese students’ National College Entrance Exam and college enrolment

ABSTRACT The condition of poverty is pervasive worldwide and is multifaceted in its ability to have a deleterious generational impact. Although China has greatly reduced the proportion of people living in abject poverty over the past three decades, there are still millions of families living in extreme poverty. This study investigated the influences of families’ socioeconomic status on students’ educational achievement in China with regard to the National College Entrance Exam (NCEE) scores and subsequent college enrolment. We interviewed 132 recent high school graduates from schools in six urban cities from low-socio-economic status (SES) homes. The findings revealed that school climate (general school quality, student-teacher interactions, and peer pressure) and home environment (parental support, student-parent relationship, and family size) negatively impacted their educational achievement. Students were cognisant that the schools they attended did not have the same high reputation as schools attended by their more affluent peers and felt that their teachers openly discriminated against them. Additionally, their parents did not have the time or financial resources to help them advance educationally. We propose the low-SES Educational Achievement Framework to illustrate the phenomenon of environmental conditions that may influence the low-SES students’ NCEE scores and ultimately result in low college enrollment rates in China.
Using Memristor Technology for Multi-value Registers in Signed-digit Arithmetic Circuits

Signed-digit (SD) arithmetic exploits positive and negative digits requiring more than two states. It is long known that an addition using trits, i.e. each digit stores not only a 0 or a 1 but also either 2 or -1, requires only a constant number of steps independent of the operands' word length. However, current processors could not profit from that due to the lack of fast, dense and CMOS compatible memory cells that can store reliably multiple states. Memristors offer these features making it necessary to re-evaluate different SD number representations and to evaluate the consequences of an implementation of a multi-value register file with memristors concerning latency, area and energy consumption. Using memristors as multi-value register reduces latency and area on one side compared to flip-flop based memories. On the other side this requires additional sophisticated control circuitry to implement ADCs/DACs, current limiting circuits and to generate control signals to read, write and erase memristors. The paper determines the break-even points at which ternary circuits attached to memristor based registers show better energy-delay products and less area consumption and how much power consumption these improvements cost. By layout synthesis is shown that ternary adders with trit-storing memristors can reduce the latency for a word length of 16 digits about 19% and about 52% for 512 digits compared to a binary carry-look-ahead (CLA) adder with nearly the same power consumption.
FPGA-based Hardware Implementation of Compact AES Encryption Hardware Core

Most of current embedded applications need AES algorithm implementations of small size and low power consumption to assure safe information conveyance. In this article, we present the implementation of a compact ASE hardware encryption core that is suitable for resource-limited applications based on FPGA technology. The core has 8-bit data path structure and supports encryption with 128-bit keys. The core has been described using VHDL language. The simulation and synthesis results are obtained using ModelSim and Xilinx ISE software tools, respectively. This implementation is compared to the previously reported compact implementations in terms of speed, area, and consumed energy. The implementation results showed that the adopted design achieves significant reduction in area (up to 32.4%) and consumed energy (up to 66.7%). Also, it has a significant increase in speed by ratios ranging from 28.6%to 44.5%. This makes the adopted design more suitable for resource-limited embedded applications. Key-Words: Compact AES hardware implementation, Embedded systems, FPGA, VHDL, Low power hardware design, Hardware security.
The Role of Prostatitis in Prostate Cancer: Meta-Analysis

Objective Use systematic review methods to quantify the association between prostatitis and prostate cancer, under both fixed and random effects model. Evidence Acquisition Case control studies of prostate cancer with information on prostatitis history. All studies published between 1990-2012, were collected to calculate a pooled odds ratio. Selection criteria: the selection criteria are as follows: human case control studies; published from May 1990 to July 2012; containing number of prostatitis, and prostate cancer cases. Evidence Synthesis In total, 20 case control studies were included. A significant association between prostatitis and prostate cancer was found, under both fixed effect model (pooled OR=1.50, 95%CI: 1.39-1.62), and random effects model (OR=1.64, 95%CI: 1.36-1.98). Personal interview based case control studies showed a high level of association (fixed effect model: pooled OR=1.59, 95%CI: 1.47-1.73, random effects model: pooled OR= 1.87, 95%CI: 1.52-2.29), compared with clinical based studies (fixed effect model: pooled OR=1.05, 95%CI: 0.86-1.28, random effects model: pooled OR= 0.98, 95%CI: 0.67-1.45). Additionally, pooled ORs, were calculated for each decade. In a fixed effect model: 1990’s: OR=1.58, 95% CI: 1.35-1.84; 2000’s: OR=1.59, 95% CI: 1.40-1.79; 2010’s: OR=1.37, 95% CI: 1.22-1.56. In a random effects model: 1990’s: OR=1.98, 95% CI: 1.08-3.62; 2000’s: OR=1.64, 95% CI: 1.23-2.19; 2010’s: OR=1.34, 95% CI: 1.03-1.73. Finally a meta-analysis stratified by each country was conducted. In fixed effect models, U.S: pooled OR =1.45, 95%CI: 1.34-1.57; China: pooled OR =4.67, 95%CI: 3.08-7.07; Cuba: pooled OR =1.43, 95%CI: 1.00-2.04; Italy: pooled OR =0.61, 95%CI: 0.13-2.90. In random effects model, U.S: pooled OR=1.50, 95%CI: 1.25-1.80; China: pooled OR =4.67, 95%CI: 3.08-7.07; Cuba: pooled OR =1.43, 95%CI: 1.00-2.04; Italy: pooled OR =0.61, 95%CI: 0.13-2.90. CONCLUSIONS: the present meta-analysis provides the statistical evidence that the association between prostatitis and prostate cancer is significant.
Towards Large-scale Occupancy Map Building using Dirichlet and Gaussian Processes

This paper proposes a new method for building occupancy maps using Dirichlet and Gaussian processes. We consider occupancy map building as a classification problem and apply Gaussian processes. The main drawback of Gaussian processes, however, is the computational complexity of O(n) related to the matrix inversion, where n is the number of data points. To enable large-scale occupancy map building, we propose to use Dirichlet process mixture models which cluster input data without fixing the number of clusters a priori and to apply a mixture of Gaussian processes for the clustered data. This approach also has an advantage of dealing with local discontinuities better than one global Gaussian process model. Simulation results will be provided demonstrating the benefits of the approach.
A max-plus method for the approximate solution of discrete time linear regulator problems with non-quadratic terminal payoff

Efficient Riccati equation based techniques for the approximate solution of discrete time linear regulator problems are restricted in their application to problems with quadratic terminal payoffs. Where non-quadratic terminal payoffs are required, these techniques fail due to the attendant nonquadratic value functions involved. In order to compute these non-quadratic value functions, it is often necessary to appeal directly to dynamic programming in the form of gridor element-based iterations for the value function. These iterations suffer from poor scalability with respect to problem dimension and time horizon. In this paper, a new max-plus based method is developed for the approximate solution of discrete time linear regulator problems with non-quadratic payoffs.
Attending and knowing together : a new look at joint attention and common knowledge and their role in coordination

6 GENERAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 PREFACE 9 1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 10 1.1 THE NEED FOR AN ORGANIZED FRAMEWORK 12 1.2 ATTENTION SHARING AS A COORDINATION TOOL 14 1.2.1 THE CONTEXT FOR THE EVOLUTION OF ATTENTION SHARING 15 1.2.2 TWO TYPES OF COORDINATION 16 1.2. 3 COORDINATION DILEMMAS 17 1.2. 4 ATTENTION SHARING IN COORDINATION DILEMMAS 21 1.3 FOCUS OF THE THESIS 26 2. PART I: A NEW LOOK AT JOINT ATTENTION AND COMMON KNOWLEDGE 28 2.1 A TYPOLOGY OF SOCIAL ATTENTION AND SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE 30 2.1.1 MONITORING ATTENTION 31 2.1.2 COMMON ATTENTION 33 2.1.3 THE QUESTION OF JOINTNESS 34 2.1. 4 MUTUAL ATTENTION 36 2.1. 5 SHARED ATTENTION 36 2.2 A SCALE OF JOINTNESS 42 2.2.1 FACTORS THAT CAN CAUSE SHIFTS IN THE SCALE OF JOINTNESS 43
Who do trust? Combining Recommender Systems and Social Networking for Better Advice

Disclosed is a roller forming machine for converting a flat metal strip into a louver having long, narrow fins that extend lengthwise of the strip and are all bent laterally in one direction oblique to the plane of the strip. The fins are produced by a pair of fin forming rollers which slit the strip and bend out the fins to a larger acute angle to the plane of the strip than is desired in the finished louver. The strip then tends to twist along its length due to asymmetrical residual stresses generated by fin formation. To remove the twist, the strip is passed between cylindrical straightening rollers whereby the fins are bent partway back towards coplanarity with the strip, thus generating new residual stresses which oppose the original ones due to fin forming. One straightening roller is adjustable towards and from the other so that said new residual stresses can be empirically brought into equilibrium with the original ones.
The influence of psychosocial adjustment factors on team embeddedness at the workplace

The high prevalence of aggression, anxiety and stress symptoms among team members in the organisation, while acquisition of task is alarming causation of adjustment disorder influences on team embeddedness, is the subject of this study. The ontogenesis of psychosocial adjustment disorder in any employees is not palingenetic, this is exact reproduction of psychosocial factors (PSF) which develops at workplace The most important strategy for productivity improvement is based on the fact that human productivity, both positive and negative, is determined by the attitudes of all those who work in the enterprise and gap surfaced between teamwork and competence development particularly with regard to managing individualism within organisation and specifically individualistic approach, organisational justice, productivity management and psychosocial support. We strongly feel that there is a need to reexamine organisational team credentials and possible strong influences on individual's psychosocial adjustment disorders. Findings suggest psychosocial adjustment factors are significantly correlated with psychosocial disorders (PSDs).
Probabilistic latent network visualization: inferring and embedding diffusion networks

The diffusion of information, rumors, and diseases are assumed to be probabilistic processes over some network structure. An event starts at one node of the network, and then spreads to the edges of the network. In most cases, the underlying network structure that generates the diffusion process is unobserved, and we only observe the times at which each node is altered/influenced by the process. This paper proposes a probabilistic model for inferring the diffusion network, which we call Probabilistic Latent Network Visualization (PLNV); it is based on cascade data, a record of observed times of node influence. An important characteristic of our approach is to infer the network by embedding it into a low-dimensional visualization space. We assume that each node in the network has latent coordinates in the visualization space, and diffusion is more likely to occur between nodes that are placed close together. Our model uses maximum a posteriori estimation to learn the latent coordinates of nodes that best explain the observed cascade data. The latent coordinates of nodes in the visualization space can 1) enable the system to suggest network layouts most suitable for browsing, and 2) lead to high accuracy in inferring the underlying network when analyzing the diffusion process of new or rare information, rumors, and disease.
On the Equilibrium Fluctuations in a Microcanonical Ensemble

Traditionally, it is understood that fluctuations in the equilibrium distribution are not evident in thermodynamic systems of large $N$ (the number of particles in the system) \cite{Huang}. In this paper we examine the validity of this perception by investigating whether such fluctuations can in reality depend on temperature. Firstly, we describe fluctuations in the occupation numbers of the energy levels in the microcanonical ensemble, using previously unknown identities that we have derived for the purpose, which allow us to calculate the moments of the occupation numbers. Then we compute analytically the probability distribution of these fluctuations. We show that, for every system of fixed and finite $N$, fluctuations about the equilibrium distribution do in fact depend on the temperature. Indeed, at higher temperatures the fluctuations can be so large that the system does not fully converge on the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution but actually fluctuates around it. We term this state, where not one macrostate but a region of macrostates closely fit the underlying distribution, a ``{\it fluctuating equilibrium}''. Finally, we speculate on how this finding is applicable to networks, financial markets, and other thermodynamic-like systems.
Interaction of Tetraethylammonium Ion Derivatives with the Potassium Channels of Giant Axons

A number of compounds related to TEA+ (tetraethylammoniumion) were injected into squid axons and their effects on g K (the potassium conductance) were determined. In most of these ions a quaternary nitrogen is surrounded by three ethyl groups and a fourth group that is very hydrophobic. Several of the ions cause inactivation of g K, a type of ionic gating that is not normally seen in squid axon; i.e., after depolarization g K increases and then spontaneously decreases to a small fraction of its peak value even though the depolarization is maintained. Observations on the mechanism of this gating show that (a) QA (quaternary ammonium) ions only enter K+ channels that have open activation gates (the normal permeability gates). (b) The activation gates of QA-occluded channels do not close readily. (c) Hyperpolarization helps to clear QA ions from the channels. (d) Raising the external K+ concentration also helps to clear QA ions from the channels. Observations (c) and (d) strongly suggest that K+ ions traverse the membrane by way of pores, and they cannot be explained by the usual type of carrier model. The data suggest that a K+ pore has two distinct parts: a wide inner mouth that can accept a hydrated K+ ion or a TEA+-like ion, and a narrower portion that can accept a dehydrated or partially dehydrated K+ ion, but not TEA+.
Generalizing Movements with Information-Theoretic Stochastic Optimal Control

Stochastic optimal control is typically used to plan a movement for a specific situation. Although most stochastic optimal control methods fail to generalize this movement plan to a new situation without replanning, a stochastic optimal control method is presented that allows reuse of the obtained policy in a new situation, as the policy is more robust to slight deviations from the initial movement plan. To improve the robustness of the policy, we employ information-theoretic policy updates that explicitly operate on trajectory distributions instead of single trajectories. To ensure a stable and smooth policy update, the ”distance” is limited between the trajectory distributions of the old and the new control policies. The introduced bound offers a closed-form solution for the resulting policy and extends results from recent developments in stochastic optimal control. In contrast to many standard stochastic optimal control algorithms, the current approach can directly infer the system dynamics from data p.