Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An energy efficient transmitted-reference scheme for ultra wideband communications

Transmitted-reference (TR) receivers represent a low complexity alternative to RAKE receivers, which are widely used in ultra wideband (UWB) communications. Known TR schemes are not very energy efficient, since two pulses represent one bit value only. Therefore, we present a TR pulse interval amplitude modulation (PIAM) scheme which reduces the required energy per bit and a low complexity receiver structure for TR PIAM. We investigate the performance of TR 4PIAM analytically and by means of simulation and show that higher modulation alphabets can be adapted easily. Moreover, we show that there exists an optimal correlation length for transmission over multipath channels.
Rating television programs for violence: A comparison of five surveys

On the following pages, the Journal of Broadcasting presents five researchers’ dialogue on the relative merits of a number of so‐called indices of violence on television programming. The dialogue began with submission of the first article, written by Drs. Coffin (vice‐president of research planning) and Tuchman (director of research projects) of the National Broadcasting Company. Noting its basic thrust, and feeling the topic to be important and timely, we requested a “reply” piece from Dr. George Gerbner (see page 21), and eventually, both sides had brief final rebuttal comments (pages 31 and 34). Tuchman served as a member of the Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, while Gerbner was one of a number of participating researchers who contributed to that program, the results of which were released early in 1972 (see Journal of Broadcasting 16:21–35 (Winter 1971–72), for a review of the Surgeon General's research findings).
Evolution of brain imaging in neuropsychiatry: past, present and future

In the 19th and early 20th centuries the brain was very much shrouded in mystery and as such was considered a ‘black-box’. The greatest advance to emerge during this period was the discovery of regional specialisation, namely, that different brain areas serve different functions. One of the earliest examples of this is documented in the work of German physiologists Fritsch and Hitzig who when electrically stimulating a patch of cortex in the brain of a dog observed movement in its right front paw. When the same patch of cortex was surgically removed from two other dogs, they noticed that the dogs not only could not use the paw, but also seemed unaware of it. These early rudimentary studies questioned the ‘black-box’ concept and precipitated a surge in the study of the brain over the ensuing half-century in which scientists poked, prodded, stimulated and removed portions of animal (and human) brain in an attempt to uncover its mysteries. Even with so much ‘brain-power’ being directed towards demystifying the workings of the brain, progress was slow and it is only more recently that significant advances have been made. In particular, over the past several decades technological advances in physics and computing have contributed to the development of sophisticated technology, which permits an unprecedented ability to dissect the ‘working brain’ and better understand its neurobiology. In this thematic issue of Acta Neuropsychiatrica, dedicated to imaging, the opportunity arises to chronicle some of the imaging techniques that have been influential in advancing our understanding of brain function in neuropsychiatry. The various techniques and modalities that have come together to form the field of neuroimaging can be conceptualised as a pyramid (Fig. 1). At the very top of the pyramid is the basic science that underpins the imaging technique of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) from which magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has evolved. The next layer represents the various core modalities that have been developed as a direct result of NMR, and beneath this layer reside the analysis techniques that have been developed to unlock the potential of the various modalities. Finally, the bottom layer represents the latest hybrid-imaging modalities to emerge that incorporate external manipulations to normal brain function to investigate brain dynamics.
Weak lensing reconstruction through cosmic magnification I: a minimal variance map reconstruction

We present a concept study on weak lensing map reconstruction through the cosmic magnification effect in galaxy number density distribution. We propose a minimal variance linear estimator to minimize both the dominant systematic and statistical errors in the map reconstruction. It utilizes the distinctively different flux dependences to separate the cosmic magnification signal from the overwhelming galaxy intrinsic clustering noise. It also minimizes the shot noise error by an optimal weighting scheme on the galaxy number density in each flux bin. Our method is in principle applicable to all galaxy surveys with reasonable redshift information. We demonstrate its applicability against the planned Square Kilometer Array survey, under simplified conditions. Weak lensing maps reconstructed through our method are complementary to that from cosmic shear and cosmic microwave background (CMB) and 21-cm lensing. They are useful for cross-checking over systematic errors in weak lensing reconstruction and for improving cosmological constraints.
High power DC-DC converter for renewable energy power system

Special demands are made on DC-DC converter by renewable energy power system, composing of such green power as fuel cell, solar cell, etc. For these requirements, the high-power step-up, step-down and step-up/down DC-DC converters, designed and developed by the research group at Beihang University on the application of High Power DC-DC converter in recent years, are introduced, focusing on analysis of the design of their topologies and control strategies. Some application examples and performance studies are also included.
Regulation of Polyglutamic Acid Synthesis by Glutamate in Bacillus licheniformis and Bacillus subtilis

ABSTRACT The synthesis of polyglutamic acid (PGA) was repressed by exogenous glutamate in strains of Bacillus licheniformis but not in strains of Bacillus subtilis, indicating a clear difference in the regulation of synthesis of capsular slime in these two species. Although extracellular γ-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT) activity was always present in PGA-producing cultures of B. licheniformis under various growth conditions, there was no correlation between the quantity of PGA and enzyme activity. Moreover, the synthesis of PGA in the absence of detectable GGT activity inB. subtilis S317 indicated that this enzyme was not involved in PGA biosynthesis in this bacterium. Glutamate repression of PGA biosynthesis may offer a simple means of preventing unwanted slime production in industrial fermentations using B. licheniformis.
Discrimination and Other Barriers to Accessing Health Care: Perspectives of Patients with Mild and Moderate Intellectual Disability and Their Carers

Background People with intellectual disability have a higher prevalence of physical health problems but often experience disparities in accessing health care. In England, a number of legislative changes, policies and recommendations have been introduced to improve health care access for this population. The aim of this qualitative study was to examine the extent to which patients with intellectual disability and their carers experience discrimination or other barriers in accessing health services, and whether health care experiences have improved over the last decade years. Method and Main Findings Twenty nine participants (14 patient and carer dyads, and one carer) took part in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were audio-taped and transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. Eight themes were identified. Half the participants thought that the patient had been treated unfairly or had been discriminated against by health services. There were accounts of negative staff attitudes and behaviour, and failure of services to make reasonable adjustments. Other barriers included problems with communication, and accessing services because of lack of knowledge of local services and service eligibility issues; lack of support and involvement of carers; and language problems in participants from minority ethnic groups. Most participants were able to report at least one example of good practice in health care provision. Suggestions for improving services are presented. Conclusion Despite some improvements to services as a result of health policies and recommendations, more progress is required to ensure that health services make reasonable adjustments to reduce both direct and indirect discrimination of people with intellectual disability.
A computational trust model for multi-agent interactions based on confidence and reputation

In open environments in which autonomous agents can break contracts, computational models of trust have an important role to play in determining who to interact with and how interactions unfold. To this end, we develop such a trust model, based on confidence and reputation, and show how it can be concretely applied, using fuzzy sets, to guide agents in evaluating past interactions and in establishing new contracts with one another.
Nanomedicine for the reduction of the thrombogenicity of stent coatings

The treatment of patients with drug-eluting stents (DES) continues to evolve with the current emergence of DES technology that offers a combination of pharmacological and mechanical approaches to prevent arterial restenosis. However, despite the promising short-term and mid-term outcomes of DES, there are valid concerns about adverse clinical effects of late stent thrombosis. In this study, we present an example of how nanomedicine can offer solutions for improving stent coating manufacturing, by producing nanomaterials with tailored and controllable properties. The study is based on the exploitation of human platelets response towards carbon-based nanocoatings via atomic force microscope (AFM). AFM can facilitate the comprehensive analysis of platelets behavior onto stent nanocoatings and enable the study of thrombogenicity. Platelet-rich plasma from healthy donors was used for the real-time study of biointerfacial interactions. The carbon nanomaterials were developed by rf magnetron sputtering technique under controllable deposition conditions to provide favorable surface nanotopography. It was shown that by altering the surface topography of nanocoatings, the activation of platelets can be affected, while the carbon nanocoatings having higher surface roughness were found to be less thrombogenic in terms of platelets adhesion. This is an actual solution for improving the stent coating fabrication.
Enhancing Sparsity and Resolution via Reweighted Atomic Norm Minimization

The mathematical theory of super-resolution developed recently by Candès and Fernandes-Granda states that a continuous, sparse frequency spectrum can be recovered with infinite precision via a (convex) atomic norm technique given a set of uniform time-space samples. This theory was then extended to the cases of partial/compressive samples and/or multiple measurement vectors via atomic norm minimization (ANM), known as off-grid/continuous compressed sensing (CCS). However, a major problem of existing atomic norm methods is that the frequencies can be recovered only if they are sufficiently separated, prohibiting commonly known high resolution. In this paper, a novel (nonconvex) sparse metric is proposed that promotes sparsity to a greater extent than the atomic norm. Using this metric an optimization problem is formulated and a locally convergent iterative algorithm is implemented. The algorithm iteratively carries out ANM with a sound reweighting strategy which enhances sparsity and resolution, and is termed as reweighted atomic-norm minimization (RAM). Extensive numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the advantageous performance of RAM with application to direction of arrival (DOA) estimation.
Simple Type is Not a Boundary Phenomenon

This is an expository article, explaining recent work by D. Groisser and myself [GS] on the extent to which the boundary region of moduli space contributes to the ``simple type'' condition of Donaldson theory. The presentation is intended to complement [GS], presenting the essential ideas rather than the analytical details. It is shown that the boundary region of moduli space contributes 6/64 of the homology required for simple type, regardless of the topology or geometry of the underlying 4-manifold. The simple type condition thus reduces to a statement about the interior of moduli space, namely that the interior of the (k+1)st ASD moduli space, intersected with two representatives of (4 times) the point class, be homologous to 58 copies of the (k)-th moduli space. This is peculiar, since the only known embeddings of the (k)-th moduli space into the (k+1)st involve Taubes patching, and the image of such an embedding lies entirely in the boundary region.
Relapse of Clubfoot after Treatment with the Ponseti Method and the Function of the Foot Abduction Orthosis

Ponseti clubfoot treatment has become more popular during the last decade because of its high initial correction rate. But the most common problem affecting the long-term successful outcome is relapse of the deformity. Non-compliance with Ponseti brace protocol is a major problem associated with relapse. Although more comfortable braces have been reported to improve the compliance, they all have the same design and no significant changes have been made to the protocols. After refinement in the Ponseti method and emphasizing the importance of brace to parents, the relapse rate has been markedly decreased. Nevertheless, there are patients who do not have any recurrence although they are not completely compliant with the brace treatment, whereas other patients have a recurrence even though they are strictly compliant with the brace treatment. The aim of this article is to review the relapse of clubfoot and the function of the brace and to develop an individualized brace protocol for each patient by analyzing the mechanism of the brace and the biomechanical properties of muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
Late-Life Depression

We live in an aging world. Illnesses that are prevalent and cause significant morbidity and mortality in older people will consume an increasing share of health care resources. One such illness in depression. This illness has a particularly devastating impact in the elderly because it is often undiagnosed or inadequately treated. Depression not only has a profound impact on quality of life but it is associated with an increased risk of mortality from suicide and vascular disease. In fact for every medical illness studied, e.g. heart disease, diabetes, cancer, individuals who are depressed have a worse prognosis. Research has illuminated the physiological and behavioral effects of depression that accounts for these poor outcomes. The deleterious relationship between depression and other illnesses has changed the concept of late-life depression from a "psychiatric disorder" that is diagnosed and treated by a psychiatrist to a common and serious disorder that is the responsibility of all physicians who care for patients over the age of 60.
Network Dimensioning Problems of Applying Achievement Functions

In this paper, we focus on approaches in network dimensioning where it allocates band- widths and attempts to provide a proportionally fair treatment of all the competing classes. We will show that an achievement function can map different criteria onto a normalized scale subject to vari- ous utilities. The achievement function can be coped with the Ordered Weighted Averaging method. Moreover, it may be interpreted as a measure of QoS on All-IP networks. Using the achievement function, one can find a Pareto optimal allocation of bandwidths on the network under the available budget, which provides the so-called proportional fairness to each class. Consequently, this results in the similar satisfaction level to every connection in all classes.
Recreational Fishing Site Choice Models: Insights and Future Opportunities

This article reviews published research that has focused on the recreational fishing site choices made by anglers. A conceptual model for predicting fishing site choice is developed by synthesizing the findings from past studies that employed fishing site choice models. From these and other relevant studies, six general attributes (i.e., costs, fishing quality, environmental quality, facility development, encounters with other anglers, and regulations) are identified that may influence an angler’s selection of a fishing site. The article also enhances the conceptual model by accounting for differing preferences among anglers, for complex substitution patterns among fishing sites, for fishing participation decisions, for habit forming behaviors and for differences in anglers’ awareness levels for fishing sites. Finally, the article discusses several avenues that researchers could exploit to improve on past fishing site choice model studies. The author is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments and suggestions that were used to greatly improve an earlier version of this article. The author also thanks Barry Boots and Peter Boxall for their constructive comments and discussions about recreational fishing site choice model studies. Finally, the author acknowledges the support provided by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the Living Legacy Trust that provided the opportunity to write this article.
A Bivariate Asymptotic Expansion of Coefficients of Powers of Generating Functions

The aim of this paper is to give a bivariate asymptotic expansion of the coefficient ynk = xny(x)k, where y(x) = ? ynxn has a power series expansion with non-negative coefficients yn ? 0. Such expansions are known for k/n ? a, b with a > 0. In the first part we provide two versions of full asymptotic series expansions for ynk and in the second part we show how to generalize these expansions to the case k/n ? 0, b if y(x) has an algebraic singularity of the kind y(x) = g(x) - h (x)1 - x/x0. A concluding section provides extensions to multivariate asymptotic expansions and applications to multivariate generating functions. As a byproduct, we obtain a remarkable identity for Catalan numbers.
Family-centered caregiving and well-being of parents of children with disabilities:linking process with outcome

Objective: This study examined the strength of the relationship between parents’ perceptions of familycentered, professionally provided caregiving and their emotional well-being (feelings of distress and depression). This was done in the context of other factors that might affect well-being (child behavior problems, coping strategies of parents, protective factors in the social environment, child factors related to disability, and family factors). Method: We asked 164 parents of children with nonprogressive neurodevelopmental disorders (primarily cerebral palsy, spina bifida, or hydrocephalus) to complete a series of instruments measuring the constructs of interest. Results: Structural equation modeling showed that more family-centered caregiving was a significant predictor of parents’ well-being. The most important predictors of well-being were child behavior problems and protective factors in the social environment. Conclusions: Services are most beneficial when they are delivered in a family-centered manner and address parent-identified issues such as the availability of social support, family functioning, and child behavior problems.
Student engagement: stakeholder perspectives on course representation in university governance

Student engagement has become a key feature of UK higher education policy and analysis. At the core of this is a notion of engagement characterised by dialogue and joint venture. The article explores this by considering the role of student representation in university governance. It focuses on the system of course representation that is a feature of most British universities. Using a small-scale, exploratory study of key stakeholders within one UK institution, it examines the context within which such representation operates. Analysis suggests that a complex interaction between cultural, social, individual and structural factors shapes the nature of representation. It concludes that enhancing engagement requires institutions to resist managerialist impulses to regulate and control course representation. Instead, they should respond flexibly and reflexively to create an environment for meaningful engagement between students and staff.
Evolutionary origins of obesity

Although it appeared relatively suddenly, the current obesity epidemic – largely manifest in industrialized societies but now spreading to the rest of the world – is the result of interaction between human biology and human culture over the long period of human evolution. As mammals and primates, humans have the capacity to store body fat when opportunities to consume excess energy arise. But during the millions of years of human evolution such opportunities were rare and transient. More commonly ancestral hominins and modern humans were confronted with food scarcity and had to engage in high levels of physical activity. In tandem with encephalization, humans evolved elaborate and complex genetic and physiological systems to protect against starvation and defend stored body fat. They also devised technological aids for increasing energy consumption and reducing physical effort. In the last century, industrialization provided access to great quantities of mass‐produced, high‐calorie foods and many labour‐saving and transportation devices, virtually abolishing starvation and heavy manual work. In the modern obesogenic environment, individuals possessing the appropriate combination of ancestral energy‐conserving genes are at greater risk for overweight and obesity and associated chronic diseases.
Error Exponent Regions for Gaussian Broadcast and Multiple-Access Channels

In modern communication systems, different users have different requirements for quality of service (QoS). In this work, QoS refers to the average codeword error probability experienced by the users in the network. Although several practical schemes (collectively referred to as unequal error protection schemes) have been studied in the literature and are implemented in existing systems, the corresponding performance limits have not been studied in an information-theoretic framework. In this paper, an information-theoretic framework is considered to study communication systems which provide heterogeneous reliabilities for the users. This is done by defining individual probabilities of error for the users in the network and obtaining the fundamental tradeoffs of the corresponding error exponents. In particular, we quantify the reliability tradeoff by introducing the notion of error exponent region (EER), which specifies the set of error exponent vectors that are simultaneously achievable by the users for a fixed vector of users' rates. We show the existence of a tradeoff among the users' error exponents by deriving inner and outer bounds for the EER. Using this framework, a system can be realized, which can provide a tradeoff of reliabilities among the users for a fixed vector of users' rates. This adds a completely new dimension to the performance tradeoff in such networks, which is unique to multiterminal communication systems, and is beyond what is given by the conventional performance-versus-rate tradeoff in single-user systems. Although this is a very general concept and can be applied to any multiterminal communication system, in this paper we consider Gaussian broadcast and multiple-access channels (MACs).