Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design of Frequency Selective Band Stop Shield Using Analytical Method

In this article, a high-order frequency selective band-stop EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) shield is designed using multilayer square loop while each loop resonates at the specific desired frequency. The glass material is picked out as the preferred substrate for the designing process. In contrast to the computationally intensive numerical approaches (software), the equivalent circuit model offers a simple alternative method in FSS (frequency selective surface) analyses which is useful for quickly predicting the performance of FSS. The proposed FSS can be synthesized based on microwave filter theory and the synthesized FSS can control transmission-zero frequencies. A three zero-transmission transparent window is designed using the proposed method, in which 30dB insertion loss is achieved for 6 to 10 GHz bandwidth and optical opacity of the structure is 85%. The response of the analytical model is compared with the results of full-wave simulation. As a result, it predicts quite well the resonant frequencies of the designed FSS.
Testosterone depot injection in male hypogonadism: a critical appraisal

Testosterone compounds have been available for almost 70 years, but the pharmaceutical formulations have been less than ideal. Traditionally, injectable testosterone esters have been used for treatment, but they generate supranormal testosterone levels shortly after the 2- to 3-weekly injection interval and then testosterone levels decline very rapidly, becoming subnormal in the days before the next injection. The rapid fluctuations in plasma testosterone are subjectively experienced as disagreeable. Testosterone undecanoate is a new injectable testosterone preparation with a considerably better pharmacokinetic profile. After 2 initial injections with a 6-week interval, the following intervals between two injections are almost always 12-weeks, amounting eventually to a total of 4 injections per year. Plasma testosterone levels with this preparation are nearly always in the range of normal men, so are its metabolic products estradiol and dihydrotestosterone. The “roller coaster” effects of traditional parenteral testosterone injections are not apparent. It reverses the effects of hypogonadism on bone and muscle and metabolic parameters and on sexual functions. Its safety profile is excellent due to the continuous normalcy of plasma testosterone levels. No polycythemia has been observed, and no adverse effects on lipid profiles. Prostate safety parameters are well within reference limits. There was no impairment of uroflow. Testosterone undecanoate is a valuable contribution to the treatment options of androgen deficiency.
Vagal regulation, cortisol, and sleep disruption in women with metastatic breast cancer.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To determine the relationship between hypothalamic pituitary axis (HPA) dysregulation, vagal functioning, and sleep problems in women with metastatic breast cancer. DESIGN Sleep was assessed by means of questionnaires and wrist actigraphy for 3 consecutive nights. The ambulatory, diurnal variation in salivary cortisol levels was measured at 5 time points over 2 days. Vagal regulation was assessed via respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA(TF)) during the Trier Social Stress Task. PARTICIPANTS Ninety-nine women (54.6 +/- 9.62 years) with metastatic breast cancer. RESULTS Longer nocturnal wake episodes (r = 0.21, p = 0.04, N=91) were associated with a flatter diurnal cortisol slope. Sleep disruption was also associated with diminished RSA(TF). Higher RSA baseline scores were significantly correlated with higher sleep efficiency (r = 0.39, p = 0.001, N=68) and correspondingly lower levels of interrupted sleep (waking after sleep onset, WASO; r = -0.38, p = 0.002, N=68), lower average length of nocturnal wake episodes (r = -0.43, p < 0.001, N=68), and a lower self-reported number of hours of sleep during a typical night (r = -0.27, p = 0.02, N=72). Higher RSA AUC was significantly related to higher sleep efficiency (r = 0.45, p < 0.001, N=64), and a correspondingly lower number of wake episodes (r = -0.27, p = 0.04, N=64), lower WASO (r = -0.40, p = 0.001, N=64), and with lower average length of nocturnal wake episodes (r = -0.41, p = 0.001, N=64). While demographics, disease severity, and psychological variables all explained some portion of the development of sleep disruption, 4 of the 6 sleep parameters examined (sleep efficiency, WASO, mean number of waking episodes, average length of waking episode) were best explained by RSA. CONCLUSIONS These data provide preliminary evidence for an association between disrupted nocturnal sleep and reduced RSA the subsequent day, confirming an association between disrupted nocturnal sleep and flattened diurnal cortisol rhythm in women with metastatic breast cancer. They suggest that the stress-buffering effects of sleep may be associated with improved parasympathetic tone and normalized cortisol patterns during the day.
Changes in Breath Trihalomethane Levels Resulting from Household Water-Use Activities

Common household water-use activities such as showering, bathing, drinking, and washing clothes or dishes are potentially important contributors to individual exposure to trihalomethanes (THMs), the major class of disinfection by-products of water treated with chlorine. Previous studies have focused on showering or bathing activities. In this study, we selected 12 common water-use activities and determined which may lead to the greatest THM exposures and result in the greatest increase in the internal dose. Seven subjects performed the various water-use activities in two residences served by water utilities with relatively high and moderate total THM levels. To maintain a consistent exposure environment, the activities, exposure times, air exchange rates, water flows, water temperatures, and extraneous THM emissions to the indoor air were carefully controlled. Water, indoor air, blood, and exhaled-breath samples were collected during each exposure session for each activity, in accordance with a strict, well-defined protocol. Although showering (for 10 min) and bathing (for 14 min), as well as machine washing of clothes and opening mechanical dishwashers at the end of the cycle, resulted in substantial increases in indoor air chloroform concentrations, only showering and bathing caused significant increases in the breath chloroform levels. In the case of bromodichloromethane (BDCM), only bathing yielded a significantly higher air level in relation to the preexposure concentration. For chloroform from showering, strong correlations were observed for indoor air and exhaled breath, blood and exhaled breath, indoor air and blood, and tap water and blood. Only water and breath, and blood and breath were significantly associated for chloroform from bathing. For BDCM, significant correlations were obtained for blood and air, and blood and water from showering. Neither dibromochloromethane nor bromoform gave measurable breath concentrations for any of the activities investigated because of their much lower tap-water concentrations. Future studies will address the effects that changes in these common water-use activities may have on exposure.
Von Willebrand’s disease in an eight-day-old quarter horse foal

A radiographic evaluation did not reveal any abnormalities. On the basis of an ultrasound examination, the swellings that were present in the foal’s forehead (Fig 2) and the tarsal joint effusion were considered to be haematomas. The prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) were normal; however, these values could have been influenced by the earlier blood transfusion. Therefore, the coagulation times were measured again after 11 days. At the second measurement, the APTT was mildly prolonged (65 seconds, control [a healthy foal] 49 seconds, reference range 40 to 60 seconds) and the PT was normal. The platelet count and fibrinogen concentration were normal, at 187 x 109 platelets/l (reference range 150 x 109 to 400 x 109 platelets/l) and 2·0 g/l (reference range <2·5 g/l), respectively. The activity of vWF was determined by an ELISA (Animal Health Trust Diagnostic Laboratory Services) and showed a decrease to 9 per cent. The factor VIII percentage was normal (100 per cent). Due to an acute deterioration of the foal, with a second anaemic episode and the development of several haematomas, its bleeding time was not measured. However, the bleeding time was evaluated in its dam and shown to be almost 13 minutes (reference range two to six minutes) (Radostits and others 2000). The vWF concentration in the mare was decreased to 30 per cent. In view of the poor prognosis, the foal was euthanased 12 days after admission and examined postmortem. Grossly, the foal was in a good nutritional state. Haemarthrosis was detected in both stifle and tarsometatarsal Von Willebrand’s disease in an eight-dayold quarter horse foal
Trigeminal Neuralgia With Chronic Paroxysmal Hemicrania: the CPH-tic Syndrome

A case of chronic paroxysmal hemicrania-tic syndrome is described. The chronic paroxysmal hemicrania (CPH) was controlled with indomethacin and the trigeminal neuralgia with a glycerol blockade. The trigeminal neuralgia reappeared four years after the blockade and was then treated successfully with corticosteroids. Six months later, when indomethacin was stopped, the trigeminal neuralgia recurred and resolved again with corticosteroids. We suggest that the CPH-tic syndrome is due to periorbital venous vasculitis. To our knowledge this is the first reported case of this disorder.
Fast‐Food Restaurant Advertising on Television and Its Influence on Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is an escalating problem around the world that is especially detrimental as its effects carry on into adulthood. In this paper we employ the 1979 Child–Young Adult National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the effects of television fast‐food restaurant advertising on children and adolescents with respect to being overweight. A ban on these advertisements would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3–11 in a fixed population by 18 percent and would reduce the number of overweight adolescents ages 12–18 by 14 percent. The elimination of the tax deductibility of this type of advertising would produce smaller declines of between 5 and 7 percent in these outcomes but would impose lower costs on children and adults who consume fast food in moderation because positive information about restaurants that supply this type of food would not be completely banned from television.
Nutritional beverage production from the dried black glutinous rice malt

In our study of nutritious beverage from the dried black glutinous malt, the optimum cooking conditions were chosen at the ratio of water and material 1:4,3; the temperature 45 oC 15 minutes, 63 oC 50 minutes and 72 oC – 50 minutes with the highest extraction yield 71,65%. The percent of added sugar indicated the best result of sensory evaluation was 4%. The product pasteurized at 75 oC in 25 minutes achieved the standards of microorganism and sensory evaluation after stabilization stage of 15 days.
An almost-linear time algorithm for uniform random spanning tree generation

We give an m1+o(1)βo(1)-time algorithm for generating uniformly random spanning trees in weighted graphs with max-to-min weight ratio β. In the process, we illustrate how fundamental tradeoffs in graph partitioning can be overcome by eliminating vertices from a graph using Schur complements of the associated Laplacian matrix. Our starting point is the Aldous-Broder algorithm, which samples a random spanning tree using a random walk. As in prior work, we use fast Laplacian linear system solvers to shortcut the random walk from a vertex v to the boundary of a set of vertices assigned to v called a “shortcutter. ” We depart from prior work by introducing a new way of employing Laplacian solvers to shortcut the walk. To bound the amount of shortcutting work, we show that most random walk steps occur far away from an unvisited vertex. We apply this observation by charging uses of a shortcutter S to random walk steps in the Schur complement obtained by eliminating all vertices in S that are not assigned to it.
Investor Psychology in Capital Markets: Evidence and Policy Implications

We review extensive evidence about how psychological biases affect investor behavior and prices. Systematic mispricing probably causes substantial resource misallocation. We argue that limited attention and overconfidence cause investor credulity about the strategic incentives of informed market participants. However, individuals as political participants remain subject to the biases and self-interest they exhibit in private settings. Indeed, correcting contemporaneous market pricing errors is probably not government's relative advantage. Government and private planners should establish rules ex ante to improve choices and efficiency, including disclosure, reporting, advertising, and default-option- setting policies. Especially, government should avoid actions that exacerbate investor biases.
Stormy: an elastic and highly available streaming service in the cloud

In recent years, new highly scalable storage systems have significantly contributed to the success of Cloud Computing. Systems like Dynamo or Bigtable have underpinned their ability to handle tremendous amounts of data and scale to a very large number of nodes. Although these systems are designed the store data, the fundamental architectural properties and the techniques used (e.g., request routing, replication and load balancing) can also be applied to data streaming systems. In this paper, we present Stormy, a distributed stream processing service for continuous data processing. Stormy is based on proven techniques from existing Cloud storage systems that are adapted to efficiently execute streaming workloads. The primary design focus lies in providing a scalable, elastic, and fault-tolerant framework for continuous data processing, while at the same time optimizing resource utilization and increasing cost efficiency. Stormy is able to process any kind of streaming workloads, thus, covering a wide range of use cases ranging from realtime data analytics to long-term data aggregation jobs.
Environmental injustice : Is race or income a better predictor? : Research on the environment

Drawing on recent debates over environmental justice and environmental racism, this paper investigates the distribution of Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) emissions in Michigan in an attempt to ascertain whether these emissions are inequitably distributed according to race. The analysis examines TRI emissions for the entire State, the State's urban areas, and the Detroit Metropolitan Area (DMA). TRI emissions for the entire State are inequitably distributed according to race. This finding does not hold for multivariate analyses of the State's urban areas and the DMA. However, in these areas, race is significantly correlated with TRI emissions in bivariate regressions. The author makes several arguments. First, the nature of specific conclusions drawn from this and another, similar study depends on (a) whether one holds an institutional or intentional model of environmental discrimination and (b) whether one gives more weight to Statewide analyses or analyses restricted to urban areas. Second, one should not theorize race and income as competing explanatory variables. Third, qualitative historical case studies are necessary if we are to adequately explain the formation of current environmental hazard distributions.
Accurate and Robust Line Segment Extraction Using Minimum Entropy With Hough Transform

The Hough transform is a popular technique used in the field of image processing and computer vision. With a Hough transform technique, not only the normal angle and distance of a line but also the line-segment's length and midpoint (centroid) can be extracted by analysing the voting distribution around a peak in the Hough space. In this paper, a method based on minimum-entropy analysis is proposed to extract the set of parameters of a line segment. In each column around a peak in Hough space, the voting values specify probabilistic distributions. The corresponding entropies and statistical means are computed. The line-segment's normal angle and length are simultaneously computed by fitting a quadratic polynomial curve to the voting entropies. The line-segment's midpoint and normal distance are computed by fitting and interpolating a linear curve to the voting means. The proposed method is tested on simulated images for detection accuracy by providing comparative results. Experimental results on real-world images verify the method as well. The proposed method for line-segment detection is both accurate and robust in the presence of quantization error, background noise, or pixel disturbances.
Cyber-Physical-Social System Self-Organization: Ontology-Based Multi-level Approach and Case Study

This paper presents a multi-level approach for self-organization of in cyber-physical system resources. Cyber-physical system consists of physical part and cyber part. For implementation of joint actions by devices in physical part, they have to interact in cyber part. It is proposed to use the smart space technology for exchange information between these devices in cyber part of cyber-physical system. Smart Space -- is a computational environment consisting of multiple heterogeneous services (electronic and computational devices, Internet pages, data based, etc.) which has intelligent behavior, can proactively provide information taking into account current situation. Smart spaces allow unifying different levels of services, implement self-organization of services in each level, and providing politics from upper to lower level. Self-organization on every level is implemented based on ontology-based context management techniques and ontology matching method that provides semantic interoperability between interacted robots. Discussed in the paper case study solve the task of self-organization three types of robots based on politics from operation planning services and context situation in smart space. For the scenario implementation the Smart-M3 information sharing platform is used. It provides easy-to-use interfaces for information sharing through the RDF ontologies and publish / subscribe mechanism for connected services.
A hierarchical approach for human age estimation

We consider the problem of automatic age estimation from face images. Age estimation is usually formulated as a regression problem relating the facial features and the age variable, and a single regression model is learnt for all ages. We propose a hierarchical approach, where we first divide the face images into various age groups and then learn a separate regression model for each group. Given a test image, we first classify the image into one of the age groups and then use the regression model for that particular group. To improve our classification result, we use many different classifiers and fuse them using the majority rule. Experiments show that our approach outperforms many state of the art regression methods for age estimation.
AUDIO QUALITY MEASUREMENTS IN COMUNICATION SYSTEMS

ITU gives P-class recommendations for the measurement of audio quality in communication systems. The recommendations are based on system transfer function estimation, nonlinear distortion measurement and perceptual evaluation of audio signal degradation. This work shows and discusses implementation of these methods in real-time "point-to-point" testing of communication systems. A refinement of existing Fourier analyzer technique, a multitone distortion testing, and modulation quality evaluation in speech testing are presented. Modern digital communications introduce new types of signal degradation: coding distortions, time varying delays, time variance of system parameters (gain and noise floor) and even a time clipping in VoIP systems. Echo canceling systems impose restriction on selection of excitation signals in distortion testing, as well as on selection on minimal length of signal analysis window. After analysis of these factors, the work suggests use of excitation signals that are slightly different from those proposed in ITU_T recommendations. The work also presents new perceptual method for the evaluation of speech quality called MQE. It is based on speech modulation quality evaluation and can be used in real time.
The RAVE Complex Is Essential for Stable Assembly of the Yeast V-ATPase*

Vacuolar proton-translocating ATPases are composed of a peripheral complex, V1, attached to an integral membrane complex, Vo. Association of the two complexes is essential for ATP-driven proton transport and is regulated post-translationally in response to glucose concentration. A new complex, RAVE, was recently isolated and implicated in glucose-dependent reassembly of V-ATPase complexes that had disassembled in response to glucose deprivation (Seol, J. H., Shevchenko, A., and Deshaies, R. J. (2001) Nat. Cell Biol. 3, 384–391). Here, we provide evidence supporting a role for RAVE in reassembly of the V-ATPase but also demonstrate an essential role in V-ATPase assembly under other conditions. The RAVE complex associates reversibly with V1 complexes released from the membrane by glucose deprivation but binds constitutively to cytosolic V1 sectors in a mutant lacking Vosectors. V-ATPase complexes from cells lacking RAVE subunits show serious structural and functional defects even in glucose-grown cells or in combination with a mutation that blocks disassembly of the V-ATPase. RAVE·V1 interactions are specifically disrupted in cells lacking V1 subunits E or G, suggesting a direct involvement for these subunits in interaction of the two complexes. Skp1p, a RAVE subunit involved in many different signal transduction pathways, binds stably to other RAVE subunits under conditions that alter RAVE·V1 binding; thus, Skp1p recruitment to the RAVE complex does not appear to provide a signal for V-ATPase assembly.
Journal of Information Science and Engineering Xx, Xxx-xxx (201x) a Bad-block Test Design for Multiple Flash-memory Chips

Flash-memory has become a popular alternative in storage systems, due to its characteristics in non-volatility, shock-resistance, and low-power consumption. When a flash-memory chip is created priori to shipping, its initial bad blocks should be identified, where a bad block means that data stored in the block could be unreliable and can not be used. For safety and reliable reasons, any bad blocks should be efficiently identified by considering the operational model of flash-memory chips. In this paper, we will propose a bad-block test design for multiple flash-memory chips to efficiently identify bad blocks. The objective is to exploit execution parallelism and provide QoS guarantees. We will define a real-time task model and provide the schedulability analysis. We further provide a reasonable execution time setup for real-time tasks and show that the execution time setup can provide a schedulable result. In the experiments, a real case is discussed and measured such that the bad-block test design can be realized by configuring the corresponding computation time, the period, and the longest non-preemption time.