Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Degrees of Freedom for Distributed MIMO Communications

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems have assumed great importance in recent times because of their remarkably higher capacity compared to single input single output (SISO) systems. One of the most celebrated results in this context is that the capacity of a point-to-po int MIMO system withM inputs andN outputs increases linearly asmin(M;N) at high SNR. For power and bandwidth limited wireless system this opens up another dimension “space” that can be exploited in a similar way as t ime and frequency. Similar to time division and frequency division multiplexing, MIMO systems present the possibility of multiplexing signals in space. For example, using the singular value decomposition of a MIMO ch annel, one can generate parallel channels in space similar to the multiple channels created by dividing time or frequency into orthogonal slots. Inspite of the theoretical duality of time, frequency, and s pace, the contextual constraints of a communication system create important differences that determine whethe r the degrees of freedom that exist in each of these dimensions areavailable or not. In particular, the availability of the spatial degre es of freedom depends upon two factors: cooperation within inputs and outputs, and cha nnel knowledge. Previous work has shown that in the absence of channel knowledge the spatial degrees of free dom are lost [1, 2]. In this paper we will focus on communication scenarios with constrained cooperation bet we n inputs and outputs. The traditional view of MIMO systems is that of a point-to-point multiple antenna system with multiple inputs representing the collocated antennas at the transmi tter and the multiple outputs representing the collocated antennas at the receiver. In this paper we take a generalized view of MIMO systems where the inputs and outputs are distributed across users. The distributed MIMO model ca ptures most multiuser communication scenarios. While multiuser communications have always been interesti ng topic, there has been a recent surge of interest in this area because of the growing popularity and application s of ad-hoc and sensor networks. What makes the generalized MIMO systems especially challenging is that un like the point-to-point case, joint processing is not possible at the inputs or the outputs controlled by differen t users. The available spatial degrees of freedom are affected by the inability to jointly process the signals at t he distributed inputs and outputs. In this paper our goal is to quantify the loss in the available degrees of freedom un der the cooperation constraints imposed by various multiuser communication scenarios.
Targeted Nanotheranostics for Future Personalized Medicine: Recent Progress in Cancer Therapy

Recently, many theranostic nanomaterials have been developed by integrating therapeutic and diagnostic agents in a single regimen. Real-time visualization of nano drug carrier biodistributions, drug release processes and therapeutic responses can provide critical information needed for dynamically optimizing treatment operations in a personalized manner in real time. This review highlights recent progresses in the development of multifunctional nanoparticles possessing both therapeutic and imaging functionalities for cancer therapy. The advantages of using nanoparticle platforms are discussed. Examples demonstrating various combinations of imaging and therapeutic modalities are highlighted.
Resilience: a nationwide study of medical educators

Background: Medical educators have the potential to play an important role in addressing resilience issues across the medical education continuum. Yet, limited research has explored this cohort, particularly in the UK context. This study aims to address this gap by exploring resilience and the factors that relate to resilience in UK medical educators. Methods: A cross-sectional online questionnaire was employed. It contained the validated Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale 25 (CD-RISC-25) and Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8), for determining medical educator resilience and depression levels respectively. Sociodemographic characteristics were also collected to identify potential factors associated with resilience. Finally, participants identified factors that facilitated or undermined their resilience through open-ended questions. Data was analysed using quantitative (e.g. multiple regression analysis), and qualitative (i.e. thematic framework analysis) approaches. Results: Among 244 UK participants, the mean CD-RISC-25 score was 72.9 and standard deviation 10.3. The PHQ-8 score was the only significant negative predictor identified (B = -1.22, p < 0.001). Other sociodemographic variables examined were not found to be predictors of CD-RISC-25 scores. Educators identified multidimensional factors influencing their resilience, but predominately viewed internal factors as being supportive, and external factors as undermining. Conclusions: Medical educators in this study had resilience levels that were comparable to other population samples. The study also highlights the importance of considering external factors, such as contextual and sociocultural influences, in addition to individual factors when addressing resilience.
Long term mortality after severe starvation during the siege of Leningrad: prospective cohort study

Abstract Objectives To determine whether starvation during periods of increased growth after birth have long term health consequences. Design Analysis of cardiovascular risk factors and mortality in a longitudinal follow up after the 1941-4 siege of Leningrad. Mortality measured from 1975 up to the end of 1999. Setting St Petersburg, Russia (formerly Leningrad). Participants 5000 men born 1916-35 who lived in Leningrad, randomly selected to take part in health examinations in 1975-7. Of the 3905 men who participated, a third had experienced the siege. Main outcome measures Relative risk of ischaemic heart disease and mortality from stroke by siege exposure. Odds ratios and means for several cardiovascular risk factors. Results Three to six decades after the siege, in men who experienced the siege around the age of puberty blood pressure was raised (mean difference in systolic 3.3 mm Hg, in diastolic 1.3 mm Hg) as was mortality from ischaemic heart disease (relative risk 1.39, 95% confidence interval 1.07 to 1.79) and stroke (1.67, 1.15 to 2.43), including haemorrhagic stroke (1.71, 0.90 to 3.22). The effect on mortality was partly mediated via blood pressure but not by any other measured biological, behavioural, or social factor. Conclusions Starvation, or accompanying chronic stress, particularly at the onset of or during puberty, may increase vulnerability to later cardiovascular disease.
DOES ULTRASOUND TRAINING LEAD TO IMPROVED PERCEPTION OF A NON-NATIVE SOUND CONTRAST ? : EVIDENCE FROM JAPANESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH *

Both the perception and production of speech sounds in a non-native language can be challenging to adult second language learners due to long-time experience with their native language. Numerous studies have investigated how the ability to perceive and produce speech sounds can be modified during adulthood. This study explores whether production training using ultrasound as visual feedback can lead to improved perception and production of a non-native speech contrast in the absence of perceptual training. To this end, Japanese learners of English who were beginning ESL students in Canada were trained to produce English /r/ and /l/. It has been well documented that native Japanese speakers are likely to have difficulty in discriminating between English /r/ and /l/ (e.g., Goto 1971, Miyawaki et al. 1975) due to the perceived similarity between these phonemes and the Japanese liquid /r/ (e.g., Best and Strange 1992). This claim is often made despite the fact that the Japanese /r/ is phonetically an apico-alveolar tap that is distinct from the English liquids (Vance 2008). The primary acoustic cue that differentiates English /r/ and /l/ is the third formant (F3), which is lower for /r/ and higher for /l/ (e.g., O’Conner et al. 1957). Those phonemes also differ in the second formant (F2), which is slightly lower for /r/ and slightly higher for /l/; however, this does not appear to be a reliable cue in discriminating the phonemes for native English speakers (O’Conner et al. 1957). Compared to native English speakers, native Japanese speakers are less sensitive to the F3 difference (Miyawaki et al. 1975, Best and Strange 1992, Iverson et al. 2003) but are more sensitive to the F2 difference, which may be crucial in identifying the Japanese tap (Iverson et al. 2003). English /r/ and /l/ can also be difficult for native Japanese speakers to produce (e.g., Goto 1971, Sheldon and Strange 1982). This could be due in part to their unfamiliarity with the accurate configurations of the articulatory gestures required for these sounds (Bradlow 2008). Lotto et al. (2004) acoustically analyzed Japanese speakers’ productions of /r/ and /l/ by plotting multiple
Conceptualisation, development, and evaluation of a measure of unplanned pregnancy

Study objective: To develop a measure of unplanned pregnancy that is valid, reliable, and appropriate in the context of contemporary demographic trends and social mores and can be used in a variety of situations, including the production of population prevalence estimates. Design: A two stage study design: qualitative (inductive) methods to delineate the construct of pregnancy planning, and quantitative/psychometric methods to establish the means of measurement. Setting: Eight health service providers (comprising 14 clinics, including antenatal, abortion, and one general practitioner) across London, Edinburgh, Hertfordshire, Salisbury, and Southampton in the UK. Participants: Samples comprised a mixture of pregnant (continuing pregnancy and opting for abortion) and recently pregnant (post-abortion and postnatal) women. At the qualitative stage, 47 women took part in depth interviews (20 of whom were re-interviewed after the birth of their baby). Items were pre-tested with 26 women, and two psychometric field tests were carried out with, respectively, 390 and 651 women. Main results: A six item measure of unplanned pregnancy was produced. Psychometric testing demonstrated the measure’s high reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.92; test-retest reliability = 0.97) and high face, content, and construct validity. Women’s positions in relation to pregnancy planning are represented by the range of scores (0–12). Conclusions: A psychometric measure of unplanned pregnancy, the development of which was informed by lay views, is now available. The measure is suitable for use with any pregnancy regardless of outcome (that is, birth, abortion, miscarriage) and is highly acceptable to women.
Identity Over Time: Perceived Similarity Between Selves Predicts Well-Being 10 Years Later

When individuals feel similar to their future self, they are more likely to delay present gratification and make plans for the long run. But do these feelings of similarity actually correspond with heightened well-being for the future self? Theoretically, making patient decisions in the present could lead to a future self who is better off and thus more satisfied. Alternatively, perceived overlap with the future self could cause people to continually deny themselves pleasures in the present, diminishing satisfaction over time. To adjudicate between these possibilities, we use a 10-year longitudinal data set (N = 4,963) to estimate how thoughts about one’s future self in an initial survey predict life satisfaction 10 years later. Controlling for initial life satisfaction, greater perceived similarity to the future self is linearly associated with greater life satisfaction 10 years after the original prediction, a finding that is robust to a number of alternative analyses.
S74 Small Creep Deformations and Residual Stress Relaxation in Welded and Shot Peened AlMgSiCu Aluminum Alloys

The stability of compressive residual stresses and the stability of strain hardening states are seen to have high technical im portance. For a laser beam welded AlMgSiCu-alloy, results of applied stress and residual stress relaxation at elevated temperatures 100 100°C, and only small differences between welding zones and base material occur. Shot peening induced residual stresses decrease to a large extent in the weld seam areas yet remain stable to a higher extent in the base material after stress relaxation tests (and also after creep tests, low cycle alternating thermal or thermal mechanical tests). Calculations of residual stress relaxation based on applied stress relaxation tests underestimates the relaxation behavior due to the different nature of applied stresses and residual stresses and the higher relaxation of surface residual stresses.
Average entropy of a subsystem.

If a quantum system of Hilbert space dimension mn is in a random pure state, the average entropy of a subsystem of dimension m\ensuremath{\le}n is conjectured to be ${\mathit{S}}_{\mathit{m},\mathit{n}}$= ${\mathit{S}}_{\mathit{k}=\mathit{n}+1}^{\mathit{mn}}$ 1/k-m-1/2n and is shown to be \ensuremath{\simeq}lnm-m/2n for 1\ensuremath{\ll}m\ensuremath{\le}n. Thus there is less than one-half unit of information, on average, in the smaller subsystem of a total system in a random pure state.
Privacy in Epigenetics: Temporal Linkability of MicroRNA Expression Profiles

The decreasing cost of molecular profiling tests, such as DNA sequencing, and the consequent increasing availability of biological data are revolutionizing medicine, but at the same time create novel privacy risks. The research community has already proposed a plethora of methods for protecting genomic data against these risks. However, the privacy risks stemming from epigenetics, which bridges the gap between the genome and our health characteristics, have been largely overlooked so far, even though epigenetic data such as microRNAs (miRNAs) are no less privacy sensitive. This lack of investigation is attributed to the common belief that the inherent temporal variability of miRNAs shields them from being tracked and linked over time. In this paper, we show that, contrary to this belief, miRNA expression profiles can be successfully tracked over time, despite their variability. Specifically, we show that two blood-based miRNA expression profiles taken with a time difference of one week from the same person can be matched with a success rate of 90%. We furthermore observe that this success rate stays almost constant when the time difference is increased from one week to one year. In order to mitigate the linkability threat, we propose and thoroughly evaluate two countermeasures: (i) hiding a subset of disease-irrelevant miRNA expressions, and (ii) probabilistically sanitizing the miRNA expression profiles. Our experiments show that the second mechanism provides a better trade-off between privacy and disease-prediction accuracy.
Partial discharge pattern recognition of transformer based on electric signal and ultrasonic comprehensive analysis

According to the characteristics and disadvantages of PD electrical analysis method, an electro-acoustic and ultrasound combination partial discharge (PD) pattern recognition method is proposed. Firstly, the transformer PD test system's wiring diagram is given, and anti-jamming measures are described. Secondly, Electrical pulse signals time-domain and ultrasound signal statistical features have been extracted to build feature vectors, and then the features is input to BP neural network, the typical PD pattern recognition has been derived. Lastly, the partial discharge analysis system software is developed, and experiments show that the analysis method is effective and software process is correct.
Relating possible world based and POMDP based characterization of sensing actions

In this paper we discuss two diierent ways to characterize sensing actions: one based on possible worlds and another based on POMDPs. In the past there has been a possible world based characterization when sensors and actuators are perfect, and a POMDP based characterization allowing them to be imperfect. We develop a simpliied POMDP based characterization for the rst case and a possible world based characterization for the second case. We then show the equivalence of the possible world based characterizations and POMDP based characterizations and discuss some of the other characterizations in the literature
Speech Recognition in Alzheimer's Disease and in its Assessment

Narrative, spontaneous speech can provide a valuable source of information about an individual’s cognitive state. Unfortunately, clinical transcription of this type of data is typically done by hand, which is prohibitively time-consuming. In order to automate the entire process, we optimize automatic speech recognition (ASR) for participants with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a relatively large clinical database. We extract text features from the resulting transcripts and use these features to identify AD with an SVM classifier. While the accuracy of automatic assessment decreases with increased WER, this is weakly correlated (−0.31). This relative robustness to ASR error is aided by selecting features that are resilient to ASR error.
A Program for Research on Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Tax Incentives and Household Portfolios: a Panel Data Analysis Tax Incentives and Household Portfolios: a Panel Data Analysis Tax Incentives and Household Portfolios: a Panel Data Analysis

The Program for Research on Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population (SEDAP) is an interdisciplinary research program centred at McMaster University with co-investigators at seventeen other universities in Canada and abroad. The SEDAP Research Paper series provides a vehicle for distributing the results of studies undertaken by those associated with the program. Authors take full responsibility for all expressions of opinion. Abstract: This paper investigates the responsiveness of household portfolios to tax incentives by exploiting a substantial tax reform that altered after-tax returns and cost of debt for a large number of households. An extraordinary panel data set that covers two years before and after the reform is used for the analysis. Our empirical findings suggest that households reshuffle their balance sheets in the case of a partial deductibility phase-out. In particular, heavily taxed, interest-bearing assets are used to pay off mortgage debt. Furthermore, we find that taxes have a significant impact on the structure of household portfolios even after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Cet article examine la sensibilité du choix de portefeuille des ménages aux incitations fiscales en s'appuyant sur une importante réforme fiscale qui affecta les rendements après impôt et le coût de l'endettement d'un grand nombre de ménages. Notre analyse repose sur une base de donnée longitudinale exceptionnelle couvrant les deux années antérieures et postérieures à la reforme. Nos résultats empiriques suggèrent que les ménages remanient leurs portefeuilles dans le cas de l'élimination progressive de la déductibilité partielle. En particulier, les actifs rémunérés lourdement imposés sont utilisés au remboursement des crédits hypothécaires. En outre, nous constatons que les impôts ont un impact significatif sur la diversification du portefeuille des ménages même après la prise en compte des effets de l'hétérogénéité non observée. Acknowledgements: We thank Martin Browning and Thomas Crossley for long discussions and many comments. We also thank the participants of the Workshop on Household Choice of Consumption, Housing and Portfolios in Copenhagen (2005). Sule Alan thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support. Søren Leth-Petersen is grateful for financial support from the Carlsberg Foundation.
Determinants of the length of stay in Latin American tourism destinations.

Economic theory generally treats the duration of a vacation as a constraint on demand imposed by available time. In contrast, in this article, we show that the length of stay is a determinant of destination demand more than a demand constraint that is largely explained by the cost of travel, and moderated by the perceived characteristics of the destination, publicity, and the sociodemographic profile of the tourist. We estimate a heterogeneous survival model to measure the relationship between vacation length and covariates. The empirical application was carried out in Portugal on a sample of individuals traveling to Latin America on charter flights. The article discusses the policy implications of the research findings.
Bottom-up Integration Testing with the Technique of Metamorphic Testing

In previous studies on the application of Metamorphic Testing (MT), testing was usually conducted at the system level directly, without any well-planned integration strategy. This could lead to a difficulty in constructing Metamorphic Relations (MRs), as well as tracking and debugging the faults. On the other hand, traditional integration testing requires extra cost. In this paper, we combine the bottom-up integration approach with MT to address all the above problems. We use the Feature Selection (FS) system to illustrate our method and a 2-phase MT is conducted. With this 2-phase MT method, we can ease the MR identification and provide a clear hierarchy to easily track and isolate the faults for a complex system. Moreover, since such an integration approach is logically achieved with MRs, it does not need to have those specific set-ups as required in traditional integration testing.
ATMOSPHERIC INSTABILITY PARAMETERS DERIVED FROM MSG SEVIRI OBSERVATIONS

Convective systems can develop in a thermodynamically unstable atmosphere. Such systems may quickly reach high altitudes and can cause severe storms. Meteorologists are thus especially interested to identify such storm potentials when the respective system is still in a preconvective state. A number of instability indices have been defined to describe such situations. Traditionally, these indices are taken from temperature and humidity soundings by radiosondes. As radiosondes are only of very limited temporal and spatial resolution there is a demand for satellite-derived indices. The Meteorological Product Extraction Facility (MPEF) for the new European Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite envisages the operational derivation of a number of instability indices from the brightness temperatures measured by certain SEVIRI channels (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager, the radiometer onboard MSG). The traditional physical approach to this kind of retrieval problem is to infer the atmospheric profile via a constrained inversion and compute the indices then directly from the obtained profile. As this algorithm would impose a too high computer load on the MPEF system, the operational MPEF will use a statistical approach: The measured brightness temperatures together with further predictors are used to derive each instability index, where the statistical relations between these parameters are gained from a neural network and appropriate training data. Both methods are currently installed in the Eumetsat MPEF prototype environment and are tested on GOES sounder data. This paper shortly describes the two methods and shows a detailed comparison between the two methods and to independent radiosonde data. It should be noted that both methods only allow the derivation of instability indices over cloudfree areas.