Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel approach to non-invasive blood glucose measurement based on RF transmission

A new approach to non-invasive blood parameter measuring is presented, which consists of two matched antennas for transmission based two port measurements. The current situation of patients suffering from diabetes mellitus and their need for novel blood sugar level measuring techniques is presented. Dielectric properties of body tissues are reviewed and their influence on transmission properties are estimated for plane wave propagation. A covered patch antenna and substrate integrated waveguide slot antenna has been designed, measured and compromised for glucose-concentration measurements. Further, several test locations are discussed with respect to an accurate measurement. The introduced antennas were optimized and fabricated with respect to the dielectric and mounting properties of human tissues.
Secure SMS Communication Using Encryption Gateway and Digital Signature

GSM Networks were initially designed for communication purpose and security aspect was not covered in the system, but now different systems are using diverse encryption techniques to protect the SMS text from unwanted receivers. Most of work has been done in GSM to secure message from person who can eavesdrop the GSM Channel, from the hacker who can perform replay attacked using his historical messages and from the hacker who can disclose the message secrecy. Eavesdropping in a radio channel is easy but due to a lot of traffic there is a very less chances to find the correct information and the desired SMS however in today's GSM system still have two problems. The easiest way to read the text message from any person is the mobile operator network entities so there is a need to make it possible that our sent SMS is not in the format that should be easily read, so Protection of message text, its readability at operators end at different network entities like, SMSC, MSC and Lawful Interception System, and the second problem is message non-repudiation, this term is used for the behavior of an attacker such that it impersonates as some other genuine user. Because in today's network it is possible that at operator end messages can be sent using any sender number and receiver cannot confirm that this message is generated from the specified number or from any other network operator.
Experimental Study on Age Estimation of Bloodstains Based on Biological and Toxicological Analysis

The determination of the age of bloodstains in forensic investigations helps in estimating the time elapsed between incidents (such as accidents or violent crimes wherein the blood was shed) and sampling. In this study, bloodstains containing either ethanol or amphetamine sulfate and methamphetamine hydrochloride were prepared and incubated at 25°C and 50% humidity to determine their age, based on temporal changes in the relative levels of microRNA 16 (miR-16) and miR-451 after incubation. The miR-16 and miR-451 levels decreased significantly 5-28 days after incubation in the chamber. The concentration of ethanol in the bloodstains decreased rapidly during storage and became undetectable after 180 min. The concentrations of amphetamine sulfate and methamphetamine hydrochloride in the bloodstains remained almost constant throughout the experimental period. These findings indicate that the age of bloodstains can be calculated simply on the basis of the relative levels of miRNAs. Although it is difficult to utilize the concentrations of ethanol, methamphetamine, and amphetamine sulfate for estimating the age of the bloodstain, these data could provide evidence of the victim or assailant having used these substances at the scene of an accident or crime.
Personalized retrieval in social bookmarking

Users of social bookmarking systems take advantage of pivot browsing, an interaction technique allowing them to easily refine lists of bookmarks through the selection of filter terms. However, social bookmarking systems use one-size-fits-all ranking metrics to order refined lists. These generic rankings ignore past user interactions that may be useful in determining the relevance of bookmarks. In this work we describe a personalized ordering algorithm that leverages the fact that refinding, rather than discovery (finding a bookmark for the first time), makes up the majority of bookmark accesses. The algorithm examines user-access histories and promotes bookmarks that a user has previously visited. We investigate the potential of our algorithm using interaction logs from an enterprise social bookmarking system, the results show that our personalized algorithm would lead to improved bookmark rankings.
Formant-Based Robust Voice Activity Detection

Voice activity detection (VAD) can be used to distinguish human speech from other sounds, and various applications can benefit from VAD-including speech coding and speech recognition. To accurately detect voice activity, the algorithm must take into account the characteristic features of human speech and/or background noise. In many real-life applications, noise frequently occurs in an unexpected manner, and in such situations, it is difficult to determine the characteristics of noise with sufficient accuracy. As a result, robust VAD algorithms that depend less on making correct noise estimates are desirable for real-life applications. Formants are the major spectral peaks of the human voice, and these are highly useful to distinguish vowel sounds. The characteristics of the spectral peaks are such that, these peaks are likely to survive in a signal after severe corruption by noise, and so formants are attractive features for voice activity detection under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. However, it is difficult to accurately extract formants from noisy signals when background noise introduces unrelated spectral peaks. Therefore, this paper proposes a simple formant-based VAD algorithm to overcome the problem of detecting formants under conditions with severe noise. The proposed method achieves a much faster processing time and outperforms standard VAD algorithms under various noise conditions. The proposed method is robust against various types of noise and produces a light computational load, so it is suitable for use in various applications.
RNA as a Drug Target and its Tools and Databases

Earlier, during 19th century, there was a concept that RNA is a passive carrier of genetic information. However, with advancement, now it is well established that RNA performs a number of vital roles in the cell, and its malfunction may lead to a disease. The recent advancement in the knowledge about diversity, structural and functional information related to RNAs has put them in the lime light as a drug target. Here, in this mini-review, discussion has been done that coding as well as non-coding RNA regions have potential as a drug target. Besides, a few databases and tools used for the RNA target prediction have also been discussed.
The Influence of Diabetes, Glycemic Control, and Diabetes-Related Comorbidities on Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Background To assess the influence of diabetes mellitus (DM), glycemic control, and diabetes-related comorbidities on manifestations and outcome of treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Methodology/Principal Findings Culture positive pulmonary TB patients notified to health authorities in three hospitals in Taiwan from 2005–2010 were investigated. Glycemic control was assessed by glycated haemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) and diabetic patients were categorized into 3 groups: HbA1C<7%, HbA1C 7–9%, HbA1C>9%. 1,473 (705 with DM and 768 without DM) patients were enrolled. Of the 705 diabetic patients, 82 (11.6%) had pretreatment HbA1C<7%, 152 (21.6%) 7%–9%, 276 (39.2%) >9%, and 195 (27.7%) had no information of HbA1C. The proportions of patients with any symptom, cough, hemoptysis, tiredness and weight loss were all highest in diabetic patients with HbA1C>9%. In multivariate analysis adjusted for age, sex, smoking, and drug resistance, diabetic patients with HbA1C>9% (adjOR 3.55, 95% CI 2.40–5.25) and HbA1C 7–9% (adjOR 1.62, 95% CI 1.07–2.44) were significantly more likely to be smear positive as compared with non-diabetic patients, but not those with HbA1C<7% (adjOR 1.16, 95% CI 0.70–1.92). The influence of DM on outcome of TB treatment was not proportionately related to HbA1C, but mainly mediated through diabetes-related comorbidities. Patients with diabetes-related comorbidities had an increased risk of unfavorable outcome (adjOR 3.38, 95% CI 2.19–5.22, p<0.001) and one year mortality (adjOR 2.80, 95% CI 1.89–4.16). However, diabetes was not associated with amplification of resistance to isoniazid (p = 0.363) or to rifampicin (p = 0.344). Conclusions/Significance Poor glycemic control is associated with poor TB treatment outcome and improved glycemic control may reduce the influence of diabetes on TB.
Recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma following liver transplantation: a review of preoperative and postoperative prognostic indicators.

OBJECTIVE To review the preoperative and postoperative variables that predict hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence following orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT). DATA SOURCES A collective review of the literature was conducted by searching the MEDLINE database using several key words: hepatocellular carcinoma, recurrence, liver transplantation, and salvage transplantation. STUDY SELECTION Reviews and original articles containing basic scientific observations and long-term clinical outcomes were included. DATA EXTRACTION Critical observations from peer-reviewed sources were incorporated in this review. DATA SYNTHESIS Overall, 11 studies were reviewed to determine the incidence of HCC recurrence following OLT and to identify prognostic variables of recurrence. Four studies were evaluated to determine the efficacy of salvage transplantation following liver resection. CONCLUSIONS Liver transplantation is a viable treatment option for select patients with HCC and end-stage liver disease. However, in approximately 20% of patients, recurrent HCC is the rate-limiting factor for long-term survival. Despite identification of clinical parameters that may stratify patients at high risk and exhaustive preoperative staging, cancer recurrence is likely the result of microscopic extrahepatic disease. With a desperate donor organ shortage, locoregional ablation techniques and resection are being employed in patients on the waiting list to serve as a bridge to OLT. Furthermore, some have advocated aggressive surgical resection of isolated metastasis in both the liver and extrahepatic viscera. Whether these creative strategies confer a survival advantage is unknown; it will require long-term follow-up to determine their efficacy.
The role of immunity and neuroinflammation in genetic predisposition and pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract Alzheimer's disease is an important public concern with rising prevalence across the globe. While many therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer's disease have been developed, there are currently no validated disease-modifying treatments. Thus, in order to develop novel treatment strategies, there is a significant need to progress our understanding of the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. Several large genome-wide association studies and whole genome and exome sequencing studies have identified novel genes associated with late-onset Alzheimer's disease. Interestingly, many of the genes are associated with inflammation and the immune system, including complement receptor 1, clusterin, CD33, EPH receptor A1, membrane-spanning 4-domains subfamily A, ATP-binding cassette sub-family A member 7, major histocompatibility complex class II, inositol polyphosphate-5-phosphatase, myocyte enhancer factor 2C, and triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2. The pathogenetic contributions of immune reaction and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease have been regarded largely as part of amyloid cascade hypothesis. The neurotoxic amyloid-β (Aβ) induces activation of immune cells, such as microglia, astrocytes, perivascular macrophages and lymphocytes and decreased capability of clearing Aβ by immune system and chronic inflammation caused by activated immune cells aggravate neuronal damage and eventually Alzheimer's disease. But the precise mechanism and hereditary impact on such process is largely unknown. The current findings in genetic studies suggest that the immunological mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease may extend beyond passive reaction of Aβ, including the development of Alzheimer's disease such as time of onset and rate of progression. In this article, we aimed to review the mechanisms of immune reaction and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's disease, with an emphasis on the function of genes known to be associated with a risk of Alzheimer's disease in terms of neuroinflammation and immune function.
A Versatile Quadrature Oscillator and Universal Biquad Filter Using Dual-Output Current Controlled Current Differencing Transconductance Amplifier

In this article, a novel circuit, which can function both as quadrature oscillator and as universal biquad filter (lowpass, highpass, bandpass) are introduced. Working as quadrature oscillator, the oscillation condition and oscillation frequency can be adjusted independently by the input bias current. Functioning as universal biquad filter, the quality factor and cutoff frequency can be tuned orthogonally via the input bias current. The proposed circuit can work as either quadrature oscillator or biquad filter without changing circuit topology. The proposed circuit provides output signal both current-mode and voltage-mode simultaneously. The circuit description is very simple, consisting of merely one dual output current controlled current differencing transconductance amplifier (DO-CCCDTA) and 2 grounded capacitors. Without any external resistors and using only grounded element, this circuit is then suitable for IC architecture. The PSPICE simulation results are depicted. The given results agree well with the theoretical anticipations. The power consumption is approximately 1.89 mW at plusmn2.5 V supply voltages
Watch Your Step: Optimal Policy in a Tipping Climate

We investigate the optimal policy response to the possibility of abrupt, irreversible shifts in system dynamics. The welfare cost of a tipping point emerges from the policymaker's response to altered system dynamics. Our policymaker also learns about a threshold's location by observing the system's response in each period. Simulations with a recursive, numerical climate-economy model show that tipping possibilities raise the optimal carbon tax more strongly over time. The resulting policy paths ultimately lower optimal peak warming by up to 0.5°C. Different types of posttipping shifts in dynamics generate qualitatively different optimal pretipping policy paths.
Commitment to Work and its Relationship with Organizational Culture Mediated by Satisfaction

Purpose – The objective of this study is to analyze the mediating effect of satisfaction on the relationship between organizational culture and commitment at work. Design/methodology/approach – This paper adopts a quantitative and descriptive approach, applying an online questionnaire to employees of a public development bank operating in the Northeast of Brazil. The analysis method involved the use of structural equations modeling. Findings – The main results indicate that job satisfaction plays an important role in employee commitment, mediating the positive influence of organizational culture on commitment to work in its affective, instrumental, and normative dimensions in adhocratic cultures, and on affective commitment in clan cultures. They also indicate that satisfaction is a direct predictor of organizational commitment in the same way it mediates the relationship between culture and commitment. Originality/value – This paper contributes to increasing the theoretical knowledge about the relationships established between culture, satisfaction, and commitment. For the area of people management, this knowledge can favor organizational performance, allowing managers to act more accurately in each of these constructs.
Optical implementation of a high order associative memory

An experimental implementation of a 10-input quadratic associative memory based on a compact optical 'chip' design is described. Such a design lends itself easily to the implementation of kth-order associative memories. The authors have experimentally investigated the performance of the network, finding that it stably stores up to four vectors and has error correction capability. Experimental results are compared to theoretical predictions. <<ETX>>
Decoupling End-to-End Efficiency and Fairness Control in High Bandwidth-Delay Product Networks

To address the inefficiency of standard TCP’s additive-increase multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) control in high bandwidth-delay product networks, several end-to-end con gestion control algorithms were proposed. However, these proposal s, for example High-Speed TCP and Scalable TCP, have failed to decouple efficiency control and fairness control. Often h igh aggressiveness (for good efficiency) is achieved at the pric e of poor fairness. The proposed Exponential TCP (EXP-TCP) is an end-to-end algorithm that decouples efficiency control a nd fairness control. With EXP-TCP, first the absolute increment of congestion window sizecwnd grows exponentially, resulting in O(log(cwnd)) time between two consecutive loss events in steadystate. This exponential growth provides high efficiency eve n when the bandwidth is extremely high. Second, the relative growt h rate of two competing flows is proportional to √ cwnd, resulting in the convergence-to-fairness property even with synchro nized losses. EXP-TCP is simple and uses only two parameters: multiplicative decrease parameter β and exponential increase parameter γ. We use simulations to evaluate EXP-TCP under various configurations, including a wide range of bottlenec k bandwidth, a large number of competing flows, mixed long-lived flows and short Web-like traffic, and sudden increase/decrea se of traffic demand.
Real‐Time Weighted Pose‐Space Deformation on the GPU

WPSD (Weighted Pose Space Deformation) is an example based skinning method for articulated body animation. The per‐vertex computation required in WPSD can be parallelized in a SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) manner and implemented on a GPU. While such vertex‐parallel computation is often done on the GPU vertex processors, further parallelism can potentially be obtained by using the fragment processors. In this paper, we develop a parallel deformation method using the GPU fragment processors. Joint weights for each vertex are automatically calculated from sample poses, thereby reducing manual effort and enhancing the quality of WPSD as well as SSD (Skeletal Subspace Deformation). We show sufficient speed‐up of SSD, PSD (Pose Space Deformation) and WPSD to make them suitable for real‐time applications.
Study of the Similarity between Linguistic Tones and Melodic Pitch Contours in Beijing Opera Singing

Features of linguistic tone contours are important factors that shape the distinct melodic characteristics of different genres of Chinese opera. In Beijing opera, the presence of a two-dialectal tone system makes the tone-melody relationship more complex. In this paper, we propose a novel data-driven approach to analyze syllable-sized tone-pitch contour similarity in a corpus of Beijing Opera (381 arias) with statistical modeling and machine learning methods. A total number of 1,993 pitch contour units and attributes were extracted from a selection of 20 arias. We then build Smoothing Spline ANOVA models to compute matrixes of average melodic contour curves by tone category and other attributes. A set of machine learning and statistical analysis methods are applied to 30-point pitch contour vectors as well as dimensionality-reduced representations using Symbolic Aggregate approXimation(SAX). The results indicate an even mixture of shapes within all tone categories, with the absence of evidence for a predominant dialectal tone system in Beijing opera. We discuss the key methodological issues in melody-tone analysis and future work on pair-wise contour unit analysis.
Look Inside the World of Parts of Handwritten Characters

Part-based recognition is expected to be robust in difficult handwritten character recognition tasks. This is because part-based recognition is based on aggregation of independent recognition results at individual local parts without considering their global relations and thus is robust against various deformations, such as partial occlusion, overlap, broken stroke, etc. Since part-based recognition is a new approach, there are still several open problems toward its practical use. For example, compared with entire images, local parts are more ambiguous, i.e., less discriminative. For better recognition accuracy and less computations, we need to know the characteristics of local parts and then, for example, discard less discriminative parts. The purpose of this paper is to conduct some experiments in order to observe and analyze how the local parts of multiple classes are distributed in feature spaces. By handling parts appropriately based on the analysis, we will be able to enhance the usefulness of the part-based method.
Identification of a Peptide Toxin from Grammostola spatulata Spider Venom That Blocks Cation-Selective Stretch-Activated Channels

We have identified a 35 amino acid peptide toxin of the inhibitor cysteine knot family that blocks cationic stretch-activated ion channels. The toxin, denoted GsMTx-4, was isolated from the venom of the spider Grammostola spatulata and has <50% homology to other neuroactive peptides. It was isolated by fractionating whole venom using reverse phase HPLC, and then assaying fractions on stretch-activated channels (SACs) in outside-out patches from adult rat astrocytes. Although the channel gating kinetics were different between cell-attached and outside-out patches, the properties associated with the channel pore, such as selectivity for alkali cations, conductance (∼45 pS at −100 mV) and a mild rectification were unaffected by outside-out formation. GsMTx-4 produced a complete block of SACs in outside-out patches and appeared specific since it had no effect on whole-cell voltage-sensitive currents. The equilibrium dissociation constant of ∼630 nM was calculated from the ratio of association and dissociation rate constants. In hypotonically swollen astrocytes, GsMTx-4 produces ∼40% reduction in swelling-activated whole-cell current. Similarly, in isolated ventricular cells from a rabbit dilated cardiomyopathy model, GsMTx-4 produced a near complete block of the volume-sensitive cation-selective current, but did not affect the anion current. In the myopathic heart cells, where the swell-induced current is tonically active, GsMTx-4 also reduced the cell size. This is the first report of a peptide toxin that specifically blocks stretch-activated currents. The toxin affect on swelling-activated whole-cell currents implicates SACs in volume regulation.
ZG Control for Ship Course Tracking with Singularity Considered and Solved

Zhang dynamics (ZD) and gradient dynamics (GD) are both effective methods for online problems solving. By combining ZD and GD methods, an innovative ZG (Zhang-gradient) control method is thus proposed and investigated in this paper, which is applied to ship course tracking for the first time. Firstly, for a constant parameter setting, we design a ZD-based controller to solve the tracking-control problem of a ship course system with no singularity appearing. Then, for a time-varying parameter setting, the ZG method is applied generally to solve the singularity-containing tracking-control problem of such a system. Simulation results further demonstrate and verify the feasibility and superiority of the unified ZG method in fulfilling the tracking-control task while conquering the singularity problem for the ship course system.