Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling of transfer Characteristics for the broadband power line communication channel

This paper presents a novel approach to model the transfer function of electrical power lines for broadband power line communication. In this approach, the power line is approximated as a transmission line and the two intrinsic parameters, the characteristic impedance and the propagation constants, are derived based on the lumped-element circuit model. Using these intrinsic parameters, the transfer characteristics for a N-branch power distribution network are derived based on the scattering matrix method. Detail derivation of this line model is given in this paper. The model has been verified with practical measurements conducted on actual power networks. It is demonstrated that the model accurately determine the line characteristics under different network configuration and when different household appliances are connected.
An approach to hierarchy model checking via evaluating CTL hierarchically

Symbolic Model Checking is one of the most efficient formal verification methods for hardware design. It uses Computational Tree Logic (CTL) for expressing formal specification of hardware design. However, the large demands of space by Symbolic Model Checking prevents itself from verifying large automates. In this paper we study the possibility of hierarchy evaluation of CTL formula. The result shows that CTL specifications for whole automata can be decomposed into local properties in some case, each of them can be verified on different subautomates respectively. By this way symbolic model checking can be completed hierarchically, which enable us to handle much larger circuits without a large growth of complexity.
Constructing Public Space| Rousing the Facebook Crowd: Digital Enthusiasm and Emotional Contagion in the 2011 Protests in Egypt and Spain

The activist use of Facebook pages in the 2011 movements of the Egyptian revolution and the Spanish Indignados saw phases of exponential growth in user engagement in proximity to key protest events, signaled by spikes in likes and comments. This article analyzes these episodes as moments of digital enthusiasm facilitated by emotional communication on political Facebook pages. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative analysis of Facebook data, I argue that two elements concurred to build moments of digital enthusiasm: (a) the hopeful narrative produced by activist admins managing political Facebook pages, and (b) the receptivity and cooperation of ordinary Internet users who overwhelmingly reinforced the message put forward by activist admins. This emotional dialogue between admins and users generated a process of emotional contagion that helped establish propitious psychological conditions for mass protest participation. Moments of digital enthusiasm demonstrate the power of social media and emotional communication in mass protest mobilization. However, they also highlight the risk of evanescence of collective action in a digital age.
Early emergence of an H275Y mutation in a hematopoietic cell transplant recipient treated with intravenous peramivir

C. Renaud, S.A. Pergam, C. Polyak, R. Jain, J. Kuypers, J.A. Englund, L. Corey, M.J. Boeckh. Early emergence of an H275Y mutation in a hematopoietic cell transplant recipient treated with intravenous peramivir. Transpl Infect Dis 2010: 12: 513–517. All rights reserved
Polynomial-Predictive FIR Design – A Review

In this paper, polynomial-predictive FIR (PPF) design is reviewed. Step-by-step instructions are given starting from the signal model, up to designing ideal fixed-point PPFs. This paper is a one-stop starting point for immediate application of PPFs. Also, a literature review is given, including examples of analogously designable filter types.
Family integrity: pathways of elderly poor persons

Constructing family integrity is a normal developmental challenge for older people, which is infl uenced by the family and social systems. This study examined the life trajectories of older people who lived in poverty throughout their lives and how they evolve towards family integrity or family disconnection. A semi-structured interview on family integrity was administered to 12 participants aged over 64 years old (six of each sex), three in each group were considered as living family integrity situation or disconnection. The main fi ndings suggested that some common circumstances of poverty in people's lives namely: family confl ict and/or distance, domestic violence, (e)migration, multiple severe chronic diseases, informal work, low income, may prevent family integrity and promote family disconnection/alienation. However, participants who
Recurrence of Work-related Low Back Injuries: The Association between Patient Self-report and Indemnity-based Assessments

BACKGROUND: Although various measures of low back pain (LBP) recurrence have been proposed, none have been tested to determine if they are consistent with what those with LBP perceive a “recurrence” to be. To further the understanding of LBP recurrence and how to measure it, we examined how individuals with a history of LBP describe their back pain experiences. METHODS: A qualitative approach was chosen and six mixed-gender focus groups were conducted. Discussions were facilitated by two researchers and structured around predetermined questions. All four authors were involved in the data analysis and thematic congruence was achieved through an iterative process of coding and discussion. Participants included 31 individuals (14 females, 17 males), with ages ranging from early-20s to mid-70s. RESULTS: When asked about LBP recurrence participants had difficulty understanding the concept. There was a sense that, although the pain may disappear, the condition was always there. Three states were defined: ‘normal’, ‘flared-up’ and ‘attack’. ‘Normal’ could include experiencing pain, but generally represented a tolerable state. ‘Flared-up’ was associated with increased pain, the use of strategies to overcome difficulties, and modified participation. ‘Attack’ state was described as severely disabled: “I just have to lay there. ” CONCLUSION: Participants described their experiences in a way that is consistent with the idea that LBP is a fluctuating and disabling health condition. Results cast doubt on the validity of LBP recurrence measures that assume recovery between episodes of lost work time.
Automatic checking of license compliance

Open source software facilitates software reuse as developers can learn from code in existing open source projects. However, license compliance is an important legal issue that should be taken into consideration during open source based software reuse. Ignorance or carelessness could result in huge financial losses. In this paper, we present LChecker, a tool we developed for automatic checking of license compliance. LChecker utilizes Google Code Search service to check whether a local file exists in an OSS project and whether the licenses are compatible. The initial experimental results show that our tool is effective in detecting license compliance problems1.
Domestic water and sanitation as water security: monitoring, concepts and strategy

Domestic water and sanitation provide examples of a situation where long-term, target-driven efforts have been launched with the objective of reducing the proportion of people who are water-insecure, most recently through the millennium development goals (MDGs) framework. Impacts of these efforts have been monitored by an increasingly evidence-based system, and plans for the next period of international policy, which are likely to aim at universal coverage with basic water and sanitation, are being currently developed. As distinct from many other domains to which the concept of water security is applied, domestic or personal water security requires a perspective that incorporates the reciprocal notions of provision and risk, as the current status of domestic water and sanitation security is dominated by deficiency This paper reviews the interaction of science and technology with policies, practice and monitoring, and explores how far domestic water can helpfully fit into the proposed concept of water security, how that is best defined, and how far the human right to water affects the situation. It is considered that they fit well together in terms both of practical planning of targets and indicators and as a conceptual framework to help development. The focus needs to be broad, to extend beyond households, to emphasize maintenance as well as construction and to increase equity of access. International and subnational monitoring need to interact, and monitoring results need to be meaningful to service providers as well as users.
On the practical availability of work-practice

Ethnomethodology (EM) and Conversation Analysis (CA) are often talked of interchangeably, in the same breath, as being concerned with the same object of study; namely, with the explication of the orderliness of naturally organized activities. In the literature that phenomenon is accounted for under the auspices of the ‘missing interactional what’ of organizational studies. Garfinkel (unpublished manuscript) articulates the notion as follows:
Creating Watercolor Style Images Taking Into Account Painting Techniques

Research for creating impressive images like paintings has attained more and more importance because of the recent growth in processing images. Among many painting styles, watercolor style gives a strong impression because of its thin colors and its soft appearance. This paper proposes a method to create watercolor style images from input images, for instance photographs. In contrast with the previously proposed watercolor methods that focuses only on simulating the effects of watercolor medium such as the mottled appearance and the color glazing, the proposed method also considers how the watercolor paintings are painted in order to simulate artists′ painting techniques. In the proposed method, artists′ painting techniques are represented using painting rules. Several painting rules are provided, in addition, user can specify their own painting rules. These painting rules are used for generating strokes to paint the objects. Painting techniques are simulated by first detecting the objects in the input image and generating strokes for each object according to the painting rules. The properties of watercolor medium are simulated by approximating each stroke with sampling points and diffuses their color to nearby pixels. Using the proposed method, a user can interactively create watercolor style images.
The Effects of Social Power on Goal Content and Goal Striving: A Situated Perspective

In this article, we integrate recent findings on the ways power affects goal pursuit. We review literature suggesting that power has two unique effects on goal pursuit: it affects the goals individuals choose to pursue, and the ways they pursue them. In short, we maintain that power-holders prefer goals that suit their privileged positions - reward oriented and hierarchy-maintenance goals - as well as goals that come easily to mind because they are chronically accessible or afforded in the situation. We go on to show that powerful individuals exhibit better self-regulation during goal striving than powerless individuals, independently of goal content. Finally, we review conditions that reverse the effects of power on goal pursuit. © 2011 The Authors. Social and Personality Psychology Compass © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Rapidly exploring random graphs: motion planning of multiple mobile robots

Rapidly exploring random trees (RRT) and probabilistic roadmaps (PRM) are sampling-based techniques being extensively used for robot path planning. In this paper, the tree structure of the RRT is generalized to a graph structure which enables a greater exploration. Exploration takes place simultaneously from multiple points in the map, all explorations fusing at multiple points producing well-connected graph architecture. Initially, in a typical RRT manner, the search algorithm attempts to reach the goal by expansions, and thereafter furtherer areas are explored. With some additional computation cost, as compared to RRT with a single robot, the results can be significantly improved. The so-formed graph is similar to roadmap produced by PRM. However as compared to PRM, the proposed algorithm has a more judicious search strategy and is adaptable to the number of nodes as a parameter. Experimental results are shown with multiple robots planned using prioritization scheme. Results show the betterment of the proposed algorithm as compared to RRT and PRM techniques.
Low serum testosterone, arterial stiffness and mortality in male haemodialysis patients.

BACKGROUND In the general population, accumulating data support a link between low testosterone levels and mortality by all causes, but especially by cardiovascular disease (CVD). Also, accelerated arterial stiffness has been recognized as an important cardiovascular risk factor. Here, we explored the association between testosterone levels and risk of death in male haemodialysis (HD) patients, whose arterial system is characterized by generalized stiffening. METHODS In this three-centre prospective observational study, 111 male HD patients after completion of baseline assessment, including measurement of male sex hormones and pulse wave velocity (PWV), were followed up for CVD and all-cause mortality. RESULTS Of the 111 patients studied, 54 were found with and 57 without testosterone deficiency, defined as testosterone levels <8 nmol/L. During a median follow-up period of 37 months, 49 deaths occurred, 28 (57%) of which were caused by CVD. Testosterone deficiency patients had increased CVD and all-cause mortality {crude hazard ratio: 3.14 [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.21-8.16] and 3.09 (95% CI, 1.53-6.25), respectively}, even after adjustment for age, body mass index, serum albumin and C-reactive protein, prevalent CVD and HD vintage. The association of testosterone with CVD mortality, but not with all-cause mortality, was lost after adjusting for PWV, an index of arterial stiffness. Testosterone levels were inversely related to PWV (r = -0.441; P < 0.001). CONCLUSION We showed that testosterone deficiency in male HD patients is associated with increased CVD and all-cause mortality and that increased arterial stiffness may be a possible mechanism explaining this association.
Various Metal Sandwich Layer Oriented Efficiency Enhancement Superiority on CuInGaSe2 Thin Film Solar Cells

The good quality CuInGaSe2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells were fabricated on molybdenum metal coated soda lime glass substrate. Three-stage co-evaporation method was utilized for the fabrication of high quality p-type CIGS thin film absorber layer. Further, n-type CdS layer, high resistive intrinsic ZnO layer and transparent conducting AlZnO layers were fabricated by CBD method and vacuum sputtering methods. We made three various top metal sandwich grid patterns, i.e. Al, Al/Cu and Cu/Al which were utilized to investigate the metal sandwich layer oriented efficiency enhancement superiority on CuInGaSe2 thin film solar cells. The investigated specific CIGS solar cell device efficiency with respect to various top metal grid sandwich patterns is presented and discussed.
Phosphatidylinositol‐ and phosphatidylcholine‐dependent phospholipases C are involved in the mechanism of action of atrial natriuretic factor in cultured rat aortic smooth muscle cells

We have investigated the involvement of specific phospholipase systems and their possible mutual relationship with the mechanism by which atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) increases phosphatidate (PA) and diacylglycerol (DAG) in rat aortic smooth muscle cells (RASMC), one of the major targets of this hormone. Our results indicate that ANF initially stimulates a phosphatidylinositol‐dependent phospholipase C (PI‐PLC) with a significant increase of DAG, enriched in arachidonate, and inositol trisphosphate (IP3) and then a phosphatidylcholine‐dependent phospholipase C (PC‐PLC) with formation of DAG, enriched in myristate, and phosphocholine (Pcho). Moreover, ANF stimulates PA formation at an intermediate stage between early and late DAG formation. The transphosphatidylation reaction, as well as its labeling ratio, demonstrate that phosphatidylcholine‐dependent phospholipase D (PC‐PLD) is not involved. Our experiments with R59022, a DAG kinase (DAGK) inhibitor, indicate that such an increase may be due to the phosphorylation of DAG derived from phosphatidylinositol (PI) hydrolysis. Our results show that phorbol 12‐myristate 13 acetate (PMA) plays a significant role in late DAG formation and that Pcho is released concomitantly, suggesting there is a relationship between the two phospholipase Cs (PLCs) that occurs through a protein kinase C (PKC) translocation from cytosol to the plasma membrane. These findings are confirmed by the use of PKC inhibitors calphostin, H7, and staurosporine. The involvement of membrane phospholipid hydrolysis and the ensuing production of second messengers might explain the vasorelaxant effect of ANF. J. Cell. Physiol. 170:272–278, 1997. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Explaining neighborhood-based recommendations

Recommender Systems (RS) attempt to discover users' preferences, and to learn about them in order to anticipate their needs. The main task normally associated with a RS is to offer suggestions for items. However, for most users, RSs are black boxes, computerized oracles that give advice, but cannot be questioned. In order to improve the quality of predictions and the satisfaction of the users, explanations facilities are needed. We present a novel methodology to explain recommendations: showing predictions over a set of observed items. Our proposal has been validated by means of user studies and lab experiments using MovieLens dataset.
TEACHING MINDFULNESS TO CHILDREN

Mindfulness, which features focused awareness training, is increasing in popularity among mental health professionals. Mindfulness training emphasizes focused attention to internal and external experiences in the present moment of time, without judgment. While mindfulness interventions have been used in treatments for stress, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, and addiction, researchers suggest that this type of training also can be beneficial in everyday life.
A cooperative perception system for multiple UAVs: Application to automatic detection of forest fires

This paper presents a cooperative perception system for multiple heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It considers different kind of sensors: infrared and visual cameras and fire detectors. The system is based on a set of multipurpose low‐level image‐processing functions including segmentation, stabilization of sequences of images, and geo‐referencing, and it also involves data fusion algorithms for cooperative perception. It has been tested in field experiments that pursued autonomous multi‐UAV cooperative detection, monitoring, and measurement of forest fires. This paper presents the overall architecture of the perception system, describes some of the implemented cooperative perception techniques, and shows experimental results on automatic forest fire detection and localization with cooperating UAVs. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A role for metabolism in Rett syndrome pathogenesis

Rett syndrome (RTT), an X-linked neurological disorder caused by mutations in MECP2, may have a metabolic component. We reported a genetic suppressor screen in a Mecp2-null mouse model to identify pathways for therapeutic improvement of RTT symptoms. Of note, one suppressor mutation implied that cholesterol homeostasis was perturbed in Mecp2 null mice; indeed, cholesterol synthesis was elevated in the brain and body system. Remarkably, the genetic effect of downregulating the cholesterol pathway could be mimicked chemically by statin drugs, improving motor symptoms, and increasing longevity in the mouse. Our work linked cholesterol metabolism to RTT pathology for the first time. Both neurological and systemic effects of perturbed cholesterol homeostasis overlap with many RTT symptoms. Here we show in patients that peripheral cholesterol, triglycerides, and/or LDLs may be elevated early in RTT disease onset, providing a biomarker for patients that could be aided by therapeutic interventions that modulate lipid metabolism.
Security and Privacy in Future Internet Architectures - Benefits and Challenges of Content Centric Networks

As the shortcomings of our current Internet become more and more obvious, researchers have started creating alternative approaches for the Internet of the future. Their design goals are mainly content-orientation, security, support for mobility and cloud computing. The probably most popular architecture is called Content Centric Networking. Every communication is treated as a distribution of content and caches are used within the network to improve the effectiveness. While the performance gain of Content Centric Networks is undoubted, there are questions about security and especially privacy since it is not one of its main design principle. In this work, we compare the Content Centric Networking approach with the current Internet with respect to security and privacy. We analyze improvements that have been made and new problems that have yet to be resolved. The Internet of the future could be content-oriented, so it is essential to identify potential security and privacy issues that are inherent to the architecture early on.
Deep Reinforcement Learning framework for Autonomous Driving

Reinforcement learning is considered to be a strong AI paradigm which can be used to teach machines through interaction with the environment and learning from their mistakes. Despite its perceived utility, it has not yet been successfully applied in automotive applications. Motivated by the successful demonstrations of learning of Atari games and Go by Google DeepMind, we propose a framework for autonomous driving using deep reinforcement learning. This is of particular relevance as it is difficult to pose autonomous driving as a supervised learning problem due to strong interactions with the environment including other vehicles, pedestrians and roadworks. As it is a relatively new area of research for autonomous driving, we provide a short overview of deep reinforcement learning and then describe our proposed framework. It incorporates Recurrent Neural Networks for information integration, enabling the car to handle partially observable scenarios. It also integrates the recent work on attention models to focus on relevant information, thereby reducing the computational complexity for deployment on embedded hardware. The framework was tested in an open source 3D car racing simulator called TORCS. Our simulation results demonstrate learning of autonomous maneuvering in a scenario of complex road curvatures and simple interaction of other vehicles.