Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multipath modelling in a dual-frequency phase-comparison FMCW radar

The unique configuration and application of the Active Protection System (APS) radar sensor, developed by Reutech Radar Systems, requires the development of a novel multipath interference model. This paper derives a mathematical model for the effects of specular multipath interference (primarily due to ground reflections) on the received signals of a dual-frequency phase-comparison FMCW radar. Two formulas are derived, one describes the change in amplitude and the other describes the change in phase due to specular multipath. This has interesting and previously unknown effects when Range-Doppler processing is applied to the corrupted input signal. Simulation results and measurements are presented to corroborate the theory.
Lost in Cloud

Cloud computing can reduce cost significantly because businesses can share computing resources. In recent years Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) have used Cloud effectively for cost saving and for sharing IT expenses. With the success of SMBs, many perceive that the larger enterprises ought to move into Cloud environment as well. Government agency's stove-piped environments are being considered as candidates for potential use of Cloud either as an enterprise entity or pockets of small communities. Cloud Computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than as a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network. Underneath the offered services, there exists a modern infrastructure cost of which is often spread across its services or its investors. As NASA is considered as an Enterprise class organization, like other enterprises, a shift has been occurring in perceiving its IT services as candidates for Cloud services. This paper discusses market trends in cloud computing from an enterprise angle and then addresses the topic of Cloud Computing for NASA in two possible forms. First, in the form of a public Cloud to support it as an enterprise, as well as to share it with the commercial and public at large. Second, as a private Cloud wherein the infrastructure is operated solely for NASA, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The paper addresses the strengths and weaknesses of both paradigms of public and private Clouds, in both internally and externally operated settings. The content of the paper is from a NASA perspective but is applicable to any large enterprise with thousands of employees and contractors.
A Study of Actor and Action Semantic retention in Video Supervoxel Segmentation

Existing methods in the semantic computer vision community seem unable to deal with the explosion and richness of modern, open-source and social video content. Although sophisticated methods such as object detection or bag-of-words models have been well studied, they typically operate on low level features and ultimately suffer from either scalability issues or a lack of semantic meaning. On the other hand, video supervoxel segmentation has recently been established and applied to large scale data processing, which potentially serves as an intermediate representation to high level video semantic extraction. The supervoxels are rich decompositions of the video content: they capture object shape and motion well. However, it is not yet known if the supervoxel segmentation retains the semantics of the underlying video content. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study of how well the actor and action semantics are retained in video supervoxel segmentation. Our study has human observers watching supervoxel segmentation videos and trying to discriminate both actor (human or animal) and action (one of eight everyday actions). We gather and analyze a large set of 640 human perceptions over 96 videos in 3 different supervoxel scales. Furthermore, we design a feature defined on supervoxel segmentation, called supervoxel shape context, which is inspired by the higher order processes in human perception. We conduct actor and action classification experiments with this new feature and compare to various traditional video features. Our ultimate findings suggest that a significant amount of semantics have been well retained in the video supervoxel segmentation and can be used for further video analysis.
Microsatellites with variation and heredity applicable to genetic studies of Norwegian red deer (Cervus elaphus atlanticus).

Sampling and PCR: We genotyped 93 wild red deer from different locations in Norway with 25 microsatellites (Table 1), as well as 32 calves and their 26 known mothers from two red deer farms with 21 of these microsatellites. Genomic DNA was isolated from muscle tissue collected from the wild red deer (Qiagen, Dneasy Kit; VWR International, Oslo, Norway) and from 10 plucked hairs from the farmed red deer (12-h standard proteinase K). Polymerase chain reaction and electrophoresis conditions are described elsewhere [1,2]. Allele frequency, observed heterozygosity (H0) and average probabilities of parentage exclusion with no known parents (pE1) and one known parent (pE2) were estimated with Cervus 2.0,[3] which also simulated the expected proportion of solved parentages given various numbers of candidate parents and a genotyping error rate. Apparent non-inheritance of parental null alleles can result in offspring–parent mismatches [4,5] and was used as an indication of null alleles.
Epigenome-Guided Analysis of the Transcriptome of Plaque Macrophages during Atherosclerosis Regression Reveals Activation of the Wnt Signaling Pathway

We report the first systems biology investigation of regulators controlling arterial plaque macrophage transcriptional changes in response to lipid lowering in vivo in two distinct mouse models of atherosclerosis regression. Transcriptome measurements from plaque macrophages from the Reversa mouse were integrated with measurements from an aortic transplant-based mouse model of plaque regression. Functional relevance of the genes detected as differentially expressed in plaque macrophages in response to lipid lowering in vivo was assessed through analysis of gene functional annotations, overlap with in vitro foam cell studies, and overlap of associated eQTLs with human atherosclerosis/CAD risk SNPs. To identify transcription factors that control plaque macrophage responses to lipid lowering in vivo, we used an integrative strategy – leveraging macrophage epigenomic measurements – to detect enrichment of transcription factor binding sites upstream of genes that are differentially expressed in plaque macrophages during regression. The integrated analysis uncovered eight transcription factor binding site elements that were statistically overrepresented within the 5′ regulatory regions of genes that were upregulated in plaque macrophages in the Reversa model under maximal regression conditions and within the 5′ regulatory regions of genes that were upregulated in the aortic transplant model during regression. Of these, the TCF/LEF binding site was present in promoters of upregulated genes related to cell motility, suggesting that the canonical Wnt signaling pathway may be activated in plaque macrophages during regression. We validated this network-based prediction by demonstrating that β-catenin expression is higher in regressing (vs. control group) plaques in both regression models, and we further demonstrated that stimulation of canonical Wnt signaling increases macrophage migration in vitro. These results suggest involvement of canonical Wnt signaling in macrophage emigration from the plaque during lipid lowering-induced regression, and they illustrate the discovery potential of an epigenome-guided, systems approach to understanding atherosclerosis regression.
Effect of various lesions in the nucleus tractus solitarii of the rat on blood pressure, heart rate and cardiovascular reflex responses.

The inhibitory role of the nucleus tractus solitarii (NTS) in cardiovascular control was studied in the rat. Bilateral electrolytic lesions of the dorsal medulla oblongata, located in the NTS, acutely caused hypertension and tachycardia. Effective sites were at the level of the obex and just rostral and caudal of this level. More rostrally or more caudally located lesions were ineffective in changing blood pressure and heart rate. The ascending or descending pathways from the NTS structures in the dorsal midline appear not to be essential. Frontal transections rostral of the obex or lesions and transections in the commissural part of the NTS did not block the hypertension caused by lesions at the level of the obex. The latter lesions completely blocked the reflex-induced changes of heart rate caused by administration of bradykinin, angiotensin II and the diving reflex bradycardia. The hypertension was associated with a marked increase in plasma renin activity and plasma adrenaline concentration. Adrenalec.
Memantine treatment in mild to moderate Alzheimer disease: a 24-week randomized, controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of the moderate-affinity, uncompetitive N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonist, memantine, versus placebo in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer disease (AD). METHOD This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted at 42 U.S. sites. Participants were 403 outpatients with mild to moderate AD and Mini-Mental State Examination scores of 10-22 randomized to memantine (20 mg/day; N=201) or placebo (N=202) for 24 weeks. Primary outcomes were change from baseline at 24 weeks on the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-cog), a measure of cognition, and on the Clinician's Interview-Based Impression of Change Plus Caregiver Input (CIBIC-Plus), a global measure. Secondary outcomes included change on the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) and the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study Activities of Daily Living Inventory (ADCS-ADL(23)), measures of behavior and function, respectively. RESULTS Most (82.4%) participants completed the trial. Memantine resulted in significantly better outcomes than placebo on measures of cognition, global status, and behavior when based on the protocol-specified primary last observation carried forward imputation as well as a mixed-models repeated-measures approach applied to the continuous outcomes. Treatment discontinuations because of adverse events for memantine versus placebo were 19 (9.5%) and 10 (5.0%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS These results support the safety and efficacy of memantine for the treatment of mild to moderate AD.
Acquiring Target Stacking Skills by Goal-Parameterized Deep Reinforcement Learning

Understanding physical phenomena is a key component of human intelligence and enables physical interaction with previously unseen environments. In this paper, we study how an artificial agent can autonomously acquire this intuition through interaction with the environment. We created a synthetic block stacking environment with physics simulation in which the agent can learn a policy end-to-end through trial and error. Thereby, we bypass to explicitly model physical knowledge within the policy. We are specifically interested in tasks that require the agent to reach a given goal state that may be different for every new trial. To this end, we propose a deep reinforcement learning framework that learns policies which are parametrized by a goal. We validated the model on a toy example navigating in a grid world with different target positions and in a block stacking task with different target structures of the final tower. In contrast to prior work, our policies show better generalization across different goals.
Applying experienceware to support ontology deployment

Experienceware is a paradigm which emerged in the late eighties and evolved during the nineties, resulting in technologies such as experience factories and their constituent experience bases. These are designed to manage experiences collected throughout the life-cycle of a software project. Ontologies emerged round about the same time as a way to represent consensual knowledge about a domain of interest in reusable and sharable formats. Despite their diverse origins and ways of development, there is an overlap of scope regarding one of their goals: to support reuse. In this paper we make use of this overlap by applying the experience factories paradigm to ontology deployment and in particular, to support ontology verification.
Formation of two types of germinal centers during immune response in chicken spleen.

The immune response was analysed immunohistochemically in the chicken spleen after intravenous injection of alum-aggregated bovine serum albumin (A-BSA). From about 12 hr after primary injection, anti-bursa serum (ABS) positive lymphoblasts were observed in the periellipsoidal lymphatic tissue (PEL). One day later, ABS-positive lymphoblasts were also observed in the periarterial lymphatic tissue (PAL) and perivenous lymphatic tissue (PVL). The lymphoblasts became to form cell clumps and formed the germinal center (GC), suggesting that ABS-positive lymphoblasts in PEL might be origin cells of GCs. Two types of GCs appeared in the spleen after antigen injections. Type I GCs with many antigen presenting dendritic cells (DCs) were formed in the early stage after antigen injection, while type II GCs without antigen presenting DCs were formed in a later stage. The quantitative change of antibody producing cells (APCs) agreed with that of type I GCs but not that of type II GCs. Type II GCs were characterized by the antigen capture immediately after secondary injection, and by the appearance of many lymphocytes bearing anti-BSA antibody. The results suggested that type I and II GCs might have produced precursors of APCs and memory cells, respectively.
Middle Stone Age Culture in India and Pakistan

For the present we may only note (i) the special features of this flake culture, consisting predominantly of scrapers, points, and borers on any fine-grained material, (ii) its relationship to certain river deposits and factory sites on or near foothills, and (iii) its distribution over almost the whole of Peninsular India. Its maker, Middle Stone Age man, and his vegetational environment are unkown, though we do have a faint idea of the contemporary fauna.
Detection of Significant Groups in Hierarchical Clustering by Resampling

Hierarchical clustering is a simple and reproducible technique to rearrange data of multiple variables and sample units and visualize possible groups in the data. Despite the name, hierarchical clustering does not provide clusters automatically, and “tree-cutting” procedures are often used to identify subgroups in the data by cutting the dendrogram that represents the similarities among groups used in the agglomerative procedure. We introduce a resampling-based technique that can be used to identify cut-points of a dendrogram with a significance level based on a reference distribution for the heights of the branch points. The evaluation on synthetic data shows that the technique is robust in a variety of situations. An example with real biomarker data from the Long Life Family Study shows the usefulness of the method.
Individual Differences in the Balance of GABA to Glutamate in pFC Predict the Ability to Select among Competing Options

Individuals vary greatly in their ability to select one item or response when presented with a multitude of options. Here we investigate the neural underpinnings of these individual differences. Using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we found that the balance of inhibitory versus excitatory neurotransmitters in pFC predicts the ability to select among task-relevant options in two language production tasks. The greater an individual's concentration of GABA relative to glutamate in the lateral pFC, the more quickly he or she could select a relevant word from among competing options. This outcome is consistent with our computational modeling of this task [Snyder, H. R. , Hutchison, N. , Nyhus, E. , Curran, T. , Banich, M. T. , O'Reilly, R. C. , et al. Neural inhibition enables selection during language processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. , 107, 16483–16488, 2010], which predicts that greater net inhibition in pFC increases the efficiency of resolving competition among task-relevant options. Moreover, the association with the GABA/glutamate ratio was specific to selection and was not observed for executive function ability in general. These findings are the first to link the balance of excitatory and inhibitory neural transmission in pFC to specific aspects of executive function.
Hybrid Video Compression Using Selective Keyframe Identification and Patch-Based Super-Resolution

This paper details a novel video compression pipeline using selective key frame identification to encode video and patch-based super-resolution to decode for playback. Selective key frame identification uses shot boundary detection and frame differencing methods to identify representative frames which are subsequently kept in high resolution within the compressed container. All other non-key frames are downscaled for compression purposes. Patch-based super-resolution finds similar patches between an up scaled non-key frame and the associated, high-resolution key frame to regain lost detail via a super-resolution process. The algorithm was integrated into the H.264 video compression pipeline tested on web cam, cartoon and live-action video for both streaming and storage purposes. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid video compression pipeline successfully achieved higher compression ratios than standard H.264, while achieving superior video quality than low resolution H.264 at similar compression ratios.
Causes of Vitamin B12 and Folate Deficiency

This review describes current knowledge of the main causes of vitamin B12 and folate deficiency. The most common explanations for poor vitamin B12 status are a low dietary intake of the vitamin (i.e., a low intake of animal-source foods) and malabsorption. Although it has long been known that strict vegetarians (vegans) are at risk for vitamin B12 deficiency, evidence now indicates that low intakes of animal-source foods, such as occur in some lacto-ovo vegetarians and many less-industrialized countries, cause vitamin B12 depletion. Malabsorption of the vitamin is most commonly observed as food-bound cobalamin malabsorption due to gastric atrophy in the elderly, and probably as a result of Helicobacter pylori infection. There is growing evidence that gene polymorphisms in transcobalamins affect plasma vitamin B12 concentrations. The primary cause of folate deficiency is low intake of sources rich in the vitamin, such as legumes and green leafy vegetables, and the consumption of these foods may explain why folate status can be adequate in relatively poor populations. Other situations in which the risk of folate deficiency increases include lactation and alcoholism.
A framework for the evaluation of specification miners based on finite state machines

Software maintenance tasks, such as testing and program understanding, can benefit from formal specifications that describe how a program should use an API. Recently, there has been increasing interest in specification miners that automatically extract finite state specifications of method ordering constraints from existing software. However, comparing different mining approaches is difficult, because no common ground to evaluate the effectiveness of specification miners has been established yet. We present a framework for evaluating to which extent specification miners find valid finite state descriptions of API usage constraints. The framework helps in creating reference specifications and includes metrics to compare mined specifications to the reference specifications. The metrics are tailored for evaluating specification miners and account for imprecision and incompleteness in mined specifications. We use the framework to compare the effectiveness of three mining approaches and to show their respective benefits.
DENSITY OF STATES FOR HP LATTICE PROTEINS

The density of states contains all informations on energetic quantities of a statistical system, such as the mean energy, free energy, entropy, and specific heat. As a specific application, we consider in this work a simple lattice model for heteropolymers that is widely used for studying statistical properties of proteins. For short chains, we have derived exact results from conformational enumeration, while for longer ones we developed a multicanonical Monte Carlo variant of the nPERM-based chain growth method in order to directly simulate the density of states. For simplification, only two types of monomers with respective hydrophobic (H) and polar (P) residues are regarded and only the next-neighbour interaction between hydrophobic monomers, being nonadjacent along the chain, is taken into account. This is known as the HP model for the folding of lattice proteins.
FINITE COMMUTATIVE HYPERGROUPS AND APPLICATIONS FROM GROUP THEORY TO CONFORMAL FIELD THEORY

Finite abelian groups are among the most simple and useful of all algebraic ob jects possessing a pleasant but non trivial classi cation a perfect theory of duality and a penchant for cropping up in interesting places When one thinks of generalizations of this theory within the nite setting the theory of non abelian nite groups immediately comes to mind This theory has now achieved a very high state of development and sophistication It comes as a surprise perhaps that there is another generalization whose simplicity and range of application rivals that of the non abelian groups This is the theory of nite commutative hypergroups
Clinical outcomes of 23-gauge vitrectomy may be better than 20-gauge vitrectomy for retinal detachment repair

Objective This study compared the clinical outcomes between 23-gauge (23-G) vitrectomy and 20-gauge (20-G) vitrectomy for the repair of retinal detachment (RD). Methods A retrospective comparative analysis of 135 RD patients was conducted between January, 2013 and September, 2014 in the Ophthalmology Department of the Affiliated Hospital of Weifang Medical College. The clinical outcomes of RD patients who underwent 23-G vitrectomy (n = 65) and 20-G vitrectomy (n = 70) were compared. A logistic regression analysis was used for prognostic factors in RD patients. A meta-analysis was performed using the comprehensive Meta-Analysis version 2.0 software. Results Baseline characteristics of RD patients between the 23-G group and the 20-G group were not significantly different (all p>0.05). The postoperative wound closure time was obviously shorter, and postoperative intraocular pressure (IOP; mmHg) and the incidence of macular holes (MH) were evidently lower in the 23-G group than in the 20-G group (all p<0.05). However, no statistical significances in the postoperative retinal reattachment rate or visual acuity improvement in the logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) were detected between the 23-G group and the 20-G group (both p>0.05). The meta-analysis further confirmed a shorter postoperative wound closure time, as well as a lower postoperative IOP and incidence of MH in the 23-G group than in the 20-G group (all p<0.05), while neither the postoperative retinal reattachment rate nor the visual acuity improvement in the logMAR showed statistical significance (all p>0.05). Conclusions Our retrospective comparative study of RD surgery using 20-G or 23-G techniques revealed a shorter postoperative wound closure time, as well as a lower postoperative IOP and incidence of MH in the 23-G group than in the 20-G group, confirming the superiority of 23-G vitrectomy over 20-G vitrectomy. This study provided a better option of 23-G vitrectomy for clinically managing RD.