Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coronary Heart Disease in Smokers: Vitamin C Restores Coronary Microcirculatory Function

BackgroundCoronary endothelial function and vasomotion are impaired in smokers without coronary disease, and this is thought to be due to increased oxidative stress. Methods and ResultsWe used positron emission tomography to measure the coronary flow reserve, an integrated measure of coronary flow, through both the large epicardial coronary arteries and the microcirculation in 11 smokers and 8 control subjects before and after administration of the antioxidant vitamin C. At baseline, coronary flow reserve was reduced by 21% in smokers compared with control subjects (P <0.05) but was normalized after vitamin C, whereas the drug had no effect in control subjects. ConclusionsThe present study is the first to demonstrate that the noxious prooxidant effects of smoking extend beyond the epicardial arteries to the coronary microcirculation and affect the regulation of myocardial blood flow. Vitamin C restores coronary microcirculatory responsiveness and impaired coronary flow reserve in smokers, which provides evidence that the damaging effect of smoking is at least in part accounted for by an increased oxidative stress.
Effect of Yangyinqingfei decoction on radiation-induced lung injury via downregulation of MMP12 and TIMP-1 expression

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect and underlying mechanism of Yangyinqingfei decoction on radiation-induced lung injury in rats. Wistar rats (n=75) were randomly divided into five experimental groups (A-E). Rats in two of the groups were administered saline solution, whereas rats in the remaining three groups were administered different doses of Yangyinqingfei decoction. After one week, the rats were irradiated with a single dose of 25 Gy to their right hemi-thoraxes by a 60Co γ-ray, with the exception of the control group, which underwent sham irradiation. The effect of Yangyinqingfei decoction was assessed one, two and four weeks post-irradiation according to the pathological changes and the right lung index (wet weight of right lung/body weight ×100%). Expression levels of matrix metalloproteinase-12 (MMP-12) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases-1 (TIMP-1) in lung tissue were determined using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and western blot analysis. Pretreatment with Yangyinqingfei resulted in a significant dose-dependent resistance to radiation-induced body weight loss. The expression of MMP-12 and TIMP-1 increased following irradiation. However, the levels of MMP-12 and TIMP-1 in groups receiving Yangyinqingfei were lower four weeks after irradiation compared with those in rats administered saline. Cumulatively, these results suggest that Yangyinqingfei has a protective effect on radiation-induced lung injury in rats, possibly by downregulating MMP-12 and TIMP-1 expression.
Assessing and Estimating Corrective, Enhancive, and Reductive Maintenance Tasks: A Controlled Experiment

This paper describes a controlled experiment of student programmers performing maintenance tasks on a C++ program. The goal of the study is to assess the maintenance size, effort, and effort distribution of three different maintenance types and to describe estimation models to predict the programmer’s effort on maintenance tasks. The results of our study suggest that corrective maintenance is much less productive than enhancive and reductive maintenance. Our study also confirms the previous results which conclude that corrective and reductive maintenance requires large proportions of effort on program comprehension activity. Moreover, the best effort model we obtained from fitting the experiment data can estimate the time of 79% of the programmers with the error of 30% or less.
Low-power-consuming 24-Gb/s multiplexer in 90-nm CMOS for optical transceivers

In this paper, an integrated 2-to-1 selector multiplexer in 90-nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) digital technology is presented. The multiplexer is based on a differential Gilbert-cell structure. Peaking inductors are used to improve the bandwidth. At a supply voltage of 1.2 V, a speed performance of 24 Gb/s is achieved. The circuit core consumes only 10 mA. Common drain output buffers allow measurements at 50 /spl Omega/.
The Mythology of European Monetary Union 1

The global economic crisis that began in 2008 with the failure of American financial institutions has appeared in Europe as a crisis of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) which poses the most profound challenges the European Union (EU) has faced since its founding in 1958. People are asking: how did the EU get itself into this situation and why it is having so much trouble getting out of it? Although many factors converged to produce this perfect storm, at the heart of the crisis is a persistent failure to recognize that there are durable differences in the institutional structures of the European political economies, which cannot readily be erased and offer comparative institutional advantages that national governments often exploit (Hall and Soskice 2001; Amable 2003). Economic prosperity in Europe has long depended on the operation of these national varieties of capitalism (Hall 2001a). From its inception, however, EMU has been built on the assumption that such institutional differences are transient deviations from neo-classical economic models, which should be corrected rather than accommodated. Of course, officials engaged in day-to-day policy-making have a more nuanced understanding of how their economies operate, but the major policy initiatives associated with the Euro have been justified in terms of this view. As a result, the Euro operates on a distinctive mythology. Mythologies have their uses, especially in politics, as Machiavelli (1984) noted; and this one was instrumental to securing agreement to the establishment of a monetary union with a particular institutional form in 1992. This was the high water mark of a rational expectations economics whose doctrines left a distinctive imprint on the new union. In contrast to preceding Keynesian views, which saw active macroeconomic management as the key to stable growth, the new classical economics held that fiscal policy was rarely stabilizing and monetary policy largely without lasting effects on the real economy. Prosperity was said to depend, not on demand management, but on supply-side measures to make markets in labor and goods more competitive (Crystal 1979; Cuthbertson 1979). Since active fiscal policy was deemed counterproductive, no effort was made to give the new monetary union capacities for coordinating its member states’ fiscal policies over the medium term. A Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) placing crude limits on national deficits and debt was considered sufficient. Since monetary policy was said to be of value only for controlling inflation, and best done through monetary rules, the new union was endowed with a European central bank (ECB) entirely independent of political control, with circumscribed powers that kept it focused on inflation and unable to purchase sovereign debt directly. EMU acquired these features ultimately because this is what the member states, who were interested in EMU for political as well as economic reasons, could agree on; but images of the economy purveyed by
Incorporating Jurisdiction Issues into Regional Carbon Accounts under Production and Consumption Accounting Principles

Despite increased public interest, policy makers have been slow to enact targets based on limiting emissions under full consumption accounting measures (such as carbon footprints). We argue that this may be due to the fact that policy makers in one jurisdiction do not have control over production technologies used in other jurisdictions. We use a regional input–output framework and data derived on carbon dioxide emissions by industry (and households) to examine regional accountability for emissions generation. In so doing, we consider two accounting methods which permit greater accountability of regional private and public (household and government) final consumption as the main driver of regional emissions generation, while retaining focus on the local production technology and consumption decisions which fall under the jurisdiction of regional policy makers. We propose that these methods permit an attribution of emissions generation that is likely to be of more use than a full global footprint analysis to regional policy makers.
Sphinx: distributed execution of interactive SQL queries on big spatial data

This paper presents Sphinx, a full-fledged distributed system which uses a standard SQL interface to process big spatial data. Sphinx adds spatial data types, indexes and query processing, inside the code-base of Cloudera Impala for efficient processing of spatial data. In particular, Sphinx is composed of four main components, namely, query parser, indexer, query planner, and query executor. The query parser injects spatial data types and functions in the SQL interface of Sphinx. The indexer creates spatial indexes in Sphinx by adopting a two-layered index design. The query planner utilizes these indexes to construct efficient query plans for range query and spatial join operations. Finally, the query executor carries out these plans on big spatial datasets in a distributed cluster. A system prototype of Sphinx running on real datasets shows up-to three orders of magnitude performance improvement over traditional Impala.
Neuromagnetic responses during unilateral periodic finger tapping to phasic contralateral finger tap stimulation

Humans can perform rhythmic voluntary movement without a benefit of an external cue such as a metronome beep sound. This suggests that there exists an “internal clock'' in the nervous system generating the periodic rhythm [1]. In this paper, we investigate how rhythms of the internal clock are controlled or modulated. We assume that the periodic dynamics of the internal clock for the periodic finger tapping control can be modeled by a limit cycle oscillator. In general, single impulsive perturbations delivered to a limit cycle oscillator shift the phase of subsequent compared to the nonperturbed control case. The amount of phase shift, referred to as phase reset [2], as well as the transient behavior of the system, includes much information about the underlying dynamical system. For this reason, the phase resetting curves (PRCs) representing the phase reset as a function of the perturbation timing has been applied to understanding generation and control mechanisms of rhythmic activities of biological oscillators, e.g., circadian rhythm [2], neuronal firings [3], and EEG alpha rhythm [4]. In the field of motor control, it has been shown that periodic wrist movement exhibits phase reset in response to magnetic stimulation applied to the motor cortex [5]. Yamanishi et al. [6] have shown PRCs of the periodic finger tapping in response to a brief visual cue followed by a contra-lateral single finger tap, and discussed bimanual coordination based on the topological property of the PRCs. We continued their study, and tried to obtain PRC of the brain activity during the periodic finger tapping. To this end, we perturbed the neural activity during the tapping and thus the periodic right-index finger tapping movement by the single left-index finger tap, and responses of each to the perturbations were measured simultaneously. The neural responses were measured using magnetoencephalography (MEG) [7][8]. 2 Methods
International Conference on Information Systems ( ICIS ) 1231-2004 Business-to-Consumer Web Site Quality and Web Shoppers ' Emotions : Exploring a Research Model

Based on the literature on consumer behavior, psychology, and information systems, this paper explores relationships between Web site quality, the cognitive appraisal of situational state (a key cognitive antecedent to emotions) and a set of positive and negative emotions. A theoretical model is tested on data collected from 215 different Web shopping episodes. Results show that when shopping on business-to-consumer Web sites for low-touch products (music CDs and movies in DVD format), customers felt emotions, namely liking, joy, pride, dislike, frustration, and fear. Even though the mean intensity levels of these emotions is low to moderate, for a substantial number of shoppers (near a third of the sample population) the emotions of liking and joy were felt intensely. Results also indicate that Web site quality, measured by several Web site design components, has a positive impact on the cognitive appraisal of situational state, operationalized as the satisfaction level of the overall online shopping experience. In turn, this appraisal affects all emotions felt by shoppers except fear. This study is particularly addressed to designers and managers of B2C Web sites as it invites them to consider Web shoppers’ emotions while designing and developing their electronic platform.
Rewarding probabilistic hybrid automata

The joint consideration of randomness and continuous time is important for the formal verification of many real systems. Considering both facets is especially important for wireless sensor networks, distributed control applications, and many other systems of growing importance. Apart from proving the quantitative safety of such systems, it is important to analyze properties related to resource consumption (energy, memory, bandwidth, etc.) and properties that lie more on the economical side (monetary gain, the expected time or cost until termination, etc.). This paper provides a framework to decide such reward properties effectively for a generic class of models which have a discrete-continuous behaviour and involve both probabilistic as well as nondeterministic decisions. Experimental evidence is provided demonstrating the applicability of our approach.
An H∞ power flow approach to control of uncertain structures

A technique is described for generating guaranteed stable control laws for uncertain, modally dense structures with collocated sensors and actuators. By ignoring the reverberant response created by reflections from other parts of the structure, a dereverberated mobility model can be developed which accurately models the local dynamics of the structure. This is similar in many respects to a wave based model, but can treat more general structures, and can be determined directly from transfer function data. In order to minimize the effect of disturbances propagatimg through the structure, the power dissipated by the controller is maximized in an H∞ sense. This guarantees that the controller is positive real, and thus that the system will remain stable for any uncertainty, provided that the power flow is correctly modelled. The approach is demonstrated for a beam example. The resulting controllers are much more effective than simple collocated rate feedback.
Graph Grammar Algebraic Approach For Generating Fractal Patterns

This paper presents a new approach to fractal image generation by translating the evolution of graph grammar into graphics output. It uses the algebraic approach of graph grammar as a powerful abstract modeling tool for the generation of selfsimilar fractal images via its graph production, derivations and double-pushout construction. We focus on three proposed methods for image generation which exhibit a certain analogy with fractals. Validation of our approach is given in terms of experimental results. An investigation of the relationships between the generated images and their corresponding graph grammar is also discussed.
Automatic Analysis of Plot for Story Rewriting

A method for automatic plot analysis of narrative texts that uses components of both traditional symbolic analysis of natural language and statistical machine-learning is presented for the story rewriting task. In the story rewriting task, an exemplar story is read to the pupils and the pupils rewrite the story in their own words. This allows them to practice language skills such as spelling, diction, and grammar without being stymied by content creation. Often the pupil improperly recalls the story. Our method of automatic plot analysis enables the tutoring system to automatically analyze the student’s story for both general coherence and specific missing events.
Quantifying Gain Compression in RF Power Amplifiers – An Improved Method for OFDM Signals

Power Consumption and Competitive Advantage Minimizing power consumption is one of the most critical design goals for portable wireless devices. Heat dissipation due to undesirable power requirements affects product reliability and product life. Most important, and one of the few things the average consumer understands, is the useable time of the device between battery charges. Longer operating time between charges can be a major advantage for manufacturers who achieve significantly lower power consumption than their competitors. However, the need for low power consumption must be traded off against other features and performance, such as the higher data rates needed in the latest wireless devices.
Generic Architectures for Computing With Words Based on BK-Products of Fuzzy Relations

This paper introduces a fuzzy CW application and the BK-products form of analysis on fuzzy binary relations. We present a front-end CW system which makes relational computations easier because it no longer requires its users to have deep knowledge of fuzzy BK-products and their calculations. We also show how the front-end tool can be used to study the process of analysis on binary fuzzy relations with words in a natural language query. Our prototype front-end for Fuzzy Knowledge Based Systems (FEFKBS) is used to demonstrate an implementation of a CW application. It is designed to accept words taken from the user’s environment to form and control analysis. Therefore users are provided the freedom to permit their common use of vague measurement terms in analyzing vague and partial relational knowledge structures. Linguistic modifiers are allowed to change the objects of analysis. A central ingredient of the query analysis process is the mathematics of certain fuzzy relational binary products referred to in the literature as BKproducts. These products were introduced by two researchers, Bandler and Kohout. They were first to apply many-valued logic and set-based logic to their triangle products of binary fuzzy relations. In the paper, emphasis is placed on the structured English Query Language (EQL) grammar that closely patterns the control sequence of the BK-products on fuzzy relations. For our examples, we use a clinical environment as the knowledge domain model from which sample queries are formed. These queries contain words that cause various forms of analysis and control of fuzzy relational structures. The fuzzy data values contained in the relations should reflect the observed assessment of membership values or degree of truth as supported by the environment’s knowledge expert. Our defined fuzzy computations on the fuzzy data values hold true for both crisp and fuzzy relations. This work on our fuzzy CW system (FEFKBS) demonstrates how a natural language query communication system can be used to reduce the complexity associated with making analysis on fuzzy relations and enhancing user friendliness and acceptability.
Successive Approximation Methods in Undiscounted Stochastic Games

This paper considers undiscounted two-person, zero-sum sequential games with finite state and action spaces. Under conditions that guarantee the existence of stationary optimal strategies, we present two successive approximation methods for finding the optimal gain rate, a solution to the optimality equation, and for any ϵ > 0, ϵ-optimal policies for both players.
Epsilon geometry: building robust algorithms from imprecise computations

This thesis introduces Epsilon Geometry, a framework for the development of robust geometric algorithms using inaccurate primitives. Epsilon Geometry is based on a very general model of imprecise computations, which includes floating-point and rounded-integer arithmetic as special cases. The algorithms in this framework produce exact solutions for perturbed versions of their input and return a bound on the size of these implicit perturbations. The thesis begins with a formal description of the Epsilon Geometry framework. It introduces the notions of an epsilon predicate, a geometric predicate that can be satisfied by a perturbed version of its arguments; and a critical distance, the size of the perturbation required to make an epsilon predicate true. It also introduces epsilon and delta boxes, the implementations of these mathematical concepts as computer programs. The thesis describes some general rules for turning mathematical lemmas about epsilon predicates and critical distances into implementations of epsilon and delta boxes. Next, it presents a basic set of two-dimensional geometric predicates that are used for all of the algorithms in the sequel. The second half of the thesis examines how Epsilon Geometry can be applied to various geometric objects and algorithms in the plane. It defines the notions of an $\varepsilon$-convex polygon, a polygon that can be made convex by perturbing each of its vertices by $\varepsilon$ or less; and a ($-\varepsilon)$-convex polygon, a polygon that remains convex even if its vertices are all displaced in arbitrary directions by a distance of $\varepsilon$ or less. The thesis develops robust algorithms for testing point inclusion in both kinds of polygons, and for testing a polygon's degree of convexity. Finally, the thesis investigates the existence of approximate hulls for sets of points. It proves that for every point set there exists a ($-\varepsilon$)-convex polygon H such that every point of the set is at most 4$\varepsilon$ away from H, and it describes robust algorithms for computing such hulls.
Phonological awareness interventions in French immersion classrooms

In this research project, I examined phonological awareness interventions (PAIs) in primary French Immersion classrooms. In detail, I discussed current research on the importance of phonological awareness (PA) as a foundation for literacy skills and the transferability of these pre-literacy skills across languages. In a focus group setting, I invited primary French Immersion teachers to share their knowledge and understanding of PA as well as share effective interventions to teach this pre-literacy skill to second language learners. Subsequently, I delivered a questionnaire to teachers asking them to rate the listed interventions for effectiveness and frequency of application. Results indicated that teachers had a varying degree of knowledge of PA, and therefore, PAIs. PAIs identified in this study match the research of current PAI and addressed the "big ideas" of literacy such as phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and the alphabetic principle. PAIs that were highest rated in frequency and effectiveness included building words on mini-chalkboards, cutting sentence strips, and identifying rhymes in stories and poems. --Leaf ii.