Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Closed-form CRLBs for SNR estimation from turbo-coded square-QAM-modulated signals

In this contribution, we derive for the first time the closed-form expressions for the Cramér-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimates from turbo-coded square-QAM transmissions. By exploiting the structure of the Gray mapping, we are able to factorize the likelihood function thereby linearizing all the derivation steps for the FIM elements. The analytical CRLBs coincide exactly with their empirical counterparts validating thereby our new analytical expressions. Numerical results suggest that the CLRBs for code-aided (CA) SNR estimates range between the CRLBs for non-data-aided (NDA) SNR estimates and those for data-aided (DA) ones, thereby highlighting the effect of the coding gain. At sufficiently high SNR levels, the three CRLBs coincide. The derived bounds are also valid for LDPC-coded systems and they can be evaluated in the same way when the latter are decoded using the turbo principal.
Forensic Voice Comparison with Japanese Vowel Acoustics - A Likelihood Ratio-based Approach Using Segmental Cepstra

The suitability of vowel cepstral spectra for forensic voice comparison is explored within a likelihood ratio-based framework. Non-contemporaneous landline telephone recordings of 297 male Japanese speakers are compared using only two replicates each of their five vowels. 14 cepstrally-mean-subtracted LPC CCs from dc to 5 kHz are used as features. Multivariate likelihood ratios estimated for the 297 target-and 43956 non-target trials give good results: an equal error rate of 0.28% and log likelihood ratio cost of 0.013. It is concluded that the approach has some merit.
Use of the Channel Impulse Response of the DVB-T Service for the Evaluation of the Reflected Signals of Wind Farms

Wind turbines can cause degradation to the existing transmission systems, especially in the analogue television terrestrial broadcasting and radar services. The main effects of the interference are caused by the reflected signals in the support tower and in the rotating blades of the wind turbines. Empirical trials are necessary in order to adequately characterize the influence on the quality of the transmitted services, and to determine the parameters involved. The existing techniques to evaluate this influence are cost prohibitive or do not offer the required accuracy. In this paper, a low cost technique for evaluating the reflected signals from wind turbines is proposed, based on the analysis of the channel impulse response of the digital terrestrial television services. The results show that this technique provides accurate and reliable results.
Learning Visual Reasoning Without Strong Priors

Achieving artificial visual reasoning - the ability to answer image-related questions which require a multi-step, high-level process - is an important step towards artificial general intelligence. This multi-modal task requires learning a question-dependent, structured reasoning process over images from language. Standard deep learning approaches tend to exploit biases in the data rather than learn this underlying structure, while leading methods learn to visually reason successfully but are hand-crafted for reasoning. We show that a general-purpose, Conditional Batch Normalization approach achieves state-of-the-art results on the CLEVR Visual Reasoning benchmark with a 2.4% error rate. We outperform the next best end-to-end method (4.5%) and even methods that use extra supervision (3.1%). We probe our model to shed light on how it reasons, showing it has learned a question-dependent, multi-step process. Previous work has operated under the assumption that visual reasoning calls for a specialized architecture, but we show that a general architecture with proper conditioning can learn to visually reason effectively.
Production of altered cell foci in tissue culture by defective Moloney sarcoma virus particles.

Sendai virus inoculated into mice IP induces the production in the peritoneal cavity of 103 culture protecting units of interferon within 24 hr. Within 1 day after Friend virus inoculation IP or IV, mice undergo a marked reduction of peritoneal interferon response to Sendai virus. By 12 days after Friend virus inoculation, mice can once again synthesize normal amounts of interferon in response to Sendai virus. The interactions between these two viruses in the animal model may offer clues as to the development and suppression oi human leukemia.
Longitudinal analysis of citrullinated protein/peptide antibodies (anti-CP) during 5 year follow up in early rheumatoid arthritis: anti-CP status predicts worse disease activity and greater radiological progression

Objective: To study serum levels of citrullinated protein/peptide antibodies (anti-CP) during up to 5 years’ follow up of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and to relate serum levels to disease course and to treatments in clinical practice. Methods: 279 patients with early RA were followed up with clinical investigations, radiographs, and measurement of anti-CP at baseline and after 3 months, 1, 2, 3, and 5 years. Results: 160/279 (57.3%) patients were anti-CP positive at the first visit (mean 5 months after first symptoms). During follow up only 11/279 (3.9%) of the patients changed their anti-CP status. Anti-CP levels fell significantly during the first year, and this drop correlated with the extent of sulfasalazine treatment but not with other drugs or clinical indices. Anti-CP positive and negative patients had similar disease activities at baseline, but during follow up the anti-CP positive patients had worse clinical disease and greater radiological progression, despite at least equally intensive antirheumatic treatment. Conclusions: Anti-CP are stable during the first 5 years of RA, suggesting that events before rather than after onset of clinical manifestations of disease determine this phenotype. The presence of anti-CP at diagnosis predicts a less favourable disease course and greater radiological progression despite antirheumatic treatment, but subsequent changes in antibody levels do not reflect changes in disease activity. Taken together, these observations suggest that anti-CP positive RA is a distinct clinical and pathophysiological entity.
Human Factors and Simulation in Emergency Medicine

This consensus group from the 2017 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference "Catalyzing System Change through Health Care Simulation: Systems, Competency, and Outcomes" held in Orlando, Florida, on May 16, 2017, focused on the use of human factors (HF) and simulation in the field of emergency medicine (EM). The HF discipline is often underutilized within EM but has significant potential in improving the interface between technologies and individuals in the field. The discussion explored the domain of HF, its benefits in medicine, how simulation can be a catalyst for HF work in EM, and how EM can collaborate with HF professionals to effect change. Implementing HF in EM through health care simulation will require a demonstration of clinical and safety outcomes, advocacy to stakeholders and administrators, and establishment of structured collaborations between HF professionals and EM, such as in this breakout group.
Neuropathologic Overlap of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Pick's Disease and Corticobasal Degeneration

Several neurodegenerative disorders contain tau-immunoreactive neuronal and glial inclusions throughout the cerebral cortex and brainstem. Although these diseases have been considered distinct clinicopathological entities, recent recognition of many neuropathological and clinical parallels has raised the question of overlap between the disorders. In addition, histopathological similarities sometimes complicate neuropathological diagnosis. To address these issues, we examined the morphology and differential distribution of pathologic lesions in three disorders: progressive supranuclear palsy, Pick's disease, and corticobasal degeneration. We found considerable similarity in the anatomical regions affected by the three entities; however, semiquantitative analysis revealed differential anatomical susceptibility. Similarly, although overlap existed in the morphology of tau-immunoreactive inclusions, characteristic differences remained and may be useful in differential diagnosis. In particular, glial inclusions varied dramatically between the disorders. Despite significant overlap among the three neurodegenerative diseases examined, the morphological and regional differences suggest that each is a distinct pathophysiological entity
A Novel Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Networks With Noise Uncertainty

This correspondence investigates a joint spectrum sensing scheme in cognitive radio (CR) networks with unknown and dynamic noise variance. A novel Bayesian solution is proposed to recover the dynamic noise variance and detect the occupancy of primary frequency band simultaneously. The states of primary users are detected based on particle filtering technology, and then the noise parameters are tracked by using finite-dimensional statistics for each particle based on marginalized adaptive particle filtering. Simulation results are provided to validate that the proposed method can improve the sensing performance significantly and target the dynamic noise variance accurately.
White Matter Abnormalities in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Traumatic axonal injury is a primary brain abnormality in head trauma and is characterized by reduction of fractional anisotropy (FA) on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Our hypothesis was that patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) have widespread brain white matter regions of reduced FA involving a variety of fiber bundles and show fiber disruption on fiber tracking in a minority of these regions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ethics committee approval and informed consent were obtained. Twenty-one patients with mild TBI were investigated (men:women, 12:9; mean age ± SD, 32 ± 9 years). In a voxel-based comparison with 11 control subjects (men:women, 8:3; mean age, 37 ± 9 years) using z score analysis, patient regions with abnormally reduced FA were defined in brain white matter. MR imaging, DTI, and fiber tracking characteristics of these regions were described and analyzed using Pearson correlation, linear regression analysis, or the χ2 test when appropriate. RESULTS: Patients had on average 9.1 regions with reduced FA, with a mean region volume of 525 mm3, predominantly found in cerebral lobar white matter, cingulum, and corpus callosum. These regions mainly involved supratentorial projection fiber bundles, callosal fibers, and fronto-temporo-occipital association fiber bundles. Internal capsules and infratentorial white matter were relatively infrequently affected. Of all of the involved fiber bundles, 19.3% showed discontinuity on fiber tracking. CONCLUSION: Patients with mild TBI have multiple regions with reduced FA in various white matter locations and involving various fiber bundles. A minority of these fiber bundles show discontinuity on fiber tracking.
Predictors of infarct artery patency after prehospital thrombolysis: the multicentre, prospective, observational OPTIMAL study

Objective: To identify predictors of early TIMI 3 flow patency of the infarct-related artery after prehospital thrombolysis in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) using data from a “real-world” population, and to develop a nomogram for triaging patients to emergency angiography. Design: Multicentre, observational, prospective, cohort study. Setting: 79 Hospitals in France with a prehospital mobile intensive care unit and a coronary care unit with 24 h access to coronary angiography. Patients: 997 Patients with STEMI. Interventions: All patients received prehospital thrombolysis within 6 h of symptom onset and angiography was performed within 6 h of thrombolysis. Main outcome measures: Coronary patency (TIMI flow). Results: The median age of the population was 59 years and the sample comprised 18% women. After multivariable logistic regression analysis, predictors of TIMI 3 flow in the infarct-related artery were current/previous smoking (odds ratio (OR) = 1.60, 95% confidence interval 1.15 to 2.22), ⩽5 leads with ST-segment elevation before thrombolysis (OR = 1.59, 1.12 to 2.25), Killip class I (OR = 1.96, 1.05 to 3.67), chest pain relief (OR = 1.62, 1.17 to 2.25) and ST-segment resolution ⩾70% (OR = 1.76, 1.29 to 2.38). A nomogram was developed to assess the probability of TIMI 3 flow, according to smoking status, number of leads with ST elevation before thrombolysis, Killip class, chest pain relief and ST-segment resolution. Conclusions: This study provides quantitative data for predicting success of prehospital thrombolysis. The nomogram is a simple tool for predicting likelihood of coronary patency, based on clinical and electrocardiographic data. It may help to identify patients who require emergency angiography and rescue percutaneous coronary intervention.
O EXERCÍCIO DA LIDERANÇA SOB A ÓTICA DE ENFERMEIROS DE PRONTO SOCORRO

Estudio descriptivo con abordaje cualitativo cuyo objetivo fue identificar como enfermeros de servicio de urgencia perciben el ejercicio del liderazgo en su practica profesional. Los datos fueron obtenidos por medio de entrevistas semiestructuradas con nueve enfermeros de un hospital-escuela de Curitiba - Parana, de mayo a julio de 2011. Despues de la transcripcion de las entrevistas, los datos fueron sometidos al analisis de contenido, que resulto en tres categorias. La primera describe el concepto de liderazgo en la perspectiva de los enfermeros; en la segunda son abordadas las caracteristicas de liderazgo que seran practicadas en la emergencia y, en la tercera se discute acerca de los atributos del enfermero-lider en el ambiente del hospital de emergencia. Se concluye que el liderazgo es una competencia administrativa esencial para la practica del enfermero en el sector de emergencia y que, para esa efectiva movilizacion, este debe mantenerse actualizado y utilizar la habilidades de comunicacion, negociacion, autonomia, creatividad y valoracion de los miembros del equipo.
Modelling the joint determination of household labour supplies and commodity demands

In addition to choosing the allocation of total expenditure between commodities, households may also be able to make decisions over the allocation of their time between market work and leisure. In both theoretical and empirical work it has often been the case that these decisions have been analysed separately. In this paper we stress the theoretical attractions of considering the joint determination of the allocation of time between work and leisure and the allocation of total expenditure between commodities in a utility maximising framework. Using a sample of individual households we attempt to evaluate the empirical importance of the joint determination model over the separate determination of labour supplies and commodity demands. Our approach follows that of Abbott and Ashenfelter (I976), Phlips (I978), Barnett (I979), Deaton and Muellbauer (I980), and Atkinson and Stern (I980). Here we pay particular attention to the following four important aspects of household decision-making over commodity demand and labour supply. The first concerns the commonly assumed restriction on the household's preferences of (weak) separability between goods and leisure. This assumption allows the estimation of commodity demand systems and Engel curves that exclude wage-rate variables. In cross-section household budget data with large variation in wage rates across the sample the invalidity of this assumption would involve a serious mis-specification. Any correlation between the excluded wage variable and the included price, income and demographic variables would lead to biased parameter estimates and hence biased estimated elasticities. Similarly, this assumption allows the estimation of labour supply curves that exclude relative price variables and its invalidity could produce biased labour supply elasticities. A second aspect of household decision-making which we wish to highlight arises from the suspicion, commonly alluded to in labour economics texts, that primary male workers may not be free to choose their hours of work. Thus we estimate a matched pair of rationed and unrationed systems following the work of Neary and Roberts (i 980) and Deaton and Muellbauer (I 979). The separability restriction is not unrelated to this point, since without it we will see that the rationed hours of work enter demand systems in a complex fashion. In effect,
The evolution of pain management in the critically ill trauma patient: Emerging concepts from the global war on terrorism

Background:The evolution of military medical care to manage polytrauma, critically ill-wounded warriors from the greater war on terrorism has been accompanied by significant changes in the diagnosis, management, and modulation of acute and chronic trauma-related pain. A paradigm shift in pain management includes early treatment of pain at the point of injury and throughout the continuum of care with a combination of standard and novel therapeutic interventions. These concepts are important for all critical care providers because they translate to most critically ill patients, including those resulting from natural disasters. Previous authors have reported a high incidence of moderate to severe pain and poor analgesia in intensive care units associated with sleep disturbances, tachycardia, pulmonary complications, increased stress response with thromboembolic incidents, and immunosuppression, increased intensive care unit and hospital stays, and needless suffering. Although opioids have traditionally been the cornerstone of acute pain management, they have potential negative effects ranging from sedation, confusion, respiratory depression, nausea, ileus, constipation, tolerance, opioid-induced hyperalgesia as well as potential for immunosuppression. Alternatively, multimodal therapy is increasingly recognized as a critical pain management approach, especially when combined with early nutrition and ambulation, designed to improve functional recovery and decrease chronic pain conditions. Discussion:Multimodal therapy encompasses a wide range of procedures and medications, including regional analgesia with continuous epidural or peripheral nerve block infusions, judicious opioids, acetaminophen, anti-inflammatory agents, anticonvulsants, ketamine, clonidine, mexiletine, antidepressants, and anxiolytics as options to treat or modulate pain at various sites of action. Summary:With a more aggressive acute pain management strategy, the military has decreased acute and chronic pain conditions, which may have application in the civilian sector as well.
Molecular Sensing of Bacteria in Plants

To detect microbial infection multicellular organisms have evolved sensing systems for pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). Here, we identify bacterial cold shock protein (CSP) as a new such PAMP that acts as a highly active elicitor of defense responses in tobacco. Tobacco cells perceive a conserved domain of CSP and synthetic peptides representing 15 amino acids of this domain-induced responses at subnanomolar concentrations. Central to the elicitor-active domain is the RNP-1 motif KGFGFITP, a motif conserved also in many RNA- and DNA-binding proteins of eukaryotes. Csp15-Nsyl, a peptide representing the domain with highest homology to csp15 in a protein of Nicotiana sylvestris exhibited only weak activity in tobacco cells. Crystallographic and genetic data from the literature show that the RNP-1 domain of bacterial CSPs resides on a protruding loop and exposes a series of aromatic and basic side chains to the surface that are essential for the nucleotide-binding activity of CSPs. Similarly, these side chains were also essential for elicitor activity and replacement of single residues in csp15 with Ala strongly reduced or abolished activity. Most strikingly, csp15-Ala10, a peptide with the RNP-1 motif modified to KGAGFITP, lacked elicitor activity but acted as a competitive antagonist for CSP-related elicitors. Bacteria commonly have a small family of CSP-like proteins including both cold-inducible and noninducible members, and Csp-related elicitor activity was detected in extracts from all bacteria tested. Thus, the CSP domain containing the RNP-1 motif provides a structure characteristic for bacteria in general, and tobacco plants have evolved a highly sensitive chemoperception system to detect this bacterial PAMP.
Towards Capability Maturity in Software Review

Software review facilitates software projects with better technologies sharing, reduced rework, robust design, and early removal of defects. In order to exploit its power, software review should be well organized in software projects. A framework is proposed here to well conduct the SQA activities with software review. This paper argues that software review is not only an important approach to quality control, but also is essential to software quality assurance. Four levels for software review are presented in this paper, which can be followed to be mature of capability to produce high quality software product.
An antibody that prevents the hemagglutinin low pH fusogenic transition.

We have determined the structure of a complex of influenza hemagglutinin (HA) with an antibody that binds simultaneously to the membrane-distal domains of two HA monomers, effectively cross-linking them. The antibody prevents the low pH structural transition of HA that is required for its membrane fusion activity, providing evidence that a rearrangement of HA membrane-distal domains is an essential component of the transition.
Tissue Factor-Like Activity Of The Human Monocytic Tumor Cell Line U937

Cells of the human monocytic cell line U937, derived from a patient with histiocytic lymphoma (Sundstrom and Nilsson, Int. J. Cancer 17:565, 1976) have procoagulant activity similar to that of activated peripheral blood monocytes, although about 10-fold more U937 cells than monocytes are required for equivalent activity. Procoagulant activity of the cells is Ca2+ dependent and is not demonstrable in factor VII deficient or factor X deficient plasma. Culture with E. coli 0127:B8 1ipopolysaccharide increases the procoagulant activity of washed U937 cells two-fold. Exposure of U937 cells to lymphokines from normal lymphocytes does not induce further coagulant activity. The slope of the log/log plot of cells vs. clotting time parallels that of human brain thromboplastin. Other cell lines of myeloid or lymphoid origin, e.g., K562 cells, WI-L2 cells, do not have procoagulant activity. Thus, U937 cells have constitutive factor VII-dependent coagulant activity similar to the tissue factor activity induced by activation of normal monocytes. In further experiments, U937 cells were incubated with purified human factor VII in the presence or absence of Ca2+ and then repeatedly washed. When subsamples of the cells were then added to recalcified factor VII deficient plasma in the absence of added tissue factor, the following clotting times were obtained: for cells incubated with factor VII in the presence of Ca2+,45"; for cells incubated with factor VII in the absence of Ca2+, 150". These data suggest that U937 cells can bind factor VII in a reaction requiring Ca2+, which then enables the cells to express their tissue factor-like activity in factor VII deficient plasma.