Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Iterative (turbo) expectation - maximisation-based time and frequency synchronisation for multiple-input multiple-output-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems

An iterative expectation-maximisation time-frequency synchronisation algorithm joint with channel estimation for multiple-input multiple-output-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in frequency-selective fading channels is addressed. The receiver iterates between detection and estimation stages. For each iteration, the expectation of ODFM symbols is calculated first by using a posteriori probabilities provided by maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoder, and second, a proposed metric is maximised to obtain both frequency offset and symbol timing. The channel can be identified by means of these estimates. This algorithm can work in transmission mode, and thus, can be used to estimate the residual errors or track the change of the parameters. The performance of the proposed synchronisation approach, in terms of bit-error rate and mean-square error, is shown.
Relationship between breathlessness and hypoxic and hypercap

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between breathlessness and the ventilatory response to hypercapnia or hypoxia in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Fifteen male patients (mean forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1): 1.13 L) underwent tests to determine hyperoxic hypercapnic ventilatory response (HCVR) and isocapnic hypoxic ventilatory response (HVR) with simultaneous quan- tification of breathlessness by modified Borg scale. The ventilatory output was evaluated by the ratio of minute ventilation (V 'E) divided by measured maximal voluntary ventilation (MVV). The magnitude of HCVR or HVR was assessed as the slope value of the V 'E/MVV-end-tidal carbon dioxide pressure (PET,CO2) or arterial oxygen saturation (Sa,O2) regression line, respectively. The breathlessness during the tests was evaluated not only linearly in relation to V 'E/MVV, but also at given levels of PET,CO2 or Sa,O2. The mean value of the breathlessness at two different levels of ventilation was greater during HVR than during HCVR, suggesting that hypoxia is dyspnogenic independently of ventilatory stimulation. The HCVR was inversely correlated with the breathlessness response to ventilation, while similar correlation was partly pre- sent for HVR. The HVR was positively correlated with the breathlessness at an Sa,O2 of 80%, whilst there was no such correlation between the HCVR and the breathlessness related to PET,CO2. Therefore, patients with a higher breathlessness related to increased ventilation had a lower HCVR and HVR, whilst those with a higher breathlessness with desaturation, which might include a direct influence of hypoxia, had a higher HVR. These findings suggest an interaction between ventilatory response and breath- lessness during the test, which may partly include behavioural modulation of HCVR and HVR through the breathlessness in various ways, depending on the origin and nature of the sensation.
A modified two-point stepsize gradient algorithm for unconstrained minimization

Based on a modified secant equation proposed by Li and Fukushima, we derive a stepsize for the Barzilai–Borwein gradient method. Then, using the newly proposed stepsize and another effective stepsize proposed by Dai et al. in an adaptive scheme that is based on the objective function convexity, we suggest a modified two-point stepsize gradient algorithm. We also show that the limit point of the sequence generated by our algorithm is first-order critical. Finally, our numerical comparisons done on a set of unconstrained optimization test problems from the CUTEr collection are presented. At first, we compare the performance of our algorithm with two other two-point stepsize gradient algorithms proposed by Dai et al. and Raydan. Then, numerical comparisons between the implementations of our algorithm and two conjugate gradient methods proposed by Gilbert and Nocedal, and Hestenes and Stiefel, and also, with the memoryless BFGS algorithm proposed by Liu and Nocedal, are made. Furthermore, to provide a numerical support for our adaptive approach, we compare two other two-point stepsize gradient algorithms, one of which applies the stepsize proposed by Dai et al. and the other applies our newly proposed stepsize, with our algorithm which applies both of these stepsizes together. Numerical results demonstrating the efficiency of our algorithm, in the sense of the performance profile introduced by Dolan and Moré, are reported.
Power Allocation in an RF Energy Harvesting DF Relay Network in the Presence of an Interferer

In this paper, we study a cooperative wireless relay network in which multiple source-destination pairs communicate via a decode-and-forward relay, which harvests energy from the source transmissions in the presence of an interfering signal. The goal is to efficiently distribute the relay’s power among the different relay-destination <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$(\mathrm {R-D})$ </tex-math></inline-formula> links. The outage probability and the throughput in the delay-sensitive transmission mode are derived for the non-shared and several shared power allocation schemes. Numerical results show that the studied shared allocation schemes outperform the non-shared allocation scheme in terms of outage probability and throughput. Different shared allocation schemes are compared against each other in terms of outage probability, throughput, and fairness. The <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathrm {R-D}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> channel dependent and the weighted-sum-rate maximization schemes achieve the best outage and throughput performances but require knowledge of the statistical channel state information at the relay node. The results also illustrate the tradeoff between the throughput and fairness of the different shared allocation schemes.
Video Object Segmentation with Re-identification

Conventional video segmentation methods often rely on temporal continuity to propagate masks. Such an assumption suffers from issues like drifting and inability to handle large displacement. To overcome these issues, we formulate an effective mechanism to prevent the target from being lost via adaptive object re-identification. Specifically, our Video Object Segmentation with Re-identification (VS-ReID) model includes a mask propagation module and a ReID module. The former module produces an initial probability map by flow warping while the latter module retrieves missing instances by adaptive matching. With these two modules iteratively applied, our VS-ReID records a global mean (Region Jaccard and Boundary F measure) of 0.699, the best performance in 2017 DAVIS Challenge.
ERBİYUM KATKILI FİBER YÜKSELTEÇLERDE (EDFA) POMPALAMA DALGABOYU VE YÖNÜNÜN EDFA KAZANCINA ETKİSİ

Bu calismada, Erbiyum Katkili Fiber Yukselteclerde (EDFA) pompalama dalgaboyu ve yonunun, sinyal gucu ve kazan­cina etkisi incelenmistir. EDFA’larda temel oran denklemleri verilerek, 980nm ve 1480nm dalgaboylarinda ileri, geri ve iki yonlu olarak pompalanmis EDFA simule edilmis, pompalama dalgaboyu ve yonunun sinyal kazanci ve gucune olan etkisi incelenmis­tir. Sonuc olarak, ileri yonde pompalama ile 1480nm dalgaboyunda yapilan pompalamanin daha yuksek cikis sinyal gucu ve ka­zanci verdigi ve iki yonlu pompalamanin gurultu seviyesinin diger pompalama konfigurasyonlarina gore daha dusuk oldugu go­rulmustur.
Prediction of a low-risk concentration of diflubenzuron to aquatic organisms and evaluation of clay and gravel in reducing the toxicity

Diflubenzuron is an insecticide that, besides being used in the agriculture, has been widely used in fish farming. However, its use is prohibited in this activity. Diflubenzuron is not in the list of Brazilian legislation establishing maximum permissible limits in water bodies for the protection of aquatic communities. In this paper, according toxicity data of diflubenzuron in non-target organisms, it was calculated an hazardous concentration for only 5% of the species (HC5) of the aquatic community. This parameter value was estimated to be about 7 x 10 -6 mg L. The low value is due to the extreme high toxicity of diflubenzuron to daphnids and to the large variation in sensitivity among the species tested. Two relatively low cost and inert materials were efficient in removing the diflubenzuron from solutions containing this compound. Among these materials, expanded clay shown to promote reduction of approximately 50% of the toxicity of a solution containing diflubenzuron. The results may contribute to the establishment of public policies in Brazil associated to the definition of maximum permissible limits of xenobiotics in the aquatic compartment. This study is also relevant to the search of low cost and inert materials for xenobiotics removal from aquaculture or agricultural effluents.
Co-variation des taux de croissance sectoriels au Luxembourg: l?apport des corrélations conditionnelles dynamiques

Cette analyse emploie le modele des correlations conditionnelles dynamiques developpees recemment par Engle (2002) pour determiner le caractere synchrone ou asynchrone des mouvements des taux de croissance de la valeur ajoutee des differents secteurs economiques au Luxembourg. Le recours a cette methodologie, initialement developpee pour l? analyse des series financieres, s? explique principalement par la non-constance de la volatilite des series trimestrielles des composantes du PIB luxembourgeois. Cette caracteristique de la volatilite demeure naturelle pour une petite economie tres ouverte, sujette par ailleurs, a une multiplicite de chocs exogenes dont les effets se traduiraient par une plus grande volatilite des agregats economiques. Nous adoptons, par ailleurs, le test de causalite des moyennes et des variances construit par Cheung et Ng (1996) pour confirmer ou infirmer le role attribue par certains au secteur financier en tant que locomotive de l? economie luxembourgeoise.
Effect of GFP tags on the localization of EB1 and EB1 fragments in vivo

EB1 is a microtubule plus‐end tracking protein that plays a central role in the regulation of microtubule (MT) dynamics. GFP‐tagged EB1 constructs are commonly used to study EB1 itself and also as markers of dynamic MT plus ends. To properly interpret these studies, it is important to understand the impact of tags on the behavior of EB1 and other proteins in vivo. To address this problem and improve understanding of EB1 function, we surveyed the localization of expressed EB1 fragments and investigated whether GFP tags alter these localizations. We found that neither N‐terminal nor C‐terminal tags are benign: tagged EB1 and EB1 fragments generally behave differently from their untagged counterparts. N‐terminal tags significantly compromise the ability of expressed EB1 proteins to bind MTs and/or track MT plus ends, although they leave some MT‐binding ability intact. C‐terminally tagged EB1 constructs have localizations similar to the untagged constructs, initially suggesting that they are benign. However, most constructs tagged at either end cause CLIP‐170 to disappear from MT plus ends. This effect is opposite to that of untagged full‐length EB1, which recruits CLIP‐170 to MTs. These observations demonstrate that although EB1‐GFP can be a powerful tool for studying microtubule dynamics, it should be used carefully because it may alter the system that it is being used to study. In addition, some untagged fragments had unexpected localizations. In particular, an EB1 construct lacking the coiled‐coil tracks MT plus ends, though weakly, providing evidence against the idea that EB1 +TIP behavior requires dimerization. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Closed-form solution of the convolution integral in the magnetic resonance dispersion model for quantitative assessment of angiogenesis

Prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis and treatment is still limited due to the lack of reliable imaging methods for cancer localization. Based on the fundamental role played by angiogenesis in cancer growth and development, several dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) imaging methods have been developed to probe tumor angiogenic vasculature. In DCE magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), pharmacokinetic modeling allows estimating quantitative parameters related to the physiology underlying tumor angiogenesis. In particular, novel magnetic resonance dispersion imaging (MRDI) enables quantitative assessment of the microvascular architecture and leakage, by describing the intravascular dispersion kinetics of an extravascular contrast agent with a dispersion model. According to this model, the tissue contrast concentration at each voxel is given by the convolution between the intravascular concentration, described as a Brownian motion process according to the convective-dispersion equation, with the interstitium impulse response, represented by a mono-exponential decay, and describing the contrast leakage in the extravascular space. In this work, an improved formulation of the MRDI method is obtained by providing an analytical solution for the convolution integral present in the dispersion model. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated by means of dedicated simulations in terms of estimation accuracy, precision, and computation time. Moreover, a preliminary clinical validation was carried out in five patients with proven PCa. The proposed method allows for a reduction by about 40% of computation time without any significant change in estimation accuracy and precision, and in the clinical performance.
Hepatitis C virus polyprotein processing: kinetics and mutagenic analysis of serine proteinase-dependent cleavage

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) serine proteinase (Cpro-2) is responsible for the processing of HCV nonstructural (NS) protein processing. To clarify the mechanism of Cpro-2-dependent processing, pulse-chase and mutation analyses were performed by using a transient protein production system in cultured cells. Pulse-chase study revealed the sequential production of HCV-NS proteins. Production of p70(NS3) and p66(NS5B) were rapid. An 89-kDa processing intermediate protein (p89) was observed during the early part of the chase. p89 seemed to be cleaved first into a 31-kDa protein (p31) and a p58/56(NS5A). p31 was further processed into p4(NS4A) and p27(NS4B). Mutation analysis of cleavage sites of NS4A/4B, NS4B/5A, and NS5A/5B revealed that cleavage at each site is essentially independent from cleavage occurring at the other site.
Consensus on hyperthermia for the 1990s. Clinical practice in cancer treatment. XII International Symposium on Clinical Hyperthermia. Rome, April 27-29, 1989.

Hyperthermia as a safe and effective cancer treatment modality is rapidly evolving propelled by widespread research and clinical efforts worldwide. Presentations on Hyperthermia experience are now commonplace at Oncology meetings, as are congresses dedicated entirely to the intertwined interactions between basic sciences and patient treatment that together are forming the structure of a new medical specialty. Such was the XII International Symposium on Clinical Hyperthermia held in Rome, Italy, April 27 - 29, 1989. Papers presented therein constitute the backbone of this book. Biology research has provided data describing mechanisms of action for the cancer cell killing and physiological effects of Hyperthermia. Physics research has led to the development of equipment enabling treatment of many areas of the human body, as well as explained the limitations that still constrain our ability to treat, especially in the areas of deep seated tumor heating and non-invasive thermometry. The main question that will decide the future of this modality is that of its clinical use. To put it succinctly, what do we do with this potentially useful tool in an everyday clinical oncological practice . This is the main question addressed in this book as "Consensus on Hyperthermia for the 1990s. " The book in cludes 28 presented papers and 25 invited chapters from some of the leading experts in the field. Their basic mechanisms of action were physics principles, treatment quality assurance and especially, clinical indications. "
Spine Abnormalities Depicted by Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Adolescent Rowers

Background: Most lesions of the spine of athletes, which often are detected incidentally, do not cause important symptoms or make the athletes discontinue their physical activities. To better understand the significance of these lesions, new imaging studies have been conducted with asymptomatic athletes in several sports, aiming to detect potentially deleterious and disabling abnormalities. Purpose: To compare the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) lumbar spine findings in a group of asymptomatic adolescent rowers and in a control group of adolescents matched according to age and sex who do not practice any regular physical activity. Study Design: Cohort study (prevalence); Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Our study evaluated 44 asymptomatic adolescent boys distributed in 2 groups of 22 rowers and 22 control subjects. All the examinations were performed using a 0.35-T open-field MRI unit and evaluated by 2 experienced radiologists blinded to the study groups. Each MRI scan was analyzed for the presence of disc degeneration/desiccation, herniated or bulging disc, pars interarticularis stress reaction, and spondylolysis. The Student t test and the Fisher exact test were used for statistical analyses. Results: Nine rowers (40.9%) had at least 1 abnormality detected by MRI in the lumbar spine, whereas only 2 participants (9.1%) in the control group had at least 1 MRI abnormality (P = .03). Seven disc changes (31.8%) and 6 pars abnormalities (27.3%) were found in the group of elite rowers. In the control group, 3 disc changes (13.6%) and no pars abnormalities were found in the MR scans. The comparison between groups showed statistically significant differences in stress reaction of the pars articularis. Conclusion: Disc disease and pars interarticularis stress reaction are prevalent abnormalities of the lumbar spine of high-performance rowers.
A Threat Analysis Model for Identity and Access Management

Cyber attacks as a threat to business and national security have become concerns to organizations and governments. Potential impacts of attacks are financial loss, fraud, reputation damage, and legal costs. Identification of security threats is part of securing information systems as it involves identifying threats and challenges which need to be addressed by implementing appropriate countermeasures and realistic security requirements. Our study focuses on threat analysis and modeling for digital identities and identity management within and across complex and networked systems. Further, a preliminary version of a reference threat analysis model that supports threat analysis for identity management is proposed and discussed in this
The self-care for people initiative: the outcome evaluation

Aim To determine the effects of a community-based training programme in self-care on the lay population. Background Self Care is recognised as being a cornerstone of the populations health, but to date there have been few large-scale studies of its effectiveness on the general public. This paper reports on an evaluation of a self-care skills training course delivered in small group sessions within workplace and parent and toddler group settings to a lay population. Methods A quasi-experimental longitudinal study of 12-month duration was conducted in three intervention primary care trusts (PCTs) and two similar comparison PCTs in England. The sample comprised 1568 self-selecting participants: 868 received the intervention and 700 did not. Findings No changes were seen in usage of General Practitioner services, the primary outcome, however, statistical analysis suggested that being in the intervention group may be associated with increased use of out-of-hours and secondary care services. At six months’ follow-up small but statistically significant positive effects of being in the intervention group were seen on self-esteem, well-being and anxiety scores. At 12 months’ follow-up small but statistically significant positive effects of being in the intervention group were also seen on recovery locus of control, health literacy and self-esteem scores, and on knowledge of adult cough. The clinical significance of these very small changes is unclear. The training programme had a small but positive effect, which was still evident at 12 months, on individuals’ knowledge and confidence levels with regard to managing their own health, but did not lead to reductions in health service use.
C-kit mutations in core binding factor leukemias.

To the editor: C-kit mutations in core binding factor leukemias Positivity for CD117(c-kit) expression is present in 80% of acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) cases,[1][1] and has been associated with the expression of CD33, a marker of myeloid precursors, and CD13, a myeloid-associated antigen. [2
Streamer propagation study of surface creepage in transformer insulation materials

Ester fluid has potential for being used as an environmentally friendly alternative to mineral oil in transformers. However the breakdown strength and surface creepage properties of ester fluids are not entirely understood. A good test method is needed in qualifying the different liquids and the creepage properties of thin solid insulation materials. In this paper a test method designed for studying the streamer propagation along the interface between solid insulation material and oil is evaluated. A simple method with cylindrical geometry is introduced. The interface between polyaramide solid insulation and fluid insulation has been compared using lightning impulse voltage (1.2 / 50 μs). Both ester fluid and mineral oil have been studied. Weibull distribution of the result data showed higher shape parameter than e.g. U-shape electrode test set-up. Furthermore, both 2nd and 3rd streamer modes were detected. All the streamers were initiated in the oil wedge between electrode and solid material surface.
Early Iron Age burials from Equatorial Guinea: the sites of Corisco Island

During a survey undertaken on the Island of Corisco, also known as Mandji (Equatorial Guinea), in 2009, several sites of the Early and Late Iron Age were recorded. The most spectacular discoveries are three burial sites, the largest of which has yielded several intact tombs with many artefacts (axes, spears, anklets, bracelets, complete pots) radiocarbon dated to 410–640 cal AD. Objects, structures and ritual activities are similar to those documented in Early Iron Age cemeteries in Cameroon in recent years. The new data from Corisco contribute to change the image of the early iron-using societies in Equatorial Africa.
High efficiency W-band power amplifiers using ring-shaped sub-quarter-wavelength power combining technique

We present W-band power amplifiers which are designed using the sub-quarter-wavelength transmission line balun in a ring-shaped configuration and fabricated in a 0.25 μm InP DHBT technology. Operating at 86GHz, a single-stage PA exhibits 20.86dBm saturated output power with 10.2dB peak power gain, a recored PAE of 35% and a record 3-dB bandwidth of 33GHz. A two-stage PA exhibits 22.75dBm saturated output power with 20.4dB peak power gain, a PAE of 32.8% and a 3-dB bandwidth of 16GHz.