Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electrooptic field visualization and its application to millimeter-wave and terahertz antenna characterization

We present two photonics-based millimeter and terahertz wave visualization systems, self-heterodyne measurement system and asynchronous measurement system, for antenna characterization. In the self-heterodyne measurement system, the RF signal is generated by photomixing using a uni-traveling-carrier photodiode and supplied to antenna under test. On the other hand, asynchronous measurement system enables us to measure the amplitude and phase distribution of the radiative electromagnetic (EM) near-field emitted from self-oscillating devices without detaching the antennas. In the both systems, the non-polarimetric electrooptic frequency conversion technique is the key for stable and wideband measurement with low invasiveness to the EM field.
Minchinia mercenariae n. sp. (Haplosporidia) in the Hard Clam Mercenaria mercenaria: Implications of a Rare Parasite in a Commercially Important Host

ABSTRACT. During routine histopathology of 180 juvenile hard clams, Mercenaria mercenaria, from a site in Virginia, USA, in 2007, we discovered a single individual heavily infected with a parasite resembling a haplosporidian, some members of which cause lethal bivalve diseases. Scanning electron microscopy of spores and sequencing of small subunit ribosomal DNA confirmed a new species: Minchinia mercenariae n. sp. Further sampling of clams at the site found prevalences up to 38% using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). No parasites were found in routine histological screening of the same individuals, but re‐examination of clams judged positive by in situ hybridization (ISH) revealed very faintly staining plasmodia. No unusual mortalities have occurred among the sampled groups. Analysis of clams from Massachusetts to Florida by PCR failed to detect the parasite, but a haplosporidian found in a clam from New Jersey in 2001 was subsequently identified by ISH as M. mercenariae. No other haplosporidians have been reported in thousands of hard clams from the US east coast examined histologically since the mid‐1980s. The discovery underscores critical questions about how to assess the risks associated with parasites in groups known to be lethal, but that themselves are not considered a problem.
Cigarette smoke metabolically promotes cancer, via autophagy and premature aging in the host stromal microenvironment

Cigarette smoke has been directly implicated in the disease pathogenesis of a plethora of different human cancer subtypes, including breast cancers. The prevailing view is that cigarette smoke acts as a mutagen and DNA damaging agent in normal epithelial cells, driving tumor initiation. However, its potential negative metabolic effects on the normal stromal microenvironment have been largely ignored. Here, we propose a new mechanism by which carcinogen-rich cigarette smoke may promote cancer growth, by metabolically “fertilizing” the host microenvironment. More specifically, we show that cigarette smoke exposure is indeed sufficient to drive the onset of the cancer-associated fibroblast phenotype via the induction of DNA damage, autophagy and mitophagy in the tumor stroma. In turn, cigarette smoke exposure induces premature aging and mitochondrial dysfunction in stromal fibroblasts, leading to the secretion of high-energy mitochondrial fuels, such as L-lactate and ketone bodies. Hence, cigarette smoke induces catabolism in the local microenvironment, directly fueling oxidative mitochondrial metabolism (OXPHOS) in neighboring epithelial cancer cells, actively promoting anabolic tumor growth. Remarkably, these autophagic-senescent fibroblasts increased breast cancer tumor growth in vivo by up to 4-fold. Importantly, we show that cigarette smoke-induced metabolic reprogramming of the fibroblastic stroma occurs independently of tumor neo-angiogenesis. We discuss the possible implications of our current findings for the prevention of aging-associated human diseases and, especially, common epithelial cancers, as we show that cigarette smoke can systemically accelerate aging in the host microenvironment. Finally, our current findings are consistent with the idea that cigarette smoke induces the “reverse Warburg effect,” thereby fueling “two-compartment tumor metabolism” and oxidative mitochondrial metabolism in epithelial cancer cells.
Comparison study of the effect of alkyl-modified and unmodified PAMAM and PPI dendrimers on solubility and antitumor activity of crocetin

Abstract Poor water solubility of hydrophobic drugs is one of the major problems in pharmaceutical sciences. Herein, in order to address the poor solubility of crocetin, the 30% of primary amines of PAMAM G4 and PPI G4 were alkylated and evaluated as drug delivery vectors. According to the results, this modification could improve the drug delivery efficiency in term of drug solubility, release pattern and cytotoxicity; however, the encapsulation yield was decreased. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the designed alkylated dendrimers are able to improve the drug delivery efficiency, may be through improving the solubility and cellular uptake of crocetin.
Apprendre par le jeu, dans quelles mesures peut-on utiliser des activités ludiques en cours de langue vivante étrangère avec des adolescents ?

Ce memoire a pour but de tester l'acquisition d'une langue etrangere par des moyens ludiques, c'est-a-dire des jeux linguistiques et de communication. D'abord, le dispositif developpe par l'auteur de ce memoire s'adresse a un public d'enfants avant de s'adresser a un public d'adolescents d'un lycee professionnel. Comment se fait l'acquisition d'une langue etrangere ? Est-il possible d'adapter des methodes ludiques utilisees chez les apprenants-enfants avec un public d'adolescents ? Quels en sont les impacts positifs ou negatifs ? Ce memoire est divise en deux parties : une premiere theorique s'appuyant sur differentes recherches sur le sujet, une deuxieme partie pratique qui presente le dispositif didactique et pedagogique mis en place.
High‐resolution slug testing

The hydraulic conductivity (K) variation has important ramifications for ground water flow and the transport of contaminants in ground water. The delineation of the nature of that variation can be critical to complete characterization of a site and the planning of effective and efficient remedial measures. Site‐specific features (such as high‐conductivity zones) need to be quantified. Our alluvial field site in the Kansas River valley exhibits spatial variability, very high conductivities, and nonlinear behavior for slug tests in the sand and gravel aquifer. High‐resolution, multilevel slug tests have been performed in a number of wells that are fully screened. A general nonlinear model based on the Navier‐Stokes equation, nonlinear frictional loss, non‐Darcian flow, acceleration effects, radius changes in the wellbore, and a Hvorslev model for the aquifer has been used to analyze the data, employing an automated processing system that runs within the Excel spreadsheet program. It is concluded that slug tests can provide the necessary data to identify the nature of both horizontal and vertical K variation in an aquifer and that improved delineation or higher resolution of K structure is possible with shorter test intervals. The gradation into zones of higher conductivity is sharper than seen previously, and the maximum conductivity observed is greater than previously measured. However, data from this project indicate that well development, the presence of fines, and the antecedent history of the well are important interrelated factors in regard to slug‐test response and can prevent obtaining consistent results in some cases.
An investigation on the parameters affecting total harmonic distortion in class D amplifiers

In this paper, we investigate two important and practical design parameters for the design of low-voltage low-power class D amplifiers that may affect the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD): the linearity of the carrier waveform and the impedance of the output stage. By means of a novel mathematical analysis method to model the carrier non-linearity, we show that this non-linearity should be mitigated to achieve low THD. Our mathematical analysis also provides an insight to the degree of non-linearity acceptable for a practical design. We show that the impedance of the output stage has little effect on THD. We verify our analysis by means of MATLAB and SPICE simulations.
"A Proper Function of Library Schools": T. R. Schellenberg's Archives Institute at the University of Texas, 1960

T. R. Schellenberg (1903–70) authored the first American textbooks on archival administration and helped to turn concepts developed for government records into mainstream practice for U.S. manuscript librarians. Moreover, to further systematize the work of archivists, he advocated situating archival education in schools of library science. Schellenberg's first experience teaching at a library school was the Archives Institute he led at the University of Texas in 1960. The Archives Institute proved to be propitious in the formulation of Schellenberg's ideas about archival concepts and archival education in the library school environment and was an unlikely culmination to the career of its organizer, University of Texas Archivist Winnie Allen.
The Secular Behavior of Income Velocity: An International Cross-Section Study

En este trabajo se presentan los resultados obtenidos en un estudio transversal sobre la velocidad-ingreso en paises con distintos niveles de ingreso per capita. Para los valores logaritmicos de los datos de los distintos paises, las relaciones entre el ingreso per capita y la velocidad del "dinero" y del "dinero mas cuasi-dinero" resultaron ser inversas y lineales. No se hallo ninguna relacion representativa para la velocidad-ingreso de billetes y monedas. Esos resultados siguieron siendo iguales cuando se introdujeron dos variables imaginarias para representar paises en los que la moneda y los depositos a la vista formaban, respectivamente, la proporcion mas elevada del "dinero mas cuasi-dinero". Sin embargo, esas variables imaginarias solo entraron significativamente en la relacion que incluye la velocidad del "dinero mas cuasi-dinero". Se estudio tambien, con respecto a los tres totales monetarios, la relacion entre 1) la tasa de variacion de la velocidad por cada variacion unitaria del ingreso per capita y 2) el nivel del ingreso per capita, habida cuenta de la influencia de la tasa de variacion de los precios. Se hallo que cuanto mas elevado era el nivel de ingreso per capita, menor era la tasa de merma en la velocidad del ingreso que va asociada con una determinada subida en el ingreso per capita, lo que indica que a niveles muy altos de ingreso per capita, podria hacerse nula o incluso negativa la tasa de merma de velocidad. En cuanto a los totales de "dinero" y "dinero mas cuasi-dinero", para los que se habia hallado una significativa relacion inversa entre niveles de velocidad y niveles de ingreso, se considero que esos resultados eran indicativos de que a muy altos niveles de ingreso per capita, al producirse un nuevo aumento del mismo, el nivel de velocidad podria tender a permanecer constante de acuerdo con la hipotesis de Gurley y Shaw, o incluso a empezar a subir de nuevo de acuerdo con la hipotesis de Dorrance y Brehmer.
It Takes One to Know One: Passing and Communities of Common Interest

In his 1946 essay, "The World and the Jug," Ralph Ellison claims that "although the sociologists tell us that thousands of light skinned Negroes become White each year undetected, most Negroes can spot a paper thin 'White Negro' every time. "' Ellison's assertion of an almost intuitive faculty of recognition, by which members of an in-group-a term I use to designate the group from which one has passed-are privy to visual codes that evade the duped spectators of the pass, will be the subject of this essay. As a member of a group from which one passes, Ellison makes a typical claim. Throughout the literature of racial and sexual passing, members of the in-group insist on a distinctive location that allows them to recognize a never truly hidden prepassing identity.2 As one "brash
Predicting participant behavior and dropout in a physical activity experiment using machine learning

Physical inactivity is identified by the World Health Organization as the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality as it increases the risk of various adverse health conditions. App-based health interventions promise to help increase physical activity levels by enhancing the motivation of the users to exercise on a regular basis. One such app-based intervention which sends tailored coaching messages to help people become more physically active, has been created by the Active2Gether project. A 12-week physical activity experiment was conducted with 92 healthy young adults to study the effect of the Active2Gether app. In this paper, supervised machine learning is applied on the experimental data, in order to detect which factors together best predict behavioral increase and which predict dropout from the experiment. Several tree-based classifiers are fitted and tuned in order to optimize F1-score. The classifiers are evaluated using K-Fold cross validation and furthermore a modified repeated cross validation is applied in order to evaluate the robustness of the models. For predicting behavioral increase, we fitted Decision Tree, Random Forest and Extremely Randomized Trees (Extra-Trees). Results show that the Decision Tree outperformed the Random Forest and the Extra-Trees, achieving an F1-score 0.8 in the 5-fold cross validation and 0.72 in the repeated cross validation. For participant dropout, we compared Decision Tree, Extra-Trees and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). Results show that the Extra-Trees performed best with an F1-score 0.765 in the 10-fold cross validation and 0.68 in the repeated cross validation.
Towards the use of semantic learning object repositories: Evaluating queries performance in two different RDF implementations

Learning Object Repositories (LOR) are an essential component of the e-Learning ecosystem and have being normally serving the purpose of cataloging, storing, retrieving and delivering Learning Objects to be used inside e-Learning applications. Next generation of LORs needs to overcome some major shortcomings current LORs present and involve other entities that are part of the e-learning process (teachers, students, lessons, courses, activities, learning paths, etc.) in a way that they are all fully integrated and linked-up. Semantic web technologies such as RDF are the natural choice to implement these requirements into Semantic Learning Repositories. One important factor limiting the implementation of this kind of systems is the uncertainty about their performance. The present paper describes an initial study that compares the performance of two distinct RDF native database implementations (4store and Jena Apache) in the specific context of a Semantic Learning Repository. The performance tests were run to evaluate two different aspects of the databases implementation: the time to upload the RDF data to the databases, and the response time for running the queries. The results showed that 4store performed better than Apache Jena for all the scenarios we evaluated.
Medication nonadherence in Korean patients with rheumatoid arthritis: the importance of belief about medication and illness perception

Background/Aims To investigate medication nonadherence in Korean patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and analyze related factors. Methods A total of 292 patients with RA participated in this study. Medication nonadherence, intentional or unintentional, was gauged via self-reported questionnaire. Patient perceptions of illness, treatment beliefs, and moods were measured via Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire, and Patient Health Questionnaire-2, respectively. Demographic and clinical data were also collected. Multinomial regression analysis was used to assess the impact of demographic, clinical, and psychological factors on medication nonadherence. Results The medication nonadherence rate was 54.1% (intentional, 21.6%; unintentional, 32.5%). Intentional nonadherence was reported most often in patients treated daily drugs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and/or disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs) (24.2%), and unintentional nonadherence was highest in patients receiving methotrexate (33.3%) (p = 0.872). In univariate analysis, beliefs in necessity and concerns of medication differed significantly in adherent and nonadherent patients (intentional or unintentional). When controlling for other factors that may impact medication nonadherence, less belief in necessity of medication (odds ratio [OR], 0.81; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.68 to 0.95) and greater emotional response to disease (OR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.01 to 1.40) were important predictors of intentional nonadherence. Conclusions Medication nonadherence is common in Korean patients with RA. Less belief in necessity of medication and greater emotional response to disease were identified as key factors prompting intentional nonadherence. These factors may be strategically targeted to improve medication adherence rates and subsequent clinical outcomes.
Syndrome de Cowden : présentation de 7 cas

Le syndrome de Cowden est une affection rare, hereditaire, a transmission autosomique dominante. Il est caracterise par l'apparition d'hamartomes multiples principalement sur le revetement cutaneo-muqueux, dans les seins, la glande thyroide, le tractus gastro-intestinal, l'endometre et le cerveau. Certaines lesions ont un potentiel de transformation maligne. Ce syndrome est du a des mutations du gene PTEN. Faute de traitement curatif, la prise en charge comprend le traitement de manifestations cliniques et surtout la surveillance pour le depistage de toute transformation maligne. En raison de la multiplicite des organes atteints, la prise en charge doit etre pluridisciplinaire. L'aspect typique des lesions buccales permet au medecin-dentiste d'aider au diagnostic precoce et de s'integrer dans l'equipe pluridisciplinaire. Les 7 cas presentes dans ce travail ont ete retrouves dans 2 familles genevoises, ils sont suivis dans la division de Stomatologie et Chirurgie orale de l'Ecole de Medecine Dentaire de Geneve.
Detecting Driver Normal and Emergency Lane-Changing Intentions With Queuing Network-Based Driver Models

Driver intention detection is an important component in human-centric driver assistance systems. This article proposes a novel method for detecting driver normal and emergency left- or right-lane-changing intentions by using driver models based on the queuing network cognitive architecture. Driver lane-changing and lane-keeping models are developed and used to simulate driver behavior data associated with 5 kinds of intentions (i.e., normal and emergency left- or right-lane-changing and lane-keeping intentions). The differences between 5 sets of simulated behavior data and the collected actual behavior data are computed, and the intention associated with the smallest difference is determined as the detection outcome. The experimental results from 14 drivers in a driving simulator show that the method can detect normal and emergency lane-changing intentions within 0.325 s and 0.268 s of the steering maneuver onset, respectively, with high accuracy (98.27% for normal lane changes and 90.98% for emergency lane changes) and low false alarm rate (0.294%).
Relations between obesity, insulin resistance, and 25-hydroxyvitamin D.

BACKGROUND Although low circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations have been associated with insulin resistance and obesity, the relations between these 3 variables have not been completely resolved. OBJECTIVE The objective was to compare circulating 25(OH)D concentrations in apparently healthy individuals who were matched for degree of obesity or insulin sensitivity. DESIGN This was a case-control study in which 78 apparently healthy individuals were classified as being normal weight (NW) or obese (OB) on the basis of their BMI and as being insulin sensitive (IS) or insulin resistant (IR) on the basis of their steady state plasma glucose (SSPG) concentration during the insulin suppression test. RESULTS Groups did not differ in terms of age, sex distribution, race, or mean (± SD) plasma 25(OH)D concentration. Values for 25(OH)D were 32 ± 10, 30 ± 10, and 28 ± 8 ng/mL in NW-IS, OB-IS, and OB-IR groups, respectively. These concentrations were essentially identical when comparing IR with IS subjects matched for BMI or when comparing OB with NW subjects matched for SSPG. Concentrations of 25(OH)D ≤ 30 ng/mL were somewhat more common in OB subjects than in NW subjects (54% compared with 35%), but SSPG concentrations were not different within either the IR or IS groups when subgroups with 25(OH)D concentrations ≤ 30 or > 30 ng/mL were compared. CONCLUSIONS In 78 individuals, 47% of whom were vitamin D deficient or insufficient (≤ 30 ng/mL), 25(OH)D concentrations did not vary with differences in insulin sensitivity (SSPG concentration) when matched for BMI (OB-IR compared with OB-IS). Similarly, when matched for SSPG concentrations, plasma 25(OH)D concentrations were not different in NW or OB individuals (NW-IS compared with OB-IS).
Invisible herders? The archaeology of Khoekhoe pastoralists

Although based on strong historical, linguistic and ethnographic evidence, the conclusion that immigrant Khoekhoe pastoralists introduced the first livestock to southernmost Africa finds no convincing archaeological support. This may be for a number of reasons. Perhaps nomadic pastoralists leave no archaeological traces; or migrations are difficult to detect. Archaeology and the other disciplines may not be looking at the same thing. Or maybe the migrations date to the second millennium AD, long after the first livestock had reached southernmost Africa. It is not easy to tell: Later Stone Age animal bones, stones and pots do not broadcast the language and identity of the people who discarded them.
Testing Macroprudential Stress Tests: The Risk of Regulatory Risk Weights

Macroprudential stress tests have been employed by regulators in the United States and Europe to assess and address the solvency condition of financial firms in adverse macroeconomic scenarios. We provide a test of these stress tests by comparing their risk assessments and outcomes to those from a simple methodology that relies on publicly available market data and forecasts the capital shortfall of financial firms in severe market-wide downturns. We find that: (i) The losses projected on financial firm balance-sheets compare well between actual stress tests and the market-data based assessments, and both relate well to actual realized losses in case of future stress to the economy; (ii) In striking contrast, the required capitalization of financial firms in stress tests is found to be rather low, and inadequate ex post, compared to that implied by market data; (iii) This discrepancy arises due to the reliance on regulatory risk weights in determining required levels of capital once stress-test losses are taken into account. In particular, the continued reliance on regulatory risk weights in stress tests appears to have left financial sectors under-capitalized, especially during the European sovereign debt crisis, and likely also provided perverse incentives to build up exposures to low risk-weight assets.