Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance analysis of cooperative small cell systems under correlated Rician/Gamma fading channels

Small cell networks (SCNs) have emerged as promising technologies to meet the data traffic demands for the future wireless communications. However, the benefits of SCNs are limited to their hard handovers between base stations (BSs). In addition, the interference is another challenging issue. To solve this problem, this study employs a cooperative transmission mechanism focusing on correlated Rician/Gamma fading channels with zero-forcing receivers. The analytical expressions for the achievable sum rate, symbol error rate and outage probability are derived, which are applicable to arbitrary Rician factors, correlation coefficients, the number of antennas, and remain tight across entire signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Asymptotic analyses at the high and low SNR regimes are carried out in order to further reveal the insights of the model parameters on the system performance. Monte-Carlo simulation results validate the correctness of their derivations. Numerical results indicate that the theoretical expressions provide sufficiently accurate approximation to simulated results.
A SSVEP BCI based on Canonical Correlation Analysis

: Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is one of the most popular methods in the field of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). The efficacy of the method has been widely proved, and several variations have been proposed. However, most of the approaches still consider only the first canonical correlation as a feature for classification, which can leave some important information behind. Notably, if the signal shows phase transitions, its informative content can be diffused over more than one coefficient. We show here that considering the first two canonical correlations, instead of the largest one only, can significantly improve classification accuracy without increasing computational load, and that an adjunctive pre-processing step with sinc-windowing can further enhance the results.
Behavior Change Techniques and Their Mechanisms of Action: A Synthesis of Links Described in Published Intervention Literature

Abstract Background Despite advances in behavioral science, there is no widely shared understanding of the “mechanisms of action” (MoAs) through which individual behavior change techniques (BCTs) have their effects. Cumulative progress in the development, evaluation, and synthesis of behavioral interventions could be improved by identifying the MoAs through which BCTs are believed to bring about change. Purpose This study aimed to identify the links between BCTs and MoAs described by authors of a corpus of published literature. Methods Hypothesized links between BCTs and MoAs were extracted by two coders from 277 behavior change intervention articles. Binomial tests were conducted to provide an indication of the relative frequency of each link. Results Of 77 BCTs coded, 70 were linked to at least one MoA. Of 26 MoAs, all but one were linked to at least one BCT. We identified 2,636 BCT–MoA links in total (mean number of links per article = 9.56, SD = 13.80). The most frequently linked MoAs were “Beliefs about Capabilities” and “Intention. ” Binomial test results identified up to five MoAs linked to each of the BCTs (M = 1.71, range: 1–5) and up to eight BCTs for each of the MoAs (M = 3.63, range: 1–8). Conclusions The BCT–MoA links described by intervention authors and identified in this extensive review present intervention developers and reviewers with a first level of systematically collated evidence. These findings provide a resource for the development of theory-based interventions, and for theoretical understanding of intervention evaluations. The extent to which these links are empirically supported requires systematic investigation.
Different Conceptualizations of River Basins to Inform Management of Environmental Flows

Environmental flows are a critical tool for addressing ecological degradation of river systems brought about by increasing demand for limited water resources. The importance of basin scale management of environmental flows has long been recognized as necessary if managers are to achieve social, economic, and environmental objectives. The challenges in managing environmental flows are now emerging and include the time taken for changes to become manifest, uncertainty around large-scale responses to environmental flows and that most interventions take place at smaller scales. The purpose of this paper is to describe how conceptual models can be used to inform the development, and subsequent evaluation of ecological objectives for environmental flows at the basin scale. Objective setting is the key initial step in environmental flow planning and subsequently provides a foundation for effective adaptive management. We use the implementation of the Basin Plan in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) as an example of the role of conceptual models in the development of environmental flow objectives and subsequent development of intervention monitoring and evaluation, key steps in the adaptive management of environmental flows. The implementation of the Basin Plan was based on the best science available at the time, however, this was focused on ecosystem responses to environmental flows. The monitoring has started to reveal that limitations in our conceptualization of the basin may reduce the likelihood of achieving of basin scale objectives. One of the strengths of the Basin Plan approach was that it included multiple conceptual models informing environmental flow management. The experience in the MDB suggests that the development of multiple conceptual models at the basin scale will help increase the likelihood that basin-scale objectives will be achieved.
Inhibition of NADPH Oxidase Activation by Apocynin Rescues Seizure-Induced Reduction of Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis

Apocynin, also known as acetovanillone, is a natural organic compound structurally related to vanillin. Apocynin is known to be an inhibitor of NADPH (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate) oxidase activity and is highly effective in suppressing the production of superoxide. The neuroprotective effects of apocynin have been investigated in numerous brain injury settings, such as stroke, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and epilepsy. Our lab has demonstrated that TBI or seizure-induced oxidative injury and neuronal death were reduced by apocynin treatment. Several studies have also demonstrated that neuroblast production is transiently increased in the hippocampus after seizures. Here, we provide evidence confirming the hypothesis that long-term treatment with apocynin may enhance newly generated hippocampal neuronal survival by reduction of superoxide production after seizures. A seizure was induced by pilocarpine [(25 mg/kg intraperitoneal (i.p.)] injection. Apocynin was continuously injected for 4 weeks after seizures (once per day) into the intraperitoneal space. We evaluated neuronal nuclear antigen (NeuN), bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), and doublecortin (DCX) immunostaining to determine whether treatment with apocynin increased neuronal survival and neurogenesis in the hippocampus after seizures. The present study indicates that long-term treatment of apocynin increased the number of NeuN+ and DCX+ cells in the hippocampus after seizures. Therefore, this study suggests that apocynin treatment increased neuronal survival and neuroblast production by reduction of hippocampal oxidative injury after seizures.
Nature as a living presence: Drawings by Tupinambá and New York Children

Child–nature interaction has undergone drastic changes in modern history, from a free outdoor childhood to a confined daily life connected to electronic devices, with negative consequences to development and well-being. Any resulting lack of connection to the natural environment can hamper involvement in solving environmental problems. This research attempted to assess children’s perceptions of nature, as well as their feelings and values. Six- to 14-year-old children from the Tupinambá group (n = 91), an indigenous society in Brazil, and from New York (n = 54) drew pictures of nature and answered five questions about their drawings, feelings, and values in regard to natural environments. Quantitative (descriptive) and qualitative (content) analyses of the drawings were carried out, and their liveness and animism were estimated. The answers given by children to the questions about nature were organized into emerging categories from the data. The Tupinambá children’s drawings were generally livelier than those of the New York children. However, the difference failed to reach statistical significance among the younger children, and the difference only approached significance among the older children. The drawings of the Tupinambá contained more animism, depicting non-humans and non-animals with facial expressions, than those of the New Yorkers. Compared with the New Yorkers, the Tupinambá children more often included human constructions such as roads and houses in their drawings. The indigenous children more often saw human and non-human elements as integrated compared with the nonindigenous children. The study reinforces theoretical tendencies about the environmental perception of children in relation to the natural environment and highlights peculiarities of the participating groups, indicating relevant questions for future investigations.
Non-Human Primate Models of Enteric Viral Infections

There is an important role non-human primates (NHP) play in biomedical research. Phylogenetic proximity of any of the NHP species to Homo sapiens assures that much better translatability of research outcomes from model studies involving human diseases can be achieved than from those generated with other pre-clinical systems. Our group and others used during past two decades NHPs in research directed towards viral and autoimmune disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. This review summarizes progress made in the area of enteric viral infections including its applicability to human disease.
Serum chemerin levels are negatively associated with male fertility and reproductive hormones

STUDY QUESTION Are chemerin levels different in subfertile men compared to men from the general population, and how does chemerin relate to reproductive hormonal status? SUMMARY ANSWER Chemerin is negatively associated to LH, SHBG and estradiol and lower levels of chemerin are detected among subfertile men compared to controls. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY Adipokines have pleiotropic effects on tissue homeostasis and have been shown to affect both sex steroid production and action. Among adipokines the newly characterized chemokine chemerin is suggested to influence testosterone production in males, but whether serum levels associate with testosterone or male subfertility has not yet been reported. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION Case control study comprising a consecutive group of men from infertile couples referred to Reproductive Medicine Centre at Skane University Hospital from 2006 through 2012, and age-matched controls. Participants were enrolled in years 2011-2013. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS Males from infertile couples (n = 180) aged 18-50 years with sperm concentration <20 × 106/ml and age-matched controls (n = 139) from the general population were enrolled. Serum concentrations of total testosterone (TT), calculated free testosterone (cFT), luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), estradiol (E2) and sex-hormone binding globuline (SHBG) as well as the adipokines chemerin, adiponectin and leptin were measured. Anthropometrics and biochemical parameters of glucose and lipid metabolism were assessed. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Chemerin levels were lower in subfertile men compared to controls (mean diff. 7.1 ng/ml; 95% CI, 3.7; 11 ng/ml; P < 0.001) even after adjustment for BMI. After adjustment for age, BMI, smoking, leptin and adiponectin, chemerin associated negatively with LH (ß = -4.2; P = 0.02), E2 (ß = -10; P = 0.004) and SHBG (ß = -7.4, P = 0.003). Men with elevated LH levels had lower chemerin levels compared to those with LH levels within the normal range (mean diff. 4.8 ng/ml; 95% CI, 0.16; 9.4 ng/ml; P = 0.04). LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION Single sample blood test with immunoassays for determination of hormone levels. Heterogeneous group of subfertile subjects. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS Even though chemerin has been positively associated with BMI, inverse association with subfertility suggests that it is independently linked to reproductive function, a hypothesis that warrants further assessment. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) This work was supported by grants from EU Interreg V (ReproUnion) program as well as Swedish Governmental Fund for Clinical Research. The authors have no conflicts of interest.
Voriconazole Resistance and Mortality in Invasive Aspergillosis: A Multicenter Retrospective Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND Triazole resistance is an increasing problem in invasive aspergillosis (IA). Small case series show mortality rates of 50%-100% in patients infected with a triazole-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus, but a direct comparison with triazole-susceptible IA is lacking. METHODS A 5-year retrospective cohort study (2011-2015) was conducted to compare mortality in patients with voriconazole-susceptible and voriconazole-resistant IA. Aspergillus fumigatus culture-positive patients were investigated to identify patients with proven, probable, and putative IA. Clinical characteristics, day 42 and day 90 mortality, triazole-resistance profiles, and antifungal treatments were investigated. RESULTS Of 196 patients with IA, 37 (19%) harbored a voriconazole-resistant infection. Hematological malignancy was the underlying disease in 103 (53%) patients, and 154 (79%) patients were started on voriconazole. Compared with voriconazole-susceptible cases, voriconazole resistance was associated with an increase in overall mortality of 21% on day 42 (49% vs 28%; P = .017) and 25% on day 90 (62% vs 37%; P = .0038). In non-intensive care unit patients, a 19% lower survival rate was observed in voriconazole-resistant cases at day 42 (P = .045). The mortality in patients who received appropriate initial voriconazole therapy was 24% compared with 47% in those who received inappropriate therapy (P = .016), despite switching to appropriate antifungal therapy after a median of 10 days. CONCLUSIONS Voriconazole resistance was associated with an excess overall mortality of 21% at day 42 and 25% at day 90 in patients with IA. A delay in the initiation of appropriate antifungal therapy was associated with increased overall mortality.
Sensitivity analysis for nonlinear hyperbolic equations of conservation laws. (Analyse de sensibilité pour systèmes hyperboliques non linéaires)

Sensitivity analysis (SA) concerns the quantification of changes in Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) solution due to perturbations in the model input. Stan- dard SA techniques for PDEs, such as the continuous sensitivity equation method, rely on the differentiation of the state variable. However, if the governing equations are hyperbolic PDEs, the state can exhibit discontinuities yielding Dirac delta functions in the sensitivity. We aim at modifying the sensitivity equations to obtain a solution without delta functions. This is motivated by several reasons: firstly, a Dirac delta function cannot be seized numerically, leading to an incorrect solution for the sensi- tivity in the neighbourhood of the state discontinuity; secondly, the spikes appearing in the numerical solution of the original sensitivity equations make such sensitivities unusable for some applications. Therefore, we add a correction term to the sensitivity equations. We do this for a hierarchy of models of increasing complexity: starting from the inviscid Burgers’ equation, to the quasi 1D Euler system. We show the influence of such correction term on an optimization algorithm and on an uncertainty quantification problem.
Event Coreference Resolution Using Neural Network Classifiers

This paper presents a neural network classifier approach to detecting both within- and cross- document event coreference effectively using only event mention based features. Our approach does not (yet) rely on any event argument features such as semantic roles or spatiotemporal arguments. Experimental results on the ECB+ dataset show that our approach produces F1 scores that significantly outperform the state-of-the-art methods for both within-document and cross-document event coreference resolution when we use B3 and CEAFe evaluation measures, but gets worse F1 score with the MUC measure. However, when we use the CoNLL measure, which is the average of these three scores, our approach has slightly better F1 for within- document event coreference resolution but is significantly better for cross-document event coreference resolution.
Study on Integrated Risk-Management Support System - Application to Emergency Management for Cyber Incidents

We have been studying the standardization of an emergency-management support system mainly for natural disasters at the local-government level. The system provides information from three viewpoints, “Plan: What should we do? ”, “Do: What are we doing? ”, and “See: What kind of situations are we in? ” to support decision making at an emergency operations center. Rapid and accurate judgment prevents the occurrence of new damage and the expansion of damage, and as a result resilience will increase. We investigated its applicability to emergency management for cyber incidents through a cyber-defense exercise.
Comparative Rice Bran Metabolomics across Diverse Cultivars and Functional Rice Gene–Bran Metabolite Relationships

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) processing yields ~60 million metric tons of bran annually. Rice genes producing bran metabolites of nutritional and human health importance were assessed across 17 diverse cultivars from seven countries using non-targeted metabolomics, and resulted in 378–430 metabolites. Gambiaka cultivar had the highest number and Njavara had the lowest number of metabolites. The 71 rice bran compounds of significant variation by cultivar included 21 amino acids, seven carbohydrates, two metabolites from cofactors and vitamins, 33 lipids, six nucleotides, and two secondary metabolites. Tryptophan, α-ketoglutarate, γ-tocopherol/β-tocopherol, and γ-tocotrienol are examples of bran metabolites with extensive cultivar variation and genetic information. Thirty-four rice bran components that varied between cultivars linked to 535 putative biosynthetic genes using to the OryzaCyc 4.0, Plant Metabolic Network database. Rice genes responsible for bran composition with animal and human health importance is available for rice breeding programs to utilize in crop improvement.
Transcriptomics reveal potential vaccine antigens and a drastic increase of upregulated genes during Theileria parva development from arthropod to bovine infective stages

Theileria parva is a protozoan parasite transmitted by the brown ear tick Rhipicephalus appendiculatus that causes East Coast fever (ECF) in cattle, resulting in substantial economic losses in the regions of southern, eastern and central Africa. The schizont form of the parasite transforms the bovine host lymphocytes into actively proliferating cancer-like cells. However, how T. parva causes bovine host cells to proliferate and maintain a cancerous phenotype following infection is still poorly understood. On the other hand, current efforts to develop improved vaccines have identified only a few candidate antigens. In the present paper, we report the first comparative transcriptomic analysis throughout the course of T. parva infection. We observed that the development of sporoblast into sporozoite and then the establishment in the host cells as schizont is accompanied by a drastic increase of upregulated genes in the schizont stage of the parasite. In contrast, the ten highest gene expression values occurred in the arthropod vector stages. A comparative analysis showed that 2845 genes were upregulated in both sporozoite and schizont stages compared to the sporoblast. In addition, 647 were upregulated only in the sporozoite whereas 310 were only upregulated in the schizont. We detected low p67 expression in the schizont stage, an unexpected finding considering that p67 has been reported as a sporozoite stage-specific gene. In contrast, we found that transcription of p67 was 20 times higher in the sporoblast than in the sporozoite. Using the expression profiles of recently identified candidate vaccine antigens as a benchmark for selection for novel potential vaccine candidates, we identified three genes with expression similar to p67 and several other genes similar to Tp1—Tp10 schizont vaccine antigens. We propose that the antigenicity or chemotherapeutic potential of this panel of new candidate antigens be further investigated. Structural comparisons of the transcripts generated here with the existing gene models for the respective loci revealed indels. Our findings can be used to improve the structural annotation of the T. parva genome, and the identification of alternatively spliced transcripts.
Innexins: Expression, Regulation, and Functions

The innexin (Inx) proteins form gap junction channels and non-junctional channels (named hemichannels) in invertebrates. These channels participate in cellular communication playing a relevant role in several physiological processes. Pioneer studies conducted mainly in worms and flies have shown that innexins participate in embryo development and behavior. However, recent studies have elucidated new functions of innexins in Arthropoda, Nematoda, Annelida, and Cnidaria, such as immune response, and apoptosis. This review describes emerging data of possible new roles of innexins and summarizes the data available to date.
Feature Extraction of Event Related potential based on Time and frequency Domain Analysis

: The event related potential is traditionally obtained in time domain by computing ensemble average. However, due to non-stationarity and poor localization of these signals, this may result in erroneous feature extraction. In this present study, a standard database is considered to elucidate this problem. It is shown that a frequency domain decomposition followed by the estimation of spectral distance by measures like Itakura-Saito distance may partially resolve the problem. However, recognizing the contribution of endogenous and exogenous inputs to each event related potential, it is further argued that a Wavelet Packet Decomposition may be more useful since each signal in the frequency domain can be further decomposed into ﬁve characteristic domains (delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma) and based on the feasibility of contributions from each domain a better feature extraction will be possible.