Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Wideband Horizontally Polarized Omnidirectional Antenna With a Conical Beam for Millimeter-Wave Applications

A wideband millimeter-wave (MMW) horizontally polarized omnidirectional antenna with a conical beam is proposed in this paper. The proposed antenna is composed of a radiating circular loop, six arc strips, a one-to-six radial waveguide power divider, and a conical reflector. The radiating circular loop consists of six arc dipoles with curved terminals. The wideband six-way radial waveguide power divider is employed to feed the six arc dipoles, and the wideband performance is achieved by combing the TM010 mode and the TM020 mode of the circular cavity. Six arc strips are utilized as directors to improve the omnidirectional performance at the higher frequency band. The conical reflector is designed to improve the radiation gain and obtain a conical beam in the vertical plane without affecting the horizontal plane omnidirectional performance. A prototype is fabricated and measured. The simulation and measured results show that the proposed antenna can achieve a −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 22.9% with stable radiation patterns in the band of 39–49.3 GHz. Owing to the attractive wide bandwidth, good omnidirectional performance, and ease of fabrication, the proposed antenna is a good choice for the forthcoming fifth generation MMW wireless communication systems, especially for the indoor ceiling antenna networking applications.
System-Theoretical Modeling and Analysis of Phase Control in a Photonically Steered Terahertz Phased Array Transmitter

The use of photonic phase shift beamforming is highly attractive in terahertz transmitters due to its seamless integration with terahertz generation by photomixing. By feeding several photodiodes with coherent infrared signals with well-defined phase relationships, highly directed and steerable terahertz radiation can be generated. At the same time, the total radiated power is increased by free-space power combining. Since optical phase modulators are readily available in planar lightwave circuit technology and do not need to scale with RF frequency, planar optic integration is simplified compared to photonic true time delay beamforming. However, phase fluctuations due to thermal and mechanical influences become a major issue if fiber-optic components are used and necessitate the implementation of a phase control circuit. Since direct detection of the terahertz phases is not feasible, an alternative approach is needed. In this paper, a concept for controlling the terahertz phases using a lower-frequency reference tone generated by a second set of infrared lasers is proposed and a simplified system-theoretical model is developed and analyzed.
Older Adults’ Experience Using Patient Portals in Communities: Challenges and Opportunities

Patient portals can be beneficial for older adults who manage their own health. However, there is a lack of research on older adults’ experience using patient portals in the community. The aim of this study was to assess older adults’ perceived usability of patient portals they currently use. This was a secondary data analysis using selected baseline data from an online trial that tested the effects of a 3-week Theory-Based Patient Portal eLearning Program, and included 272 older adults recruited online. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Most participants owned patient portal accounts (n = 194 [71.3%]). Self-efficacy for using patient portals was relatively low (mean, 27.1; range, 0–40), and perceived usability of patient portals was also low (mean, 28.7; range, 6–42). The most-favored features of patient portals were review of medical information and eMessaging. The main difficulties in using patient portals were associated with login/access and specific portal functions. Managing multiple patient portals was a particular challenge for many participants. Findings from this study indicate the importance of providing proper levels of training and technical support to older adults to maximize use and improve outcomes of patient portal implementation.
What are the Differences Among Pre-Service Teachers of Diverse Achievement Levels in Their Online Instructional Design Collaboration? — Analyzing from the Perspective of Behavior Pattern

Instructional design plays a vital role in the development of pre-service teachers. Sharing and communication based on instructional design is the norm of professional development of pre-service teachers. Based on the instructional design activities of pre-service teachers guided by the collaborative knowledge building, this research adopts the methods of lag sequence analysis and content analysis method to analyze and compare the participation and behavior pattern of 20 pre-service teachers in both high- and low-achievement groups. This is in order to analyze the differences of online behavior pattern among pre-service teachers of diverse achievement levels. Moreover, a few suggestions are put forward: We should encourage pre-service teachers in the low-achievement group to be more active in participating in various stages of collaborative knowledge building activities, and improve the ability of pre-service teachers in the low-achievement group to deeply reflect on themselves after consulting with members of their cohort.
Study on PMSM Power Consumption of Dual-Variable Electro-Hydraulic Actuator with Displacement-Pressure Regulation Pump

Electrical-hydraulic actuator (EHA) is a significant part of more electric aircraft. The efficiency of EHA has become a major problem in the study of actuating systems. The main purpose of the study about EHA is to improve the efficiency of energy utilization, reduce motor heating and make system power match better. Dual-variable EHA can improve the energy utilization and reduce the heating of motor by adjusting motor speed and displacement of variable pump. In this paper, the consumption mechanism of permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is analyzed. This paper introduces two kinds of EHA, direct pressure feedback dual variable EHA (DFDV-EHA) and displacement and pressure adaptive EHA(DPA-EHA), and compare the energy consumption with EHA with fixed displacement pump and variable rotational speed motor (FPVM-EHA) about the energy consumption of their PMSMs. And this paper analyzes the primary consumption of the PMSM by simulation under the same load. Then the performance that the displacement and pressure adaptive EHA can effectively reduce the load current is proved by simulation.
Pangr: A Behavior-Based Automatic Vulnerability Detection and Exploitation Framework

Nowadays, with the size and complexity of software increasing rapidly, vulnerabilities are becoming diversified and hard to identify. It is unpractical to detect and exploit vulnerabilities by manual construction. Therefore, an efficient automatic method of detecting and exploiting software vulnerability is in critical demand. This paper implements Pangr, an entire system for automatic vulnerability detection, exploitation, and patching. Pangr builds a complete vulnerability model based on its triggering behavior to identify vulnerabilities and generate exp or exploit schemes. According to the type and feature of the vulnerability, Pangr can generate the specific patch for the software. In the experiment, we tested 20 vulnerable programs on 32-bit Linux machine. Pangr detected 16 vulnerabilities, generated 10 exp, and patched 14 programs.
Telmisartan and thiorphan combination treatment attenuates fibrosis and apoptosis in preventing diabetic cardiomyopathy

Aims LCZ696, a first-generation dual angiotensin receptor-neprilysin inhibitor (ARNi), is effective in treating heart failure patients. However, the role of ARNis in treating diabetic cardiomyopathy is poorly understood. This study evaluates the efficacy of a novel combination of telmisartan [angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB)] and thiorphan [neprilysin inhibitor (NEPi)] in ameliorating diabetic cardiomyopathy while, at the same time, exploring the relevant underlying molecular mechanism(s). Methods and results Diabetes was induced by administration of streptozotocin (55 mg/kg, i.p.) in male Wistar rats. After 4 weeks, diabetic rats were subjected to either thiorphan (0.1 mg/kg/day, p.o.) or telmisartan (10 mg/kg/day, p.o.) monotherapy, or their combination, for a period of 4 weeks. Metabolic and morphometric alterations, failing ventricular functions, and diminished baroreflex indicated development of diabetic cardiac complications. Apart from morphometric alterations, all pathological consequences were prevented by telmisartan and thiorphan combination therapy. Diabetic rats exhibited significant modulation of the natriuretic peptide system, a key haemodynamic regulator; this was normalized by combination therapy. Histopathological studies showed augmented myocardial fibrosis, demonstrated by increased % PSR-positive area, with combination therapy giving the best improvement in these indices. More importantly, the combination of thiorphan and telmisartan was superior in attenuating inflammatory (NF-κB/MCP-1), profibrotic (TGF-β/Smad7) and apoptotic (PARP/Caspase-3) cascades compared to respective monotherapies when treating rats with diabetic cardiomyopathy. In addition, diabetic heart chromatin was in a state of active transcription, indicated by increased histone acetylation (H2AK5Ac, H2BK5Ac, H3K9Ac, and H4K8Ac) and histone acetyltransferase (PCAF and Ac-CBP) levels. Interestingly, combination treatment was sufficiently potent to normalize these alterations. Conclusion The protective effect of novel ARB and NEPi combination against diabetic cardiomyopathy can be attributed to inhibition of inflammatory, profibrotic, and apoptotic cascades. Moreover, reversal of histone acetylation assists its protective effect.
Compact High-Gain Metasurface Antenna Arrays Based on Higher-Mode SIW Cavities

This communication presents novel compact linearly/circularly polarized metasurface antenna arrays based on higher mode substrate integrated waveguide cavities. The linearly polarized antenna is realized by an array of patch cells with similar TM resonant modes as traditional patch antennas, while the circularly polarized one is newly designed based on the proposed polarization-rotation metasurface structure. Moreover, the periodic metasurface antennas are modified with complemental boundaries to further enlarge effective radiation apertures for about 1.5 dB gain enhancement. In addition, a simple TE220 higher mode cavity is employed as a compact and symmetrical feeding network to provide perfectly uniform four-way excitations, resulting in relatively uniform radiation aperture for high gain. The simulation and measured results both indicate that the proposed linearly/circularly polarized metasurface arrays can, respectively, achieve very high directional gains of about 10.75/10.66 dBi with aperture efficiencies of about 90% and low cross-polarization suppressions. In addition, 3 dB axial ratio beamwidths of the circularly polarized array can be up to 68° and 57° at two pitch planes of $\varphi = 0^{\circ }$ and 90°.
Hybrid P-Channel/N-Substrate Poly-Si Nanosheet Junctionless Field-Effect Transistors With Trench and Gate-All-Around Structure

This paper demonstrates the gate-all-around P/N hybrid nanosheet p-channel junctionless field-effect transistors (GAA NS-JLFET) with trench and raised source and drain structure. The GAA NS-JLFET exhibits the superior electrical properties, including high field-effect mobility (18.9 cm<sup>2</sup>/Vs), high <sc>on/off</sc> current ratio (>5 × 10<sup>6</sup>), steep subthreshold slope (136 mV/dec.), and low DILB (60 mV/V). The high mobility and steep subthreshold slope of this GAA NS-JLFET indicates that the conducting hole filled the whole thin nanosheet channel. This GAA NS-JLFET is simple to fabricate and highly favorable for use in advanced system-on-panel and three-dimensional stacked ICs applications.
DHNet: working double hard to learn a convolutional neural network-based local descriptor

Abstract. Designing effective local descriptors is crucial for many computer vision tasks such as image matching and patch verification. We propose a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based local descriptor named DHNet with a considerate sampling strategy and a dedicated loss function. By considerate sampling, both the closest nonmatching sample and the farther matching sample can be obtained for effectively training a discriminative model. In addition, an improved triplet loss is designed by adding a constraint that limits the absolute distance for the closest nonmatching pair. Based on hard samples and the constraint, our lightweight CNN can quickly generate local descriptors with enhanced intraclass compactness and interclass separation. Experimental results show that our method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of strong discrimination ability, as evidenced by a considerable performance improvement on several benchmarks.
A Nonquadratic Algorithm Based on the Extended Recursive Least-Squares Algorithm

In adaptiveg filters, several recursive algorithms have been used to track state-space model vectors in nonstationary environments. So far, kernel recursive algorithms showed the best results in this regard. With this letter, we aim to propose an algorithm based on a nonlinear function of the error, motivated by the extended recursive least-squares algorithm. Simulations were performed on the problem of tracking a nonlinear Rayleigh fading multipath channel and on a system identification. The results showed that the proposed algorithm can overcome the extended kernel version ones.
Classification of VHR Multispectral Images Using ExtraTrees and Maximally Stable Extremal Region-Guided Morphological Profile

Pixel-based contextual classification methods, including morphological profiles (MPs), extended MPs, attribute profiles (APs), and MPs with partial reconstruction (MPPR), have shown the benefits of using geometrical features extracted from very-high resolution (VHR) images. However, the structural element sequence or the attribute filters that are necessarily adopted in the above solutions always result in computationally inefficient and redundant high-dimensional features. To solve the second problem, we introduce maximally stable extremal regions (MSER) guided MPs (MSER_MPs) and MSER_MPs(M), which contains mean pixel values within regions, to foster effective and efficient spatial feature extraction. In addition, the extremely randomized decision tree (ERDT) and its ensemble version, ExtraTrees, are introduced and investigated. An extremely randomized rotation forest (ERRF) is proposed by simply replacing the conventional C4.5 decision tree in a rotation forest (RoF) with an ERDT. Finally, the proposed spatial feature extractors, ERDT, ExtraTrees, and ERRF are evaluated for their ability to classify three VHR multispectral images acquired over urban areas, and compared against C4.5, Bagging(C4.5), random forest, support vector machine, and RoF in terms of classification accuracy and computational efficiency. The experimental results confirm the superior performance of MSER_MPs(M) and MSER_MPs compared to MPPR and MPs, respectively, and ExtraTrees is better for spectral-spatial classification of VHR multispectral images using the original spectra stacked with MSER_MPs(M) features.
Multivariable Artificial Pancreas for Various Exercise Types and Intensities.

BACKGROUND Exercise challenges people with type 1 diabetes in controlling their glucose concentration (GC). A multivariable adaptive artificial pancreas (MAAP) may lessen the burden. METHODS The MAAP operates without any user input and computes insulin based on continuous glucose monitor and physical activity signals. To analyze performance, 18 60-h closed-loop experiments with 96 exercise sessions with three different protocols were completed. Each day, the subjects completed one resistance and one treadmill exercise (moderate continuous training [MCT] or high-intensity interval training [HIIT]). The primary outcome is time spent in each glycemic range during the exercise + recovery period. Secondary measures include average GC and average change in GC during each exercise modality. RESULTS The GC during exercise + recovery periods were within the euglycemic range (70-180 mg/dL) for 69.9% of the time and within a safe glycemic range for exercise (70-250 mg/dL) for 93.0% of the time. The exercise sessions are defined to begin 30 min before the start of exercise and end 2 h after start of exercise. The GC were within the severe hypoglycemia (<55 mg/dL), moderate hypoglycemia (55-70 mg/dL), moderate hyperglycemia (180-250 mg/dL), and severe hyperglycemia (>250 mg/dL) for 0.9%, 1.3%, 23.1%, and 4.8% of the time, respectively. The average GC decline during exercise differed with exercise type (P = 0.0097) with a significant difference between the MCT and resistance (P = 0.0075). To prevent large GC decreases leading to hypoglycemia, MAAP recommended carbohydrates in 59% of MCT, 50% of HIIT, and 39% of resistance sessions. CONCLUSIONS A consistent GC decline occurred in exercise and recovery periods, which differed with exercise type. The average GC at the start of exercise was above target (185.5 ± 56.6 mg/dL for MCT, 166.9 ± 61.9 mg/dL for resistance training, and 171.7 ± 41.4 mg/dL HIIT), making a small decrease desirable. Hypoglycemic events occurred in 14.6% of exercise sessions and represented only 2.22% of the exercise and recovery period.
Therapeutic effect of MIPPSO in the thoracolumbar vertebra fracture

The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy of minimally invasive percutaneous pedicle screw osteosynthesis (MIPPSO) and traditional open pedicle screw osteosynthesis (TOPSO) in the treatment of thoracolumbar vertebra fracture. A retrospective case-control study was conducted in 120 patients with thoracolumbar vertebral fractures treated in the Affiliated Jiangyin Hospital of Southeast University Medical School (Jiangyin, China) from January 2013 to September 2014. They were randomly divided into two groups: MIPPSO and TOPSO groups with 60 cases in each group. The operation time, blood loss, incision length, post-operative bed rest time, hospital stay, visual analogue scale (VAS) pain scores and Oswestry disability index (ODI) scores before and after operation were recorded and analyzed. Inflammatory indexes including serum C-reactive protein (CRP) and creatine kinase (CK), the anterior vertebral height ratio and kyphosis Cobb's angle changes were also observed. The basic data of the two groups were similar, and there was no significant difference in the operation time between the two groups. The perioperative blood loss, length of incision, bed rest time and total hospital stay in the minimally invasive group were less than those in the open group. Levels of post-operative inflammation indicators such as CRP and CK were significantly higher than those of pre-operative (P<0.05), which was more obvious in the TOPSO group (P<0.05). VAS, ODI scores, anterior vertebral height and Cobb's angle were significantly improved at three days, one and 12 months after surgery compared with those before operation. MIPPSO for the treatment of thoracolumbar fractures can achieve similar clinical effects with traditional incision surgery. In addition, it has the advantages of less trauma, less bleeding and shorter post-operative bed rest time and hospital stay.
A Variational Bayesian Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Filter for Tracking with Inverse Wishart Distribution

In multi-target tracking (MTT), the imprecise model for sensor characteristics might result in poor performance. The Variational Bayesian labeled multi-Bernoulli (VB-LMB) filter based on Gamma distribution can handle this problem. However, the predictive likelihood of the existing VB-LMB filter is simply treated as a Gaussian, which is inaccurate. In this paper, a VB-LMB filter with inverse Wishart distribution is presented to perform MTT under the unknown sensor characteristics. The measurement noise covariance is modeled as an inverse Wishart (IW) distribution. This distribution has potential to deal with the full noise covariance matrix compared with the Gamma distribution. Since the state and the measurement noise covariance are coupled, the updated equation can be solved by variational Bayesian (VB) method. The predictive likelihood is calculated via minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence by the VB lower bound. A MTT scenario is used to evaluate the proposed method. Simulation results show that our approach has better performance than the existing VB-LMB filter with the Gamma distribution.
Measuring Personal Privacy Breaches Using Third-Party Trackers

While browsing the web, cookies are stored on user's computers. Some of these cookies are "third-party" cookies that can track the user across different websites. In this paper, we summarize what third-party cookies (trackers) are and the different types there are. We use a browser extension to examine what third party trackers are detected on popular websites. From the data collected, we examined the cookies on each website and identified common cookies. Finally, we offered solutions on how to protect browsers from unwanted third-party cookies.
Comparison Analysis of A Transformable Wheel

Search and rescue missions require robots possess high speed and efficiency on both even and rough terrains. Hybrid robots that combine the advantages of different locomotion mechanisms are developed to solve this problem. Yet the design of previous research is usually complicated because they have separate wheels, tracks and legs. In this paper, a novel wheel-track-leg hybrid robot that has simple morphology is presented. By utilizing a transformable rim, the robot wheels can switch to tracks or legs according to different grounds. We cut the wheel rim into several segments and joint the ends, which makes the rim foldable. Mode-switch is achieved by the folding or unfolding of the transformable rim, so that no separate wheel, track, or leg is needed. We conduct a geometry configuration analysis and propose two optional design of the transformable wheel. By comparison the supposed better one is chosen and an initial prototype is fabricated to verify the transformation of the rim and basic function of the robot.
Group Decision Making and Group Recommendations

In this paper we analyze descriptions of group decision-making processes provided by 200 individuals organized in 55 groups. The goal of the paper is to show how such an analysis can be used when designing more efficient group recommender systems. To this end, we demonstrate that a) the provided group decision-making process descriptions can be systematically characterized by certain qualitatively identified aspects, b) the decision-making process that is adopted by a specific group is related to the characteristics of individuals in that group as well as to the characteristics of the group as a whole, and c) the decision reaching approach that a group naturally adopted can be determined, to a considerable extent, by certain characteristics of the group. Therefore, by examining real groups in a natural scenario, we can learn how a group recommender system should adapt when supporting group decision-making processes.
Nonlinear Model and Trajectory Control of A Novel VTOL Vehicle II

This paper presents a new concept of vertical take off and landing vehicle, similar to [10]. The suggested design is relatively simple and eliminates some of the mechanical complexities while maintaining the advantages of tilt-rotor designs. The full nonlinear mathematical model is obtained in great detail, using D'Alembert's principle. A nonlinear control law is derived being able to control the altitude, attitude and some parameters of the vehicle with zero stationary error for step references. Also a trajectory tracking algorithm is proposed. At the end numerical results are presented.