Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of the Time-Variant Velocity of a Single Walking Person in Two-Dimensional Non-Stationary Indoor Environments Using Radio-Frequency Techniques

Accurate estimation of the time-variant (TV) velocity of moving persons/objects in indoor spaces is of crucial importance for numerous wireless indoor applications. This article introduces a novel iterative procedure to estimate the TV velocity, i.e., TV speed and TV angle-of-motion (AOM), of a single moving person in 2D indoor environments by using radio-frequency (RF) techniques. The indoor area is equipped with a distributed $2\times 2$ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. The proposed method is divided into two parts. In the first part, we estimate the path gains and the instantaneous Doppler frequencies by fitting the exact spectrograms of the complex channel gains of a 2D non-stationary channel model to the spectrograms obtained from the received radio signals. In the second part of this work, another estimation procedure is proposed to deduce the desired TV velocity from the estimated TV Doppler frequencies. Although, the primary objective of the proposed iterative estimation techniques is to determine the TV velocity, i.e., TV speed and TV AOM, of the walking person, it computes all channel parameters including the path gains, the TV angles-of-arrival, and the TV angles-of-departure. Closed-form solutions are derived for the path gains, the TV Doppler frequencies, the TV speed, and the TV angles, which in turn reduces considerably the complexity of the optimization methods. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the validity and robustness of the proposed algorithms against noise. This is accomplished by analyzing the agreement between the estimated parameters of interest with the corresponding exact values, which are known from computer generated test signals. The estimation accuracy of the proposed method is evaluated for different values of the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio. It is shown that this technique estimates the TV Doppler frequencies and TV speed with an accuracy between 70% and 97% for SNR values ranging from 0 dB to 20 dB.
A Study on a New Type of DDoS Attack against 5G Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications

5G New Radio (NR) allows enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) to coexist in the physical layer for better resource utilization. To enable the coexistence while satisfying the QoS requirement of URLLC, 3GPP introduces the cancellation mechanism that allows a URLLC UE to preempt the transmission of eMBB UEs. In this paper, we show that the 3GPP design to provide stringent QoS guarantee for URLLC may become a threat to interfere both eMBB and URLLC via highly synchronized low-volume DDoS. We dissect potential vulnerability for both eMBB and URLLC UEs in the uplink from the 3GPP standards. An attack model is investigated and evaluated through system-level simulations. We find that synchronization among compromised URLLC UEs could be leveraged by the attacker to amplify the overall impact on both eMBB throughput and URLLC latency, even when the number of compromised UEs is small.
Solution structure of a mini insulin-like growth factor 1

Mini insulin‐like growth factor 1, an inactive insulin‐like growth factor 1 mutant lacking the C region, was studied by 2D NMR spectroscopy. Resonances were assigned for almost all protons of the 57 amino acid residues. The 3D structure of the protein was determined by distance geometry methods. Three helical segments; Ala 8‐Cys 18, Gly 42‐Phe 49, and Leu 54‐Cys 61, were identified, corresponding to those present in wild‐type insulin‐like growth factor 1 and in single‐chain insulin. Their relative orientation, however, was found to be changed. This change is connected with a displacement of the Phe 23‐Tyr 24‐Phe 25‐Asn 26 β‐strand‐like segment, i.e., of aromatic side chains known to be important for receptor binding. Thus, deletion of the C region of IGF‐1 results in a substantial tertiary structural rearrangement that accounts for the loss of receptor affinity.
A Cramér-Rao Lower Bound Derivation for Passive Sonar Track-Before-Detect Algorithms

Track-before-detect (TkBD) algorithms have been shown to greatly abate measurement-to-track association (MTA) challenges. These simplifications are aptly relevant for reducing operator workload in deployed sonar systems that require a human “in-the-loop. ” In a prior manuscript a case study of a passive bearings-only target motion analysis TkBD algorithm was demonstrated in complex sonar scenarios relevant to advanced fielded sonar systems. In this manuscript, a Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) is derived for the algorithm previously developed. The approximations used in developing the CRLB are validated with a real data set. The CRLB itself, as a predictor of state estimation error performance, is validated with single- and multi-contact simulated data scenarios. The prior algorithm and CRLB derived herein is applicable to passive sonar, active sonar, radar, and optical applications through a change of point spread functions and Jacobians. The CRLB derived is simple to implement, requires minimal statistical assumptions, and is applicable to similarly implemented TkBD algorithms.
Robot Motor Skill Transfer With Alternate Learning in Two Spaces

Recent research achievements in learning from demonstration (LfD) illustrate that the reinforcement learning is effective for the robots to improve their movement skills. The current challenge mainly remains in how to generate new robot motions automatically to perform new tasks, which have a similar preassigned performance indicator but are different from the demonstration tasks. To deal with the abovementioned issue, this article proposes a framework to represent the policy and conduct imitation learning and optimization for robot intelligent trajectory planning, based on the improved locally weighted regression (iLWR) and policy improvement with path integral by dual perturbation (PI2-DP). Besides, the reward-guided weight searching and basis function’s adaptive evolving are performed alternately in two spaces, i.e., the basis function space and the weight space, to deal with the abovementioned problem. The alternate learning process constructs a sequence of two-tuples that join the demonstration task and new one together for motor skill transfer, so that the robot gradually acquires motor skill, from the task similar to demonstration to dissimilar tasks with different performance metrics. Classical via-points trajectory planning experiments are performed with the SCARA manipulator, a 10-degree of freedom (DOF) planar, and the UR robot. These results show that the proposed method is not only feasible but also effective.
Numerical Study on Microjet Cooling Structure for GaN HEMTs Integration on Silicon

An analysis on the heat transfer feature of the microfluid cooling based on the microjet structure in the Si interposer for GaN HEMTs was investigated to meet the requirement of thermal management in RF microsystem integration. The microjet cooling structure in the Si interposer consists of 2 layers of microfluids forming the microjets in the bottom layer and separating in the top layer from 2 directions. The GaN HEMTs device is bonded on the Si interposer with the transistor gates above the microjets to utilize the high local heat transfer coefficient effectively. The distributions of temperature and the maximum pressure variations in the cooling structure with different size parameters at different flow rates were investigated using FEM analysis, and the optimum relations of dominant parameters were proposed to achieve excellent cooling performance in this paper. Therefore, a simplified function can be established to evaluate the heat transfer coefficient with the optimized size parameters. The model of a 48 W/mm2 power density GaN HEMTs device integrated on the Si interposer with optimized microjet cooling structure was simulated. The result indicated that the thermal resistance of the integrated system is 0.96 K/W which is equal to the thermal resistance of the device bonded on a 3 mm thick copper plate directly. The study on the property of the microfluid cooling in Si interposer provided a useful support for RF microsystem heterogeneous integration for GaN high power device on silicon.
The Identification of Poverty Alleviation Targets Based on the Multiple Hybrid Decision-Making Algorithms

The poverty alleviation problem as one of the social evaluation applications has long been a major focus of social problems. As the basis and starting step of the poverty alleviation project, it is crucial to accurately identify the targets of poverty alleviation. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to establish a scientific and reasonable indicators system and then evaluate all the indicator values respectively. However, in the process of data evaluation, we found that it is often hard to decide the unique valuation for some indicators because of the hesitation among different possible valuations in the mind. Different from traditional algorithms only using a single indicator valuation, the paper uses Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) to keep possible valuations from the positive and negative aspects and it can overcome the hesitation in the data evaluation process to a certain extent. The paper considers the problem of identifying the poverty alleviation targets as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem and then proposes a modified algorithm to solve the problem on the basis of several traditional algorithms. The algorithm work well and can obtain the maximum group utility and the minimum individual regret at the same time in the following experiments. The optimal poverty alleviation targets have been found and the poverty ranking list has also been obtained through the algorithm.
A Comparison of Plant Responses to the Extreme Drought of 1995 in Northern England

1 In an investigation of the impact of the extreme drought of 1995, measurements of the relative water content (RWC) of leaves were conducted on a wide range of herbaceous species, distributed over a vegetation mosaic coinciding with local gradients in soil depth in a limestone dale at Buxton in northern England. Variation in leaf RWC was analysed in relation to soil depth, soil water potential and species composition of the vegetation at the sampled sites. 2 Despite the unusual severity of the drought, low RWC was confined to the vegetation of shallow daleside soils and rock outcrops where turgor remained conspicuously higher in tap-rooted forbs such as Sanguisorba minor and Pimpinella saxifraga. Over the sampled area as a whole, it was apparent that desiccation-avoidance through continued access to subsoil moisture was more important as a controller of leaf RWC than restriction of transpiration. 3 Under the extreme conditions of 1995 differences in water relations became apparent between several pairs of congeners and morphologically similar species co-existing in the same communities. 4 In species with distributions concentrated on the deeper soils of the plateau and valley bottom, a consistent correlation was established between declining frequency of occurrence and falling values in RWC. This relationship was due to the failure of outlying populations on shallow soil to maintain turgor and suggested that extreme moisture stress was acting as a resetting mechanism restricting the excursion of drought-sensitive species on to the areas of shallow soil. 5 With the exception of a small number of tap-rooted plants, species associated with the shallow soils and rock outcrops showed a negative relationship between abundance in communities and leaf RWC; this supports the hypothesis that areas of shallow soil are suboptimal for such species and merely provide a refuge from the competitive effects of the more robust species occupying the deeper soils.
Procedural constrained story generation based on Propp's and Fabula models

Using narrative to increase engagement in serious games where the user is required to repeatedly interact with the same game for a long period of time, as in rehabilitative exer-games, could help in reducing the boredom inherent to the task. However, producing enough narrative content to cover long rehabilitation periods could require much effort from the authorial point of view. Having a tool that, given a wide enough knowledge base, can virtually produce an infinite set of stories, could greatly help in addressing this issue. For this reason, we explored the field of automatic story generation, designed and developed a multi-layered tool capable of automating the creation process of stories. The tool allows the user to define constraints at setup-time to ensure that a given set of events will appear in the generated story plot. These events may be mapped to specific serious games, making the resulting stories suitable, for instance, for integration in exer-games based rehabilitation platforms.
Paki Mirabolandia: A Serious Game to Identify Player Personality

Serious Games (SG) use playability to achieve specific goals in a playful way. Players profiles are directly influenced by personality constructs and affects their choices. Thus, it is important to consider player personality for SG design and adaptation. There are no published studies presenting SG as a tool to identify personality with Big Five Factors (BFF) model nor using an Item Response Theory (IRT) - based intelligence system. The aim of this work was to develop a SG to automatically identify player's personalities, using an intelligence system based on IRT and evaluate the convergent and divergent validity of the SG via Classical Theory Test (CTT). The kernel of the SG intelligence system uses IRT to calculate player's latent personality trait. The trait Conscientiousness was approached in the present work. A study was conducted with a 29 subject sample of all genders. The SG was capable to identify their personality trait and the IRT intelligence system proposed is adequate. Also, evidence of convergent and divergent validity was found, reaching the aim of this work. However, more activities will be developed, toward the comprehension of more personality traits. This is a necessary step for advances to SG development providing automatic identification of player's personality based on their actions.
Designing a Distribution Level Flexibility Market using Mechanism Design and Optimal Power Flow

Modern Smart Grids with high RES penetration at the distribution level, face great challenges related to congestion avoidance and voltage control. The development of a flexibility market that guarantees the constraint satisfaction of the distribution network and truthful (as opposed to strategic) player participation is necessary. This paper proposes an efficient flexibility market architecture that facilitates flexibility service provision in a distribution network. It leverages an optimal and incentive compatible mechanism in order to achieve efficiency (energy services with lower cost) and truthful participation.
Low-temperature bonding and interfacial failure behavior of Si/glass and glass/glass chips

Silicon and glass, as the two most common substrates in the semiconductor field, can be integrated into optoelectronic devices, micro/nanofluidic chips and even extended to biological applications. To obtain diverse and reliable micro/nano electromechanical systems, the integrated interface needs to ensure good mechanical properties and corrosion resistance in chemical and biological environments. Here, we propose an inductively coupled plasma with horizontal activation direction which suppresses the formation of damage position on the surface of Si and glass chips, and void-free Si/glass and glass/glass interfaces were achieved at 150 °C. Moreover, immersion tests with different working solutions were designed to investigate the interfacial corrosion resistance. By measuring the adhesive strength and observing the interface, it is found that the strength decreased rapidly after immersing the samples in ethanol for 24 h compared with other solutions. Based on the failure behavior and conventional water corrosion mechanism, the corrosion mechanisms were improved. The results are not only beneficial for the reliability evaluation of devices, but also provide the possibility of de-bonding or even recycling the substrates in the future.
Contributions of Major Cell Populations to Sjögren’s Syndrome

Sjögren’s syndrome (SS) is a female dominated autoimmune disease characterized by lymphocytic infiltration into salivary and lacrimal glands and subsequent exocrine glandular dysfunction. SS also may exhibit a broad array of extraglandular manifestations including an elevated incidence of non-Hodgkin’s B cell lymphoma. The etiology of SS remains poorly understood, yet progress has been made in identifying progressive stages of disease using preclinical mouse models. The roles played by immune cell subtypes within these stages of disease are becoming increasingly well understood, though significant gaps in knowledge still remain. There is evidence for distinct involvement from both innate and adaptive immune cells, where cells of the innate immune system establish a proinflammatory environment characterized by a type I interferon (IFN) signature that facilitates propagation of the disease by further activating T and B cell subsets to generate autoantibodies and participate in glandular destruction. This review will discuss the evidence for participation in disease pathogenesis by various classes of immune cells and glandular epithelial cells based upon data from both preclinical mouse models and human patients. Further examination of the contributions of glandular and immune cell subtypes to SS will be necessary to identify additional therapeutic targets that may lead to better management of the disease.
Selective Coordination of Cu2+ and Subsequent Anion Detection Based on a Naphthalimide-Triazine-(DPA)2 Chemosensor

A new fluorescent chemosensor for copper (II) and subsequent anion sensing was designed and fully characterized. The sensor consisted of a 1,8-naphthalimide core, bearing two terminal dipicolylamine (DPA) receptor units for binding metal cations, and an ethoxyethanol moiety for enhanced water solubility. The DPA units are connected to position 4 of the fluorophore via a triazine-ethylenediamine spacer. Fluorescence titration studies of the chemosensor revealed a high selectivity for Cu2+ over other divalent ions, the emissions were strongly quenched upon binding, and a stability constant of 5.52 log units was obtained. Given the distance from DPA chelating units and the fluorophore, quenching from the Cu2+ complexation suggests an electron transfer or an electronic energy transfer mechanism. Furthermore, the Cu2+-sensor complex proved to be capable of sensing anionic phosphate derivatives through the displacement of the Cu2+ cation, which translated into a full recovery of the luminescence from the naphthalimide. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy studies performed in HeLa cells showed there was a high intracellular uptake of the chemosensor. Incubation in Cu2+ spiked media revealed a strong fluorescent signal from mitochondria and cell membranes, which is consistent with a high concentration of ATP at these intracellular sites.
Outcomes of neoadjuvant therapy for cholangiocarcinoma: A review of existing evidence assessing treatment response and R0 resection rate

Adjuvant chemotherapy for cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) has not been shown to gain significant improvements in survival. Factors contributing to suboptimal treatment response include aggressive disease biology and late clinical presentation. When feasible, surgical resection is the first line of treatment. Yet, recurrence remains high and long‐term survival is rare. Neoadjuvant therapy is an appealing approach, with oncologic advantages in allowing the treatment of occult systemic disease and selection of patients most likely to benefit from radical surgery. However, given the surgery‐first treatment paradigm for CCA, there is a paucity of data supporting neoadjuvant therapy. This review summarizes the current evidence on treatment response and margin‐negative (R0) resection rate associated with neoadjuvant therapy for CCA.
Pharmacological treatment of pain among persons with opioid addiction: A systematic review and meta‐analysis with implications for drug development

The clinical features and neurobiology of pain and opioid use disorder (OUD) are inextricably linked. Despite emerging evidence supporting the negative impact of ongoing pain in the treatment of OUD, the pharmacological management of pain in the presence of OUD has received limited attention. We sought to systematically review the studies investigating pharmacotherapies for pain among persons with OUD. Eligible studies had participants with OUD and outcomes including evoked or spontaneous pain. We searched Scopus, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Medline, and Embase. Out of 1,097 studies that met the search criteria, 12 studies provided data relevant to the research question—five laboratory studies and seven clinical trials. Random effects pooled estimates suggested no significant difference between groups at baseline but a response favoring the active treatment group over placebo, with nonsignificant heterogeneity between studies. Findings from these studies provide preliminary evidence for analgesic and antihyperalgesic effects of gabapentin, GABA agonists, and NMDA antagonists among persons with OUD. To establish the tradeoffs between the analgesic effects and abuse liability of these compounds, further well‐controlled clinical trials are required among persons with OUD. This review also underscores the need for methodological enhancement in drug development for pain in OUD. Future research should address the clinical and neurobiological overlap between pain‐ and addiction‐related phenomena. Transdisciplinary approaches may identify biomarkers of these shared phenomena and their neural substrates. The development of novel therapeutics for pain in OUD may be accelerated by such integration of pain and addiction research.
“My Friends are at the Bottom of My Schedule”: A Qualitative Study on Social Health among Nursing Students during Clinical Placement

Clinical placement is an essential component for nursing students, allowing them to transfer professional knowledge into practice. The quality of life among nursing students and nurses was reviewed to examine its impact on the quality of provided care. However, it is unclear how social health among nursing students is affected during clinical placement. Final-year students who had finished clinical placement were invited to participate in this qualitative study. Twenty-one in-depth interviews were conducted and transcribed verbatim for thematic analysis. Two main themes, i.e., contributors to lack of social health, and manifestations of lack of social health, emerged from seven sub-themes. Students experienced different challenges during the clinical placement, but some of these did contribute to effects on their social health. Lack of social health might further influence career development after graduation. Supportive strategies from colleagues, nursing colleges and hospitals might potentially improve students’ social health during the clinical placement.