Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of angle of arrival on transmit diversity and beamforming systems under correlated fading

Transmit diversity and beamforming are two well known complementary techniques for using multiple antennas in the forward link of a cellular communication system. We present a comparative analysis, using outage capacity as performance measure. The effects of correlated fading and the distribution of angles of arrival are considered. The paper examines the effect of angle of arrival (AOA) distributions on two systems with angle spread. We do so by comparing the performance of transmit diversity with a system that uses beamforming to point a relatively narrow beam at the mobile station. Results show that the transmit diversity system using uniform linear arrays with truncated Laplacian AOA, always perform better, even at smaller angle spreads as compared to other energy distributions
Soluble Asialoglycoprotein Receptors Reflect the Apoptosis of Hepatocytes

Cell death is thought to take place through at least two distinct processes: apoptosis and necrosis. There is increasing evidence that dysregulation of the apoptotic program is involved in liver diseases. However, there is no method to simply evaluate apoptosis in the liver tissue at present. It has been reported that the expression of asialoglycoprotein receptors (AGPRs) increases with apoptosis, but there is no report until now that investigates the influence of soluble AGPRs on apoptosis of hepatocytes. Soluble AGPRs have been reported to be present in human serum under physiological conditions. In the present study, in order to investigate the correlation between apoptosis of hepatocytes and soluble AGPR, mouse soluble AGPRs were detected using SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis was conducted using anti-extracellular mouse hepatic lectin-1 (Ex-MHL-1) antiserum (polyclonal rabbit serum). The mouse soluble AGPRs were present in culture medium and mouse serum when hepatocytes were damaged. The soluble AGPRs increased proportionately, as the number of dead hepatocytes increased. In addition, soluble AGPRs existed more when apoptotic cell death was observed in in vitro and in vivo than when necrotic cell death was observed. The extracellular moiety of MHL-1 exists in the culture medium and mouse serum as a soluble AGPR, but the detailed mechanism of releasing soluble AGPR from hepatocytes has not been revealed yet. We described the first evidence for the relation between quantity of soluble AGPRs with two kinds of cell death: necrosis and apoptosis. Based on the results of our study, soluble AGPRs might become a new marker of apoptosis in the liver tissue and be useful for clinical diagnosis and treatment for liver diseases.
Somatostatin causes vasoconstriction, reduces blood flow and increases vascular permeability in the rat central nervous system.

Using radiolabeled microspheres, spinal cord blood flow was measured after spinal subarachnoid injections of 3.1- to 12.5-nmol doses of somatostatin through either indwelling i.t. catheters or acutely inserted intervertebral needles. With either injection technique, somatostatin caused significant dose-dependent reductions in thoracic and lumbosacral blood flow that could be partially blocked by a 5-min preinjection of the somatostatin receptor antagonist cyclo[7-aminoheptanoyl-Phe-D-Trp-Lys-Thr(Bzl)], which has previously been shown to block the hindlimb flaccidity produced by these doses of somatostatin in conscious rats. The duration of these blood flow changes were appreciably less in the rats injected through indwelling i.t. catheters. Somatostatin-induced reductions in spinal cord perfusion were accompanied by transient pressor responses, reduced cardiac output, 3-fold increases in spinal cord cerebrospinal fluid lactic acid concentrations and breakdown of the blood-spinal cord barrier, as reflected by significantly increased extravasation of [125I]bovine serum albumin. By 24 hr postinjection, a 12.5-nmol dose of somatostatin caused appreciable spinal cord cellular injury, as evidenced by significant elevations in cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of lactate dehydrogenase. After topical application to exposed pial vessels of the parietal cortex, comparable doses of somatostatin caused immediate intense dose-related arteriolar vasospasm and subsequent extravasation of the visible macromolecular tracer Evans blue dye. We conclude that somatostatin has significant vasoconstrictory effects on the blood vessels of the brain and spinal cord of the rat that must be recognized and appreciated when studying its neuropharmacological actions in vivo.
Tackling Uncertainties and Errors in the Satellite Monitoring of Forest Cover Change

Title of Dissertation: TACKLING UNCERTAINTIES AND ERRORS IN THE SATELLITE MONITORING OF FOREST COVER CHANGE Kuan Song, Ph. D, 2010 Directed By: Professor John R. G. Townshend Department of Geography University of Maryland, College Park This study aims at improving the reliability of automatic fore st change detection. Forest change detection is of vital importance for understanding global land cover as well as the carbon cycle. Remote sensing and machine learning ha ve been widely adopted for such studies with increasing degrees of success. However, contemporary global studies still suffer from lower-than-satis factory accuracies and robustness problems whose causes were largely unknown. Global geographical observations are complex, as a result of the hi dden interweaving geographical processes. Is it possible that some geographical complexities were not expected in contemporary machine learning? Could they cause uncertainties and errors when contemporary machine learnin g theories are applied for remote sensing? This dissertation adopts the philosophy of error elimination. We sta rt by explaining the mathematical origins of possible geographic uncertai nties and errors in chapter two. Uncertainties are unavoidable but might be mitigate d. Errors are hidden but might be found and corrected. Then in chapter three, experim ents are specifically designed to assess whether or not the contemporary m achine learning theories can handle these geographic uncertainties and errors. In chapter four, we identify an unreported systemic error source: the proportion distribut ion of classes in the training set. A subsequent Bayesian Optimal solution is des gned to combine Support Vector Machine and Maximum Likelihood. Finally, in chapter fi ve, we demonstrate how this type of error is widespread not just in class ific tion algorithms, but also embedded in the conceptual definition of geographic classes befor e classification. In chapter six, the sources of errors and uncert ainties and their solutions are summarized, with theoretical implications for future studies. The most important finding is, how we design a classification lar ge y pre-determines the “scientific conclusions” we eventually get fr om the classification of geographical observations. This happened to many contemporary popular classifiers including various neural nets, decision tree, and support vec tor machine. This is a cause of the so-called overfitting problem in contemporary machine lea r ing. Therefore, we propose that the emphasis of classification work be shifted to the planning stage before the actual classification. Geography should not just be the analysis of collected observations, but also about the planning of obser vation collection. This is where geography, machine learning, and survey statistic s meet. TACKLING UNCERTAINTIES AND ERRORS IN THE SATELLITE MONITORING OF FOREST COVER CHANGE
Individual Rice Kernel Moisture Content Variability Trends

Variation in individual kernel moisture content (MC) distributions in rice panicles were measured for rice cultivars Bengal, Cypress, and Drew. Rice panicles were harvested at different stages of maturity from foundation seed fields at two locations with widely varying soils in Arkansas during the autumns of 1998, 1999, and 2000. The objective was to quantify variability of individual rice kernel MCs as affected by maturity, planting location, and year. Individual kernel MC distributions were multi-modal until the average harvest MC (HMC) reached about 16%, at which point the distributions tended to be primarily single-modal. For all cultivars, HMC significantly affected kernel MC standard deviation (SD). For Cypress and Drew, individual kernel MC SD was also significantly affected by year and location with significant interactions between HMC and year and HMC and location. Regression equations that accounted for the variation in individual kernel MC at varying kernel maturity stages were generated for each cultivar.
Fungal Keratitis Caused by Exserohilum, An Emerging Pathogen

Purpose: To determine the epidemiology, risk factors, clinical features, and prognosis of fungal keratitis caused by Exserohilum. Methods: All culture-proven cases of keratomycosis caused by Exserohilum presented from January 2012 to December 2014 were retrospectively analyzed using a computerized database. Results: Among 1542 cases of keratomycosis, 47 (3%) were due to Exserohilum. The mean age of presentation was 50.4 years. Males (n = 32; 68%) were more commonly affected than females (n = 15; 32%). A history of trauma was present in most of the cases (n = 38; 80.9%). The mean time of the first visit to the hospital was 6.2 days after onset of symptoms. Most of the patients (n = 24; 72.3%) had central or paracentral ulcers. The infiltrate was confined to the superficial one-third of the stroma in 39 patients (83%). Most of the patients (89.4%) responded well to topical treatment (natamycin 5% for ulcers <5 mm; voriconazole 1% was added for ulcers >5 mm or with hypopyon); 4 patients (8.5%) required therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty and 1 patient (2.1%) progressed to endophthalmitis, requiring evisceration. The mean best-corrected visual acuity in the medically treated patients improved from 0.89 (logMAR) at presentation to 0.77 at the completion of treatment (P = 0.015). Conclusions: This study signifies the importance of this new emerging pathogen that was generally regarded as rare in the past. The infection seems to be more prevalent than previously thought, especially in hot and humid areas. Vision is likely to improve if the infection is diagnosed and appropriate topical treatment is started early.
Context-Sensitive String Languages and Eecognizable Picture Languages

Abstract The theorem stating that the family of frontiers of recognizable tree languages is exactly the family of context-free languages (see J. Mezei and J. B. Wright, 1967,Inform. and Comput.11, 3–29), is a basic result in the theory of formal languages. In this article, we prove a similar result: the family of frontiers of recognizable picture languages is exactly the family of context-sensitive languages
Delay in expression of a mammary tumor provirus is responsible for defective clonal deletion during postnatal period

A gene‐encoding ligand for deletion of T cells bearing TcRVβ6 and Vβ8. 1 cosegregates a new mammary tumor provirus locus, Mtv‐50 in NC mice. The sequence of the open reading frame (ORF) in the 3′ long terminal repeat (LTR) of Mtv‐50 was strikingly similar to those of Mtv‐7, Mtv‐43 and exogenous mouse mammary tumor virus (SW) with properties of minor lymphocyte stimulating antigen 1a. Consistent with previous reports, clonal deletion of mature thymocytes bearing TcRVβ6 was defective during the early postnatal period of mice carrying Mtv‐50. Appreciable levels of mRNA corresponding to common Mtv ORF and Mtv‐6 ORF were expressed in the neonatal thymus, while little, if any, mRNA corresponding to Mtv‐50 ORF was detected in the thymus at the early postnatal stage. Delay in expression of Mtv‐50 ORF during the postnatal period may be responsible for the failure of clonal deletion of Vβ6‐T cells in the early postnatal life of mice carrying Mtv‐50.
Intravenous Lidocaine as an adjunct to general anesthesia: A CLINICAL EVALUATION*

NUMBER OF REPORTS have been pubA lished describing the use of the local anesthetic agents administered intravenously to relieve pain and to supplement anesthesia. The purpose of the present project was to evaluate further in a blind study the contribution of intravenous lidocaine to thiopental and nitrous oxide-oxygen anesthesia, and to thiopental, nitrous oxide, and succinylcholine anesthesia in human beings.
Algorithmics of motion: From robotics, through structural biology, toward atomic-scale CAD. (Algorithmics du mouvement: De la robotique, à travers la biologie structurale, vers CAD échelle atomique)

Algorithmics of motion is a fundamental part of robotics. It deals with the development of methods to compute, simulate and analyze motions of physical systems such as articulated mechanisms or mobile robots. Nevertheless, these methods can be applied to other problems beyond robotics. Indeed, a significant part of my activities are focused on interdisciplinary research in the areas of structural bioinformatics and materials science. My main methodological contributions concern motion planning and simulation algorithms for complex systems. Complexity in this context mainly concerns high-dimensionality together with multiple types of motion constraints, being kinematic loop closure an important class of them. I have also investigated variants of sampling-based motion planning algorithms able to provide good-quality solutions when a cost-function is defined over the space being explored. Parallel implementations of these algorithms have also been studied. In robotics, my research has been mainly focused on problems related to manipulation in the context of several European projects. More recently, I have started to conduct research on aerial robotics. Motion planning for aerial robots involves additional difficulties compared to other classes of robots such as simple wheeled robots or manipulators. Whereas a purely geometric approach is suitable for planning motions of other types of systems that are more easily controllable, aerial robots require to consider dynamics in order to ensure the feasibility of the planned trajectory. Structural bioinformatics and materials science are very interesting areas for the development of methods since they involve extremely challenging problems related to motion. Doubtless, biological macromolecules (such as proteins or RNA) and polymers, at the atomic scale, can be seen as extremely complex mobile systems. The development of methods for modeling/simulating motions of such systems is essential to better understand their physicochemical properties and biological functions. These methods are also of key importance for advances in application areas such as health (e.g. drug design), biotechnology (e.g. engineered enzymes for bio-catalysis) or nanotechnologies (e.g. nucleic acid-based nano-devices).
CT-guided core biopsy of lung lesions: a primer.

OBJECTIVE CT-guided core biopsy is playing an increasing role in the diagnosis of benign disease, cellular differentiation, somatic mutation analysis, and molecular fingerprint analysis. CONCLUSION In this article, we summarize the basic concepts, protocols, and techniques that we use for CT-guided core biopsy of lung lesions to assist radiologists in obtaining diagnostic specimens while reducing preventable complications.
A Comparison of Tricompartmental and Unicompartmental Arthroplasty for the Treatment of Gonarthrosis

An historical prospective study was performed to compare two surgical management alternatives in the treatment of patients with knee arthritis. There were 120 unicompartmental and 81 tricompartmental knee arthroplasties in 98 and 66 patients, respectively. All living patients were available for follow-up observation, and survivorship data on all arthroplasties were obtained. The average follow-up interval was 78 months (range, eight-162 months) in the unicompartmental series and 68 months (range, two- 186 months) in the tricompartmental group. Patients receiving the unicompartmental arthroplasty were treated with nonmetal-backed polyethylene tibial components. Prosthetic survivorship was 92% at ten years in the unicompartmental patient group. There were no statistically significant differences in aseptic loosening between these two patient groups. In appropriately selected patients unicompartmental arthroplasty was associated with better range of motion and ambulatory function than patients being treated with tricompartmental knee replacement.
Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Locomotions

In Reinforcement Learning, it is usually more convenient to optimize in the policy π(a|s) space than forming a policy indirectly by accurately evaluating state-action function Q(s, a) or value function V(s). Because the value function doesn’t prescribe actions and the state-action function might be very hard to estimate in continuous or large action space. Therefore, in an environment that suffers from a high cost of evaluation, such as robotic locomotion systems, policy optimization method is a better option due to the significantly smaller policy space. In this project, we investigate a particular policy optimization method, the Trust Region Policy Optimization algorithm, explore possible variants of it, and propose a new method based on our understanding of this algorithm.
Viability of Feature Detection on Sony Xperia Z3 using OpenCL

Context. Embedded platforms GPUs are reaching a level of perfor-mance comparable to desktop hardware. Therefore it becomes inter-esting to apply Computer Vision techniques to modern smartphones.The platform holds different challenges, as energy use and heat gen-eration can be an issue depending on load distribution on the device.Objectives. We evaluate the viability of a feature detector and de-scriptor on the Xperia Z3. Specifically we evaluate the the pair basedon real-time execution, heat generation and performance.Methods. We implement the feature detection and feature descrip-tor pair Harris-Hessian/FREAK for GPU execution using OpenCL,focusing on embedded platforms. We then study the heat generationof the application, its execution time and compare our method to twoother methods, FAST/BRISK and ORB, to evaluate the vision per-formance.Results. Execution time data for the Xperia Z3 and desktop GeForceGTX660 is presented. Run time temperature values for a run ofnearly an hour are presented with correlating CPU and GPU ac-tivity. Images containing comparison data for BRISK, ORB andHarris-Hessian/FREAK is shown with performance data and discus-sion around notable aspects.Conclusion. Execution times on Xperia Z3 is deemed insufficientfor real-time applications while desktop execution shows that there isfuture potential. Heat generation is not a problem for the implemen-tation. Implementation improvements are discussed to great lengthfor future work. Performance comparisons of Harris-Hessian/FREAKsuggest that the solution is very vulnerable to rotation, but superiorin scale variant images. Generally appears suitable for near duplicatecomparisons, delivering much greater number of keypoints. Finally,insight to OpenCL application development on Android is given
The overlap of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia

Patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) with no known diagnosis of ALS or family history of ALS were clinically and electrophysiologically assessed for the presence of ALS. Of 36 patients studied, five met criteria for a definite diagnosis of ALS and two had EMG findings suggestive of denervation in one limb. An additional five patients had prominent fasciculations and six other patients had trouble swallowing but all had normal results on EMG studies. One of the patients with fasciculations and a normal EMG study progressed to definite ALS over the course of 1 year.
A Systematic Review of the Impact of Exposure to Internet-Based Alcohol-Related Content on Young People's Alcohol Use Behaviours.

AIMS To conduct a systematic review of studies exploring the relationship between exposure to Internet-based alcohol-related content and alcohol use among young people. METHODS Searches of electronic databases and reference lists of relevant articles were conducted to retrieve studies of relevance up until December 2015. Full texts of the studies that met the inclusion criteria were read, appraised for quality using the Kmet forms and guidelines, and included in this review. RESULTS Fifteen relevant studies were identified. The included studies were a mix of cross-sectional, longitudinal, experimental and qualitative studies conducted in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The age range of the participants involved in these studies was 12-25 years. Included studies employed a variety of study designs and a range of different exposure variables and outcome measures. Studies demonstrated significant associations between exposure to Internet-based alcohol-related content and intentions to drink and positive attitudes towards alcohol drinking among young people. CONCLUSION Exposure to alcohol-related content on the Internet might predispose young people to patterns of alcohol use by promoting alcohol as a natural and vital part of life. However, the research exploring the influence of this novel form of advertising on young people's alcohol use is emergent, and comprised primarily of cross-sectional studies. To evaluate the direction of the association between exposure to online alcohol-related content and alcohol use, we call for further research based on longitudinal designs. SHORT SUMMARY From 15 relevant studies identified, this review reports significant associations between exposure to Internet-based alcohol-related content and intentions to drink and positive attitudes towards alcohol drinking among young people, with different influences found at different stages of alcohol use.
Trends and variation in use of breast reconstruction in patients with breast cancer undergoing mastectomy in the United States.

PURPOSE Concerns exist regarding breast cancer patients' access to breast reconstruction, which provides important psychosocial benefits. PATIENTS AND METHODS Using the MarketScan database, a claims-based data set of US patients with employment-based insurance, we identified 20,560 women undergoing mastectomy for breast cancer from 1998 to 2007. We evaluated time trends using the Cochran-Armitage test and correlated reconstruction use with plastic-surgery workforce density and other treatments using multivariable regression. RESULTS Median age of our sample was 51 years. Reconstruction use increased from 46% in 1998 to 63% in 2007 (P < .001), with increased use of implants and decreased use of autologous techniques over time (P < .001). Receipt of bilateral mastectomy also increased: from 3% in 1998 to 18% in 2007 (P < .001). Patients receiving bilateral mastectomy were more likely to receive reconstruction (odds ratio [OR], 2.3; P < .001) and patients receiving radiation were less likely to receive reconstruction (OR, 0.44; P < .001). Rates of reconstruction receipt varied dramatically by geographic region, with associations with plastic surgeon density in each state and county-level income. Autologous techniques were more often used in patients who received both reconstruction and radiation (OR, 1.8; P < .001) and less frequently used in patients with capitated insurance (OR, 0.7; P < .001), patients undergoing bilateral mastectomy (OR, 0.5; P < .001), or patients in the highest income quartile (OR, 0.7; P = .006). Delayed reconstruction was performed in 21% of patients who underwent reconstruction. CONCLUSION Breast reconstruction has increased over time, but it has wide geographic variability. Receipt of other treatments correlates with the use of and approaches toward reconstruction. Further research and interventions are needed to ensure equitable access to this important component of multidisciplinary treatment of breast cancer.