A New SLNR-based Linear Precoding for Downlink Multi-User Multi-Stream MIMO Systems

Signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR) is a promising criterion for linear precoder design in multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. It decouples the precoder design problem and makes closed-form solution available. In this letter, we present a new linear precoding scheme by slightly relaxing the SLNR maximization for MU-MIMO systems with multiple data streams per user. The precoding matrices are obtained by a general form of simultaneous diagonalization of two Hermitian matrices. The new scheme reduces the gap between the per-stream effective channel gains, an inherent limitation in the original SLNR precoding scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed precoding achieves considerable gains in error performance over the original one for multi-stream transmission while maintaining almost the same achievable sum-rate.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Community Participation in Mine Action: A Review and Conceptual Framework

In line with the Norwegian People\u27s Aid (NPA) international strategy, which promotes a rights-based partnership approach, the NPA is committed to exploring new approaches to mine action that promote greater involvement of the local mine affected populations. A starting point in this process is a review and conceptual framework paper prepared for NPA by Ruth Bottomley. Through a review of existing documents, the paper provides a reflection on why community participation is important in mine action and outlines some of the challenges. Existing examples of community participation in mine action are compiled with documented strengths and weaknesses

Medical Dialogue Generation via Dual Flow Modeling

Medical dialogue systems (MDS) aim to provide patients with medical services, such as diagnosis and prescription. Since most patients cannot precisely describe their symptoms, dialogue understanding is challenging for MDS. Previous studies mainly addressed this by extracting the mentioned medical entities as critical dialogue history information. In this work, we argue that it is also essential to capture the transitions of the medical entities and the doctor's dialogue acts in each turn, as they help the understanding of how the dialogue flows and enhance the prediction of the entities and dialogue acts to be adopted in the following turn. Correspondingly, we propose a Dual Flow enhanced Medical (DFMed) dialogue generation framework. It extracts the medical entities and dialogue acts used in the dialogue history and models their transitions with an entity-centric graph flow and a sequential act flow, respectively. We employ two sequential models to encode them and devise an interweaving component to enhance their interactions. Experiments on two datasets demonstrate that our method exceeds baselines in both automatic and manual evaluations.Comment: Accepted as Findings of ACL 202

RECAP: Towards Precise Radiology Report Generation via Dynamic Disease Progression Reasoning

Automating radiology report generation can significantly alleviate radiologists' workloads. Previous research has primarily focused on realizing highly concise observations while neglecting the precise attributes that determine the severity of diseases (e.g., small pleural effusion). Since incorrect attributes will lead to imprecise radiology reports, strengthening the generation process with precise attribute modeling becomes necessary. Additionally, the temporal information contained in the historical records, which is crucial in evaluating a patient's current condition (e.g., heart size is unchanged), has also been largely disregarded. To address these issues, we propose RECAP, which generates precise and accurate radiology reports via dynamic disease progression reasoning. Specifically, RECAP first predicts the observations and progressions (i.e., spatiotemporal information) given two consecutive radiographs. It then combines the historical records, spatiotemporal information, and radiographs for report generation, where a disease progression graph and dynamic progression reasoning mechanism are devised to accurately select the attributes of each observation and progression. Extensive experiments on two publicly available datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.Comment: Accepted by Findings of EMNLP 202

Orientational Packing of a Confined Discotic Mesogen in the Columnar Phase

The stacking of discotic molecules (hexakis(alkoxy)diquinoxalino[2,3-a:2′,3′-c]phenazines) in the columnar phase sandwiched between two flat glass substrates has been studied. The surface free energy of the substrates, measured by means of sessile drop technique, is found to have significant influence on the way that the discotic molecules anchor on the surface, and a steady thermal state of the system is crucial for a homogenous orientation of the discotic columns. On a surface of high free energy, the discotic molecules anchor with their disc-face toward the surface. A decrease in the surface free energy of the substrate causes the discotic columns to tilt away from the normal of the substrate

Neighborhood Differences in the Availability of Healthy Foods in the City of Worcester

INTRODUCTION. Neighborhood food environment is important to healthy eating. The availability and proximity of healthy foods has been shown to affect dietary quality, obesity, and overall health. We surveyed food stores throughout City of Worcester to assess the variability of food availability in neighborhoods and inequalities in access to fresh produce, unprocessed foods, and other healthy food options by neighborhood socioeconomic status (N-SES). METHODS. Where permitted by the store manager, the Community Nutrition Environment Evaluation Data Systems (C-NEEDS) survey was completed inside the store by trained staff. Healthy Food Availability Index (HFAI; range 0-56) and Unhealthy Food Availability Index (UFAI; range 0-39) were calculated for each store. Higher HFAI indicates higher availability of healthy food items, and higher UFAI indicates high availability of unhealthy foods. Median household income and car ownership data were derived at the census tract level as measures of N-SES using the 2013 US Census American Community Surveys 5-Year estimates. RESULTS. Convenience stores (mean HFAI 7.9, UFAI 21.1) had lower availability of both healthy and unhealthy foods than grocery stores (HFAI 32.4, UFAI 29.8). However, convenience stores had a higher proportion of unhealthy foods to healthy foods. Neighborhoods with lower median income and car ownership had a greater density of convenience stores. Neighborhoods with higher SES and car ownership had less access to convenience stores. Grocery stores in higher SES neighborhoods had more healthy food options. DISCUSSION. These results demonstrate that residents in lower SES neighborhoods may be disadvantaged when it comes to availability of healthy foods. These neighborhoods have higher density of convenience stores that may promote an unhealthy eating environment. Residents in these neighborhoods may wish to make healthy choices, but without access to a car may be unable or unwilling to walk to the nearest store where healthy alternatives are available

Systematic review on the treatment of pentoxifylline in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>As an anti-TNF agent that targets inflammatory process directly, Pentoxifylline has been investigated for treatment of NASH in individual studies and pilot trials for years. We summarized the available information and generating hypotheses for future research.</p> <p>Data Sources</p> <p>Google, Cochrane, MEDLINE, and EMBASE and the <it>Chinese Biomedical </it>data bases for studies restricted to pentoxifylline treatment in humans with NAFLD in all languages until June 2010. Six studies (2 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials; 4 prospective cohort studies) extracted from 11604 references.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Pentoxifylline-treated patients showed a significant decrease AST (n = 37, <it>P </it>= 0.01) and ALT (n = 50, <it>P </it>= 0.03), but no significant effect on IL-6 (n = 36, <it>P </it>= 0.33) and TNF-α (n = 68, <it>P </it>= 0.26) compared with Placebo or UDCA-controlled groups. Improvement in one or more histological variables was reported in two trails, only 1 study showed a reduction in of one or two points in fibrosis stage.</p> <p>Limitations</p> <p>The trails did not consistently report all of the outcomes of interest. Sample sizes (117 patients totally) were small and only 2 out of 6 studies had a randomized, controlled design.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Pentoxifylline reduce AST and ALT levels and may improve liver histological scores in patients with NALFD/NASH, but did not appear to affect cytokines. Large, prospective, and well-designed randomized, controlled studies are needed to address this issue. Novel therapeutic targets for activation of inflammatory signaling pathways by fat also merit investigation.</p

A Novel Compact Dual-Polarized Antenna

A novel compact dual-polarized antenna is proposed. The antenna has a 1.43% impedance bandwidth which is from 1801 MHz to 1827 MHz for return loss larger than 10 dB. The isolation between the two ports is above 28 dB in the bandwidth, and the gain is 6.6 dBi. The proposed antenna not only consists of a full-planar structure, but also is easy to be fabricated for its simple structure. Additionally, a section of slots and slits is cut on the radiation patch to reduce the area of it to 54% compared with the conventional square patch