Exact performance analysis of OS modified versions with noncoherent integration in nonideal situations

The radar signals returning from the targets being illuminated are usually accompanied by thermal noise and clutter. Constant false alarm rate (CFAR) processors are useful for detecting these targets in a background for which the parameters of the statistical distribution are not known and may be nonstationary. The ordered-statistics (OS) CFAR technique has been proven to work satisfactorily in both multiple-target and nonuniform clutter cases. Unfortunately, the large processing time taken by this scheme limits its practical uses. The modified versions of the OS processor have been proposed to replace it in these applications. They can reduce the processing time of the single-window OS detector in half without changing its useful properties. Our goal in this paper is to provide a complete detection analysis for the OS processor along with ordered-statistic greatest-of (OSGO) and ordered-statistic smallest-of (OSSO) modified versions, for M postdetection integrated pulses when the operating environment is nonideal. Analytical results of performance are presented in both multiple-target situations and in regions of clutter power transitions. The primary and the secondary interfering targets are assumed to be fluctuating in accordance with the Swerling II target fluctuation model. As the number of noncoherently integrated pulses increases, lower threshold values and consequently better detection performances are obtained in both homogeneous and multiple-target background models. However, the false alarm rate performance of OSSO-CFAR scheme at clutter edges worsens with increasing the postdetection integrated pulses. As predicted, the OSGO-CFAR detector accommodates the presence of spurious targets in the reference window, given that their number is within its allowable range in each local window, and controls the rate of false alarm when the contents of the reference cells have clutter boundaries. The OSSO-CFAR scheme is useful in the situation where there is a cluster of radar targets amongst the estimation cells.     

Improving query precision using semantic expansion

Query Expansion (QE) is one of the most important mechanisms in the information retrieval field. A typical short Internet query will go through a process of refinement to improve its retrieval power. Most of the existing QE techniques suffer from retrieval performance degradation due to imprecise choice of query’s additive terms in the QE process. In this paper, we introduce a novel automated QE mechanism. The new expansion process is guided by the semantics relations between the original query and the expanding words, in the context of the utilized corpus. Experimental results of our “controlled” query expansion, using the Arabic TREC-10 data, show a significant enhancement of recall and precision over current existing mechanisms in the field.     

Morning–evening difference of team-handball-related short-term maximal physical performances in female team handball players

This study investigated the two different time-of-day effect on team-handball-related short-term maximal physical performances. At two different time-of-day, fifteen young female team handball players performed different physical tests: HandGrip (HG) test, Ball-Throwing Velocity (BTV) test, Modified Agility T-test (MAT) and Repeated Shuttle-Sprint and Jump Ability (RSSJA) test. Rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale was determined following the termination of the last test. Measurements were performed at two separate testing sessions (i.e., in the morning (7:00–8:30 h) and in the early evening (17:00–18:30 h)) in a randomised and counter-balanced setting on non-consecutive days. The results showed that HG (P = 0.0013), BTV (P = 0.0027) and MAT (P < 0.001) performances were better in the evening compared with the morning. During RSSJA, both best and mean sprint times were shorter in the evening compared to the morning (P < 0.001). Moreover, during the latter test, mean jump performance was higher in the evening compared to the morning (P = 0.026). However, there was no morning–evening difference in the best jump performance during RSSJA. Likewise, jump performance decrement was not affected by the time-of-day of testing. On the other hand, RPE fluctuated, with morning nadirs and afternoon/early evening highest values. The findings suggest that in female team handball players, team-handball-related short-term maximal physical performances were better in the afternoon than in the morning.     

Confirmatory studies on the antioxidant and antidiabetic effect of quercetin in rats

Quercetin (QE), one of natural flavanoid group, was widely distributed as a secondary metabolite in plant kingdom. It has been believed that oxidative stress plays a role in the pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus (DM). The aim of the present study was the evaluation of possible effects of QE on blood glucose and antioxidant enzymes in experimental streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes in rats. STZ was injected intraperitoneally with single dose of 50 mg/kg for diabetes induction. QE (15 mg/kg bw day, intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection) was injected for 3 days prior to STZ administration; these injections were continued to the end of the study (for 25 days). Glucose tolerance test and random plasma glucose were done for all animals. Cellular antioxidant enzymes such as glutathione peroxidase (GSHPx), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities were measured in pancreatic homogenates. Quercetin had no effect on plasma glucose level of normal animals but its pre- treatment was able to prevent diabetes induced by single intraperitoneal injection of streptozocintreated rats. Antioxidant enzyme activity significantly decreased in STZ induced diabetic group. QE treatment significantly increased the antioxidant enzyme activities. It could be concluded that quercetin, a flavonoid with antioxidant properties, exerting its beneficial antidiabetic effects.     

SRL-ESA-TextSum: A text summarization approach based on semantic role labeling and explicit semantic analysis

Automatic text summarization attempts to provide an effective solution to today’s unprecedented growth of textual data. This paper proposes an innovative graph-based text summarization framework for generic single and multi document summarization. The summarizer benefits from two well-established text semantic representation techniques; Semantic Role Labelling (SRL) and Explicit Semantic Analysis (ESA) as well as the constantly evolving collective human knowledge in Wikipedia. The SRL is used to achieve sentence semantic parsing whose word tokens are represented as a vector of weighted Wikipedia concepts using ESA method. The essence of the developed framework is to construct a unique concept graph representation underpinned by semantic role-based multi-node (under sentence level) vertices for summarization. We have empirically evaluated the summarization system using the standard publicly available dataset from Document Understanding Conference 2002 (DUC 2002). Experimental results indicate that the proposed summarizer outperforms all state-of-the-art related comparators in the single document summarization based on the ROUGE-1 and ROUGE-2 measures, while also ranking second in the ROUGE-1 and ROUGE-SU4 scores for the multi-document summarization. On the other hand, the testing also demonstrates the scalability of the system, i.e., varying the evaluation data size is shown to have little impact on the summarizer performance, particularly for the single document summarization task. In a nutshell, the findings demonstrate the power of the role-based and vectorial semantic representation when combined with the crowd-sourced knowledge base in Wikipedia.     

Robust integral backstepping control for sensorless IPM synchronous motor controller

In this paper, a sensorless speed control for interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM) is designed by combining a robust backstepping controller with integral actions and an adaptive interconnected observer. The IPMSM control design generally requires rotor position measurement. Then, to eliminate this sensor, an adaptive interconnected observer is designed to estimate the rotor position and the speed. Moreover, a robust nonlinear control based on the backstepping algorithm is designed where an integral action is introduced in order to improve the robust properties of the controller. The stability of the closed-loop system with the observer–controller scheme is analyzed and sufficient conditions are given to prove the practical stability. Simulation results are shown to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme under parametric uncertainties and low speed. Furthermore, the proposed integral backstepping control is compared with the classical backstepping controller.     

Nephroprotective effects of Zingiber zerumbet Smith ethyl acetate extract against paracetamol-induced nephrotoxicity and oxidative stress in rats

Paracetamol (PCM) overdose can cause nephrotoxicity with oxidative stress as one of the possible mechanisms mediating the event. In this study, the effects of ethyl acetate extract of Zingiber zerumbet rhizome [200 mg per kg of body weight (mg/kg) and 400 mg/kg] on PCM-induced nephrotoxicity were examined. Rats were divided into five groups containing 10 rats each. The control group received distilled water while other groups were treated with extract alone (400 mg/kg), PCM alone (750 mg/kg), 750 mg/kg PCM+200 mg/kg extract (PCM+ 200-extract), and 750 mg/kg PCM+400 mg/kg extract (PCM+400-extract), respectively, for seven consecutive days. The Z. zerumbet extract was given intraperitoneally concurrent with oral administration of PCM. Treatment with Z. zerumbet extract at doses of 200 and 400 mg/kg prevented the PCM-induced nephrotoxicity and oxidative impairments of the kidney, as evidenced by a significantly reduced (P<0.05) level of plasma creatinine, plasma and renal malondialdehyde (MDA), plasma protein carbonyl, and renal advanced oxidation protein product (AOPP). Furthermore, both doses were also able to induce a significant increment (P<0.05) of plasma and renal levels of glutathione (GSH) and plasma superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity. The nephroprotective effects of Z. zerumbet extract were confirmed by a reduced intensity of renal cellular damage, as evidenced by histological findings. Moreover, Z. zerumbet extract administered at 400 mg/kg was found to show greater protective effects than that at 200 mg/kg. In conclusion, ethyl acetate extract of Z. zerumbet rhizome has a protective role against PCM-induced nephrotoxicity and the process is probably mediated through its antioxidant properties.     

Fractional-order global sliding mode controller for an uncertain quadrotor UAVs subjected to external disturbances

In the present paper, the problem of designing a global sliding mode control scheme based on fractional operators for tracking a quadrotor trajectory is investigated. The model of the quadrotor system is given with disturbances and uncertainties. To converge in short finite time of the sliding manifold, a classical quadratic Lyapunov function was used and also a global stabilization of the quadrotor system is ensured. The proposed controller can be ensured the robustness against external disturbances and model uncertainties. Some scenarios are illustrated in this paper. Finally, a comparative study to three other controllers is provided to show the validity and feasibility of the proposed method.     

Inhibitory activities of microalgal extracts against Epstein-Barr virus DNA release from lymphoblastoid cells

This study aimed to assess the inhibitory activities of methanol extracts from the microalgae Ankistrodesmus convolutus, Synechococcus elongatus, and Spirulina platensis against Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in three Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) cell lines, namely Akata, B95-8, and P3HR-1. The antiviral activity was assessed by quantifying the cell-free EBV DNA using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. The methanol extracts from Ankistrodesmus convolutus and Synechococcus elongatus displayed low cytotoxicity and potent effect in reducing cell-free EBV DNA (EC(50)<0.01 μg/ml) with a high therapeutic index (>28000). After fractionation by column chromatography, the fraction from Synechococcus elongatus (SEF1) reduced the cell-free EBV DNA most effectively (EC(50)=2.9 μg/ml, therapeutic index>69). Upon further fractionation by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), the sub-fraction SEF1'a was most active in reducing the cell-free EBV DNA (EC(50)=1.38 μg/ml, therapeutic index>14.5). This study suggests that microalgae could be a potential source of antiviral compounds that can be used against EBV.