Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model-based validation of QoS properties of biomedical sensor networks

A Biomedical Sensor Network (BSN) is a small-size sensor network for medical applications, that may contain tens of sensor nodes. In this paper, we present a formal model for BSNs using timed automata, where the sensor nodes communicate using the Chipcon CC2420 transceiver (developed by Texas Instruments) according to the IEEE 802.15. 4 standard. Based on the model, we have used UPPAAL to validate and tune the temporal configuration parameters of a BSN in order to meet desired QoS requirements on network connectivity, packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay. The network studied allows dynamic reconfigurations of the network topology due to the temporally switching of sensor nodes to power-down mode for energy-saving or their physical movements. Both the simulator and model-checker of UPPAAL are used to analyze the average-case and worst-case behaviors. To enhance the scalability of the tool, we have implemented a (new text-based) version of the UPPAAL simulator optimized for exploring symbolic traces of automata containing large data structures such as matrices. Our experiments show that even though the main feature of the tool is model checking, it is also a promising and competitive tool for efficient simulation and parameter tuning. The simulator scales well; it can easily handle up to 50 nodes in our experiments. The model checker installed on a notebook can also deal with networks with 5 up to 16 nodes within minutes depending on the properties checked; these are BSNs of reasonable size for medical applications. Finally, to study the accuracy of our model and analysis results, we compare simulation results by UPPAAL for two medical scenarios with traditional simulation techniques using OMNeT++, one of the most used simulation tools for wireless sensor networks. The comparison shows that our analysis results coincide with the simulation results by OMNeT++ in most cases although there are some differences caused the simplified wireless channel model in UPPAAL.
LivDet 2015 fingerprint liveness detection competition 2015

A spoof or fake is a counterfeit biometric that is used in an attempt to circumvent a biometric sensor. Liveness detection distinguishes between live and fake biometric traits. Liveness detection is based on the principle that additional information can be garnered above and beyond the data procured by a standard authentication system, and this additional data can be used to determine if a biometric measure is authentic. The Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet) goal is to compare both software-based and hardware-based fingerprint liveness detection methodologies. The competition is open to all academic and industrial institutions. The number of competitors grows at every LivDet edition demonstrating a growing interest in the area. In this edition eleven institutions have registered with twelve submissions for the software-based part and one for the hardware-based part.
The cycle spinning-based sharp frequency localized contourlet transform for image denoising

Contourlet transform provides flexible number of directions and captures the intrinsic geometrical structure of images. The efficient directional filter banks with low redundancy of contourlet are very attractive for image processing. However, non-ideal filters are used in the original contourlet transform, especially when combined with laplacian pyramid, which results in pseudo-Gibbs phenomena around singularities for image denoising. Sharp frequency localized contourlet transform (SFLCT) is a new construction contourlet to overcome this drawback by replacing the laplacian pyramid with a new multiscale decomposition which significantly improve the denoising performance than the original form. Unfortunately, the downsampling of SFLCT makes it lack translation invariance. Thus, we employ a cycle spinning (CS) method to improve the denoising performance of SFLCT, named as cycle spinning based SFLCT (CS-SFLCT), by averaging out the translation dependence. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed CS-SFLCT outperforms SFLCT, contourlet and cycle spinning-based contourlet for denoising in terms of PSNR and in visual effects.
Increased Durability of Concrete Made with Fine Recycled Concrete Aggregates Using Superplasticizers

This paper evaluates the influence of two superplasticizers (SP) on the durability properties of concrete made with fine recycled concrete aggregate (FRCA). For this purpose, three families of concrete were tested: concrete without SP, concrete made with a regular superplasticizer and concrete made with a high-performance superplasticizer. Five volumetric replacement ratios of natural sand by FRCA were tested: 0%, 10%, 30%, 50% and 100%. Two natural gravels were used as coarse aggregates. All mixes had the same particle size distribution, cement content and amount of superplasticizer. The w/c ratio was calibrated to obtain similar slump. The results showed that the incorporation of FRCA increased the water absorption by immersion, the water absorption by capillary action, the carbonation depth and the chloride migration coefficient, while the use of superplasticizers highly improved these properties. The incorporation of FRCA jeopardized the SP’s effectiveness. This research demonstrated that, from a durability point of view, the simultaneous incorporation of FRCA and high-performance SP is a viable sustainable solution for structural concrete production.
A Bingham plastic fluid model for multiple stenosed artery in the presence of magnetic field and slip velocity

This theoretical investigation is devoted to estimate the effect of flow characteristics of blood flowing through a multiple stenosed artery under transverse magnetic field. The non-Newtonian character of blood is taken into account considering the Bingham plastic fluid model of the blood for the presence of red cells (erythrocytes) in plasma. The likely presence of a slip (velocity discontinuity) at the flow boundaries is given due consideration introducing a velocity slip condition at the wall of artery. An extensive quantitative analysis has been carried out by performing large scale numerical computations of the flow variables having physiological and rheological significance. The pictorial representation of the effect on flow variables with the change in the value of parameters are shown with scientific discussion. The analysis bears the potential to explore a variety of information on the change of flow characteristics in the presence of velocity slip and an externally applied magnetic field.
Boosting of Image Denoising Algorithms

In this paper we propose a generic recursive algorithm for improving image denoising methods. Given the initial denoised image, we suggest repeating the following “SOS” procedure: (i) Strengthen the signal by adding the previous denoised image to the degraded input image, (ii) Operate the denoising method on the strengthened image, and (iii) Subtract the previous denoised image from the restored signal-strengthened outcome. The convergence of this process is studied for the K-SVD image denoising and related algorithms. Still in the context of K-SVD image denoising, we introduce an interesting interpretation of the SOS algorithm as a technique for closing the gap between the local patch-modeling and the global restoration task, thereby leading to improved performance. In a quest for the theoretical origin of the SOS algorithm, we provide a graph-based interpretation of our method, where the SOS recursive update effectively minimizes a penalty function that aims to denoise the image, while being regularized.
The Disappearing Cryosphere: Impacts and Ecosystem Responses to Rapid Cryosphere Loss

The cryosphere—the portion of the Earth's surface where water is in solid form for at least one month of the year—has been shrinking in response to climate warming. The extents of sea ice, snow, and glaciers, for example, have been decreasing. In response, the ecosystems within the cryosphere and those that depend on the cryosphere have been changing. We identify two principal aspects of ecosystem-level responses to cryosphere loss: (1) trophodynamic alterations resulting from the loss of habitat and species loss or replacement and (2) changes in the rates and mechanisms of biogeochemical storage and cycling of carbon and nutrients, caused by changes in physical forcings or ecological community functioning. These changes affect biota in positive or negative ways, depending on how they interact with the cryosphere. The important outcome, however, is the change and the response the human social system (infrastructure, food, water, recreation) will have to that change.
valuation of estimating daily maximum and minimum air temperature with ODIS data in east Africa

Real time and spatially distributed Ta (air temperature) data are desired for many applications. Ts (land surface temperature) derived from remote sensors has been used to estimate Ta in previous studies. Exploring MODIS Aqua Ts and station measured daily maximum and minimum Ta over east Africa, we found that Ts did not agree well with Ta during the day (MAE (Mean Absolute Error) = 6.9 ± 5.0 ◦C) but had better agreement during the night (MAE = 1.9 ± 1.7 ◦C). A stepwise linear regression method was applied to construct possible models to predict Ta based on MODIS data. Our results showed that, only considering elevation, high spatial resolution Ta could be obtained by simple linear models, with MAE = 1.9 ◦C, agreement index = 0.79 for daily maximum Ta, and MAE = 1.9 ◦C, agreement index = 0.92 for daily minimum Ta. MODIS Ts data could provide temporal variation information and slightly improve the accuracy ◦ of model predictions (by 0.2 C of MAE). However, considering (i) major absences (about 2/3 of days) of Ts data due to cloud cover and (ii) small Ta variations in time ( = 2.1 ◦C) over east Africa, models without Ts might be more practical in particular applications such as tsetse fly distribution models. Other variables including solar zenith angle, low level precipitable water content, and vegetation index (NDVI and EVI) were insignificant in the daily maximum and minimum Ta estimation models after elevation and Ts had already been considered as predictors.
Direct binding of RalA to PKCη and its crucial role in morphological change during keratinocyte differentiation

A small G protein, RalA, was identified as a binding partner of PKCη. The binding led to activation of RalA and actin depolymerization associated with keratinocyte differentiation. These results provide new insight into the molecular mechanism of cytoskeletal regulation that leads to drastic change of cell shape.
Dark Matter Subhalos and the Dwarf Satellites of the Milky Way

The Via Lactea simulation of the cold dark matter halo of the Milky Way predicts the existence of many thousands of bound subhalos with masses above 106 M☉, distributed approximately with equal mass per decade of mass. Here we show that (1) a similar steeply rising subhalo mass function is also present at redshift z = 0.5 in an elliptical-sized halo simulated with comparable resolution in a different cosmology. Compared to Via Lactea, this run produces nearly a factor of 2 more subhalos with large circular velocities; (2) the fraction of Via Lactea mass brought in by subhalos that have a surviving bound remnant today reaches 45%. Most of the Via Lactea mass is acquired in resolved discrete clumps, with no evidence for a significant smooth infall; (3) because of tidal mass loss, the number of subhalos surviving today that reached a peak circular velocity of >10 km s−1 throughout their lifetime exceeds half a thousand, 5 times larger than their present-day abundance; (4) unless the circular velocity profiles of Galactic satellites peak at values significantly higher that expected from the stellar line-of-sight velocity dispersion, only about one in five subhalos with Vmax > 20 km s−1 today must be housing a luminous dwarf; (5) nearly 600 halos with masses greater than 107M☉ are found today in the ``field'' between r200 and 1.5r200, i.e. small dark matter clumps appear to be relatively inefficient at forming stars even well beyond the virial radius; 6) the observed Milky Way satellites appear to follow the overall dark matter distribution of Via Lactea, while the largest simulated subhalos today are found preferentially at larger radii; (7) subhalos have central densities that increase with Vmax and reach ρDM = 0.1–0.3 M☉ pc−3, comparable to the central densities inferred in dwarf spheroidals with core radii >250 pc.
Unsupervised Cross-Domain Word Representation Learning

Meaning of a word varies from one domain to another. Despite this important domain dependence in word semantics, existing word representation learning methods are bound to a single domain. Given a pair of \emph{source}-\emph{target} domains, we propose an unsupervised method for learning domain-specific word representations that accurately capture the domain-specific aspects of word semantics. First, we select a subset of frequent words that occur in both domains as \emph{pivots}. Next, we optimize an objective function that enforces two constraints: (a) for both source and target domain documents, pivots that appear in a document must accurately predict the co-occurring non-pivots, and (b) word representations learnt for pivots must be similar in the two domains. Moreover, we propose a method to perform domain adaptation using the learnt word representations. Our proposed method significantly outperforms competitive baselines including the state-of-the-art domain-insensitive word representations, and reports best sentiment classification accuracies for all domain-pairs in a benchmark dataset.
Chapter 11 : Modeling Cellular Variability ∗

There are a number of reasons why phenotypical diversity may arise despite clonal genetics. Many of these are due to fluctuations in the environment–cells nearer to nutrient sources grow faster; those subjected to heat, light or other inputs will respond accordingly; and so on. But even cells in carefully controlled, homogenous environments can exhibit diversity, and a strong component of this diversity arises from the rare and discrete nature of genes and molecules involved in gene regulation. In particular, many genes have only one or two copies per cell and may be inactive for large portions of the cell cycle. The times at which these genes turn on or off depend upon many random or chaotic events, such as thermal motion, molecular competitions, and upstream fluctuations. To illustrate how diversity may arise despite identical genetics and initial conditions, Fig. 1 shows a cartoon of a simple gene regulatory system. At the initial time (Fig. 1A), the cell could have a single copy of an important gene, such as gfp (green fluorescent protein) and a single copy of an unstable activator molecule, A. The dynamics of the process is a race–will A bind and activate g first (Fig. 1C), or will A degrade before it has a chance to bind (Fig. 1B)? Although real biological systems are far more complex than this toy cartoon, the principles remain the same: genes may be ∗This chapter has been submitted for inclusion in Quantitative Biology From Molecular to Cellular Systems, Edited by Michael E. Wall at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and to be published by Taylor and Francis, Inc. Please contact Brian Munsky (brian.munskygmail.com) for an updated preprint and copyright information.
Selective Utilization of Exogenous Amino Acids by Dehalococcoides ethenogenes Strain 195 and Its Effects on Growth and Dechlorination Activity

ABSTRACT Bacteria of the genus Dehalococcoides are important members of bioremediation communities because of their ability to detoxify chloroethenes to the benign end product ethene. Genome-enabled studies conducted with Dehalococcoides ethenogenes 195 have revealed that two ATP-binding cassette (ABC)-type amino acid transporters are expressed during its exponential growth stages. In light of previous findings that Casamino Acids enhanced its dechlorination activity, we hypothesized that strain 195 is capable of importing amino acids from its environment to facilitate dechlorination and growth. To test this hypothesis, we applied isotopomer-based dilution analysis with 13C-labeled acetate to differentiate the amino acids that were taken up by strain 195 from those synthesized de novo and to determine the physiological changes caused by the significantly incorporated amino acids. Our results showed that glutamate/glutamine and aspartate/asparagine were almost exclusively synthesized by strain 195, even when provided in excess in the medium. In contrast, phenylalanine, isoleucine, leucine, and methionine were identified as the four most highly incorporated amino acids, at levels >30% of respective proteinogenic amino acids. When either phenylalanine or all four highly incorporated amino acids were added to the defined mineral medium, the growth rates, dechlorination activities, and yields of strain 195 were enhanced to levels similar to those observed with supplementation with 20 amino acids. However, genes for the putative ABC-type amino acids transporters and phenylalanine biosynthesis exhibited insignificant regulation in response to the imported amino acids. This study also demonstrates that using isotopomer-based metabolite analysis can be an efficient strategy for optimizing nutritional conditions for slow-growing microorganisms.
Randomized selection revisited

We show that several versions of Floyd and Rivest's algorithm Select for finding the $k$th smallest of $n$ elements require at most $n+\min\{k,n-k\}+o(n)$ comparisons on average and with high probability. This rectifies the analysis of Floyd and Rivest, and extends it to the case of nondistinct elements. Our computational results confirm that Select may be the best algorithm in practice.
Who is responsible? Toward a social psychology of responsibility attribution.

The currently dominant psychological model of responsibility attribution is criticized and expanded upon from a sociological perspective. It is argued that responsibility judgments entail consideration of both what the actor did and what the actor was supposed to do: i.e., both physical deeds and social roles. Including roles in a responsibility attribution model provides: (I) a coherent account of alternative meanings of responsibility itself; (2) a social psychological approach that is congruent with rules actually followed in adult sanctioning judgments; and (3) an opportunity for social psychologists to study the crucial dichotomy of authoritative versus subordinate roles. Roles are interpreted attributionally as normative contexts within which actions are evaluated, rather than as external or situational constraints on action. In general, it is suggested that accepting a role demand as normative may evoke a purposive attribution process, labeled here as ' 'motive grammar''; rejecting the role demand may be accompanied by a causal attribution process, "consequence grammar. " The paper concludes with suggestions for future research possibilities.
Hyperspectral image clustering using a novel efficient online possibilistic algorithm

In this paper a novel efficient online possibilistic clustering algorithm suitable for hyperspectral image clustering is proposed. The algorithm is an online version of the recently proposed adaptive possibilistic c-means (APCM) algorithm and inherits its basic advantage, that is the ability to adapt the involved parameters during its execution in order to track variations during the clustering formation. In addition, it embodies new procedures for creating new clusters or merging existing ones. The proposed algorithm is much more computationally efficient, compared to its batch ancestor with no degradation of the quality of the resulting clustering, while also, it compares favourably with other online related algorithms. Experimental results on a real data set corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Social innovation, reciprocity and contentious politics: Facing the socio-urban crisis in Ciutat Meridiana, Barcelona

Taking one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Barcelona as a paradigmatic case, the aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which contestation organised by sublocal grassroots movements in the context of the current urban crisis operates, both in terms of content and form of protest. Our thesis is that resident mobilisation in the neighbourhood of Ciutat Meridiana is expressive of a new cycle of (urban) social mobilisations in Spanish cities. In such mobilisations, more or less spontaneous initiatives which emerged to counteract the effects of the crisis at the community level are simultaneously serving as platforms for reciprocity and political contestation. Establishing a dialogue with the literature on social innovation, in this paper we claim that these micro-local urban practices are linked to broader social movements and thus play a fundamental role in the political empowerment of citizens living in highly segregated and vulnerable urban areas.
Delineating the Neural Signatures of Tracking Spatial Position and Working Memory during Attentive Tracking

In the attentive tracking task, observers track multiple objects as they move independently and unpredictably among visually identical distractors. Although a number of models of attentive tracking implicate visual working memory as the mechanism responsible for representing target locations, no study has ever directly compared the neural mechanisms of the two tasks. In the current set of experiments, we used electrophysiological recordings to delineate similarities and differences between the neural processing involved in working memory and attentive tracking. We found that the contralateral electrophysiological response to the two tasks was similarly sensitive to the number of items attended in both tasks but that there was also a unique contralateral negativity related to the process of monitoring target position during tracking. This signal was absent for periods of time during tracking tasks when objects briefly stopped moving. These results provide evidence that, during attentive tracking, the process of tracking target locations elicits an electrophysiological response that is distinct and dissociable from neural measures of the number of items being attended.