Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimizing Orthogonal Multiple Access Based on Quantized Channel State Information

The performance of systems where multiple users communicate over wireless fading links benefits from channel-adaptive allocation of the available resources. Different from most existing approaches that allocate resources based on perfect channel state information, this work optimizes channel scheduling along with per user rate and power loadings over orthogonal fading channels, when both terminals and scheduler rely on quantized channel state information. Channel-adaptive policies are designed to optimize an average transmit-performance criterion subject to average quality of service requirements. While the resultant optimal policy per fading realization shows that the individual rate and power loadings can be obtained separately for each user, the optimal scheduling is slightly more complicated. Specifically, per fading realization each channel is allocated either to a single (winner) user, or to a small group of winner users whose fraction of shared resources is found by solving a linear program. This bimodal scheduling is also the optimal one when the channels are deterministic. A single scheduling scheme combining both alternatives (modes) becomes possible by smoothing the original disjoint scheme. The smooth scheduling is asymptotically optimal and incurs reduced computational complexity. Different alternatives to obtain the Lagrange multipliers required to implement the channel-adaptive policies are proposed, including stochastic iterations that are provably convergent and do not require knowledge of the channel distribution.
Mode of Effective Connectivity within a Putative Neural Network Differentiates Moral Cognitions Related to Care and Justice Ethics

Background Moral sensitivity refers to the interpretive awareness of moral conflict and can be justice or care oriented. Justice ethics is associated primarily with human rights and the application of moral rules, whereas care ethics is related to human needs and a situational approach involving social emotions. Among the core brain regions involved in moral issue processing are: medial prefrontal cortex, anterior (ACC) and posterior (PCC) cingulate cortex, posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), insula and amygdala. This study sought to inform the long standing debate of whether care and justice moral ethics represent one or two different forms of cognition. Methodology/Principal Findings Model-free and model-based connectivity analysis were used to identify functional neural networks underlying care and justice ethics for a moral sensitivity task. In addition to modest differences in patterns of associated neural activity, distinct modes of functional and effective connectivity were observed for moral sensitivity for care and justice issues that were modulated by individual variation in moral ability. Conclusions/Significance These results support a neurobiological differentiation between care and justice ethics and suggest that human moral behavior reflects the outcome of integrating opposing rule-based, self-other perspectives, and emotional responses.
Metrics for Evaluating Human-Robot Interactions

Metrics for evaluating the quality of a human-robot interface are introduced. The autonomy of a robot is measured by its neglect time. The robot attention demand metric measures how much of the user’s attention is involved with instructing a robot. The free-time and fan-out metrics are two ways to measure this demand. Each of them leads to estimates of the interaction effort. Reducing interaction effort without diminishing task effectiveness is the goal of human-robot interaction design.
Determination of Optimal Distortion-Based Protection in Progressive Image Transmission: a Heuristic Approach

In this paper a method for the fast determination of distortion-based optimal unequal error protection (UEP) of bitstreams generated by embedded image coders is described. The UEP problem is reduced to the more general problem of finding a path in a graph, where each path of the graph represents a possible protection policy and the best path is that one inducing minimal distortion. The problem is combinatorially complex and excludes a brute force approach. The solution is provided by applying heuristic information from the problem domain to reduce search complexity. In particular, we use graph search procedure A, well known in the field of artificial intelligence, to avoid exhaustive search. Numerical results show that this technique outperforms the methods presented in [1], [2], in terms of mean square error (MSE) distortion and computational complexity.
A Model for Notification Systems Evaluation – Capturing User Goals for Multitasking Activity

Addressing the need to tailor usability evaluation methods (UEMs) and promote effective reuse of HCI knowledge for computing activities undertaken in divided-attention situations, we present the foundations of a unifying model that can guide evaluation efforts for notification systems. Often implemented as ubiquitous systems or within a small portion of the traditional desktop, notification systems typically deliver information of interest in a parallel, multitasking approach, extraneous or supplemental to a user’s attention priority. Such systems represent a difficult challenge to meaningfully evaluate. We introduce a design model of user goals based on blends of three critical parameters—interruption, reaction, and comprehension. Categorization possibilities form a logical, descriptive design space for notification systems, rooted in human information processing theory. This model allows conceptualization of distinct action models for at least eight classes of notification systems, which we describe and analyze with a human information processing model. System classification regions immediately suggest useful empirical and analytical evaluation metrics from related literature. We presents a case study that demonstrates how these techniques can assist an evaluator in adapting traditional UEMs for notification systems and other multitasking systems. We explain why using the design model categorization scheme was able to generate evaluation results that are more relevant for the system redesign than the results of the original exploration done by the designers of the system.
Colored Trails : A Formalism for Investigating Decision-making in Strategic Environments

Colored Trails is a research testbed for analyzing decision-making strategies of individuals or of teams. It enables the development and testing of strategies for automated agents that operate in groups that include people as well as computer agents. The testbed is based on a conceptually simple but highly expressive game in which players, working individually or in teams, make decisions about how to deploy their resources to achieve their individual or team goals. The complexity of the setting may be increased along several dimensions by varying the system parameters. The game has direct analogues to real-world task settings, making it likely that results obtained using Colored Trails will transfer to other domains. We describe several studies carried out using the formalism, which investigated the effect of different social settings on the negotiation strategies of both people and computer agents. Using machine learning, results from some of these studies were used to train computer agents. These agents outperformed other computer agents that used traditional game theoretic reasoning to guide their behavior, showing that CT provides a better basis for the design of computer agents in these types of settings.
A literature review and update on the incidence and microbiology spectrum of postcataract surgery endophthalmitis over past two decades in India

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review the incidence and microbiology of acute postcataract surgery endophthalmitis in India. Methods: Systematic review of English-language PubMed referenced articles on endophthalmitis in India published in the past 21 years (January 1992–December 2012), and retrospective chart review of 2 major eye care facilities in India in the past 5 years (January 2010–December 2014) were done. The incidence data were collected from articles that described “in-house” endophthalmitis and the microbiology data were collected from all articles. Both incidence and microbiological data of endophthalmitis were collected from two large eye care facilities. Case reports were excluded, except for the articles on cluster infection. Results: Six of 99 published articles reported the incidence of “in-house” acute postcataract surgery endophthalmitis, 8 articles reported the microbiology spectrum, and 11 articles described cluster infection. The clinical endophthalmitis incidence was between 0.04% and 0.15%. In two large eye care facilities, the clinical endophthalmitis incidence was 0.08% and 0.16%; the culture proven endophthalmitis was 0.02% and 0.08%. Gram-positive cocci (44%-64.8%; commonly, Staphylococcus species), and Gram-negative bacilli (26.2%–43%; commonly Pseudomonas species) were common bacteria in south India. Fungi (16.7%-70%; commonly Aspergillus flavus) were the common organisms in north India. Pseudomonas aeruginosa (73.3%) was the major organism in cluster infections. Conclusions: The incidence of postcataract surgery clinical endophthalmitis in India is nearly similar to the world literature. There is a regional difference in microbiological spectrum. A registry with regular and uniform national reporting will help formulate region specific management guidelines.
Novel GαS-Protein Signaling Associated with Membrane-Tethered Amyloid Precursor Protein Intracellular Domain

Numerous physiological functions, including a role as a cell surface receptor, have been ascribed to Alzheimer's disease-associated amyloid precursor protein (APP). However, detailed analysis of intracellular signaling mediated by APP in neurons has been lacking. Here, we characterized intrinsic signaling associated with membrane-bound APP C-terminal fragments, which are generated following APP ectodomain release by α- or β-secretase cleavage. We found that accumulation of APP C-terminal fragments or expression of membrane-tethered APP intracellular domain results in adenylate cyclase-dependent activation of PKA (protein kinase A) and inhibition of GSK3β signaling cascades, and enhancement of axodendritic arborization in rat immortalized hippocampal neurons, mouse primary cortical neurons, and mouse neuroblastoma. We discovered an interaction between BBXXB motif of APP intracellular domain and the heterotrimeric G-protein subunit GαS, and demonstrate that GαS coupling to adenylate cyclase mediates membrane-tethered APP intracellular domain-induced neurite outgrowth. Our study provides clear evidence that APP intracellular domain can have a nontranscriptional role in regulating neurite outgrowth through its membrane association. The novel functional coupling of membrane-bound APP C-terminal fragments with GαS signaling identified in this study could impact several brain functions such as synaptic plasticity and memory formation.
Quasinormal modes of plane-symmetric black holes according to the AdS/CFT correspondence

The electromagnetic and gravitational quasinormal spectra of (3+1)-dimensional plane-symmetric anti-de Sitter black holes are analyzed in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. According to such a correspondence, the electromagnetic and gravitational quasinormal frequencies of these black holes are associated respectively to the poles of retarded correlation functions of R-symmetry currents and stress-energy tensor in the holographically dual conformal field theory: the (2+1)-dimensional = 8 super-Yang-Mills theory. The connection between AdS black holes and the corresponding field theory is used to unambiguously fix the boundary conditions that enter the proper definition of quasinormal modes. Such a procedure also helps one to decide, among the various different possibilities, what are the appropriate gauge-invariant quantities one should use in order to correctly describe the electromagnetic and gravitational blackhole perturbations. These choices imply in different dispersion relations for the quasinormal modes when compared to some of the results in the literature. In particular, the long-distance, low-frequency limit of dispersion relations presents the characteristic hydrodynamic behavior of a conformal field theory with the presence of diffusion, shear, and sound wave modes. There is also a family of purely damped electromagnetic modes which tend to the bosonic Matsubara frequencies in the long-wavelength regime.
The agrarian question and violence in Colombia: conflict and development

This article examines connections between Colombia’s internal armed conflict and agrarian questions. It pays attention to the country’s specific historical trajectory of agrarian change, the violent expression of social tensions that this elicited, and the particular ways in which these dynamics were influenced by a changing global context.This analysis of the intimate ties between violent conflict and agrarian questions in Colombia, both in terms of their historical development and their contemporary manifestations, challenges popular notions of the relationship between armed conflict and development. In particular, the article contributes to a critique of the conventional version of the conflict–development nexus by illustrating ways in which the experience of capitalist development in Colombia has been violent and produced poverty.
Estimating the Border Effect: Some New Evidence

To what extent do national borders and national currencies impose costs that segment markets across countries? To answer this question the authors use a dataset with product-level retail prices and wholesale costs for a large grocery chain with stores in the United States and Canada. They develop a model of pricing by location and employ a regression discontinuity approach to estimate and interpret the border effect. They report three main facts: One, the median absolute retail price and wholesale cost discontinuities between adjacent stores on either side of the U.S.-Canadian border are as high as 21 percent. In contrast, within-country border discontinuity is close to 0 percent. Two, the variation in the retail price gap at the border is almost entirely driven by variation in wholesale costs, not by variation in markups. Three, the border gaps in prices and costs co-move almost one-to-one with changes in the U.S.-Canadian nominal exchange rate. They show these facts suggest that the price gaps they estimate provide only a lower bound on border costs.
The small leucine rich proteoglycan fibromodulin is overexpressed in human prostate epithelial cancer cell lines in culture and human prostate cancer tissue.

BACKGROUND Fibromodulin is a small leucine-rich proteoglycan important for extracellular matrix organization and essential for tissue repair in multiple organs. The main function of this proteoglycan is the regulation of collagen fibrillogenesis; however, more recently described roles for fibromodulin have expanded to include regulation of angiogenesis, reprogramming of human fibroblasts into pluripotent cells, modulation of TGF-β activity, inflammatory processes and association with metastatic phenotypes. Additionally, fibromodulin has been identified as a novel tumor-associated antigen in leukemia, lymphoma, and leiomyoma. Knowledge about its expression in the prostate is limited. METHODS Fibromodulin expression was analyzed in two different malignant and one non-tumorigenic prostatic cell lines in culture, and in benign and malignant human prostate tissue. Expression was analyzed by real time PCR, immunocytochemistry, and immunohistochemistry. DNA sequencing was performed on a PCR fragment amplified with primers specific for the FMOD gene from cDNA obtained from the cultured cell lines. RESULTS Both immunostaining and real time PCR analysis of cell lines indicated that fibromodulin was differentially expressed in the cancerous cell lines compared to the non-tumorigenic cell line. Likewise, cancerous tissue expressed significantly higher levels of intracellular fibromodulin compared to matched, benign tissue from the same patients, as well as compared to tissue from patients with only benign disease. CONCLUSIONS The expression of fibromodulin was higher in prostatic cancer cells (cell-lines and human tissue) than in normal/benign prostatic cells. Additional studies are required to determine the biological and clinical significance and whether this proteoglycan has a role in carcinogenesis of the prostate or in prostate cancer related inflammatory processes.
Microbiome: Should we diversify from diversity?

ABSTRACT Studies on microbiome diversity are flooding the current literature, yet lessons from ecology clearly demonstrate that diversity is just one factor to consider when analyzing an ecosystem, along with its stability, structure and function. Measures of diversity may be a useful tool for interpreting metagenomic data but the question remains as to how informative they are and what insight they may provide into the state of the microbiome. A study utilizing mathematical modeling to investigate the ecological dynamics of microbial communities has shown that diversity and stability may not always be concomitant. This finding is pertinent to the gut microbiome field, especially since diversity comparisons between healthy and pathological states frequently yield contradictory results. There is a need to broaden our approach to the analysis of microbiome data if we are to better understand this complex ecological community and its role in human health and disease.
Developmental Events Associated with the Critical Stage for Sex Determination in Wild‐Rice Florets

The developmental events of florets and a critical stage for sex determination in two wild‐rice populations (Zizania palustris cv. Franklin and Zizania palustris cv. K‐2Pi) have been identified. Formation of bisexual florets precedes the development of both male and female florets. Developmental indicators, established by measuring the length of florets and panicles, indicate that the critical stage for sex determination occurs when floret and panicle lengths are 1–2 mm and 3 cm, respectively. The stage of floret development at which sex determination occurs is the same in the two investigated wild‐rice populations. Organ suppression in bisexual florets is an essential step for sex determination during the formation of unisexual florets. Histological examination of suppressed stamens or pistils in unisexual florets of wild‐rice indicates that cell death does not occur during sex determination. In addition, the length of anthers and pistils in bisexual florets indicates that floral development in the transition zone is normal when compared with the male florets in the male spikelets and female florets in the female spikelets.
Deadline Missing Prediction Through the Use of Milestones

Distributed Real-Time Thread is an important concept for distributed real-time systems. Distributed Threads are schedulable entities with an end-to-end deadline that transpose nodes, carrying their scheduling context. In each node, the thread will be locally scheduled according to a local deadline, which is defined by a deadline partitioning algorithm. Mechanisms for predicting the missing of deadlines are fundamental if corrective actions are incorporated for improving system quality of service. In this work, a mechanism for predicting missing deadlines is proposed and evaluated through simulation. In order to illustrate the main characteristics of the proposed mechanism, experiments will be presented taking into account different scenarios of normal load and overload. Simulations show that the deadline missing prediction mechanism proposed presents good results for improving the overall performance and availability of distributed systems.
Metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 activity generates persistent, N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate receptor‐dependent depression of hippocampal pyramidal cell excitability

Metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) are involved in many forms of neuronal plasticity. In the hippocampus, they have well‐defined roles in long‐lasting forms of both synaptic and intrinsic plasticity. Here, we describe a novel form of long‐lasting intrinsic plasticity that we call (S)‐3,5‐dihydroxyphenylglycine (DHPG)‐mediated long‐term depression of excitability (DHPG‐LDE), and which is generated following transient pharmacological activation of group I mGluRs. In extracellular recordings from hippocampal slices, DHPG‐LDE was expressed as a long‐lasting depression of antidromic compound action potentials (cAPs) in CA1 or CA3 cells following a 4‐min exposure to the group I mGluR agonist (S)‐DHPG. A similar phenomenon was also seen for orthodromic fibre volleys evoked in CA3 axons. In single‐cell recordings from CA1 pyramids, DHPG‐LDE was manifest as persistent failures in antidromic action potential generation. DHPG‐LDE was blocked by (S)‐(+)‐a‐amino‐4‐carboxy‐2‐methylbenzeneacetic acid (LY367385), an antagonist of mGluR1, but not 2‐methyl‐6‐(phenylethynyl)pyridine hydrochloride (MPEP), an mGluR5 inhibitor. Although insensitive to antagonists of α‐amino‐3‐hydroxyl‐5‐methyl‐4‐isoxazole‐propionate/kainate and γ‐aminobutyric acidA receptors, DHPG‐LDE was blocked by antagonists of N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (NMDA) receptors. Similarly, in single‐cell recordings, DHPG‐mediated antidromic spike failures were eliminated by NMDA receptor antagonism. Long after (S)‐DHPG washout, DHPG‐LDE was reversed by mGluR1 antagonism. A 4‐min application of (S)‐DHPG also produced an NMDA receptor‐dependent persistent depolarization of CA1 pyramidal cells. This depolarization was not solely responsible for DHPG‐LDE, because a similar level of depolarization elicited by raising extracellular K+ increased the amplitude of the cAP. DHPG‐LDE did not involve HCN channels or protein synthesis, but was eliminated by blockers of protein kinase C or tyrosine phosphatases.
Consensus at the Heart of Division: Commentary on Norton and Ariely (2011)

We argue that seemingly deep-seated partisan divisions may be built on a foundation of surprising consensus, not only in terms of the wealth distributions that people prefer (Norton & Ariely, 2011, this issue), but also in the gut-level moral reactions and beliefs about money and happiness that may underlie those preferences.
Identification of an epidemic strain of group C Neisseria meningitidis by bactericidal serotyping.

One hundred forty-three strains isolated from cases of diseases due to Group C meningococci in Army recruits and in civilians between 1964 and 1970 have been serotyped by means of a bactericidal assay. Six serotypes were identified. The predominance of serotype 2 strains during epidemics at Fort Dix, New Jersey (42 of 47 strains) and Fort Lewis, Washington (15 of 23 strains) and the increasing prevalence of serotype 2 in cases both at other recruit training centers and among civilians, strongly suggest the existence of an epidemic strain of Group C meningococcus. Ninety-four percent of serotype 2 strains were reistant to sulfadiazine; in contrast, only 996 of serotype 1 and 5296 of serotype 4 were resistant. The serotype and the degree of susceptibility of sulfadiazine serve as two markers identifying an epidemic strain of Neisseria meningitidis.