Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Capacity bounds for the Gaussian Interference Channel

The capacity region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel (IC) is studied. Two classes of channels are considered: weak and mixed Gaussian IC. For the weak Gaussian IC, a new outer bound on the capacity region is obtained that outperforms previously known outer bounds. The sum capacity for a certain range of channel parameters is derived. For this range, it is proved that using Gaussian codebooks and treating interference as noise is optimal. It is shown that when Gaussian codebooks are used, the full Han-Kobayashi (HK) achievable rate region can be obtained by using the naive HK achievable scheme over three frequency bands. For the mixed Gaussian IC, a new outer bound is obtained that outperforms previously known outer bounds. For this case, the sum capacity for the entire range of channel parameters is derived. It is proved that the full HK achievable rate region using Gaussian codebooks is equivalent to that of the one-sided Gaussian IC for a particular range of channel parameters.
Build-to-last

The emergence of low-cost 3D printers steers the investigation of new geometric problems that control the quality of the fabricated object. In this paper, we present a method to reduce the material cost and weight of a given object while providing a durable printed model that is resistant to impact and external forces. We introduce a hollowing optimization algorithm based on the concept of honeycomb-cells structure. Honeycombs structures are known to be of minimal material cost while providing strength in tension. We utilize the Voronoi diagram to compute irregular honeycomb-like volume tessellations which define the inner structure. We formulate our problem as a strength--to--weight optimization and cast it as mutually finding an optimal interior tessellation and its maximal hollowing subject to relieve the interior stress. Thus, our system allows to build-to-last 3D printed objects with large control over their strength-to-weight ratio and easily model various interior structures. We demonstrate our method on a collection of 3D objects from different categories. Furthermore, we evaluate our method by printing our hollowed models and measure their stress and weights.
Exploring the Roles of Complex Networks in Linguistic Categorization

This article adopts the category game model, which simulates the origins and evolution of linguistic categories in a group of artificial agents, to evaluate the effect of social structure on linguistic categorization. Based on the simulation results in a number of typical networks, we examine the isolating and collective effects of some structural features, including average degree, shortcuts, and level of centrality, on the categorization process. This study extends the previous simulations mainly on lexical evolution, and illustrates a general framework to systematically explore the effect of social structure on language evolution.
Web mining research: a survey

With the huge amount of information available online, the World Wide Web is a fertile area for data mining research. The Web mining research is at the cross road of research from several research communities, such as database, information retrieval, and within AI, especially the sub-areas of machine learning and natural language processing. However, there is a lot of confusions when comparing research efforts from different point of views. In this paper, we survey the research in the area of Web mining, point out some confusions regarded the usage of the term Web mining and suggest three Web mining categories. Then we situate some of the research with respect to these three categories. We also explore the connection between the Web mining categories and the related agent paradigm. For the survey, we focus on representation issues, on the process, on the learning algorithm, and on the application of the recent works as the criteria. We conclude the paper with some research issues.
Atraumatic splenic rupture secondary to chronic HIV infection

As patients infected with HIV live longer due to effective anti-retroviral therapy, new disease manifestations are becoming apparent. We describe the case of a 59-year-old patient who presented to our unit with atraumatic splenic rupture secondary to chronic HIV infection. Given the high mortality associated with atraumatic splenic rupture, we believe it should be included in the differential diagnosis of HIV-positive patients presenting with acute abdominal pain.
Lateralized processing in human auditory cortex during the perception of emotional prosody

The aim of the present fMRI-study was to investigate the influence of different word prosodies on the activation of the auditory cortex (AC) of 24 subjects. Pseudowords and semantically neutral words were presented with neutral prosody in experiment I and with emotional prosodies in experiment II. We applied two lexical tasks i.e. detecting words or pseudowords. The control task was to detect pure tones. In both studies there was a typical left lateralized activation for speech perception on planum temporale (T3). This territory as part of Wernicke’s area is specifically involved in speech perception. A right lateralization simply dependent on prosodic versus neutral content of speech stimuli, as suggested by some literature, is not supported by the current results. In our experiments the emotional information was task-irrelevant and even distracted from the lexical task. Namely, the performance in the detection of words and pseudowords was significantly better in the prosodically neutral condition. Thus, the current results contribute to the clarification of the controversial issue whether prosodies lateralize brain activation to the right, i.e. if lexical rather than prosodic information is in the focus of a task involving prosodic material, a right hemisphere dominance cannot be expected.
ELICITING MULTIPLE CHOICES: A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF INCENTIVES IN EXPERIMENTS

Experiments elicit choices from a given set of decision problems. When multiple decision problems are offered in the same experiment, however, behavior in one decision problem may be distorted by the choices made in others. In our terminology, this is a violation of incentive compatibility. We show that, when preferences respect stochastic dominance, the Random Decision Selection (RDS) mechanism that pays for one randomly-selected decision is essentially the only incentive compatible mechanism. If an experiment pays for multiple decisions, then a ‘no complementarities’ condition must be assumed. We summarize the implications for experimental design in Section II.
Enlargement of small, asymptomatic, unruptured intracranial aneurysms in patients with no history of subarachnoid hemorrhage: the different factors related to the growth of single and multiple aneurysms.

OBJECT This study was performed to investigate the risk factors related to the growth of small, asymptomatic, unruptured aneurysms in patients with no history of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). METHODS Between January 2005 and December 2010, a total of 508 patients in whom unruptured intracranial aneurysms were diagnosed at the University of California, Los Angeles medical center did not receive treatment to prevent rupture. Of these, 235 patients with no history of SAH who had asymptomatic, small, unruptured aneurysms (<7 mm) were monitored with 3D CT angiography images. Follow-up images of the lesions were used to measure aneurysm size changes. Patient medical history, family history of SAH, aneurysm size, and location were studied to find the risk factors associated with small aneurysm growth. RESULTS A total of 319 small aneurysms were included, with follow-up durations of 29.2±20.6 months. Forty-two aneurysms increased in size during the follow-up; 5 aneurysms grew to become ≥7 mm within 38.2±18.3 months. A trend of higher growth rates was found in single aneurysms than in multiple aneurysms (p=0.07). A history of stroke was the only factor associated with single aneurysm growth (p=0.03). The number of aneurysms (p=0.011), number of aneurysms located within the posterior circulation (p=0.030), and patient history of transient ischemic attack (p=0.044) were related to multiple aneurysm growth. CONCLUSIONS Multiple small aneurysms are more likely to grow, and multiple aneurysms located in the posterior circulation may require additional attention. Although single aneurysms have a lower risk of growth, a trend of higher growth rates in single aneurysms was found.
Order Invariance on Decomposable Structures

Order-invariant formulas access an ordering on a structure’s universe, but the model relation is independent of the used ordering. They are frequently used for logic-based approaches in computer science. Order-invariant formulas capture unordered problems of complexity classes and they model the independence of the answer to a database query from low-level aspects of databases. we study the expressive power of order-invariant monadic second-order (MSO) and first-order (FO) logic on restricted classes of structures that admit certain forms of tree decompositions (not necessarily of bounded width). While order-invariant MSO is more expressive than MSO and, even, CMSO (MSO with modulo-counting predicates) in general, we show that order-invariant MSO and CMSO are equally expressive on graphs of bounded tree width and on planar graphs. This extends an earlier result for trees due to Courcelle. Moreover, we show that all properties definable in order-invariant FO are also definable in MSO on these classes. These results are applications of a theorem that shows how to lift up definability results for order-invariant logics from the bags of a graph’s tree decomposition to the graph itself.
Multidimensional Euclidean Algorithms, Numeration and Substitutions

The aim of this survey is to discuss multidimensional continued fraction and Euclidean algorithms from the viewpoint of numeration systems, substitutions, and the symbolic dynamical systems they generate. We will mainly focus on two types of multidimensional algorithms, namely, unimodular Markovian ones which include the most classical ones like e.g. Jacobi-Perron algorithm, and algorithms issued from lattice reduction. We will discuss these algorithms motivated by the study of substitutive dynamical systems, symbolic dynamical systems with low complexity function, and discrete geometry.
A novel design of unitary space-time constellations

In this paper, we propose a novel method for creating constellations of unitary space-time signals for non-coherent multiple-antenna communication link, where neither the transmitter nor the receiver knows the fading coefficients. By employing a theorem for the Clarke subdifferential of the sum of the k largest singular values of the unitary matrix, we present a numerical optimization procedure for finding good constellations of unitary space-time signals and report the best constellations found by this procedure. These constellations of unitary space-time signal improve the performance significantly upon previously best known constellations.
Comparative Proteomic Analysis of Cultured Suspension Cells of the Halophyte Halogeton glomeratus by iTRAQ Provides Insights into Response Mechanisms to Salt Stress

Soil salinity severely threatens land use capability and crop yields worldwide. An analysis of the molecular mechanisms of salt tolerance in halophytes will contribute to the development of salt-tolerant crops. In this study, a combination of physiological characteristics and iTRAQ-based proteomic approaches was conducted to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the salt response of suspension cell cultures of halophytic Halogeton glomeratus. These cells showed halophytic growth responses comparable to those of the whole plant. In total, 97 up-regulated proteins and 192 down-regulated proteins were identified as common to both 200 and 400 mM NaCl concentration treatments. Such salinity responsive proteins were mainly involved in energy, carbohydrate metabolism, stress defense, protein metabolism, signal transduction, cell growth, and cytoskeleton metabolism. Effective regulatory protein expression related to energy, stress defense, and carbohydrate metabolism play important roles in the salt-tolerance of H. glomeratus suspension cell cultures. However, known proteins regulating Na+ efflux from the cytoplasm and its compartmentalization into the vacuole did not change significantly under salinity stress suggesting our existing knowledge concerning Na+ extrusion and compartmentalization in halophytes needs to be evaluated further. Such data are discussed in the context of our current understandings of the mechanisms involved in the salinity response of the halophyte, H. glomeratus.
The Potential of Electrospun Membranes in the Treatment of Textile Wastewater: A Review

Water security and industrial wastewater treatment are significant global concerns. One of the main issues with environmental contamination has been the discharge of dye wastewater from the textile and dye industries, contributing to an ever-growing problem with water pollution, poisoning water supplies, and harming the ecosystem. The traditional approach to wastewater treatment has been found to be inefficient, and biosorption techniques and mechanisms have been proven to be a successful replacement for conventional methods. Recent developments have led to the recognition of fibrous materials as an environmentally friendly option with broad application in several industries, including wastewater treatment. This review explores the potential of fibrous materials produced by the electrospinning technique as adsorbents for wastewater treatment, while at the same time, for the removal of adsorbates such as oil, dyes, heavy metals, and other substances, as reported in the literature. Textile wastewater filtering structures, produced by electrospinning, are summarized and the use of synthetic and natural polymers for this purpose is discussed. The limitations of electrospun textile wastewater filtering structures are also mentioned. Electrospun nanofibrous membranes appear to be a very promising route to filter textile wastewater and therefore contribute to water reuse and to reducing the contamination of water courses.
Negative Autoregulation by Fas Stabilizes Adult Erythropoiesis and Accelerates Its Stress Response

Erythropoiesis maintains a stable hematocrit and tissue oxygenation in the basal state, while mounting a stress response that accelerates red cell production in anemia, blood loss or high altitude. Thus, tissue hypoxia increases secretion of the hormone erythropoietin (Epo), stimulating an increase in erythroid progenitors and erythropoietic rate. Several cell divisions must elapse, however, before Epo-responsive progenitors mature into red cells. This inherent delay is expected to reduce the stability of erythropoiesis and to slow its response to stress. Here we identify a mechanism that helps to offset these effects. We recently showed that splenic early erythroblasts, ‘EryA’, negatively regulate their own survival by co-expressing the death receptor Fas, and its ligand, FasL. Here we studied mice mutant for either Fas or FasL, bred onto an immune-deficient background, in order to avoid an autoimmune syndrome associated with Fas deficiency. Mutant mice had a higher hematocrit, lower serum Epo, and an increased number of splenic erythroid progenitors, suggesting that Fas negatively regulates erythropoiesis at the level of the whole animal. In addition, Fas-mediated autoregulation stabilizes the size of the splenic early erythroblast pool, since mutant mice had a significantly more variable EryA pool than matched control mice. Unexpectedly, in spite of the loss of a negative regulator, the expansion of EryA and ProE progenitors in response to high Epo in vivo, as well as the increase in erythropoietic rate in mice injected with Epo or placed in a hypoxic environment, lagged significantly in the mutant mice. This suggests that Fas-mediated autoregulation accelerates the erythropoietic response to stress. Therefore, Fas-mediated negative autoregulation within splenic erythropoietic tissue optimizes key dynamic features in the operation of the erythropoietic network as a whole, helping to maintain erythroid homeostasis in the basal state, while accelerating the stress response.
Handover — Enabling Learning in Communication for Safety (HELiCS): a report on achievements at two hospital sites

Clinical handover is an area of critical concern, because deficiencies in handover pose a patient safety risk. Redesign of handover must allow for input from frontline staff to ensure that designs fit into existing practices and settings. The HELiCS (Handover — Enabling Learning in Communication for Safety) tool uses a “video‐reflexive” technique: handover encounters are videotaped and played back to the practitioners involved for analysis and discussion. Using the video‐reflexive process, staff of an emergency department and an intensive care unit at two different tertiary hospitals redesigned their handover processes. The HELiCS study gave staff greater insight into previously unrecognised clinical and operational problems, enhanced coordination and efficiency of care, and strengthened junior–senior communication and teaching. Our study showed that reflexive and “bottom‐up” handover redesign can produce outcomes that harbour local fit, practitioner ownership and (to date) sustainability.
On the impact of antenna correlation on the pilot-data balance in multiple antenna systems

We consider the uplink of a single cell single input multiple output (SIMO) system, in which the mobile stations use intra-cell orthogonal pilots to facilitate uplink channel estimation. In such systems, the problem of transmission power balancing between pilot and data is known to have a large impact on the mean square error (MSE) for the received signal and, consequently, on the achievable uplink data rate. In this paper, we derive a closed form expression of the MSE for the received signal as a function of the pilot and data power levels under a per-user sum pilot-data power constraint. As a major contribution, our model is developed for arbitrary channel covariance matrices and it enables us to study the impact of the number of antennas and antenna correlation structures, including the popular 3GPP spatial channel model. Numerical results suggest that the effect of the antenna spacing is limited, but the angle of arrival and angular spread have a strong and articulated impact on the MSE performance. Moreover, as the number of antennas at the base station grows large, we show that a higher percentage of the power budget should be allocated to pilot signals than with a lower number of antennas.
Parametric Verification and Test Coverage for Hybrid Automata using the inverse Method

Hybrid systems combine continuous and discrete behavior. Hybrid Automata are a powerful formalism for the modeling and verification of such systems. A common problem in hybrid system verification is the good parameters problem, which consists in identifying a set of parameter valuations which guarantee a certain behavior of a system. Recently, a method has been presented for attacking this problem for Timed Automata. In this paper, we show the extension of this methodology for hybrid automata with linear and affine dynamics. The method is demonstrated with a hybrid system benchmark from the literature.
Simrank++: query rewriting through link analysis of the clickgraph (poster)

We focus on the problem of query rewriting for sponsored search. We base rewrites on a historical click graph that records the ads that have been clicked on in response to past user queries. Given a query q, we first consider Simrank [2] as a way to identify queries similar to q, i.e., queries whose ads a user may be interested in. We argue that Simrank fails to properly identify query similarities in our application, and we present two enhanced versions of Simrank: one that exploits weights on click graph edges and another that exploits evidence. " We experimentally evaluate our new schemes against Simrank, using actual click graphs and queries form Yahoo! , and using a variety of metrics. Our results show that the enhanced methods can yield more and better query rewrites.
A ( Revised ) Survey of Approximate Methods for Solving Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes

Partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) are interesting because they provide a general framework for learning in the presence of multiple forms of uncertainty. We survey methods for learning within the POMDP framework. Because exact methods are intractable we concentrate on approximate methods. We explore two versions of the POMDP training problem: learning when a model of the POMDP is known, and the much harder problem of learning when a model is not available. The methods used to solve POMDPs are sometimes referred to as reinforcement learning algorithms because the only feedback provided to the agent is a scalar reward signal at each time step.
The effect of baicalin in a mouse model of retinopathy of prematurity

Baicalin is a flavonoid derived from the dried root of Scutellaria baicalensis. In this study, oxygen-induced retinopathy was used to characterize the anti-angiogenic properties of baicalin in mice. Pups were exposed to a hyperbaric oxygen environment to induce retinal angiogenesis and were subjected to intraperitoneal injection of baicalin. Avascular area, neovascular tufts, and neovascular lumens were quantified from digital images. Compared to the vehicle, baicalin clearly reduced the central avascular zone and the number of neovascular tufts and lumens. High-dose baicalin (10 mg/kg) significantly reduced the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), MMP-9, angiotensin II, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). These results show that baicalin is a powerful antiangiogenic compound that attenuates new vessel formation in the retina after systemic administration, and is a candidate substance for therapeutic inhibition of retinal angiogenesis. [BMB Reports 2015; 48(5): 271-276]
Time-averaged subspace methods for radar clutter texture retrieval

Subspace approaches have become popular in the last two decades for retrieving constant amplitude harmonics observed in white additive noise because they may exhibit superior resolution over the FFT-based methods, especially with short data records and closely spaced harmonics. We demonstrate that MUSIC and ESPRIT methods can also be applied when the harmonics are corrupted by white or wideband multiplicative noise. The application context is the retrieval of texture information from high resolution and low grazing angle radar clutter data affected by wideband colored speckle that is modeled as complex multiplicative noise. Texture information is fundamental for clutter cancellation and constant false alarm rate (CFAR) radar detection. A thorough numerical analysis compares the two subspace methods and validates the theoretical findings.