Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fundamental limits and scaling behavior of cooperative multicasting in wireless networks

A framework is developed for analyzing capacity gains from user cooperation in slow-fading wireless networks when the number of nodes (network size) is large. The framework is illustrated for the case of a simple multipath-rich Rayleigh-fading channel model. Both unicasting (one source and one destination) and multicasting (one source and several destinations) scenarios are considered. We introduce a meaningful notion of Shannon capacity for such systems, evaluate this capacity as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and develop a simple two-phase cooperative network protocol that achieves it. We observe that the resulting capacity is the same for both unicasting and multicasting, but show that the network size required to achieve any target error probability is smaller for unicasting than for multicasting. Finally, we introduce the notion of a network "scaling exponent" to quantify the rate of decay of error probability with network size as a function of the targeted fraction of the capacity. This exponent provides additional insights to system designers by enabling a finer grain comparison of candidate cooperative transmission protocols in even moderately sized networks.
Context-Aware Friend Recommendation for Location Based Social Networks using Random Walk

The location-based social networks (LBSN) facilitate users to check-in their current location and share it with other users. The accumulated check-in data can be employed for the benefit of users by providing personalized recommendations. In this paper, we propose a random walk based context-aware friend recommendation algorithm (RWCFR). RWCFR considers the current context (i.e. current social relations, personal preferences and current location) of the user to provide personalized recommendations. Our LBSN model is an undirected unweighted graph model that represents users, locations, and their relationships. We build a graph according to the current context of the user depending on this LBSN model. In order to rank the recommendation scores of the users for friend recommendation, a random walk with restart approach is employed. We compare RWCFR with popularity-based, friend-based and expert-based baseline approaches. According to the results, our friend recommendation algorithm outperforms these approaches in all the tests.
Terminated LDPC convolutional codes with thresholds close to capacity

An ensemble of LDPC convolutional codes with parity-check matrices composed of permutation matrices is considered. The convergence of the iterative belief propagation based decoder for terminated convolutional codes in the ensemble is analyzed for binary-input output-symmetric memoryless channels using density evolution techniques. We observe that the structured irregularity in the Tanner graph of the codes leads to significantly better thresholds when compared to corresponding LDPC block codes
Power Optimal Scheduling for Guaranteed Throughput in Multi-access Fading Channels

A power optimal scheduling algorithm that guarantees desired throughput and bounded delay to each user is developed for fading multi-access multi-band channels that can model many important practical systems including OFDM system and flat and frequency selective multi-access channels. The optimization is over the joint space of all rate allocation and coding strategies. The proposed scheduling assigns rates on each band based only on the current system state, and subsequently uses optimal multi-user signaling to achieve these rates. The scheduling is computationally simple, and hence scalable. Due to uplink-downlink duality, all the results extend in straightforward fashion to the broadcast channels.
Observations on the Survival of Leptospira Australis A in Soil and Water

Summary Soil from a sugar-cane farm in North Queensland was infected with leptospirae. In some instances a culture of Leptospira australis A was added to the soil; in others it was infected by rats, Rattus rattus, known to be excreting leptospirae in their urine. After periods ranging from 8 to 43 days, the soil was flooded with rain water which was subsequently examined for leptospirae by treating guinea-pigs according to the ‘subcutaneous stream’ technique. Leptospirae survived in culture-infected soil for 43 days and in urine-infected soil for 15 days prior to the addition of the rain water. They were recovered from the water at intervals ranging up to 24 days after the flooding of the soil. The infected soil was of pH 6·1–6·2, its moisture content where determined was 34 and 37%, and the prevailing temperature 20–29° C. The reaction of the infected water samples ranged from pH 6·6 to 7·6. The possible significance of these findings in relation to the epidemiology of leptospirosis in North Queensland is briefly discussed.
Multi-skill Collaborative Teams based on Densest Subgraphs

We consider the problem of identifying a team of skilled individuals for collaboration, in the presence of a social network. Each node in the social network may be an expert in one or more skills. Edge weights specify affinity or collaborative compatibility between respective nodes. Given a project that requires a set of specified number of skilled individuals in each area of expertise, the goal is to identify a team that maximizes the collaborative compatibility. For example, the requirement may be to form a team that has at least three databases experts and at least two theory experts. We explore team formation where the collaborative compatibility objective is measured as the density of the induced subgraph on selected nodes. The problem of maximizing density is NP-hard even when the team requires individuals of only one skill. We present a 3-approximation algorithm that improves upon a naive extension of the previously known algorithm for densest at least $k$ subgraph problem. We further show how the same approximation can be extended to a special case of multiple skills. Our problem generalizes the formulation studied by Lappas et al. [KDD '09] who measure team compatibility in terms of diameter or spanning tree costs. Experiments are performed on a crawl of the DBLP graph where individuals can be skilled in at most four areas - theory, databases, data mining, and artificial intelligence. In addition to our main algorithm, we also present heuristic extensions to trade off between the size of the solution and its induced density. These density-based algorithms outperform the diameter-based objective on several metrics for assessing the collaborative compatibility of teams. The solutions suggested are also intuitively meaningful and scale well with the increase in the number of skilled individuals required.
Giardia Cyst Wall Protein 1 Is a Lectin That Binds to Curled Fibrils of the GalNAc Homopolymer

The infectious and diagnostic stage of Giardia lamblia (also known as G. intestinalis or G. duodenalis) is the cyst. The Giardia cyst wall contains fibrils of a unique β-1,3-linked N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) homopolymer and at least three cyst wall proteins (CWPs) composed of Leu-rich repeats (CWPLRR) and a C-terminal conserved Cys-rich region (CWPCRR). Our goals were to dissect the structure of the cyst wall and determine how it is disrupted during excystation. The intact Giardia cyst wall is thin (∼400 nm), easily fractured by sonication, and impermeable to small molecules. Curled fibrils of the GalNAc homopolymer are restricted to a narrow plane and are coated with linear arrays of oval-shaped protein complex. In contrast, cyst walls of Giardia treated with hot alkali to deproteinate fibrils of the GalNAc homopolymer are thick (∼1.2 µm), resistant to sonication, and permeable. The deproteinated GalNAc homopolymer, which forms a loose lattice of curled fibrils, is bound by native CWP1 and CWP2, as well as by maltose-binding protein (MBP)-fusions containing the full-length CWP1 or CWP1LRR. In contrast, neither MBP alone nor MBP fused to CWP1CRR bind to the GalNAc homopolymer. Recombinant CWP1 binds to the GalNAc homopolymer within secretory vesicles of Giardia encysting in vitro. Fibrils of the GalNAc homopolymer are exposed during excystation or by treatment of heat-killed cysts with chymotrypsin, while deproteinated fibrils of the GalNAc homopolymer are degraded by extracts of Giardia cysts but not trophozoites. These results show the Leu-rich repeat domain of CWP1 is a lectin that binds to curled fibrils of the GalNAc homopolymer. During excystation, host and Giardia proteases appear to degrade bound CWPs, exposing fibrils of the GalNAc homopolymer that are digested by a stage-specific glycohydrolase.
Metabolic effects of sodium bicarbonate in hypoxic lactic acidosis in dogs.

The metabolic effects of NaHCO3 therapy in hypoxic lactic acidosis were evaluated in the anesthetized dog. Hypoxic lactic acidosis was induced by ventilating the dogs with a hypoxic gas mixture of 8% O2/92%N2, resulting in arterial PO2 of less than 30 mmHg, pH below 7.20, bicarbonate less than 12 mM, and lactate more than 7 mM. In this situation lactate accumulates because of overproduction of lactate by gut and carcass in the presence of a diminished capacity of the liver to extract lactate. After the development of hypoxic lactic acidosis the dogs were treated for 60 min with either NaHCO3 or NaCl or had no therapy. Sixty minutes of either treatment resulted in further declines of blood pH and bicarbonate that were similar in all three groups. NaHCO3-treated animals, however, showed an increase in blood lactate that were significantly higher than those treated with NaCl or those that had no therapy. This could be explained by a significantly higher gut lactate production with NaHCO3 therapy than in the NaCl-treated group. Concomitantly NaHCO3-treated animals showed a decrement in liver and gut blood flow that did not occur with NaCl treatment. Only NaHCO3 therapy was associated with a further decrease of liver intracellular pH, which could be attributed to both an increase in the CO2 load to the liver and increased tissue lactate levels, which were not observed with NaCl or no therapy. Additionally, liver lactate extraction was not improved by administration of NaHCO3 or NaCl. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Solid splenic masses: evaluation with 18F-FDG PET/CT.

UNLABELLED Our objective was to assess the role of (18)F-FDG PET/CT in the evaluation of solid splenic masses in patients with a known malignancy and in incidentally found lesions in patients without known malignancy. METHODS Two groups of patients were assessed: (a) 68 patients with known malignancy and a focal lesion on PET or a solid mass on CT portions of the PET/CT study; and (b) 20 patients with solid splenic masses on conventional imaging without known malignancy. The standard of reference was histology (n = 16) or imaging and clinical follow-up (n = 72). The lesion size, the presence of a single versus multiple splenic lesions, and the intensity of (18)F-FDG uptake expressed as a standardized uptake value (SUV) were recorded. The ratio of the SUV in the splenic lesion to the background normal splenic uptake was also calculated. These parameters were compared between benign and malignant lesions within each of the 2 groups of patients and between the 2 groups. RESULTS The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) of (18)F-FDG PET/CT in differentiating benign from malignant solid splenic lesions in patients with and without malignant disease were 100%, 100%, 100%, and 100% versus 100%, 83%, 80%, and 100%, respectively. In patients with known malignant disease, an SUV threshold of 2.3 correctly differentiated benign from malignant lesions with the sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV of 100%, 100%, 100%, and 100%, respectively. In patients without known malignant disease, false-positive results were due to granulomatous diseases (n = 2). CONCLUSION (18)F-FDG PET can reliably discriminate between benign and malignant solid splenic masses in patients with known (18)F-FDG-avid malignancy. It also appears to have a high NPV in patients with solid splenic masses, without known malignant disease. (18)F-FDG-avid splenic masses in patients without a known malignancy should be further evaluated as, in our series, 80% of them were malignant.
A Geometric Approach to Mapping Bitext Correspondence

The rst step in most corpus based mul tilingual NLP work is to construct a de tailed map of the correspondence between a text and its translation Several au tomatic methods for this task have been proposed in recent years Yet even the best of these methods can err by several typeset pages The Smooth Injective Map Recognizer SIMR is a new bitext map ping algorithm SIMR s errors are smaller than those of the previous front runner by more than a factor of Its robustness has enabled new commercial quality ap plications The greedy nature of the al gorithm makes it independent of memory resources Unlike other bitext mapping algorithms SIMR allows crossing corre spondences to account for word order dif ferences Its output can be converted quickly and easily into a sentence align ment SIMR s output has been used to align over megabytes of the Canadian Hansards for publication by the Linguistic
Demographics, clinical characteristics, and treatment of aggressive patients admitted to the acute behavioral unit of a community general hospital: a prospective observational study.

OBJECTIVE Aggressive patients are not uncommon in acute inpatient behavioral health units of general hospitals. Prior research identifies various predictors associated with aggressive inpatient behavior. This prospective observational study examines the demographic and clinical characteristics of aggressive inpatients and the routine medications these patients were receiving at discharge. METHOD Thirty-six adults diagnosed with a DSM-IV mental disorder who met 2 of 6 established inclusion criteria for high violence risk and a Clinical Global Impressions-Severity of Illness (CGI-S) scale score ≥ 4 were observed for a maximum of 28 days on the 23-bed case mix acute behavioral health unit of St Luke's University Hospital, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, from January 2012 to May 2013. Primary outcome measures were the Modified Overt Aggression Scale (MOAS) and CGI-S; secondary measures were symptom outcome measures and demographic and clinical characteristics data. Analysis was conducted using repeated measures methodology. RESULTS Younger males with a history of previous violence, psychiatric admissions, and symptoms of severe agitation were more at risk for aggressive behavior. Positive psychotic symptoms, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, substance use, and comorbid personality disorders also increased risk. Significant improvements from baseline to last visit were observed for the CGI-S and MOAS (P < .001 for both), with a significant correlation between the MOAS and CGI-S at last visit (P < .001). Only the symptom of agitation was significantly correlated to MOAS scores at both baseline and last visit (P < .001). CONCLUSION Patients significantly improved over time in both severity of illness and level of aggression.
Abnormal Neural Connectivity in Schizophrenia and fMRI-Brain-Computer Interface as a Potential Therapeutic Approach

Considering that single locations of structural and functional abnormalities are insufficient to explain the diverse psychopathology of schizophrenia, new models have postulated that the impairments associated with the disease arise from a failure to integrate the activity of local and distributed neural circuits: the “abnormal neural connectivity hypothesis. ” In the last years, new evidence coming from neuroimaging have supported and expanded this theory. However, despite the increasing evidence that schizophrenia is a disorder of neural connectivity, so far there are no treatments that have shown to produce a significant change in brain connectivity, or that have been specifically designed to alleviate this problem. Brain-Computer Interfaces based on real-time functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI-BCI) are novel techniques that have allowed subjects to achieve self-regulation of circumscribed brain regions. In recent studies, experiments with this technology have resulted in new findings suggesting that this methodology could be used to train subjects to enhance brain connectivity, and therefore could potentially be used as a therapeutic tool in mental disorders including schizophrenia. The present article summarizes the findings coming from hemodynamics-based neuroimaging that support the abnormal connectivity hypothesis in schizophrenia, and discusses a new approach that could address this problem.
Comparison of wintertime asphalt and concrete pavement surface temperatures on U.S. Route 40 near Heber, Utah.

Asphalt and concrete pavement surface temperatures were compared at a location on U.S. Route 40 in northern Utah where asphalt and concrete meet end to end at the base of the mountain pass. An environmental sensor station was installed to facilitate monitoring of asphalt and concrete pavement surface temperatures, as well as selected climatic variables, at the site. To compare the surface temperatures of the concrete and asphalt pavements during freezing conditions, multivariate regression analyses were performed on data collected during the three winter seasons from 2009 to 2012. Equations were generated for three response variables, including the asphalt surface temperature, concrete surface temperature, and difference in temperatures between the asphalt and concrete surfaces. The statistical models developed in the analyses show that the surface temperature of both asphalt and concrete pavement increases with increasing air temperature and decreases with increasing relative humidity and wind speed and that the difference in pavement temperatures decreases with decreasing air temperature. For the studied site, the data indicate that concrete pavement will experience freezing before asphalt pavement for all time periods except late afternoon, when the pavement types are predicted to freeze at the same air temperature. Therefore, for material properties and environmental conditions similar to those evaluated in this study, asphalt would require less winter maintenance, on average, than concrete. Due to the interactions among albedo, specific heat, and thermal conductivity, the actual thermal behavior of a given pavement will depend on the material properties and environmental conditions specific to the site.
Evidence for selection at multiple allozyme loci across a mussel hybrid zone.

The frequency and strength with which selection shapes patterns of genetic variation is unknown. Whereas all loci should be roughly equally affected by demography and population history, selected loci may exhibit increased or decreased genetic differentiation relative to neutral loci (Cavalli-Sforza 1966). Thus, one way to test for selection on a specific category of loci is to compare geographic differentiation of this particular category relative to a category presumed to be neutrally evolving (McDonald 1994; McDonald, Verrelli, and Geyer 1996). A number of recent studies have followed this approach, in particular comparing patterns of genetic differentiation at allozyme to nonallozyme loci. Where discordances between allozymes and other nuclear markers have been reported, less genetic partitioning has been observed for allozymes, consistent with balancing selection reducing differences among geographical populations (e.g., Karl and Avise 1992; Pogson, Mesa, and Boutilier 1995; Latta and Mitton 1997). Here, we report the reverse situation; geographic partitioning is greater at allozymes relative to nonallozyme loci across a mussel hybrid zone. Northern Hemisphere populations of the mussels Mytilus trossulus and Mytilus edulis are distinguished by nearly fixed allozyme allele frequency differences and some morphometric differences (McDonald, Seed, and Koehn 1991). Mytilus edulis is found throughout the northern Atlantic, whereas M. trossulus is found in three disjunct regions: the Pacific, Atlantic North America, and the Baltic Sea. A northern European hybrid zone between the Atlantic M. edulis and the Baltic Sea M. trossulus has been well described, based on allozyme surveys. A relatively sharp transition in mussel allozyme allele frequencies (over 100 km) occurs at the mouth of the Baltic with edulis-like alleles predominating in the Atlantic populations and trossulus-like alleles predominating in the Baltic. This pattern is particularly distinct for Aap, Est-D, Gpi, Lap, Mpi, and Pgm (Theison 1978; Bulnheim and Gosling 1988; Varvio, Koehn, and Vainola 1988; Vainola and Hvilsom 1991), and these loci, with the exception of Lap, are diagnostic between M. edulis and M. trossulus throughout the Northern Hemisphere (Varvio, Koehn, and Vainola 1988; McDonald, Seed, and Koehn 1991). Rapid clinal transitions in allele frequencies, in combination with significant linkage disequilibria (particularly involving Gpi, Lap, and Pgm), have supported the idea that this hybrid zone represents
Achievable rate analysis of relay assisted cooperative NOMA over Rician fading channels

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a key to multiple access techniques for the next generation 5G wireless communication networks. In this paper, to improve the performance gain of NOMA system, a cooperative fixed decode-and-forward (DF) relay system model based on NOMA (CRS-NOMA) is studied over Rician fading channels, considering the achievable rate of signals as the performance metric. In this technique, by exploiting the concept of NOMA, unlike the conventional method of cooperative relaying, the second time slot is also utilized for the realization of information sent from the transmitter end. Moreover, as the data symbols are transmitted by nodes with full power, the compulsion of complex power allocation coefficients is precluded. In conventional cooperative relaying systems, the receiver is only able to receive a single bit of information, while the receiver can reliably bring in two data symbols in two-time slots. In this regard, this scheme is able to acquire higher achievable rate performance than existing cooperative relaying schemes for larger channel powers over most of the transmit SNR regime. Furthermore, a mathematical expression is also derived for the total achievable rate of CRS-NOMA. The results are verified through Monte-Carlo simulations which validate accuracy and consistency of the derived analytical results.
Conceptual analysis of lexical taxonomies: the case of WordNet top-level

In this paper we propose an analysis and an upgrade of WordNet's top-level synset taxonomy. We briefly review WordNet and identify its main semantic limitations. Some principles from a forthcoming OntoClean methodology are applied to the ontological analysis of WordNet. A revised top-level taxonomy is proposed, which is meant to be more conceptually rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.