Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analog Iterative LDPC Decoder Based on Margin Propagation

A margin propagation (MP) algorithm that can be used for implementing analog decoders for low-density parity check (LDPC) codes is presented. Unlike conventional sum-product analog decoders that rely on translinear operation of transistors, MP decoders use addition, subtraction and threshold operations, and therefore can be mapped onto different analog circuit topologies (current-mode, charge-mode, or nonelectronic circuits). This brief describes salient properties of the MP decoding algorithm and compares its performance to the sum-product and the min-sum (MS) decoding algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that MP based LDPC decoders achieve nearly an identical bit error rate performance as their sum-product counterparts and achieve superior performance as compared to the MS decoding algorithm. Results presented in this brief also demonstrate that, when messages in LDPC decoding are corrupted by additive noise, the MP decoding algorithm delivers superior performance compared to its sum-product and MS counterparts.
Acoustic Feedback Cancellation in hearing aids using two microphones employing variable step size affine projection algorithms

Affine projection algorithms (APA) have been widely employed for acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) since they provide a natural trade-off between convergence speed and computational complexity. However, their application in Acoustic Feedback Cancellation (AFC) in hearing aids so far has been limited due to lack of performance improvement in one microphone settings. A two microphone technique was recently proposed to provide an improved cancellation for a larger class of input signals. This paper proposes to use APA in the two microphone closed-loop feedback cancellation. It is shown that APA has significantly improved the misalignment and maximum stable gain of the system. Moreover, a new variable Gaussian step-size control (VGSS) for APA is also proposed. The simulation results indicate an improvement in convergence speed of the proposed algorithms as compared to previously suggested methods.
Letter by Klein Regarding Article, "Evaluation of Dose-Related Effects of Aspirin on Platelet Function: Results From the Aspirin-Induced Platelet Effect (ASPECT) Study"

A few issues are worthmentioning.The overall compliance rate for daily aspirin therapy was stated tobe 98%. For this 3-period/3-treatment arm crossover long-termoutpatient study, the almost ideal adherence to aspirin that wasachievedisdifferentthanthatfrommanypreviouslyreportedclinicalstudies. It is well-established that lack of compliance represents thelargest practical obstacle for the success of antiplatelet therapy,particularly for aspirin. Minor bleeding events result in unreportedwithdrawal from antiplatelet medication. These adverse events can-not be avoided in studies designed like the ASPECT study. A recentmeta-analysis of 10 antiplatelet prevention studies suggested that therange of noncompliance is 12% to 52% in all patients, with only 3%to 21% due to drug-induced adverse events.
Characterization of landscape patterns of deforestation in tropical rain forests

Patterns due to clearance and cultivation in the tropical rain forest are analysed and interpreted using high resolution remote sensing data. Within a wide variety of pattern indices, some are selected on statistical criteria to enable a cross-site comparison over different sites around the tropical belt and to monitor the landscape dynamics on one of them. The in-site variability of these indices is analysed to identify several landscape patterns of distinct land uses and to stratify the image on different landscape patterns. A cross site comparison reveals high differences of deforestation patterns between sites in terms of landscape configuration and complexity, of distribution and isolation of patches, and of degree of fragmentation. And the monitoring of landscape dynamic on a Brazilian site shows tremendous changes over the last 25 years and landscape pattern indices help to identify trends and quantify landscape changes: percentage forest decreases with forest cover, while Matheron index increases with fragmentation of landscape and fractal index increases with complexity of landscape pattern. Thus landscape pattern indices provide useful quantification to better analyse in-site variability, cross site comparison and changes over time.
Karinya Indian Swamp Cultivation in the Venezuelan Llanos

A s students of traditional systems of tropical agriculture, we _£\ have been impressed by the absence today of permanent methods of cultivation in the lowland tropics of the New World in contrast to the Old World tropics where there is a great diversity of intensive systems, often on very marginal land. We are now fairly well convinced that the preeminence of shifting cultivation in contemporary tropical Middle and South America reflects the lack of population pressure and the consequent availability of vast, mostly unoccupied, forested lands. However, the pre-Columbian situation in many tropical areas was quite different, as is evidenced by apparently dense populations1 and by numerous relic fields, including terraces in the eastern Andes and Yucatán and ridged fields in poorly drained savannas.2 It is likely that various other forms of intensive tropical agriculture once existed which were given up following massive depopulation, leaving no visible remains.
Phylogeography of the ant Myrmica rubra and its inquiline social parasite

Widely distributed Palearctic insects are ideal to study phylogeographic patterns owing to their high potential to survive in many Pleistocene refugia and—after the glaciation—to recolonize vast, continuous areas. Nevertheless, such species have received little phylogeographic attention. Here, we investigated the Pleistocene refugia and subsequent postglacial colonization of the common, abundant, and widely distributed ant Myrmica rubra over most of its Palearctic area, using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The western and eastern populations of M. rubra belonged predominantly to separate haplogroups, which formed a broad secondary contact zone in Central Europe. The distribution of genetic diversity and haplogroups implied that M. rubra survived the last glaciation in multiple refugia located over an extensive area from Iberia in the west to Siberia in the east, and colonized its present areas of distribution along several routes. The matrilineal genetic structure of M. rubra was probably formed during the last glaciation and subsequent postglacial expansion. Additionally, because M. rubra has two queen morphs, the obligately socially parasitic microgyne and its macrogyne host, we tested the suggested speciation of the parasite. Locally, the parasite and host usually belonged to the same haplogroup but differed in haplotype frequencies. This indicates that genetic differentiation between the morphs is a universal pattern and thus incipient, sympatric speciation of the parasite from its host is possible. If speciation is taking place, however, it is not yet visible as lineage sorting of the mtDNA between the morphs.
Stress transfer by the 1988–1989 M = 5.3 and 5.4 Lake Elsman foreshocks to the Loma Prieta fault: Unclamping at the site of peak mainshock slip

We study the stress transferred by the June 27, 1988, M = 5.3 and August 8, 1989, M = 5.4 Lake Elsman earthquakes, the largest events to strike within 15 km of the future Loma Prieta rupture zone during 74 years before the 1989 M = 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake. We find that the first Lake Elsman event brought the rupture plane of the second event 0.3–1.6 bars (0.03–0.16 MPa) closer to Coulomb failure but that the Lake Elsman events did not bring the future Loma Prieta hypocentral zone closer to failure. Instead, the Lake Elsman earthquakes are calculated to have reduced the normal stress on (or “undamped”) the Loma Prieta rupture surface by 0.5–1.0 bar (0.05–0.10 MPa) at the site where the greatest slip subsequently occurred in the Loma Prieta earthquake. This association between the sites of peak unclamping and slip suggests that the Lake Elsman events did indeed influence the Loma Prieta rupture process. Unclamping the fault would have locally lowered the resistance to sliding. Such an effect could have been enhanced if the lowered normal stress permitted fluid infusion into the undamped part of the fault. Although less well recorded, the ML = 5.0 1964 and ML = 5.3 1967 Corralitos events struck within 10 km of the southwest end of the future Loma Prieta rupture. No similar relationship between the normal stress change and subsequent Loma Prieta slip is observed, although the high-slip patch southwest of the Loma Prieta epicenter corresponds roughly to the site of calculated Coulomb stress increase for a low coefficient of friction. The Lake Elsman-Loma Prieta result is similar to that for the 1987 M = 6.2 Elmore Ranch and M = 6.7 Superstition Hills earthquakes, suggesting that foreshocks might influence the distribution of mainshock slip rather than the site of mainshock nucleation.
Infilling of the Younger Kathmandu–Banepa intermontane lake basin during the Late Quaternary (Lesser Himalaya, Nepal): a sedimentological study

The Kathmandu and Banepa Basins, Central Nepal, are located in a large syncline of the Lesser Himalayas. The Older Kathmandu Lake evolved during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene; the Younger Kathmandu Lake, which is the focus of this study, is infilled with late Quaternary sediments. Three formations, arranged in stratigraphical order, the Kalimati, Gokarna and Thoka Formations formed during the infilling stage of this lacustrine basin. Structural and textural sedimentological analyses, a chemical survey across the basin and mineralogical investigations of fine‐grained sediments form the basis of this palaeogeographical study. The basin under investigation was covered by a perennial freshwater lake before 30 000 yr BP. The lake was infilled with alluvial and fluvial sediments delivered mainly from the mountains north of the basin. A fairly low gradient was favourable for the formation of diatomaceous earths, carbonaceous mudstones and siltstones, which were laid down in the centre of the lake and in small ponds. Towards the basin edge, lacustrine sediments gave way to deltaic deposits spread across the delta plain. Crevasse splays and anastomosing rivers mainly delivered suspended load for the widespread siltstones and mudstones. The proximal parts of the alluvial–fluvial sedimentary wedge contain debris flows that interfinger with fine‐grained floodplain deposits. Three highstands of the water‐level (>30 000 yr BP, 28 000–19 000 yr BP, 11 000–4000 yr BP (? )) have been recognised in the sedimentary record of the younger Kathmandu Lake in the Late Quaternary. Second‐order water‐level fluctuations are assumed to be triggered by local processes (damming by tectonically induced landslides). First‐order water‐level fluctuations are the result of climatic changes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bayesian Inference for Web Surfer Behavior Prediction

The accurate prediction of user behavior on the Web has immense commercial value as the Web evolves into a primary medium for marketing and sales for many businesses. This broad and complex problem can be broken down into three more understandable problems: predicting (1) short and long visit sessions, (2) first three most probable categories of pages visited in a session, and (3) number of page views per category in a visit session. We present Bayesian solutions to these problems. The focus in our solutions is accuracy and computational efficiency rather than modeling the complex Web surfer behavior. We evaluate our solutions on four weeks of surfer data made available by the ECML/PKDD Discovery Challenge. Probabilities are estimated from the first three weeks of data and the resulting Bayesian models tested on last week’s data. The results confirm the high accuracy and good efficiency of our solutions.
Reservoir Sedimentation Estimation Using Artificial Neural Network

Conventional methods and models available for estimation of reservoir sedimentation process differ greatly in terms of complexity, inputs, and other requirements. An artificial neural network (ANN) model was used to estimate the volume of sediment retained in a reservoir. Annual rainfall, annual inflow, and capacity of the reservoir were chosen as inputs. Thirty Two years of data pertaining to Gobindsagar Reservoir on the Satluj River in India, were used in this study (23 years for training and 9 years for testing). The pattern of the sediment volume retained in this reservoir was well captured by the Multi-Layer Perceptron (3–5-1) ANN model using the back propagation algorithm. Based on several performance indices, it was found that the ANN model estimated the volume of sediment retained in the reservoir with better accuracy and less effort as compared to conventional regression analysis.
Multi-Path Feedback Recurrent Neural Networks for Scene Parsing

In this paper, we consider the scene parsing problem and propose a novel Multi-Path Feedback recurrent neural network (MPF-RNN) for parsing scene images. MPF-RNN can enhance the capability of RNNs in modeling long-range context information at multiple levels and better distinguish pixels that are easy to confuse. Different from feedforward CNNs and RNNs with only single feedback, MPF-RNN propagates the contextual features learned at top layer through multiple weighted recurrent connections to learn bottom features. For better training MPF-RNN, we propose a new strategy that considers accumulative loss at multiple recurrent steps to improve performance of the MPF-RNN on parsing small objects. With these two novel components, MPF-RNN has achieved significant improvement over strong baselines (VGG16 and Res101) on five challenging scene parsing benchmarks, including traditional SiftFlow, Barcelona, CamVid, Stanford Background as well as the recently released large-scale ADE20K.
WATER QUALITY ASSESSMENT AND APPORTIONMENT OF POLLUTION SOURCES OF TIGRIS RIVER (TURKEY) USING MULTIVARIATE STATISTICAL TECHNIQUES—A CASE STUDY

The Tigris is one of the most important transboundary rivers in western Asia and originates in the Toros mountains of the Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. Multivariate statistical techniques, such as cluster analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis (FA), were applied for the evaluation of temporal/spatial variations and the interpretation of a water quality data set for the Tigris River, which was obtained during 1 year of monitoring. This study presents the usefulness of multivariate statistical techniques for the evaluation and interpretation of complex water quality data sets and apportionment of pollution sources/factors to obtain better information about water quality and the design of a monitoring network for the effective management of water resources. Hierarchical CA grouped 12 months into two periods (the first and second periods) and classified seven monitoring sites into three groups, that is, less polluted sites, medium polluted sites and highly polluted sites, based on similarities in the water quality characteristics. PCA/FA identified five factors in the data structure, which explained 77.5% of the total variance of the data set. This allowed us to group the selected parameters according to common features and to evaluate the influence of each group on the overall variation in water quality. Varifactors obtained from the factor analysis indicated that the parameters responsible for water quality variation were mainly related to soluble salts (natural), organic pollution and nutrients (anthropogenic). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wide-band variable-gain LNA in 65 nm CMOS with inverter based amplifier for multi-tuners cable TV reception

This paper presents a wide band Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) intended for cable TV reception. The topology used for this amplifier differs from usual ones, and leads to a highly linear LNA. It was built in TSMC 65-nm CMOS technology. The measurements with 2.3 V supply voltage show 5.7 dB Noise Figure (NF), +64 dBmV IIP3, +80 dBmV IIP2 with 65 mW power consumption. The gain varies from 3 dB to 15 dB with 3 dB steps.
Optimization of Back-Propagation Network Using Simulated Annealing Approach

The back-propagation network (BPN) is a popular data mining technique. Nevertheless, different problems may require different network architectures and parameters. Therefore, rule of thumb or "try and error" methods are usually used to determine them. However, these methods may lead worse network architectures and parameters. A dataset may contain many features; however, not all features are beneficial for classification in BPN. Therefore, a simulated annealing (SA) approach is proposed to select the beneficial subset of features and to obtain the better network architectures and parameters which result in a better classification. In order to verify the developed approach, three dataset, namely PIMA, IONOS, and CANCER from UCI (University of California, Irvine) machine learning database, are employed for evaluation, and the 10-fold cross-validation is applied to calculate the classification result. Compared with the MONNA (multiple ordinate neural network architecture) structure developed by Leazoray and Cardot, the classification accurate rates of the developed approach are superior to those of the MONNA. When the feature selection is taken into consideration, the classification accurate rates of three dataset are increased. Therefore, the developed approach can be utilized to find out the network architecture and parameters of BPN, and discover the useful attributes effectively.
Charge fractionization in N=2 supersymmetric QCD

It is shown that the physical ``quark number'' charges which appear in the central charge of the supersymmetry algebra of $N=2$ supersymmetric QCD can take irrational values and depend non trivially on the Higgs expectation value. This gives a physical interpretation of the constant shifts which the ``electric'' and ``magnetic'' variables $a_D$ and $a$ undergo when encircling a singularity, and show that duality in this model is truly an electric-magnetic-quark number duality. Also included is a computation of the monodromy matrices directly in the microscopic theory.
Hydrothermal dolomitization in the Lower Ordovician Romaine Formation of the Anticosti Basin: significance for hydrocarbon exploration

This study deals with the diagenetic evolution of dolostones of the Romaine Formation, from cores and outcrops on Anticosti and Mingan islands, and reports evidence for hydrocarbon migration in secondary porosity generated by high temperature / hydrothermal alteration. Four types of calcite (grouped into early (C1) and late (C2) assemblages) and six types of dolomite (grouped into 3 different (D1, D2 and D3) assemblages) are distinguished. According to fluid-inclusion and stable C-O isotope data, the early calcite group, which consists of sedimentary micrite, replacement microspar and early pore-filling calcite records near surface diagenetic environments. Early and pervasive replacement dolomites (RD1 and RD2 in the first dolomite (D1) assemblage) were formed during early burial, and are not related to porosity generation. Later replacement dolomites (RD3 and RD4 in the second dolomite (D2) assemblage) and pore-filling dolomite cements (PD1 and PD2 in the third dolomite (D3) assemblage) as well as minor sphalerite were formed from warm, saline fluids, which were likely hydrothermal in origin. Vuggy porosity was produced through brecciation and fracturing, and through some dissolution of the D1 dolomite assemblage by these hydrothermal fluids. Intercrystalline porosity was also created during formation of the D2 dolomite assemblage. The vugs were partly occluded by late-stage pore filling dolomite and calcite cements, pyrite and barite. Bitumen droplets in vugs together with hydrocarbon inclusions recorded in C2 calcite and in contemporaneous barite indicate a hydrocarbon migration event after the porositygenerating processes. The brecciation / leaching of a precursor dolomite host is uncommon in hydrothermal dolomite hydrocarbon fields, but is recognized in the adjacent coeval pool in Newfoundland. This type of alteration in the Ordovician carbonates with the presence of a rich hydrocarbon source rock and favourable maturation are key elements for the on-going exploration efforts in this basin.
Mice Lacking the β3 Subunit of the GABAA Receptor Have the Epilepsy Phenotype and Many of the Behavioral Characteristics of Angelman Syndrome

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder resulting from a deletion/mutation in maternal chromosome 15q11–13. The genes in 15q11–13 contributing to the full array of the clinical phenotype are not fully identified. This study examines whether a loss or reduction in the GABAA receptor β3subunit (GABRB3) gene, contained within the AS deletion region, may contribute to the overall severity of AS. Disrupting the gabrb3 gene in mice produces electroencephalographic abnormalities, seizures, and behavior that parallel those seen in AS. The seizures that are observed in these mice showed a pharmacological response profile to antiepileptic medications similar to that observed in AS. Additionally, these mice exhibited learning and memory deficits, poor motor skills on a repetitive task, hyperactivity, and a disturbed rest–activity cycle, features all common to AS. The loss of the single gene, gabrb3, in these mice is sufficient to cause phenotypic traits that have marked similarities to the clinical features of AS, indicating that impaired expression of the GABRB3 gene in humans probably contributes to the overall phenotype of Angelman syndrome. At least one other gene, the E6-associated protein ubiquitin-protein ligase (UBE3A) gene, has been implicated in AS, so the relative contribution of the GABRB3 gene alone or in combination with other genes remains to be established.