Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fault detection for discrete‐time switched singular time‐delay systems: an average dwell time approach

In this paper, the fault detection problem is investigated for a class of discrete‐time switched singular systems with time‐varying state delays. The residual generator is firstly constructed based on a switched filter, and the design of fault detection filter is formulated as an H ∞ filtering problem, that is, minimizing the error between residual and fault in the H ∞ sense. Then, by constructing an appropriate decay‐rate‐dependent piecewise Lyapunov function and using the average dwell time scheme, a sufficient condition for the residual system to be regular, causal, and exponential stable while satisfying a prescribed H ∞ performance is derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The corresponding solvability condition for the desired fault detection filters is also established via LMI approach. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the effectiveness of the developed theoretical results.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Location-aware Cooperative Anti-jamming Distributed Channel Selection Approach in UAV Communication Networks

This paper investigates the cooperative anti-jamming distributed channel selection problem in UAV communication networks. Considering the existence of malicious jamming and co-channel interference, a location-aware cooperative anti-jamming scheme is designed for the purpose of maximizing the users' utilities. Users in the UAV group cooperate with each other via location information sharing. When the received interference energy is lower than mutual interference threshold, users conduct channel selection strategies independently. Otherwise, users take joint actions with a cooperative anti-jamming pattern under the impact of mutual interference. Aimed at the independent anti-jamming channel selection problem under no mutual interference, a Markov Decision Process framework is introduced, whereas for the cooperative anti-jamming channel selection case under the influence of co-channel mutual interference, a Markov game framework is employed. Furthermore, motivated by reinforcement learning with a ``Cooperation-Decision-Feedback-Adjustment" idea, we design a location-aware cooperative anti-jamming distributed channel selection algorithm (LCADCSA) to obtain the optimal anti-jamming channel strategies for the users with a distributed way. In addition, the channel switching cost and cooperation cost, which have great impact on the users' utilities, are introduced. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed algorithm converges to a stable solution with which the UAV group can avoid the malicious jamming as well as co-channel interference effectively.
In vitro maturation of bovine granulosa cells for steroid hormone production

espanolSe evaluo el efecto de celulas de granulosa preincubadas sobre la maduracion in vitro y pro- duccion de hormonas esteroides en vacas. Las celulas de granulosa de los ovarios fueron culti- vadas empleando el M-199 modificado con sales de Earle. Se anadio 1% de albumina de suero bovino y 5% de suero fetal de ternero. Tambien se incluyo un 0,8% de antibioticos. Los cultivos fue- ron incubados a 37°C con 95% de aire y 100% de humedad relativa. Se registraron diferencias sig- nificativas entre las concentraciones de progesterona y estradiol obtenidas con los niveles de inclsuion de FSH y LH. Puede concluirse que es necesario suplementar con hormonas el medio de cultivo para IVM en bovinos. EnglishThis study aimed to evaluate the effects of preincubated granulosa cells on in vitro maturation and steroid hormones production in cows. Granulosa cells from the ovaries were cultured using the modified M-199 with Earle's salts. 1% bovine serum albumin was added and 5% fetal calf serum. Also 0.8% of antibiotics was also included. Cultures were incubated at 37°C in a 95% air and 100% relative humidity. There were significant differences among values of proges- terone and estradiol concentration obtained for levels of inclusion of FSH and LH. It can be concluded that there is necessity for supplemen- tation of hormones in culture medium for bovine IVM.
Unified Single-Image and Video Super-Resolution via Denoising Algorithms

Single image super-resolution (SISR) aims to recover a high-resolution image from a given low-resolution version of it. Video super-resolution (VSR) targets a series of given images, aiming to fuse them to create a higher resolution outcome. Although SISR and VSR seem to have a lot in common, most SISR algorithms do not have a simple and direct extension to VSR. VSR is considered a more challenging inverse problem, mainly due to its reliance on a sub-pixel accurate motion-estimation, which has no parallel in SISR. Another complication is the dynamics of the video, often addressed by simply generating a single frame instead of a complete output sequence. In this paper, we suggest a simple and robust super-resolution framework that can be applied to single images and easily extended to video. Our work relies on the observation that denoising of images and videos is well-managed and very effectively treated by a variety of methods. We exploit the plug-and-play-prior framework and the regularization-by-denoising (RED) approach that extends it, and show how to use such denoisers in order to handle the SISR and the VSR problems using a unified formulation and framework. This way, we benefit from the effectiveness and efficiency of existing image/video denoising algorithms, while solving much more challenging problems. More specifically, harnessing the VBM3D video denoiser, we obtain a strongly competitive motion-estimation free VSR algorithm, showing tendency to a high-quality output and fast processing.
Membrane binding and oligomer formation by the calcium-dependent lipopeptide antibiotic A 54145 : a quantitative study with pyrene excimer fluorescence

A54145 is a lipopeptide antibiotic related to daptomycin that permeabilizes bacterial cell membranes. Its action requires both calcium and phosphatidylglycerol in the target membrane, and it is accompanied by the formation of membrane-associated oligomers. We here probed the interaction of A54145 with model membranes composed of dimyristoyl-phosphatidylcholine and dimyristoyl-phosphatidylglycerol, using the steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence of a pyrene-labelled derivative (Py-A54145). In solution, the labelled peptide was found to exist as a monomer. Its membrane interaction occurred in two stages that could be clearly distinguished by varying the calcium concentration. In the first stage, which was observed between 0.15 and 1 mM calcium, Py-A54145 bound to the membrane, as indicated by a strong increase in pyrene monomer emission. At the same time calcium concentration, excimer emission increased also, which suggested oligomerization of Py-A54145. A global analysis of the time-resolved pyrene monomer and excimer fluorescence confirmed that Py-A54145 forms oligomers quantitatively and concomitantly with membrane binding. When calcium was raised beyond 1 mM, a distinct second transition was observed that may correspond to a doubling of the number of oligomer subunits. The collective findings confirm and extend our understanding of the action mode of A54145 and daptomycin.
Adaptations to Ovulation

In socially monogamous species in which males heavily invest in offspring, there arises an inevitable genetic conflict between partners over whether investing males become biological fathers of their partners' offspring. Humans are such a species. The ovulatory-shift hypothesis proposes that changes in women's mate preferences and sexual interests across the cycle are footprints of this conflict. When fertile (mid-cycle), women find masculine bodily and behavioral features particularly sexy and report increased attraction to men other than current partners. Men are more vigilant of partners when the latter are fertile, which may reflect evolved counteradaptations. This adaptationist hypothesis has already generated several fruitful research programs, but many questions remain.
Study of the Double Nonlinear Quantum Resonances in Diatomic Molecules

We study the quantum dynamics of diatomic molecule driven by a circularly polarized resonant electric field. We look for a quantum effect due to classical chaos appearing due to the overlapping of nonlinear reso-nances associated to the vibrational and rotational motion. We solve the Schrodinger equation associated with the wave function expanded in term of proper stationary states, |n> |lm> (vibrational angular momentum states). Looking for quantum-classic correspondence, we consider the Liouville dynamics in the two dimensional phase space defined by the coherent-like state of vibrational states. We consider the rela-tionship between the overlapping of the classical resonances and the mixing of the quantum states, and it is found some similarities when the quantum dynamics is pictured in terms of number and phase operators.
High salt or low volume: A critical dissection of a mechanistic controversy in cystic fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis is an autosomal recessive disease caused by mutation of the gene coding for the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regular (CFTR) chloride channel. Complications due to chronic lung infections are the leading cause of mortality seen in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Two opposing hypotheses for the mechanism of bacterial colonization of cystic fibrosis lungs have co-existed for nearly two decades. The “high salt” hypothesis posits that the bacterial colonization of CF lungs is due to an elevated concentration of sodium and chloride in airway surface liquid (ASL) which inhibits native bactericidal activity. The “low volume” hypothesis, on the other hand, proposes that the volume of the ASL is severely decreased as a result of abnormally increased sodium absorption, which causes cilia to collapse and halt mucus clearance. An analysis of published data for sodium and chloride concentrations measured in the liquid lining of lungs, as well as ASL depth, was conducted. The original published data sets obtained and evaluated in this systematic review provided weak support for either a significant difference in salt concentrations (sodium: p = 0.316, chloride: p = 0.30) or depth (p = 0.16). This study found both hypotheses has yet established itself to be more viable and an alternative mechanism for initial bacterial colonization of the lungs in cystic fibrosis is proposed.
Decoding Strategies for Neural Referring Expression Generation

RNN-based sequence generation is now widely used in NLP and NLG (natural language generation). Most work focusses on how to train RNNs, even though also decoding is not necessarily straightforward: previous work on neural MT found seq2seq models to radically prefer short candidates, and has proposed a number of beam search heuristics to deal with this. In this work, we assess decoding strategies for referring expression generation with neural models. Here, expression length is crucial: output should neither contain too much or too little information, in order to be pragmatically adequate. We find that most beam search heuristics developed for MT do not generalize well to referring expression generation (REG), and do not generally outperform greedy decoding. We observe that beam search heuristics for termination seem to override the model’s knowledge of what a good stopping point is. Therefore, we also explore a recent approach called trainable decoding, which uses a small network to modify the RNN’s hidden state for better decoding results. We find this approach to consistently outperform greedy decoding for REG.
Characterizing the Molecular Basis for mRNA Targeting and Destruction by the Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) Protein SOX

Author(s): Covarrubias, Sergio | Advisor(s): Glaunsinger, Britt | Abstract: Lytic infection with gamma herpesviruses such as Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) and Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) results in a global depletion of cellular mRNA, which manifests in a general suppression of host gene expression, termed host shutoff. The importance of targeting cellular gene expression at the posttranscriptional level is highlighted by the observation that many changes in important cellular gene programs result in drastic changes in RNA stability. Hence, virus targeting of host gene expression at this level likely represents an efficient way to change the cellular environment into one the supports maximal viral production. In KSHV, the host shutoff phenotype is caused by virally encoded multifunctional nuclease, SOX, that is conserved throughout all gamma-herpesviruses. Here I provide detailed mechanistic insight into how SOX targets host messages to enact host shutoff activity in cells. I show that with in the cytoplasm, SOX specifically targets conserved mRNA features, which normally promote their efficient expression. Furthermore, I demonstrate that this mechanism of mRNA targeting is conserved across various other viruses, likely demonstrating an evolutionarily convergent strategy. Characterizing how viruses co-op specific cellular factors involved in gene expression will yield a better understanding of the signals that initiate activation of RNA turnover pathways needed for viral replication success.
Calibration of the visible and near-infrared channels of NOAA-11 and -14 AVHRRs by using reflections from molecular atmosphere and stratus cloud

A new method to determine the calibration coefficients for visible and near-infrared channels of Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) aboard NOAA satellite is presented and applied to NOAA-11 and -14 spacecrafts. The method uses the reflections from clear-sky ocean and stratus clouds. The clear-sky data analysis gives a minimum estimate of the slope coefficient (albedo per count) for a target month by using radiative transfer theory for molecular atmosphere. Cloudy-sky pixels were precisely excluded from that analysis by using multi-spectral data of AVHRR. Neighbouring pixels of cloud were also excluded to avoid three-dimensional radiative effects such as cloud shadow. On the other hand, the optical thickness (at a visible wavelength) of summer stratus clouds was retrieved from nominally calibrated reflectance of respective visible and near-infrared channels. This analysis was performed to adjust the balance between the two-channels' calibration coefficients because if the two channels were correctly calibrated, the cloud optical thickness retrieved from the two channels must be the same. Finally, the calibration coefficients were determined using iteration.
Knowledge Economy Gaps, Policy Syndromes, and Catch-Up Strategies: Fresh South Korean Lessons to Africa

Africa’s overall knowledge index fell between 2000 and 2009. South Korea’s economic miracle is largely due to a knowledge-based development strategy that holds valuable lessons for African countries in their current pursuit towards knowledge economies. Using updated data (1996–2010), this paper presents fresh South Korean lessons to Africa by assessing the knowledge economy (KE) gaps, deriving policy syndromes, and providing catch-up strategies. The 53 peripheral African countries are decomposed into fundamental characteristics of wealth, legal origins, regional proximity, oil-exporting, political stability, and landlockedness. The World Bank’s four KE components are used: education, innovation, information and communication technology (ICT), and economic incentives and institutional regime. Absolute beta and sigma convergence techniques are employed as empirical strategies. With the exception of ICT for which catch-up is not very apparent, in increasing order, it is visible in innovation, economic incentives, education, and institutional regime. The speed of catch-up varies between 8.66 and 30.00 % per annum with respective time to full or 100 % catch-up of 34.64 and 10 years. Based on the trends and dynamics in the KE gaps, policy syndromes and compelling catch-up strategies are discussed. Issues standing on the way to KE in Africa are dissected with great acuteness before South Korean relevant solutions are provided to both scholars and firms. The paper is original in its provision of practical policy initiatives drawn from the Korean experience to African countries embarking on a transition to KE.
Optimized Pattern Mining Of Sample Data

Data precise is often found in real-world applications due to reasons such as imprecise measurement, outdated sources, or sampling errors. Much research has been published in the area of managing in databases. In many cases, only partially aggregated data sets are available because of privacy concerns. Thus, each aggregated record can be represented by a probability distribution. In other privacy-preserving data mining applications, the data is perturbed in order to preserve the sensitivity of attribute values. In some cases, probability density functions of the records may be available. Some recent techniques construct privacy models, such that the output of the transformation approach is friendly to the use of data mining and management techniques. Here data is inherent in applications such as sensor monitoring systems, location-based services, and biological databases. There is an increasing desire to use this technology in new application domains. One such application domain that is likely to acquire considerable significance in the near future is database mining. The information in those organizations are classified using EMV, mean obtained after calculating the profit. Decision tree is constructed using the profit and EMV values which prunes the data to the desired extent. An increasing number of organizations are creating ultra large data bases (measured in gigabytes and even terabytes) of business data, such as consumer data, transaction histories, sales records, etc. Such data forms a potential gold mine of valuable business information. Keywords —Averaging, Classification, Database mining, Decision trees, Knowledge discovery.
Asymmetric Effects of Volatility Risk on Stock Returns: Evidence from VIX and VIX Futures

First, to separate different market conditions, this study focuses on how VIX spot (VIX), VIX futures (VXF), and their basis (VIX − VXF) perform different roles in asset pricing. Secondly, this study decomposes the VIX index into two parts: volatility calculated from out‐of‐the‐money call options and volatility calculated from out‐of‐the‐money put options. The analysis shows that out‐of‐the‐money put options capture more useful information in predicting future stock returns. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 36:1029–1056, 2016
A Comparative Study on Emotional Maturity of Secondary School Students in Lakhimpur and Sonitpur Districts of Assam

The present study investigated the emotional maturity of secondary school students in Lakhimpur and Sonitpur districts of Assam. This study is conducted on a sample of 1000 Students, out of 1000 students 500 boys and 500 girls selected randomly from 32 Government and Private secondary schools of both districts of Assam. The descriptive survey method is used for data collection using Emotional Maturity Scale (M. Bhargava and Y. Singh (1990). The finding of the study reported that there was not any significant difference in various areas of emotional maturity of government and private school students; no significant difference in the emotional maturity level of boys and girls school students; and there is no significant difference between in the emotional maturity level of rural and urban secondary school students of both districts of Assam.
Impact of Work Environment on Performance of Employees in Manufacturing Sector in India: Literature Review

It has been observed that the workplace environment affects the performance of employees. Employees are more than the most important asset for an organization, they play pivotal role in current operational performance and future competitive advantage. Employees spend major part of their life in the organization within which they work. The main objective of this work is to find out the work done in respect of relationship between workplace environment and productivity. The quality and quantity of work generated by employees are influenced by the work environment while poor environmental conditions can cause inefficient worker productivity as well as reduce their job satisfaction. The work will attempt to describe some elements of the workplace environment that can impact on employee productivity like lighting, noise, color, air quality and unsuitable furniture. Investigations support that various factors in the workplace environment are responsible for the enhancement of employee’s productivity. The purpose of this work is to identify the elements, which can affect the performance level of employees in the manufacturing sector in India. This work is expected to show that work environment have great impact on the performance level of employees of manufacturing sector in India.
Estimating the Use of Higher-Order Theory of Mind Using Computational Agents

Abstract When people make decisions in a social context, they often make use of theory of mind, by reasoning about unobservable mental content of others. For example, the behavior of a pedestrian who wants to cross the street depends on whether or not he believes that the driver of an oncoming car has seen him or not. People can also reason about the theory of mind abilities of others, leading to recursive thinking of the sort ‘I think that you think that I think…’. Previous research suggests that this ability may be especially effective in simple competitive settings. In this paper, we use a combination of computational agents and Bayesian model selection to determine to what extent people make use of higher-order theory of mind reasoning in a particular competitive game known as matching pennies. We find that while many children and adults appear to make use of theory of mind, participants are also often classified as using a simpler reactive strategy based only on the actions of the directly preceding round. This may indicate that human reasoners do not primarily use their theory of mind abilities to compete with others.
Natural Resource Ecology and Management 12-2013 Restoration of Herbaceous Woodland Plants : Persistence , Growth , and Reproductive Success of Local and Non-local Propagules

Restoring the forest herbaceous layer in remnant forests throughout the Midwestern United States (U.S.) is limited by the lack of seed and propagules for many plant species. As a result, restorationists often have limited material to work with and must seek out plant material at a regional rather than a local scale, without knowing whether regional provenances are ecologically appropriate. We conducted greenhouse and field experiments to examine persistence, growth, and reproduction of three herbaceous perennials (wild ginger, Virginia waterleaf, and James’ sedge) that could be used for restoration. The greenhouse experiment represented a common garden and was conducted to identify whether there were genetic differences in morphological characters between local plants and non-local transplants from commercial nurseries. The two-year field study was conducted to determine whether any genetic differences noted in the greenhouse persisted in a natural setting, and also to determine what planting density (two or five individuals in a 0.25 m2 plot) would be sufficient for the plants to establish. In the greenhouse, growth and reproductive measures for non-local plants were generally equal to or greater than those of local plants. However, we found the reverse for many traits, particularly related to reproduction, in the field during year two. In natural field conditions local plants had equal or greater vegetative growth and reproduction than non-local plants, although both had similar persistence. Further, similar persistence and growth in lowand high-density field plots suggested that a limited number of transplants would be adequate for successful establishment of non-local transplant stock.