Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Finite monoids and the fine structure of NC1

Recently a new connection was discovered between the parallel complexity class <italic>NC</italic><supscrpt>1</supscrpt> and the theory of finite automata in the work of Barrington on bounded width branching programs. There (nonuniform) <italic>NC</italic><supscrpt>1</supscrpt> was characterized as those languages recognized by a certain nonuniform version of a DFA. Here we extend this characterization to show that the internal structures of <italic>NC</italic><supscrpt>1</supscrpt> and the class of automata are closely related. In particular, using Thérien's classification of finite monoids, we give new characterizations of the classes <italic>AC</italic><supscrpt>0</supscrpt>, depth-<italic>k</italic> <italic>AC</italic><supscrpt>0</supscrpt>, and <italic>ACC</italic>, the last being the <italic>AC</italic><supscrpt>0</supscrpt> closure of the mod <italic>q</italic> functions for all constant <italic>q</italic>. We settle some of the open questions in [3], give a new proof that the dot-depth hierarchy of algebraic automata theory is infinite [8], and offer a new framework for understanding the internal structure of <italic>NC</italic><supscrpt>1</supscrpt>.
Analysis of Proximity-Based Multimodal Feedback for 3D Selection in Immersive Virtual Environments

Interaction tasks in virtual reality (VR) such as three-dimensional (3D) selection or manipulation of objects often suffer from reduced performance due to missing or different feedback provided by VR systems than during corresponding realworld interactions. Vibrotactile and auditory feedback have been suggested as additional perceptual cues complementing the visual channel to improve interaction in VR. However, it has rarely been shown that multimodal feedback improves performance or reduces errors during 3D object selection. Only little research has been conducted in the area of proximity-based multimodal feedback, in which stimulus intensities depend on spatiotemporal relations between input device and the virtual target object. In this paper, we analyzed the effects of unimodal and bimodal feedback provided through the visual, auditory and tactile modalities, while users perform 3D object selections in VEs, by comparing both binary and continuous proximity-based feedback. We conducted a Fitts' Law experiment and evaluated the different feedback approaches. The results show that the feedback types affect ballistic and correction phases of the selection movement, and significantly influence the user performance.
Building Footprint Extraction From VHR Remote Sensing Images Combined With Normalized DSMs Using Fused Fully Convolutional Networks

Automatic building extraction and delineation from high-resolution satellite imagery is an important but very challenging task, due to the extremely large diversity of building appearances. Nowadays, it is possible to use multiple high-resolution remote sensing data sources, which allow the integration of different information in order to improve the extraction accuracy of building outlines. Many algorithms are built on spectral-based or appearance-based criteria, from single or fused data sources, to perform the building footprint extraction. But the features for these algorithms are usually manually extracted, which limits their accuracy. Recently developed fully convolutional networks (FCNs), which are similar to normal convolutional neural networks (CNN), but the last fully connected layer is replaced by another convolution layer with a large “receptive field,” quickly became the state-of-the-art method for image recognition tasks, as they bring the possibility to perform dense pixelwise classification of input images. Based on these advantages, i.e., the automatic extraction of relevant features, and dense classification of images, we propose an end-to-end FCN, which effectively combines the spectral and height information from different data sources and automatically generates a full resolution binary building mask. Our architecture (Fused-FCN4s) consists of three parallel networks merged at a late stage, which helps propagating fine detailed information from earlier layers to higher levels, in order to produce an output with more accurate building outlines. The inputs to the proposed Fused-FCN4s are three-band (RGB) , panchromatic (PAN), and normalized digital surface model (nDSM) images. Experimental results demonstrate that the fusion of several networks is able to achieve excellent results on complex data. Moreover, the developed model was successfully applied to different cities to show its generalization capacity.
Reliability-based Usage Strategy Optimization for Lifetime Maximization of Solid-state Lasers

Solid-state lasers have been widely used in machinery and electronics industry, and the input power is the main adjustable variable that affects the lifetime of solid-state lasers. This paper proposes a reliability-based usage strategy optimization for lifetime maximization of solid-state lasers. Firstly, considering the randomness and volatility of the quality characteristics, an accelerated degradation model based on the Wiener process is investigated, and the effect of input power is established by the Inverse Power Law model. Secondly, the unknown parameters in the accelerated model are estimated through maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Thirdly, with the given number of stress levels n, a usage strategy optimization of n-stage stress levels application is proposed to maximize the lifetime of solid-state lasers. Finally, the implementation of the proposed method is illustrated by a real case study of constant stress accelerated degradation test (CSADT) of solid-state lasers.
Pioneering Studies on LTE eMBMS: Towards 5G Point - to-Multipoint Transmissions

The first 5G (5th generation wireless systems) New Radio Release-15 was recently completed. However, the specification only considers the use of unicast technologies and the extension to point-to-multipoint (PTM) scenarios is not yet considered. To this end, we first present in this work a technical overview of the state-of-the-art LTE (Long Term Evolution) PTM technology, i.e., eMBMS (evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services), and investigate the physical layer performance via link-level simulations. Then based on the simulation analysis, we discuss potential improvements for the two current eMBMS solutions, i.e., MBSFN (MBMS over Single Frequency Networks) and SC-PTM (Single-Cell PTM). This work explicitly focus on equipping the current eMBMS solutions with 5G candidate techniques, e.g., multiple antennas and millimeter wave, and its potentials to meet the requirements of next generation PTM transmissions.
Making the Ethical Transition in South Africa: Acquiring Human Bodies for Training in Anatomy

While dissection remains the method of choice for teaching human anatomy, ethical requirements for obtaining cadavers has made the process of acquiring human bodies more strenuous for institutions. In Africa and at the School of Anatomical Sciences in South Africa, dependence on unclaimed bodies has been prevalent. The aim of the present study was to determine whether more rigorous application of ethical consent has altered the provenance of the cadavers in the School of Anatomical Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand. The numbers of bequeathed/donated/unclaimed cadavers received over the period 2013–2017, as well as their sex and population affinity were analyzed. The majority (96.8%) of the cadavers dissected over the period were from bequests/donations. Marginally more females than males were available. In addition, the population affinity of the cadavers had changed from a majority of South African African (unclaimed) bodies to a majority of South African White (bequest/donated) bodies. The study shows that even with ethical constraints it is possible to transition from the use of mainly unclaimed bodies to the acquisition of bequeathed/donor bodies. However, there may be challenges in relation to anatomical collections in the School as few of the bequest/donated cadavers remain in the School to be added to the collections. These changes also affect the demographics of the Schools' collections.
A Simple Test to Check the Inherent-Stability Proviso on Field-Effect Transistors

Available techniques for stability analysis of DC solutions, such as the popular Ohtomo test, make the task quite a straightforward one. Such tests are based on the assumption that the active subcircuit is inherently stable, which is reasonably easy to enforce in practice since the active devices themselves are typically inherently stable. However, besides this empirical observation, there is an unfortunate lack of techniques to verify the proviso itself before proceeding to the stability test of the whole circuit. This contribution presents a quick-and-easy technique for identifying a single, technology-dependent parameter and choosing the test section appropriately. Examples are also given of active devices that, quite unusually, were found to be non-inherently stable. It is shown that, due to the nature of the instability in the considered cases, the proviso cannot be checked without accessing the intrinsic circuit on a single-finger basis, which, in turn, calls for the availability of a multi-finger model. The devices illustrated in this contribution are based on a 250-nm GaN HEMT technology provided by the UMS foundry and are featured by standard and customized geometries, only the latter presented unstable behavior.
Endophytic Microbial Consortia of Phytohormones-Producing Fungus Paecilomyces formosus LHL10 and Bacteria Sphingomonas sp. LK11 to Glycine max L. Regulates Physio-hormonal Changes to Attenuate Aluminum and Zinc Stresses

The compatible microbial consortia containing fungal and bacterial symbionts acting synergistically are applied to improve plant growth and eco-physiological responses in extreme crop growth conditions. However, the interactive effects of phytohormones-producing endophytic fungal and bacterial symbionts plant growth and stress tolerance under heavy metal stress have been least known. In the current study, the phytohormones-producing endophytic Paecilomyces formosus LHL10 and Sphingomonas sp. LK11 revealed potent growth and tolerance during their initial screening against combined Al and Zn (2.5 mM each) stress. This was followed with their co-inoculation in the Al- and Zn-stressed Glycine max L. plants, showing significantly higher plant growth attributes (shoot/root length, fresh/dry weight, and chlorophyll content) than the plants solely inoculated with LHL10 or LK11 and the non-inoculated (control) plants under metal stresses. Interestingly, under metal stress, the consortia exhibited lower metal uptake and inhibited metal transport in roots. Metal-induced oxidative stresses were modulated in co-inoculated plants through reduced hydrogen peroxide, lipid peroxidation, and antioxidant enzymes (catalase and superoxide dismutase) in comparison to the non-inoculated plants. In addition, endophytic co-inoculation enhanced plant macronutrient uptake (P, K, S, and N) and modulated soil enzymatic activities under stress conditions. It significantly downregulated the expression of heavy metal ATPase genes GmHMA13, GmHMA18, GmHMA19, and GmPHA1 and upregulated the expression of an ariadne-like ubiquitin ligase gene GmARI1 under heavy metals stress. Furthermore, the endogenous phytohormonal contents of co-inoculated plants revealed significantly enhanced gibberellins and reduced abscisic acid and jasmonic acid contents, suggesting that this endophytic interaction mitigated the adverse effect of metal stresses in host plants. In conclusion, the co-inoculation of the endophytic fungus LHL10 and bacteria LK11 actively contributed to the tripartite mutualistic symbiosis in G. max under heavy metal stresses; this could be used an excellent strategy for sustainable agriculture in the heavy metal-contaminated fields.
Comparison of the Effect of Organic and Chemical Fertilizers on Yield and Essence of Peppermint (Mentha piperita L.)

This study compared organic and chemical fertilizers on qualitative yield and essence content of peppermint. The experiment was carried out as Randomized Complete Design in Agricultural Farm Center, Sari, Iran, in 2013. The treatments were as control, vermicompost, composed sheep manure and basic chemical fertilizers at N60, P50, K60; N60, P80, K60; N90, P50, K80 and N90, P80, K80, and replicated four times. The results showed that all the measured characteristics were significantly (p<0.05) influenced by both organic and chemical fertilizers at the two harvest times. The values of the quantitative (wet and dry yield) and qualitative characteristics (essence content and essence yield) were also more at the first harvest than the second harvest. At the first harvest, the maximum value for dry and wet yield, and the maximum essence value and its yield were attained by using both sheep manure and chemical fertilizers at the rate of N90, P80, K80. The highest value for dry (96 kg ha-1) and wet (207 kg ha-1) yield, and yield (0.46 lit ha-1) and content of essence (0.48 g/100 g) were obtained with vermicompost. The values obtained for vermicompost and sheep manure were not significantly different. Application of sheep manure and vermicompost as organic fertilizer was recommended for production of peppermint. Whereas essence content and yield for first harvest were significantly higher than other treatments and control.
Plasma ferritin concentration is positively associated with in vivo fatty acid mobilization and insulin resistance in obese women

What is the central question of this study? Do obese women with relatively high whole‐body iron stores exhibit elevated in vivo rates of fatty acid (FA) release from adipose tissue compared with a well‐matched cohort of obese women with relatively low iron stores? What is the main finding and its importance? Obese women with high plasma [ferritin] (a marker of whole‐body iron stores) had greater FA mobilization, lipolytic activation in adipose tissue and insulin resistance (IR) compared with obese women with lower plasma [ferritin]. Given that elevated FA mobilization is intimately linked with the development of IR, these findings suggest that elevated iron stores might contribute to IR in obesity by increasing systemic FA availability.
A Multimode SoC FPGA-Based Acoustic Camera for Wireless Sensor Networks

Acoustic cameras allow the visualization of sound sources using microphone arrays and beamforming techniques. The required computational power increases with the number of microphones in the array, the acoustic images resolution, and in particular, when targeting real-time. Such computational demand leads to a prohibitive power consumption for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this paper, we present a SoC FPGA based architecture to perform a low-power and real-time accurate acoustic imaging for WSNs. The high computational demand is satisfied by performing the acoustic acquisition and the beamforming technique on the FPGA side. The hard-core processor enhances and compresses the acoustic images before transmitting to the WSN. As a result, the WSN manages the supported configuration modes of the acoustic camera. For instance, the resolution of the acoustic images can be adapted on-demand to satisfy the available network's BW while performing real-time acoustic imaging. Our performance measurements show that acoustic images are generated on the FPGA in real time with resolutions of $\mathbf{160}\mathbf{x}\mathbf{120}$ pixels operating at 32 frames-per-second. Nevertheless, higher resolutions are achievable thanks to the exploitation of the hard-core processor available in SoC FPGAs such as Zynq.
Inflammasome Proteins in Serum and Serum-Derived Extracellular Vesicles as Biomarkers of Stroke

The inflammasome is a key contributor to the inflammatory innate immune response after stroke. We have previously shown that inflammasome proteins are released in extracellular vesicles (EV) after brain and spinal cord injury. In addition, we have shown that inflammasome proteins offer great promise as biomarkers of central nervous system (CNS) injury following brain trauma. In the present study, we used a Simple Plex Assay (Protein Simple), a novel multi-analyte automated microfluidic immunoassay platform, to analyze serum and serum-derived EV samples from stroke patients and control subjects for inflammasome protein levels of caspase-1, apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a caspase-recruitment domain (ASC), Interleukins (IL)-1β, and (IL)-18. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves with associated confidence intervals obtained from the analysis of serum samples revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) for ASC was 0.99 with a confidence interval between 0.9914 and 1.004, whereas the AUC for caspase-1, IL-1β, and IL-18 were 0.75, 0.61, and 0.67, respectively. Thus, these data indicate that ASC is a potential biomarker of stroke and highlight the role of the inflammasome in the inflammatory response after brain ischemia.
Improved Sliding Mode Control Method of Single-Phase LCL Filtered VSI

This paper presents a sliding mode control (SMC) and design method of single-phase LCL filtered VSI with direct current feedback. The proposed SMC is much simpler since it is based on a new sliding surface which only requires one grid current sensor. The multiple resonant strategies are also applied to enhance the ability to track the sinusoidal reference. In addition, a practical math method is proposed to calculate the optimal parameters of the sliding-surface. The theoretical considerations and analytical results are verified through simulations with a 2-kw grid-connected inverter. The results show that the proposed SMC strategy has fast dynamic response, strong robustness to perturbation, smaller tracking-error and total harmonic distortion.
Privacy-Aware Data Publishing and Integration for Collaborative Service Recommendation

Item-based collaborative filtering (i.e., ICF) technique has been widely recruited to make service recommendations in the big data environment. However, the ICF technique only performs well when the data for service recommendation decision-making are stored in a physically centralized manner, while they often fail to recommend appropriate services to a target user in the distributed environment where the involved multiple parties are reluctant to release their data to each other due to privacy concerns. Considering this drawback, we improve the traditional ICF approach by integrating the locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) technique, to realize secure and reliable data publishing. Furthermore, through integrating the published data with little privacy across different platforms, appropriate services are recommended based on our suggested recommendation approach named ICFLSH. At last, simulated experiments are conducted on WS-DREAM data set. Experiment results show that ICFLSH performs better than the competitive approaches in terms of service recommendation accuracy, efficiency, and the capability of privacy-preservation.
Any “Body” There? Avatar Visibility Effects in a Virtual Reality Game

This article presents an experiment exploring the possible impact of avatar's body part visibility on players' experience and performance using current Virtual Reality (VR) gaming platform capacities. In an action-based VR game, a player sees an avatar in first person perspective which is replicating his/her hand, head and body motion. In contrast to the expected outcome from non-game VR contexts, our results did not reveal significant differences with an avatar presenting an increasing number of visible body parts. The body ownership, immersion, emotional and cognitive involvements as well as the perceived control and difficulty were not improved with a more coherent virtual body. This tends to confirm the strong performance aspect of action-based games, whereby control efficiency and enemy awareness is paramount, and could overcome the perceptual, behavioural or emotional effects of avatar embodiment. Digital games are indeed prone to create an intense flow state typically reducing self-awareness, and focusing on the game completion and high performance achievements. However, further experiments with full-body tracking and different game types are necessary to confirm this trend. This research outcome motivates further analysis of the mutual influence of bottom-up and top-down factors of avatar embodiment causing psychophysical effects. In addition, it provides useful indications for VR game developers and researchers on possible effects and evaluation methods.
Patiromer to Enable Spironolactone Use in the Treatment of Patients with Resistant Hypertension and Chronic Kidney Disease: Rationale and Design of the AMBER Study

Background: While chronic kidney disease (CKD) is common in resistant hypertension (RHTN), prior studies evaluating mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists excluded patients with reduced kidney function due to risk of hyperkalemia. AMBER (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03071263) will evaluate if the potassium-binding polymer patiromer used concomitantly with spironolactone in patients with RHTN and CKD prevents hyperkalemia and allows more persistent spironolactone use for hypertension management. Methods: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel group 12-week study of patiromer and spironolactone versus placebo and spironolactone in patients with uncontrolled RHTN and CKD. RHTN is defined as unattended systolic automated office blood pressure (AOBP) of 135–160 mm Hg during screening despite taking ≥3 antihypertensives, including a diuretic, and an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker (unless not tolerated or contraindicated). The CKD inclusion criterion is an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of 25 to ≤45 mL/min/1.73 m2. Screening serum potassium must be 4.3–5.1 mEq/L. The primary efficacy endpoint is the between-group difference (spironolactone plus patiromer versus spironolactone plus placebo) in the proportion of patients remaining on spironolactone at Week 12. Results: Baseline characteristics have been analyzed as of March 2018 for 146 (of a targeted 290) patients. Mean (SD) baseline age is 69.3 (10.9) years; 52.1% are male, 99.3% White, and 47.3% have diabetes. Mean (SD) baseline serum potassium is 4.68 (0.25) mEq/L, systolic AOBP is 144.3 (6.8) mm Hg, eGFR is 35.7 (7.7) mL/min/1.73 m2. Conclusion: AMBER will define the ability of patiromer to facilitate the use of spironolactone, an effective antihypertensive therapy for patients with RHTN and CKD.