Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bispecific single chain molecules (Janusins) target cytotoxic lymphocytes on HIV infected cells.

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV‐1) uses cell surface CD4 as a receptor to infect susceptible cells. Therefore, different forms of soluble CD4 (sCD4) molecules have been developed recently for potential therapeutic purposes. Here we describe a novel design of sCD4 molecules which exploit cytotoxic T cells as their effector function. The principle of bispecific antibodies was exploited and further developed to create new bispecific reagents which could retarget cytotoxic T cells of any specificity and thus, induce killing of HIV‐1 infected cells. The most advanced molecules, Janusins, contain in one polypeptide chain the first two N‐terminal CD4 domains and single chain combining site against the human CD3 complex (FvCD3).
Adaptive Token Bank Fair Queuing Scheduling in the Downlink of 4G Wireless Multicarrier Networks

In this paper we present an efficient cross-layer scheduling algorithm designed for resource allocation in downlink of 4G wireless multicarrier networks. This study focuses on the mechanisms of efficiency, fairness, as well as quality of service (QoS) provisioning and algorithm development for resource allocation in multiuser frequency-selective fading environments. The performance of the proposed scheme is compared to that of the score based (SB) scheduling, which is a variation of the proportional fair (PF) algorithm (the most widely adapted opportunistic scheduling technique), in the presence of interference. It is observed from simulation results that the proposed scheme provides better fairness in terms queuing delays, and dropped packets for various loading factors while the throughput remains comparable. A gain in the performance of cell edge users is also observed for the proposed scheme, this may result in substantial savings in the deployment cost since fewer base stations (BS) will be needed to cover regions.
Targeted Interventions for Improved Equity in Maternal and Child Health in Low- and Middle-Income Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Targeted interventions to improve maternal and child health is suggested as a feasible and sometimes even necessary strategy to reduce inequity. The objective of this systematic review was to gather the evidence of the effectiveness of targeted interventions to improve equity in MDG 4 and 5 outcomes. Methods and Findings We identified primary studies in all languages by searching nine health and social databases, including grey literature and dissertations. Studies evaluating the effect of an intervention tailored to address a structural determinant of inequity in maternal and child health were included. Thus general interventions targeting disadvantaged populations were excluded. Outcome measures were limited to indicators proposed for Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5. We identified 18 articles, whereof 15 evaluated various incentive programs, two evaluated a targeted policy intervention, and only one study evaluated an intervention addressing a cultural custom. Meta-analyses of the effectiveness of incentives programs showed a pooled effect size of RR 1.66 (95% CI 1.43–1.93) for antenatal care attendance (four studies with 2,476 participants) and RR 2.37 (95% CI 1.38–4.07) for health facility delivery (five studies with 25,625 participants). Meta-analyses were not performed for any of the other outcomes due to scarcity of studies. Conclusions The targeted interventions aiming to improve maternal and child health are mainly limited to addressing economic disparities through various incentive schemes like conditional cash transfers and voucher schemes. This is a feasible strategy to reduce inequity based on income. More innovative action-oriented research is needed to speed up progress in maternal and child survival among the most disadvantaged populations through interventions targeting the underlying structural determinants of inequity.
Hand gesture recognition and spotting in uncontrolled environments based on classifier weighting

Pure appearance based Hand Gesture Recognition and Spotting in uncontrolled environments are challenging tasks due to the uncontrolled scene settings include: multiple hand regions in the scene; background moving objects; scale, speed and location variations of the gesture trajectories; changing lighting conditions and frontal occlusions. An appearance based method based on a novel classifier weighting scheme is proposed in this paper for hand gesture recognition and spotting in uncontrolled environments. The method is capable of producing decent performance with the presence of all the aforementioned challenges. Two databases are used for evaluating the proposed method, the Palm Graffiti Digits Database and the Warwick Hand Gesture Database. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can deal with the challenges from uncontrolled environments without any prior knowledge and enhance the performance of the initial classifier.
Semi-blind data detection of space-time coding systems in time-varying fading channels

In this paper we propose a blind data detection principle for space-time coding systems in time-varying fading channels. To solve the ambiguity problem in the blind detection, we consider semi-blind schemes for systems with (1) the space- time trellis coding (STTC) and (2) a trellis coded modulation (TCM) cascaded with a space-time block coding (STBC). We develop our algorithm based on the per-survivor processing (PSP)(6) on the trellis, and model the channel variation by a polynomial of time indices. A least-squares-fitting approach is applied to determine the coefficients of the polynomial. Our algorithm needs not to know the channel statistics like correlation functions and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Since the pilot density is low in the data streams of the semi-blind scheme, the transmission rate can be near that of pure blind schemes.
Adaptive stabilization of a class of nonlinear systems using high-gain feedback

This paper presents a high-gain feedback stabilizing control algorithm in which the high-gain parameter is adapted on line. The algorithm is developed for a class of nonlinear systems which can be viewed as the nonlinear counterpart of uniform rank multivariable linear systems. The system can be unknown except for a number of vital pieces of information. For single-input single-output linear systems such information is usually required in the traditional adaptive control literature.
A walking stability controller with disturbance rejection based on CMP criterion and Ground Reaction Force feedback

A novel controller using Center of Gravity (COG) planning based on the Centroidal Moment Pivot (CMP) criterion with Ground Reaction Force (GRF) feedback is presented. High level motion planning of the robot is done by planning a reference CMP trajectory that lies within the support polygon. In order to ensure rotational stability, the controller regulates the distance between the Zero Moment Point (ZMP) and the reference CMP through COG manipulation. A reference COG trajectory is generated from the measured GRF and a simplified model of the rotational dynamics of the robot. The reference COG is then decomposed into reference joint velocities via kinematic resolution of the COG Jacobian. Planar simulations show that modifying the COG trajectory using the CMP criterion with GRF feedback increases the controller's robustness to external disturbances compared to a ZMP based controller. Additionally, the results show that the constant non-zero momentum generated by external disturbances can be regulated by minimizing the difference between the reference CMP and ZMP positions, without explicitly regulating the momentum about the COG.
A Non-MDS Erasure Code Scheme For Storage Applications

This paper investigates the use of redundancy and self repairing against node failures in distributed storage systems, using various strategies. In replication method, access to one replication node is sufficient to reconstruct a lost node, while in MDS erasure coded systems which are optimal in terms of redundancy-reliability tradeoff, a single node failure is repaired after recovering the entire stored data. Moreover, regenerating codes yield a tradeoff curve between storage capacity and repair bandwidth. The current paper aims at investigating a new storage code. Specifically, we propose a non-MDS (2k, k) code that tolerates any three node failures and more importantly, it is shown using our code a single node failure can be repaired through access to only three nodes.
Automatic Detection of Driver Fatigue Using Driving Operation Information for Transportation Safety

Fatigued driving is a major cause of road accidents. For this reason, the method in this paper is based on the steering wheel angles (SWA) and yaw angles (YA) information under real driving conditions to detect drivers’ fatigue levels. It analyzes the operation features of SWA and YA under different fatigue statuses, then calculates the approximate entropy (ApEn) features of a short sliding window on time series. Using the nonlinear feature construction theory of dynamic time series, with the fatigue features as input, designs a “2-6-6-3” multi-level back propagation (BP) Neural Networks classifier to realize the fatigue detection. An approximately 15-h experiment is carried out on a real road, and the data retrieved are segmented and labeled with three fatigue levels after expert evaluation, namely “awake”, “drowsy” and “very drowsy”. The average accuracy of 88.02% in fatigue identification was achieved in the experiment, endorsing the value of the proposed method for engineering applications.
Effect of plant cover on seed removal by rodents in the Monte Desert (Mendoza, Argentina)

In desert areas, predation risk is one of the highest costs of foraging and is a major influence on animal behaviour. Several strategies are used by foragers for surviving and reproducing in desert areas. The foraging strategies of the small mammals of South American deserts are still poorly known. In this study, we investigated the foraging strategies of rodents of the Monte Desert in response to distance from seed sources to sheltered sites (i.e. shrubs) during two different seasons (wet and dry). We evaluated the relative rates of removal of two species of seeds (millet and sunflower) by rodents at two sites by establishing 80 seed sources, 40 in unsheltered microhabitats and 40 in sheltered microhabitats. We recorded both the number of caches and seed consumption for each source. We found that plant cover affected the foraging activity of rodents of the sand dunes in the Monte Desert because both consumption and numbers of caches constructed from sheltered seed sources were higher than those from unsheltered ones. Consumption of sunflower was higher in the wet season than it was in the dry season, when millet consumption increased. Sunflower was the preferred seed both from sheltered or unsheltered sources. We discuss the possible causes of the different foraging strategies used by rodents of the Monte Desert.
Genetically elevated non-fasting triglycerides and calculated remnant cholesterol as causal risk factors for myocardial infarction.

AIMS Elevated non-fasting triglycerides mark elevated levels of remnant cholesterol. Using a Mendelian randomization approach, we tested whether genetically increased remnant cholesterol in hypertriglyceridaemia due to genetic variation in the apolipoprotein A5 gene (APOA5) associates with an increased risk of myocardial infarction (MI). METHODS AND RESULTS We resequenced the core promoter and coding regions of APOA5 in individuals with the lowest 1% (n = 95) and highest 2% (n = 190) triglyceride levels in the Copenhagen City Heart Study (CCHS, n = 10 391). Genetic variants which differed in frequency between the two extreme triglyceride groups (c.-1131T > C, S19W, and c.*31C > T; P-value: 0.06 to <0.001), thus suggesting an effect on triglyceride levels, were genotyped in the Copenhagen General Population Study (CGPS), the CCHS, and the Copenhagen Ischemic Heart Disease Study (CIHDS), comprising a total of 5705 MI cases and 54 408 controls. Genotype combinations of these common variants associated with increases in non-fasting triglycerides and calculated remnant cholesterol of, respectively, up to 68% (1.10 mmol/L) and 56% (0.40 mmol/L) (P < 0.001), and with a corresponding odds ratio for MI of 1.87 (95% confidence interval: 1.25-2.81). Using APOA5 genotypes in instrumental variable analysis, the observational hazard ratio for a doubling in non-fasting triglycerides was 1.57 (1.32-2.68) compared with a causal genetic odds ratio of 1.94 (1.40-1.85) (P for comparison = 0.28). For calculated remnant cholesterol, the corresponding values were 1.67(1.38-2.02) observational and 2.23(1.48-3.35) causal (P for comparison = 0.21). CONCLUSION These data are consistent with a causal association between elevated levels of remnant cholesterol in hypertriglyceridaemia and an increased risk of MI. Limitations include that remnants were not measured directly, and that APOA5 genetic variants may influence other lipoprotein parameters.
Empirical Study of Planning and Execution for Large Teams of Robots

Large teams of robots can substantially increase the effectiveness of planning by acting as coordinated team. Our focus is on the planning of activities of a team of autonomous, mobile robots by distributed planning coordinated by one robot. With arising number of agents the communication increases rapidly. Our goal is to minimize communication much as possible. Modeling needs to be combined with planning to describe complex activities in intuitive way. The main contribution of the paper is the optimization of the planning process while using every agent as a planning resource and aiming at low communication needs. We evaluated our distributed planning for teams of up to 75 agents in the transport domain of the International Planning Competition (IPC). We optimized the planning process compared to state-ofthe-art approaches (last winners of IPC in the transportation domain) by up to 23%.
Under the table interaction

We explore the design space of a two-sided interactive touch table, designed to receive touch input from both the top and bottom surfaces of the table. By combining two registered touch surfaces, we are able to offer a new dimension of input for co-located collaborative groupware. This design accomplishes the goal of increasing the relative size of the input area of a touch table while maintaining its direct-touch input paradigm. We describe the interaction properties of this two-sided touch table, report the results of a controlled experiment examining the precision of user touches to the underside of the table, and a series of application scenarios we developed for use on inverted and two-sided tables. Finally, we present a list of design recommendations based on our experiences and observations with inverted and two-sided tables.
Telemonitoring of Patients with Implantable Cardiac Devices to Manage Heart Failure: An Evaluation of Tablet-PC-Based Nursing Intervention Program

Background: With the rapid aging of society, the number of patients with heart failure has also increased. Implantable devices for heart failure have become standardized. Remote monitoring using cardiac devices has grown in popularity for medical efficiency and the early detection of abnormalities. Our first aim was to develop a tablet-PC-based nursing intervention program for patients requiring remote monitoring of implantable cardiac devices. The second purpose was to evaluate the efficacy of the program by using mixed-methods research. Methods: The study consisted of two phases. In phase 1, we designed a tablet-PC-based nursing intervention program, on the basis of a literature review and qualitative data collected via semi-structured interviews. In phase 2, we conducted a randomized controlled trial that served as a preliminary investigation of the program. The outcome measures were readmission, unexpected visits to the clinic for heart problems, quality of life, self-care behavior, and self-efficacy. After the study, we interviewed each participant about his or her experiences with the program. Interviews were audio recorded, coded, and thematically analyzed. Results: The 33 patients with heart failure were randomized into two groups as follows: 17 patients in the telenursing group and 16 in the control group. During 6 months of follow-up, the readmission for heart failure occurred in 11% of the intervention group and 18% of the control group. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups at any outcome measures. Three themes were extracted via qualitative analysis: “getting a sense of safety,” “triggering a health behavior change,” and “feeling like a burden. ” Conclusion: No improvements in rates of rehospitalization or unexpected clinic visits were seen in the quantitative study. However, signs of behavior modification were seen in the qualitative study. This program has the possibility of improving patient outcomes.
Are free land arrangement really free? An exploration into land arrangements made by rural-urban migrants in the Northeast of Thailand

This paper contributes to an emerging literature on free land arrangements in developing countries. We argue that in-depth empirical analysis is crucial to understand the specific terms of land arrangements. Using mixed quantitative and qualitative data collected among rural-urban migrants in Thailand, we categorize land arrangements along four dimensions: self-reported categories by the actors, the nature of the relationship between the parties involved, the nature of the payment made, and how explicit or binding are the contractual terms. The economic motivations in each of the consequent categories of land arrangement are then analyzed with simple econometrics. Our main results suggest that while free land arrangements are allegedly common practice in Thailand, only a small number of these free arrangements are really free. Many appear to be a `disguised form of rental contract', similar to sharecropping except for the fact that they are reported as free arrangements. Disguised rental is often found among households who rely heavily on the safety net function of land. Or results also suggest that the arrangements which do not involve any direct repayment or compensation are often parts of complex inter-vivo bequests, and involve incomplete transfers of property rights.
A clustering-based approach for exploring sequences of compiler optimizations

In this paper we present a clustering-based selection approach for reducing the number of compilation passes used in search space during the exploration of optimizations aiming at increasing the performance of a given function and/or code fragment. The basic idea is to identify similarities among functions and to use the passes previously explored each time a new function is being compiled. This subset of compiler optimizations is then used by a Design Space Exploration (DSE) process. The identification of similarities is obtained by a data mining method which is applied to a symbolic code representation that translates the main structures of the source code to a sequence of symbols based on transformation rules. Experiments were performed for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The selection of compiler optimization sequences considering a set of 49 compilation passes and targeting a Xilinx MicroBlaze processor was performed aiming at latency improvements for 41 functions from Texas Instruments benchmarks. The results reveal that the passes selection based on our clustering method achieves a significant gain on execution time over the full search space still achieving important performance speedups.
Enterprise energy management using a linked dataspace for Energy Intelligence

Energy Intelligence platforms can help organizations manage power consumption more efficiently by providing a functional view of the entire organization so that the energy consumption of business activities can be understood, changed, and reinvented to better support sustainable practices. Significant technical challenges exist in terms of information management, cross-domain data integration, leveraging real-time data, and assisting users to interpret the information to optimize energy usage. This paper presents an architectural approach to overcome these challenges using a Dataspace, Linked Data, and Complex Event Processing. The paper describes the fundamentals of the approach and demonstrates it within an Enterprise Energy Observatory.
Synthesis and Chemometrics of Thymol and Carvacrol Derivatives as Larvicides against Aedes aegypti

Background: Thymol and carvacrol have previously demonstrated larvicidal activity against Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae). In view of this fact, it was of our interest to obtain synthetic derivatives and evaluate their larvicidal activity on Ae. aegypti larvae. Methods: Structural modifications were performed on thymol and carvacrol in an effort to understand the functional groups necessary for modulating their activities and to lead possibly to more effective larvae control agents. The derivatives were further subjected to SAR and computational studies (molecular modeling and chemometric tools (CPCA and PCA)) to extract structural information regarding their larvicidal properties. Field collected and Rockefeller populations of Ae. aegypti were used. Results: Carvacrol and thymol exhibited LC50 of 51 and 58ppm for field collected larvae, respectively. Carvacrol derivatives exhibited LC50 ranging from 39 to 169ppm, while thymol derivatives exhibited LC50 ranging from 18 to 465ppm. Substitution of the acidic proton of carvacrol by esters, ethers, and acetic acid resulted in either maintenance or reduction of potency. Conclusion: Thymol derivatives were, to a certain extent, more efficient larvicides against Ae. aegypti than carvacrol derivatives, particularly to Rockefeller larvae. The chemometrics tools applied in this study showed that the independent variables indicate a mixed profile. Nevertheless, hydrophobic interactions increased the larvicidal activity.
NoDB: efficient query execution on raw data files

As data collections become larger and larger, data loading evolves to a major bottleneck. Many applications already avoid using database systems, e.g., scientific data analysis and social networks, due to the complexity and the increased data-to-query time. For such applications data collections keep growing fast, even on a daily basis, and we are already in the era of data deluge where we have much more data than what we can move, store, let alone analyze. Our contribution in this paper is the design and roadmap of a new paradigm in database systems, called NoDB, which do not require data loading while still maintaining the whole feature set of a modern database system. In particular, we show how to make raw data files a first-class citizen, fully integrated with the query engine. Through our design and lessons learned by implementing the NoDB philosophy over a modern DBMS, we discuss the fundamental limitations as well as the strong opportunities that such a research path brings. We identify performance bottlenecks specific for in situ processing, namely the repeated parsing and tokenizing overhead and the expensive data type conversion costs. To address these problems, we introduce an adaptive indexing mechanism that maintains positional information to provide efficient access to raw data files, together with a flexible caching structure. Our implementation over PostgreSQL, called PostgresRaw, is able to avoid the loading cost completely, while matching the query performance of plain PostgreSQL and even outperforming it in many cases. We conclude that NoDB systems are feasible to design and implement over modern database architectures, bringing an unprecedented positive effect in usability and performance.