Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Outage Performance Analysis With Moving Relays on Suburban Trains for Uplink

We propose a system model to analyze heterogeneous cellular networks for uplink that includes the presence of moving relays on top of suburban trains. The outage probability of both macro users and vehicular users is analyzed at various cell locations. Per-user fractional power control is considered, and the effect of cooperation via moving relays on nonvehicular users is studied. Simulation results show that moving relays can reduce the outage probability of train users by almost 50%, especially toward the cell boundary. Moving relays can also significantly reduce outage of nonvehicular boundary users, depending on the location with the help of cooperative communication.
CleanEST: a database of cleansed EST libraries

The EST division of GenBank, dbEST, is widely used in many applications such as gene discovery and verification of exon–intron structure. However, the use of EST sequences in the dbEST libraries is often hampered by inconsistent terminology used to describe the library sources and by the presence of contaminated sequences. Here, we describe CleanEST, a novel database server that classified dbEST libraries and removes contaminants. We classified all dbEST libraries according to species and sequencing center. In addition, we further classified human EST libraries by anatomical and pathological systems according to eVOC ontologies. For each dbEST library, we provide two different cleansed sequences: ‘pre-cleansed’ and ‘user-cleansed’. To generate pre-cleansed sequences, we cleansed sequences in dbEST by alignment of EST sequences against well-known contamination sources: UniVec, Escherichia coli, mitochondria and chloroplast (for plant). To provide user-cleansed sequences, we built an automatic user-cleansing pipeline, in which sequences of a user-selected library are cleansed on-the-fly according to user-selected options. The server is available at http://cleanest.kobic. re.kr/ and the database is updated monthly.
Bounding loop iterations for timing analysis

Static timing analyzers need to know the minimum and maximum number of iterations associated with each loop in a real time program so accurate timing predictions can be obtained. The paper describes three complementary methods to support timing analysis by bounding the number of loop iterations. First, an algorithm is presented that determines the minimum and maximum number of iterations of loops with multiple exits. Second, the loop invariant variables on which the number of loop iterations depends are identified for which the user can provide minimum and maximum values. Finally, a method is given to tightly predict the execution time of loops whose number of iterations is dependent on counter variables of outer level loops. These methods have been successfully integrated in an existing timing analyzer that predicts the performance for optimized code on a machine that exploits caching and pipelining. The result is tighter timing analysis predictions and less work for the user.
Requirements for T Cell-Polarized Tubulation of Class II+ Compartments in Dendritic Cells 1

Activation of naive CD4 T cells by dendritic cells requires the sequential interaction of many TCR molecules with peptide-class II complexes of the appropriate specificity. Such interaction results in morphological transformation of class II MHC-containing endosomal compartments. In this study, we analyze the requirements for long tubular endosomal structures that polarize toward T cell contact sites using dendritic cells from I-Ab class II -enhanced green fluorescent protein knock-in mice and I-Ab-restricted CD4 T cells specific for OVA. Clustering of membrane proteins and ligation of T cell adhesion molecules LFA-1 and CD2 are involved in induction of endosomal tubulation. Activation of T cells increases their ability to induce class II-enhanced green fluorescent protein-positive tubules in dendritic cells, in part through up-regulation of CD40 ligand. Remarkably, and in stark contrast with the result obtained with dendritic cells loaded with intact OVA, OVA peptide added to dendritic cells failed to evoke T cell-polarized endosomal tubulation even though both conditions allowed T cell stimulation. These results suggest the existence of microdomains on the membrane of dendritic cells that allow Ag-specific T cells to evoke tubulation in the dendritic cell.
Sexual Quality of Life and Aging: A Prospective Study of a Nationally Representative Sample

Unlike other life domains, sexual quality of life (SQoL) has a negative relationship with age. This study disentangled the effect of age in this relationship from confounding sociocultural influences (e.g., the period of time in which data were collected, and cohort differences) and aimed to understand the roles of other sexual domains (i.e., frequency, perceived control, thought and effort invested in sex, and number of sexual partners). We analyzed data from the longitudinal Midlife in the United States study (n = 6,278; age range 20–93), which were collected between 1995 and 2013. Repeated measures linear mixed-effects models showed that age was the most robust time-related predictor of declining SQoL. However, after the sexual domains were included in the model, age had a positive relationship with SQoL and older adults’ SQoL was differentially influenced by the quality—not quantity—of sex. When partnership characteristics were included in the model, age was no longer related to SQoL. These findings suggest that aging may be associated with the acquisition of skills and strategies that can buffer age-related declines in SQoL, particularly in the context of a positive relationship. We summarize these findings as sexual wisdom.
Distributed video networks for incident detection and management

We describe a novel architecture for developing distributed video networks for incident detection and management. The networks utilize both rectilinear and omnidirectional cameras. It is recognized that robust and reliable segmentation of automobiles and shadows is critical in our application. We describe new segmentation procedure and present experimental results to support the basic feasibility and utility of the algorithms.
Learning to Construct Fast Signal Processing Implementations

A single signal processing algorithm can be represented by many mathematically equivalent formulas. However, when these formulas are implemented in code and run on real machines, they have very different runtimes. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to model this broad performance range. Further, the space of formulas for real signal transforms is so large that it is impossible to search it exhaustively for fast implementations. We approach this search question as a control learning problem. We present a new method for learning to generate fast formulas, allowing us to intelligently search through only the most promising formulas. Our approach incorporates signal processing knowledge, hardware features, and formula performance data to learn to construct fast formulas. Our method learns from performance data for a few formulas of one size and then can construct formulas that will have the fastest runtimes possible across many sizes.
Meat tenderness and the calpain proteolytic system in longissimus muscle of young bulls and steers.

The objectives of this study were to examine the effects of castration on the calpain proteinase system (mu-calpain, m-calpain, and calpastatin) activities and meat tenderness. Six each, MARC III bulls and steers were slaughtered at approximately 12 mo of age. Longissimus muscle samples were obtained for determining myofibril fragmentation index, Warner-Bratzler shear force, and sensory panel evaluation at 1, 7, and 14 d postmortem, and mu- and m-calpain and calpastatin activities at 24 h postmortem. Bulls produced leaner carcasses with lower (P < .05) quality grades than did steers. Meat from bulls had higher (P < .05) shear force values than meat from steers; however, sensory panelists were unable (P > .05) to detect differences in tenderness or other sensory traits between bulls and steers. Activities of mu- and m-calpain were not affected (P > .05) by castration; however, calpastatin was higher (P < .05) in muscles from the bull carcasses. Lower (P < .05) myofibril fragmentation index values indicate that less proteolysis occurred in muscle from bulls than in muscle from steers during the first 7 d postmortem. Greater calpastatin 24-h activity may be associated with the increased shear force of meat from bulls.
Interacting with molecular structures: user performance versus system complexity

Effective interaction in a virtual environment requires that the user can adequately judge the spatial relationships between the objects in a 3D scene. In order to accomplish adequate depth perception, existing virtual environments create useful perceptual cues through stereoscopy, motion parallax and (active or passive) haptic feedback. Specific hardware, such as high-end monitors with stereoscopic glasses, head-mounted tracking and mirrors are required to accomplish this. Many potential VR users however refuse to wear cumbersome devices and to adjust to an imposed work environment, especially for longer periods of time. It is therefore important to quantify the repercussions of dropping one or more of the above technologies. These repercussions are likely to depend on the application area, so that comparisons should be performed on tasks that are important and/or occur frequently in the application field of interest. In this paper, we report on a formal experiment in which the effects of different hardware components on the speed and accuracy of three-dimensional (3D) interaction tasks are established. The tasks that have been selected for the experiment are inspired by interactions and complexities, as they typically occur when exploring molecular structures. From the experimental data, we develop linear regression models to predict the speed and accuracy of the interaction tasks. Our findings show that hardware supported depth cues have a significant positive effect on task speed and accuracy, while software supported depth cues, such as shadows and perspective cues, have a negative effect on trial time. The task trial times are smaller in a simple fish-tank like desktop environment than in a more complex co-location enabled environment, sometimes at the cost of reduced accuracy.
Pattern matching of biological sequences with limited storage

Existing methods for getting the locally best matched alignments between a pair of biological sequences require O(N2) computational steps and O(N2) storage, where N is the average sequence length. An improved method is presented with which the storage requirement is greatly reduced, while the computational steps remain O(N2). Only a small number of additional steps are required to display any common sub-sequences with similarity scores greater than a given threshold. The aligments found by the algorithm are optimal in the sense that their scores are locally maximal, where each score is a sum of weights given to individual matches/replacements, insertions and deletions involved in the alignment. The algorithm was implemented in C programming language on a personal computer. Data area of 64 kbytes on random access memory and a few hundred kbytes on a disk is sufficient for comparing two protein or nucleic acid sequences of 2500 residues. The programs are particularly valuable when used in combination with fast sequence search programs.
Approximating matching size from random streams

We present a streaming algorithm that makes one pass over the edges of an unweighted graph presented in random order, and produces a polylogarithmic approximation to the size of the maximum matching in the graph, while using only polylogarithmic space. Prior to this work the only approximations known were a folklore O(√n) approximation with polylogarithmic space in an n vertex graph and a constant approximation with Ω(n) space. Our work thus gives the first algorithm where both the space and approximation factors are smaller than any polynomial in n. Our algorithm is obtained by effecting a streaming implementation of a simple "local" algorithm that we design for this problem. The local algorithm produces a O(k · n1/k) approximation to the size of a maximum matching by exploring the radius k neighborhoods of vertices, for any parameter k. We show, somewhat surprisingly, that our local algorithm can be implemented in the streaming setting even for k = Ω(log n/log log n). Our analysis exposes some of the problems that arise in such conversions of local algorithms into streaming ones, and gives techniques to overcome such problems.
Two-way shape memory polymer with "switch-spring" composition by interpenetrating polymer network

In the present work, a novel molecular strategy was employed to fabricate a two-way shape memory polymer (2WSMP), which is an interpenetrating network (IPN) with elastomeric and crystalline components leading to a “switch–spring” composition. In this 2WSMP the switch, a PCL crystalline network, is responsible for the reversible shape shrinkage. While the spring, the compressed PTMEG elastomeric network, provides the push force for shape expansion. This IPN polymer has the desired two-way shape effect (2WSME) as proved by DMA.
Compliant design of artificial graft: compliance determination by new digital X-ray imaging system-based method.

The development of an artificial graft requires formulation of biomechanical design criteria. The compliance of artifical grafts, based on the intraluminal pressure-internal diameter (Pi-Di) relationship, was measured by a novel method using a digital X-ray imaging system coupled with an edge detection algorithm and a pressure transducer. The Pi-Di values were obtained from digital angiographic images under continuous inflation of a canine femoral artery anastomosed with an expanded poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (ePTFE) vascular graft as a model vessel with a pressurized contrast medium. The Di at Pi using an NIH Image software specially programmed for the entropy filter method, which enables the detection of the edge of the vessel phantoms of the images, was determined. The Pi-Di relationships showed a "J-shape" curve for the artery, a steeper line with a very low pressure-dependent distensibility for the ePTFE graft, and an intermediate curve for the anastomosis protion. The two indices for the vessel compliance, the stiffness parameter (beta value) and the diameter compliance (Cd), both of which were calculated from the Pi-Di relationships, were 10.6 and 6.8%/mmHg x 10(-2) for the artery, 164 and 0.51%/mmHg x 10(-2) for the ePTFE, and 14.4 and 5.5%/mmHg x 10(-2) for the anastomosis portion, respectively. This method can measure compliance at any portions of the sampling vessel in a single experiment on a real-time basis with very high accuracy, compared with conventional methods, and even in cases of intimal thickening and/or connective tissues-adhered vessels, and may serve to provide information on compliant design criteria of artificial and tissue-engineered graft.
Goal-Based Modeling of Dynamically Adaptive System Requirements

Self-adaptation is emerging as an increasingly important capability for many applications, particularly those deployed in dynamically changing environments, such as ecosystem monitoring and disaster management. One key challenge posed by dynamically adaptive systems (DASs) is the need to handle changes to the requirements and corresponding behavior of a DAS in response to varying environmental conditions. Berry et al. previously identified four levels of RE that should be performed for a DAS. In this paper, we propose the levels of RE for modeling that reify the original levels to describe RE modeling work done by DAS developers. Specifically, we identify four types of developers: the system developer, the adaptation scenario developer, the adaptation infrastructure developer, and the DAS research community. Each level corresponds to the work of a different type of developer to construct goal model(s) specifying their requirements. We then leverage the levels of RE for modeling to propose two complementary processes for performing RE for a DAS. We describe our experiences with applying this approach to GridStix, an adaptive flood warning system, deployed to monitor the River Ribble in Yorkshire, England.
Caffeine, acting on adenosine A(1) receptors, prevents the extinction of cocaine-seeking behavior in mice.

Drug-naive DBA/2 mice were trained to self-administer cocaine (40 microgram/kg/infusion) i.v. by nose poking. The number of nose-poke responses was higher in mice receiving response-contingent injections of cocaine (active group) than in yoked controls or in animals receiving response-contingent saline injections. Twenty-four hours after the training session (cocaine or saline self-administration), mice were injected i.p. with saline, cocaine, caffeine, 1,3-dipropyl-8-cyclopentyl xanthine (DPCPX), 8-cyclopentyl theophylline (8-CPT), 5-amino-7-(2-phenylethyl)2-(2-furyl)-pyrazolo-[4,3-e]-1,2, 4-triazolo[1,5-c]pyrimidine (SCH 58261), or 9-chloro-2(2-furyl)[1,2, 4]triazolo[1,5-c]quinazolin-5-amine (CGS 15943) and placed again in exactly the same operant boxes as during the training session but without response-contingent i.v. infusions. Saline injection elicited similar responding in animals from the active group and from the yoked control group. A low dose of cocaine (5 mg/kg) or caffeine (3 mg/kg), but not higher doses, produced greater responding in the active group than in the yoked control group during a single extinction trial. The adenosine A(1)-receptor antagonists DPCPX and 8-CPT and the nonselective antagonist CGS 15943 partially reproduced the effect of a low dose of caffeine on the cocaine-associated behavior in a dose-dependent manner and did not alter the nose-poke activity of yoked control mice in the extinction experiment. In contrast, the adenosine A(2A) antagonist SCH 58261, in doses above 1 mg/kg, reduced nose-poke activity equally in active and yoked control animals. This confirms that a drug from a different pharmacological class (adenosine-receptor antagonist) can induce behavior changes similar to the effects of the original self-administered drug (indirect dopamine-receptor agonist). The data also suggest that the effects of caffeine on cocaine-seeking behavior might be related to interaction with adenosine A(1) receptors, but not A(2A) receptors.
Structural DfT Approach on Folded ADCs

This paper presents a structural design for test approach for folding and interpolated analog-to-digital converters. In this methodology relative deviations between internal ADC nodes are measured to detect the presence of a fault. A behavioral model of the ADC and the DfT has been done in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed test approach compared to a functional test.
A new method for GPU based irregular reductions and its application to k-means clustering

A frequently used method of clustering is a technique called k-means clustering. The k-means algorithm consists of two steps: A map step, which is simple to execute on a GPU, and a reduce step, which is more problematic. Previous researchers have used a hybrid approach in which the map step is computed on the GPU and the reduce step is performed on the CPU. In this work, we present a new algorithm for irregular reductions and apply it to k-means such that the GPU executes both the map and reduce steps. We provide experimental comparisons using OpenCL. Our results show that our scheme is 3.2 times faster than the hybrid scheme for k = 10, an average 1.5 times faster when the number of clusters, k = 100 and on average equal for k = 400, on an ATI Radeon® HD 5870 (best speedup was 3.5 times) compared to the hybrid approach. In addition, we compare the GPU code with the standard OpenMP benchmark, MineBench. In that implementation, both the map and reduce steps are computed on the CPU. For large data sizes, the new GPU scheme shows great promise, with performance up to 35 times faster than MineBench on a four core Intel i7 CPU.
Randomized rounding without solving the linear program

We introduce a new technique called oblivious rounding a variant of randomized rounding that avoids the bottleneck of first solving the linear program. Avoiding this bottleneck yields more efficient algorithms and brings probabilistic methods to bear on a new class of problems. We give oblivious rounding algorithms that approximately solve general packing and covering problems, including a parallel algorithm to find sparse strategies for matrix games.
Reify your collection queries for modularity and speed!

Modularity and efficiency are often contradicting requirements, such that programers have to trade one for the other. We analyze this dilemma in the context of programs operating on collections. Performance-critical code using collections need often to be hand-optimized, leading to non-modular, brittle, and redundant code. In principle, this dilemma could be avoided by automatic collection-specific optimizations, such as fusion of collection traversals, usage of indexing, or reordering of filters. Unfortunately, it is not obvious how to encode such optimizations in terms of ordinary collection APIs, because the program operating on the collections is not reified and hence cannot be analyzed. We propose SQuOpt, the Scala Query Optimizer--a deep embedding of the Scala collections API that allows such analyses and optimizations to be defined and executed within Scala, without relying on external tools or compiler extensions. SQuOpt provides the same "look and feel" (syntax and static typing guarantees) as the standard collections API. We evaluate SQuOpt by re-implementing several code analyses of the FindBugs tool using SQuOpt, show average speedups of 12x with a maximum of 12800x and hence demonstrate that SQuOpt can reconcile modularity and efficiency in real-world applications.
Enterprise search behaviour of software engineers

Technical professionals spend ~25% of their time at work searching for information, and have specialized information needs that are not well-served by generic enterprise search tools. In this study, we investigated how a group of software engineers use a workplace search system. We identify patterns of search behaviour specific to this group and distinct from general web and intranet search patterns, and make design recommendations for search systems that will better serve the needs of this group.
Nanofibrous-structured biopolymer scaffolds obtained by a phase separation with camphene and initial cellular events

A simple and novel methodology to create a biopolymer PHBV (polyhydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) with a nanofibrous morphology is introduced in this paper. PHBV solution was mixed with hydrocarbon camphene (C10H16) at various concentrations (camphene : PHBV = 1 : 1∼12 : 1) to create an interpenetrating network. During the solvent evaporation, camphene was easily solidified due to its low freezing point (∼40 °C), and the sublimation of camphene at ambient condition generated pores, resulting in the production of a highly porous PHBV membrane. As the camphene concentration increased, the pore part increased and the resultant PHBV network became nanofibrous. The nanofibrous morphology was uniformly observed throughout the PHBV membrane. Additionally, the nanofibrous surface could be easily implemented onto a 3D macro-porous scaffold by applying standard scaffolding techniques, such as salt impregnation-and-leaching and robotic dispensing. The initial cell adhesion events assessed up to 24 h were significantly enhanced on the PHBV with nanofibrous surfaces when compared to those with dense surfaces, as confirmed by the adherent cell number, morphological traits, and the expression of adhesion proteins including focal adhesion kinase and paxillin. Overall, this study conveys a novel and simple methodology of producing a biopolymer with nanofibrous morphology that may be an alternative to electrospinning, with which the production of 3D macroporous scaffolds with complex shapes has been a challenge.