Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A sample-mode packet delay variation filter for IEEE 1588 synchronization

Recent studies have shown that the delay distribution of IEEE 1588 synchronization traffic varies with the characteristics and amount of the background traffic in the network, and influences the choice of packet selection filters. In this paper, we characterize the delay profile of an Ethernet cross-traffic network statically loaded with one of the ITU-T network models and a larger Ethernet inline traffic loaded with uniformly-sized packets. We also propose an iterative sample-mode packet delay variation (PDV) filter and use numerical simulations in OPNET to illustrate the performance of the filter in the networks. We compare the performance of the proposed PDV filter with those of the existing sample minimum, mean, and maximum filters and observe that the sample-mode filtering algorithm is able to match or outperform other types of filters, at different levels of network load.
Multicast-based inference of network-internal loss characteristics

Robust measurements of network dynamics are increasingly important to the design and operation of large internetworks like the Internet. However, administrative diversity makes it impractical to monitor every link on an end-to-end path. At the same time, it is difficult to determine the performance characteristics of individual links from end-to-end measurements of unicast traffic. In this paper, we introduce the use of end-to-end measurements of multicast traffic to infer network-internal characteristics. The bandwidth efficiency of multicast traffic makes it suitable for large-scale measurements of both end-to-end and internal network dynamics. We develop a maximum-likelihood estimator for loss rates on internal links based on losses observed by multicast receivers. It exploits the inherent correlation between such observations to infer the performance of paths between branch points in the tree spanning a multicast source and its receivers. We derive its rate of convergence as the number of measurements increases, and we establish robustness with respect to certain generalizations of the underlying model. We validate these techniques through simulation and discuss possible extensions and applications of this work
Preliminary guide to the identification of the early life history stages of Gerreid fishes of the Western Central Atlantic

The family Gerreidae contains four genera and 13 species that occur in the western central North Atlantic. Adult gerreids are small to medium size fishes that are abundant in coastal waters, bays, and estuaries in tropical and warm temperate regions and sometimes occur in freshwaters. They are generally associate~ with grassy or open bottoms, but not with reefs. Gerreids are silvery fishes, with deeply forked tails, and extremely protrusible mouth that points downward when protracted. They apparently feed on bottom-dwelling organisms and at least one species (Eucinostomus gula) shows a distinct transition, during the juvenile period, from a planktivore (exclusively copepods) to a carnivore that includes a diet of almost solely polychaetes (Carr & Adams, 1973; Robins and Ray, 1987; Murdy et al., 1997). (PDF contains 10 pages)
Work Zone Throughput Models for Southern Ontario

Highway lane closures cause reductions in the traffic throughput which lead to premature queuing. To minimize user delays, contractors are required to keep highway lanes open during the peak traffic hours and work at nights. However, these limitations can reduce the quality of the work and extend project duration. Finding a right balance between the times that the lanes can be closed and the times they should be kept open can increase the efficiency of the
Knowledge-based systems for idea processing support

Knowledge-based systems methods have been seen as means of enhancing the nature of support provided by Decision Support Systems. This paper examines how they can be similarly used to provide user guidance and to represent forms of knowledge that are relevant to the newer type of qualitative support systems called Idea Processing. Basic concepts of Idea Processing and Knowledge-based systems are summarized. The paper identifies several modes of knowledge representation appropriate for particular functions of Idea Processing.
Impact of Mechanical Stress on Characteristics of Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

In this paper, we investigate the impact of mechanical stress on characteristics of interior permanent magnet synchronous motors from both results of measurement and calculation. First, the basic experiments by using stator cores with/without shrink fitting of housings are carried out. The measured iron loss is compared with the calculated results obtained by combined stress and electromagnetic field finite-element analysis. Next, the measured torque and iron loss of the motor under load conditions are compared with the analysis that considers the mechanical stress caused by both the stator shrink fitting and the rotor centrifugal force. The measured and calculated results are found to be in good agreement. From these results, it is clarified that the mechanical stress causes not only an increase in the stator iron loss, but also an increase in the rotor-iron loss, and a decrease in the reluctance torque of interior permanent magnet synchronous motors.
Detection of Intratumoral Susceptibility Signals Using T2*-Weighted Gradient Echo MRI in Patients with Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Objective To retrospectively evaluate whether T2*-weighted imaging can be used to grade clear cell renal cell carcinomas (ccRCC) based on intratumoral susceptibility signals (ISSs). Materials and Methods MR imaging from 37 patients with pathologically-proven ccRCCs was evaluated. ISSs on T2*WI were classified as linear or conglomerated linear structures (type I) and dot-like or patchy foci (type II). Two radiologists assessed the likelihood of the presence of ISS, dominant structure of ISS and ratio of ISS area to tumor area. Results were analyzed by nonparametric Mann-Whitney test. Results ISSs were seen in all patients except for four patients with low-grade ccRCCs and two patients with high-grade ccRCCs. There was no significant difference of the likelihood of the presence of ISS between low- and high-grade ccRCCs. More type I ISSs and less type II ISSs were predictive of low-grade tumors, whereas more conspicuity type II ISSs correlated with higher occurrence of high-grade tumors (P<0.05). The ratio of ISS area to tumor area was also significantly higher for the high-grade group (1.27±0.79) than that for the low-grade group (0.81±0.40) (P<0.05). Conclusion ISSs on T2*-weighted gradient-echo MR images can help grade ccRCCs before operations.
Replication of Experimental Results in Software Engineering

Carrying out empirical studies is widely held to be of importance. A view less widely held is that experiments should be replicated externally (i.e. by diierent researchers) to both verify and validate the original results. This paper serves two main functions. First, the need for external replications is established. The role of replication in experimental software engineering is discussed. Without the connrming power of external replications, results in experimental software engineering should only be provisionally accepted, if at all. An extension to the framework for experimentation in software engineering by Basili et al 5] is proposed to diierentiate between the various kinds of internal and external replication and their powers of connrmation and to allow a better appreciation of the context of a piece of empirical work. Second, this paper presents a concrete example of an external replication of an experiment which tested the beneets to maintenance of using modular code against non-modular (mono-lithic) code. The results of the original experiment by Korson 32, 33] showed that a modular program could be maintained signiicantly faster than an equivalent monolithic version of the same program under the condition that modularity has been used to implement information hiding which localizes changes required by a modiication. The results of our replication, however , were strikingly diierent from those of the original and showed no signiicant diierence between the average times taken to maintain modular and monolithic code. An inductive analysis was undertaken to investigate the reasons for this diierence. Evidence was uncovered suggesting an ability eeect (which was not observed in the original experiment), a lack of realism in the context in which subjects were asked to perform tasks, diiering degrees of subjects' understanding of the programs, diierent approaches taken by subjects toward making the required modiications, and possible deeciencies of subject monitoring. Other sources of variability are also discussed. It is concluded that external replications, combined with inductive analysis techniques, have an important if not vital part to play in the realization of generalizable results.
Linguistically-Based Sub-Sentential Alignment for Terminology Extraction from a Bilingual Automotive Corpus

We present a sub-sentential alignment system that links linguistically motivated phrases in parallel texts based on lexical correspondences and syntactic similarity. We compare the performance of our sub-sentential alignment system with different symmetrization heuristics that combine the GIZA++ alignments of both translation directions. We demonstrate that the aligned linguistically motivated phrases are a useful means to extract bilingual terminology and more specifically complex multiword terms.
Design and Application of Antimicrobial Peptide Conjugates

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are an interesting class of antibiotics characterized by their unique antibiotic activity and lower propensity for developing resistance compared to common antibiotics. They belong to the class of membrane-active peptides and usually act selectively against bacteria, fungi and protozoans. AMPs, but also peptide conjugates containing AMPs, have come more and more into the focus of research during the last few years. Within this article, recent work on AMP conjugates is reviewed. Different aspects will be highlighted as a combination of AMPs with antibiotics or organometallic compounds aiming to increase antibacterial activity or target selectivity, conjugation with photosensitizers for improving photodynamic therapy (PDT) or the attachment to particles, to name only a few. Owing to the enormous resonance of antimicrobial conjugates in the literature so far, this research topic seems to be very attractive to different scientific fields, like medicine, biology, biochemistry or chemistry.
Mycotoxin identification in moldy dwellings

The objective of this study was to assess the level of macrocyclic trichothecenes (MCT), one of the most potent mycotoxins, on wall surfaces, ßoor dust and air samples from moldy dwellings. The study was based on an index group comprising 15 ßooded dwellings contaminated by Stachybotrys chartarum or Chaetomium and a control group comprising nine dwellings without molds on visual inspection and mold sampling. Three samples were collected from each dwelling: a sample from the moldy wall, using a swab, a ßoor dust sample on a 0.5 m2 surface with a cloth and an air sample using a pump comprising a 1 µm Teßon filter. The MCT level was measured using a monoclonal, antibody‐based ELISA test. Compared with measurements performed in index dwellings, higher MCT values were measured on ßoor dust samples from moldy dwellings (P = 0.02). Samples from wall surfaces demonstrated nearly significant differences (P = 0.06). No significant differences were observed for air samples (P = 0.15), but some samples showed increased MCT levels. Significant correlations were observed between the levels measured on wall surfaces, ßoor dust and air samples (P = 0.02 to 0.05). In contrast, no correlation was observed between moldy surface and MCT levels. In conclusion, this paper reports for the first time direct evidence for the presence of MCT in moldy dwellings. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Proximity of persistence modules and their diagrams

Topological persistence has proven to be a key concept for the study of real-valued functions defined over topological spaces. Its validity relies on the fundamental property that the persistence diagrams of nearby functions are close. However, existing stability results are restricted to the case of continuous functions defined over triangulable spaces. In this paper, we present new stability results that do not suffer from the above restrictions. Furthermore, by working at an algebraic level directly, we make it possible to compare the persistence diagrams of functions defined over different spaces, thus enabling a variety of new applications of the concept of persistence. Along the way, we extend the definition of persistence diagram to a larger setting, introduce the notions of discretization of a persistence module and associated pixelization map, define a proximity measure between persistence modules, and show how to interpolate between persistence modules, thereby lending a more analytic character to this otherwise algebraic setting. We believe these new theoretical concepts and tools shed new light on the theory of persistence, in addition to simplifying proofs and enabling new applications.
Linguistically Motivated Reordering Modeling for Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation

Word reordering is one of the most difficult aspects of Statistical Machine Translation (SMT), and an important factor of its quality and efficiency. While short and medium-range reordering is reasonably handled by the phrase-based approach (PSMT), long-range reordering still represents a challenge for state-of-the-art PSMT systems. As a major cause of this problem, we point out the inadequacy of existing reordering constraints and models to cope with the reordering phenomena occurring between distant languages. On one hand, the reordering constraints used to control translation complexity appear to be too coarse-grained. On the other hand, the reordering models used to score different reordering decisions during translation are not discriminative enough to effectively guide the search over very large sets of hypotheses. In this thesis we propose several techniques to improve the definition of the reordering search space in PSMT by exploiting prior linguistic knowledge, so that long-range reordering may be adequately handled without sacrificing efficiency. In particular, we focus on Arabic-English and German-English: two language pairs characterized by uneven distributions of reordering phenomena, with long-range movements concentrating on few patterns. All our techniques aim at improving the definition of the reordering search space by exploiting prior linguistic knowledge, but they do this with different means: namely, chunk-based reordering rules and word reordering lattices, modified distortion matrices and early reordering pruning. Through extensive experiments, we show that our techniques can significantly advance the state of the art in PSMT for these challenging language pairs. When compared with a popoular tree-based SMT approach, our best PSMT systems achieve comparable or higher reordering accuracies while being considerably faster.
Advancing Streamflow Forecasts Through the Application of a Physically Based Energy Balance Snowmelt Model With Data Assimilation and Cyberinfrastructure Resources

In many parts of the world, the quantity and timing of streamflow depend on processes of snow accumulation and melt. However, detailed snowmelt modeling is often hampered by limited input data availability and uncertainty arising from inadequate model structure and parametrization. This is particularly true in operational streamflow forecasting where modelers do not have the benefit of post-processed data. Data assimilation that updates model states based on observations provides a way to reduce uncertainty and improve model forecasts of streamflow. In this study, we evaluated coupled snowmelt, soil moisture accounting, and river routing models for streamflow forecasting in a snow dominated headwater watershed. We integrated the Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snowmelt model into the Research Distributed Hydrologic Model (RDHM), which has implementations for the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) and rutpix7 river routing models. We implemented two different data assimilation methods for different parts of the model: the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) for assimilation of snow water equivalent (SWE) observations from Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) stations in UEB and the Particle Filter (PF) for assimilation of streamflow to update the SAC-SMA and rutpix7 states. Using leave one out validation, it 1 Authors: Tseganeh Z Gichamo, David G. Tarboton. 15 was shown that the modeled SWE at an observation location whose observations were excluded from the data assimilation was improved through assimilation of data from other stations, especially during the snow accumulation period. This suggests that assimilation of sparse observations of SWE has the potential to improve the distributed modeling of SWE over watershed grid cells where SWE is not observed. In addition, the distributed snow data assimilation resulted in improved ensemble streamflow forecasts. For example, the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) for the ensemble mean of forecasted streamflow improved from 0.52 with no data assimilation to 0.83 with snow data assimilation, and the April – July volume error was reduced by 94 %. On the other hand, the assimilation of streamflow observations using the Particle Filter (PF) method did not provide additional forecast improvement over that achieved by the SWE assimilation. Keywords—Ensemble streamflow forecast; Utah Energy Balance (UEB) snowmelt model; Research Distributed Hydrologic Model (RDHM); data assimilation; Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF); Particle Filter (PF);
The after‐effects of impulses in the giant nerve fibres of Loligo

The giant nerve fibres of Loligo and Sepia differ from most excitable tissues in that the spike of an isolated axon is followed by a brief period of hyperpolarization, which is often called the positive phase (Curtis & Cole, 1942; Hodgkin & Huxley, 1939; Weidmann, 1951). There is evidence that the positive phase occurs because the permeability of the membrane to potassium increases during the second half of the spike, and does not at once return to its resting value (Hodgkin & Huxley, 1952d). Since the resting potential of an isolated axon may be 15-30 mV less than the equilibrium potential for potassium ions, the persistence of the state of increased potassium permeability during the refractory period raises the membrane potential above its resting value and generates a pQsitive phase. This suggestion is supported by the observation that the membrane potential during the positive phase is markedly affected by small changes in the concentration of potassium outside the fibre (Hodgkin & Katz, 1949a, Hodgkin & Keynes, 1955). Thus, increasing the external potassium concentration from 0 to 20 mm, which decreases the resting potential by only about 10 mV, reduces the membrane potential during the positive phase by 30 mV. The sensitivity of the positive phase to changes in potassium concentration forms the basis for interpreting the observations described in this paper; the starting-point was provided by an experiment in which the effects of calciumdeficient solutions were being examined. Like many previous observers we found that reducing the concentrations of calcium and magnesium made the giant axon of Loligo spontaneously active. When fibres were near the point at which they fired continuously they often gave long trains of impulses in response to a single shock. In these trains we noticed that the positive phases of the spikes were not of equal size, but declined during the initial stages of the
Observations of H I absorbing gas in compact radio sources at cosmological redshifts

We present an overview of the occurrence and properties of atomic gas associated with compact radio sources at redshifts up to z = 0.85. Searches for H i 21cm absorption were made with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope at UHF-high frequencies (725-1200 MHz). Detections were obtained for 19 of the 57 sources with usable spectra (33%). We have found a large range in line depths, from � = 0.16 to � � 0.001. There is a substantial variety of line profiles, including Gaussians of less than 10kms 1 , to more typically 150kms 1 , as well as irregular and multi-peaked absorption profiles, sometimes spanning several hundred kms 1 . Assuming uniform coverage of the entire radio source, we obtain column depths of atomic gas between 1×10 19 and 3.3×10 21 (Tsp/100 K)(1/f) cm 2 . There is evidence for significant gas motions, but in contrast to earlier results at low redshift, there are many sources in which the H i velocity is substantially negative (up to v = 1420kms 1 ) with respect to the optical redshift, suggesting that in these sources the atomic gas, rather than falling into the centre, may be be flowing out, interacting with the jets, or rotating around the nucleus.
Bed motion under waves: plug and sheet flow observations

Experiments were designed to address the role of horizontal pressure gradients on bed dynamics for shoaling, breaking, surf and swash waves. A small-scale laboratory flume with low density sediment is used. The flow in the bottom boundary layer and sediment bed motion is tracked by video measurements. Occurrence of plug flows is evidenced. We also question the role of the vertical pressure gradients on bed destabilization, and the dubious relevance of acoustic measurements to track deep layers of moving sediment. The chosen experimental set-up is favoring the occurrence of the plug flow regime, scaling arguments nevertheless suggest that plug flow is likely to occur in natural coastal zones.
Syllable Contraction in Taiwan Mandarin

Taiwan Mandarin syllable contraction is a lenition process which involves the elision of the intervocalic segments and the merger of the tonal elements of two syllables. Trough depth is employed as the measure for gradience of syllable contraction in this study and the distribution of trough depth shows that syllable contraction is optional. In the perception experiment, listeners were asked to do a forced-choice identification task and the accuracy was generally high. The production results verify that syllable contraction is optional and gradient, and the duration and F0 range are the acoustic cues that contribute to the distinction between the fully-contracted tokens and the lexical tokens.
Fault-tolerant pose estimation of space objects

This paper presents a fault-tolerant method for pose estimation of space objects using 3-D vision data by integration of a Kalman filter (KF) and an Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm in a closed-loop configuration. The initial guess for the internal ICP iteration is provided by state estimate propagation of the Kalman filer. The Kalman filter is capable of not only estimating the target's states, but also its inertial parameters. This allows the motion of target to be predictable as soon as the filter converges. Consequently, the ICP can maintain pose tracking over a wider range of velocity due to increased precision of ICP initialization. Furthermore, incorporation of the target's dynamics model in the estimation process allows the estimator continuously provide pose estimation even when the sensor temporally loses its signal namely due to obstruction. The capabilities of the pose estimation methodology is demonstrated by a ground testbed for Automated Rendezvous & Docking (AR&D).