Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of TCP performance with LTE downlink schedulers in a vehicular environment

Packet scheduler at the medium access control (MAC) layer is essential to improve radio resource utilization in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. The MAC scheduler allocates resource blocks to user terminals (UEs) according to the priority metric, which varies in different scheduling algorithms. Although there have been many studies on the performance of LTE schedulers at the MAC layer, it is interesting to evaluate the impact of different LTE MAC schedulers on the transport layer, particularly on the transmission control protocol (TCP). In this study, we implement three mainstream LTE MAC schedulers in Network Simulator-3 (NS-3), namely, maximum throughput (MT), blind equal throughput (BET) and proportional fair (PF). Extensive simulations are conducted to examine the different TCP throughput achieved with the frequency domain version and the time domain version of these schedulers in a vehicular environment. The performance difference is attributed to important factors such as the resource allocation granularity, channel-awareness in scheduling, and the number of UEs.
The Role of Endoscopic Assistance in Surgery for Pediatric Cholesteatoma in Reducing Residual and Recurrent Disease

The primary aim of this study was to evaluate long-term recurrent and residual disease after surgery for acquired cholesteatoma in children according to surgical approach. A total of 71 interventions performed on 67 pediatric patients were included in the study. Canal wall-up tympanomastoidectomy (CWUT) was performed in 31 ears (13 with endoscopic assistance), a transcanal esclusive endoscopic approach (TEEA) was used in 22, and canal wall-down tympanomastoidectomy (CWDT) was performed in 18. Overall, the cholesteatoma relapse rate estimated by the Kaplan–Meier method was 47 ± 6% at 12 years; the recurrent cholesteatoma rate was 28 ± 6% and the residual cholesteatoma rate was 26 ± 5%. The relapse rate according to surgical approach was 33 ± 11% for CWDT, 60 ± 9% for CWUT, and 40 ± 11% for TEEA (p = 0.04). The difference for recurrent disease was no recurrent disease for CWDT, 42 ± 9% for CWUT, and 32 ± 11% for TEEA (p = 0.01). The residual disease rate was significantly reduced with endoscopy: 42 ± 8% without endoscopy vs. 9 ± 5% with (p = 0.003). CWDT can still be considered in primary surgery in case of extensive cholesteatomas and small mastoid with poor pneumatization. TEEA can be recommended for small cholesteatoma not extending to the mastoid to reduce morbidity. Endoscopic assistance seems useful to reduce residual disease in CWUT, whereas it does not have a significant impact on preventing recurrent disease.
Structural social support and cardiovascular disease risk factors in Hispanic/Latino adults with diabetes: results from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL)

ABSTRACT Objective(s): Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have yielded inconsistent findings on the associations of social support networks with cardiovascular health in Hispanic/Latino adults with diabetes. We examined the cross-sectional associations of structural social support and traditional cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in a diverse sample of Hispanic/Latino adults with diabetes. Research Design and Methods: This analysis included 2994 adult participants ages 18–74 with diabetes from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL – 2008–2011). Select items from the Social Network Inventory (SNI) were used to assess indices of structural social support, i.e. network size (number of children, parents, and in-laws) and frequency of familial contact. Standardized methods were used to measure abdominal obesity, BMI, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and smoking status. Multivariate regression was used to examine associations of structural support with individual CVD risk factors with demographics, acculturation, physical health, and psychological ill-being (depressive symptoms and anxiety) included as covariates. Results: There were no significant cross-sectional associations of structural support indices with abdominal obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, or smoking status. There was a marginally significant (OR: 1.05; 95%CI 0.99–1.11) trend toward higher odds of obesity in participants reporting a larger family unit (including children, parents, and in-laws) and those with closer ties with extended family relatives (OR: 1.04; 95%CI 0.99–1.09). Conclusions: Structural social support was marginally associated with higher odds of obesity in Hispanic/Latino adults with diabetes. Alternate forms of social support (e.g. healthcare professionals, friends, peers) should be further explored as potential markers of cardiac risk in Hispanics/Latinos with diabetes.
Display Registration for Device Interaction - a Proof of Principle Prototype

A method is proposed to facilitate visually-driven interactions between two devices, which we call the client, such as a mobile phone or personal digital assistant (PDA), which must be equipped with a camera, and the server, such as a personal computer (PC) or intelligent display. The technique that we describe here requires a camera on the client to view the display on the server, such that either the client or the server (or both) can compute exactly which part of the server display is being viewed. The server display and the clients image of the server display, which can be written onto (part of) the client’s display are then registered. This basic principle, which we call “display registration” supports a very broad range of interactions (depending on the context in which the system is operating) and it will make these interactions significantly quicker, easier and more intuitive for the user to initiate and control. In addition, either the client or the server (or both) can compute the six degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) position of the client camera with respect to the server display. We have built a prototype which proves the principle and usefulness of display registration. This system employs markers on the server display for fast registration and it has been used to demonstrate a variety of operations, such as selecting and zooming into images.
Intermediate filament–membrane attachments function synergistically with actin-dependent contacts to regulate intercellular adhesive strength

By tethering intermediate filaments (IFs) to sites of intercellular adhesion, desmosomes facilitate formation of a supercellular scaffold that imparts mechanical strength to a tissue. However, the role IF–membrane attachments play in strengthening adhesion has not been directly examined. To address this question, we generated Tet-On A431 cells inducibly expressing a desmoplakin (DP) mutant lacking the rod and IF-binding domains (DPNTP). DPNTP localized to the plasma membrane and led to dissociation of IFs from the junctional plaque, without altering total or cell surface distribution of adherens junction or desmosomal proteins. However, a specific decrease in the detergent-insoluble pool of desmoglein suggested a reduced association with the IF cytoskeleton. DPNTP-expressing cell aggregates in suspension or substrate-released cell sheets readily dissociated when subjected to mechanical stress whereas controls remained largely intact. Dissociation occurred without lactate dehydrogenase release, suggesting that loss of tissue integrity was due to reduced adhesion rather than increased cytolysis. JD-1 cells from a patient with a DP COOH-terminal truncation were also more weakly adherent compared with normal keratinocytes. When used in combination with DPNTP, latrunculin A, which disassembles actin filaments and disrupts adherens junctions, led to dissociation up to an order of magnitude greater than either treatment alone. These data provide direct in vitro evidence that IF–membrane attachments regulate adhesive strength and suggest furthermore that actin- and IF-based junctions act synergistically to strengthen adhesion.
Twooter: designing a musical expression tool for use in social networks

This paper reports on the design of Twooter, a tool for non-verbal, music-based expression in an online social network. Borrowing ideas from popular social networks and influenced through recent educational endeavors by a large cultural institution, Twooter is being designed with the hope of bridging the gap between the ease of updating one's status in a profile and the difficulty in content creation. Twooter is being designed through the Cooperative Inquiry method. Adults and children are working together to design this technology for use in an online, educational environment. Several design sessions have informed researchers on the features and interactions required to accomplish this goal.
Assessment of Heavy Metal Contamination in Dust in Vilnius Schools: Source Identification, Pollution Levels, and Potential Health Risks for Children

The main objective of this study is to thoroughly evaluate the diversity and sources of heavy metals in the school environment. Specifically, this study examines the presence of heavy metals in the dust found and collected from 24 schools in Vilnius. Employing hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and positive matrix factorization, we identified combustion-related activities as primary contributors to elevated metal concentrations, notably zinc, scandium, and copper, with PM2.5/PM10 ratios indicating a combustion source. They reveal significant differences in the levels of elements such as arsenic (4.55–69.96 mg/kg), copper (51.28–395.37 mg/kg), zinc, and lead, which are affected by both local environmental factors and human activities. Elevated pollution levels were found in certain school environments, indicating environmental degradation. Pollution assessment and specific element pairings’ strong positive correlations suggested shared origins or deposition processes. While this study primarily assesses non-carcinogenic risks to children based on a health risk assessment model, it acknowledges the well-documented carcinogenic potential of substances such as lead and arsenic. The research emphasizes the immediate necessity for efficient pollution management in educational environments, as indicated by the elevated hazard index for substances such as lead and arsenic, which present non-carcinogenic risks to children. This research offers important insights into the composition and origins of dust pollution in schools. It also promotes the need for broader geographic sampling and prolonged data collection to improve our understanding of pollution sources, alongside advocating for actionable strategies such as environmental management and policy reforms to effectively reduce exposure risks in educational settings. Furthermore, it aims to develop specific strategies to safeguard the health of students in Vilnius and similar urban areas.
On Error-Class Distribution in Automotive Model-Based Software

Software fault prediction promises to be a powerful tool in supporting test engineers upon their decision where to define testing hotspots. However, there are limitations on a cross project prediction and a lack of reports upon application to industrial software, as well as the power of metrics to represent bugs. In this paper, we present a novel analysis based upon faults discovered in model-based automotive software projects and their relationship to metrics used to perform fault prediction. Using our previously released dataset on software metrics, we report bug classes discovered during heavy testing of those automotive software. As the software has been developed following strict coding and development guidelines, we present the results based on a comparison between the discovered error classes and those which might derive a reduced potential error set. Using the three projects from our dataset we determine if any of these bug classes are project specific.
R 2 * response of brain tumors to hyperoxic and hypercapnic respiratory challenges at 3 Tesla

A. Müller, S. Remmele, I. Wenningmann, F. Träber, R. König, H. Clusmann, H. Dahnke, J. Gieseke, S. Flacke, W. A. Willinek, H. H. Schild, and P. Mürtz Department of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany, Philips Research Europe, Hamburg, Germany, Department of Anesthesiology, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany, Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany, Philips Medical Systems, Hamburg, Germany
Spectral dependence of absorption sensitivity on concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin: pulse oximetry implications

Abstract. The sensitivity analysis indicates that the effective absorption coefficient is most sensitive to the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin in spectral bands centered at 700 and 960 nm. We find that the highest temporal modulation due to heart function for a thick sample, like an arm, is at 940 nm, a significant shift from 710 nm measured for a finger. The most favorable spectral region for a thick transmission sample, such as a forearm, is the domain defined by intervals [900 nm≤λ1≤1000 nm] and [650 nm≤λ2≤720 nm]. We evaluated five near-infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for their potential applications in oximetry. The LED with peak emission at 930 nm emits well in this spectral region. Here the temporal noise is low, and the effective absorption coefficient is strongly dependent on the concentration of the oxygenated hemoglobin. High-quality saturation results are obtained through the forearm during a short measurement (30 s).
Bamboo-Based Biochar: A Still Too Little-Studied Black Gold and Its Current Applications

Biochar (BC), also referred to as “black gold”, is a carbon heterogeneous material rich in aromatic systems and minerals, preparable by the thermal decomposition of vegetable and animal biomasses in controlled conditions and with clean technology. Due to its adsorption ability and presence of persistent free radicals (PFRs), BC has demonstrated, among other uses, great potential in the removal of environmental organic and inorganic xenobiotics. Bamboo is an evergreen perennial flowering plant characterized by a short five-year growth period, fast harvesting, and large production in many tropical and subtropical countries worldwide, thus representing an attractive, low-cost, eco-friendly, and renewable bioresource for producing BC. Due to their large surface area and increased porosity, the pyrolyzed derivatives of bamboo, including bamboo biochar (BBC) or activated BBC (ABBC), are considered great bio-adsorbent materials for removing heavy metals, as well as organic and inorganic contaminants from wastewater and soil, thus improving plant growth and production yield. Nowadays, the increasing technological applications of BBC and ABBC also include their employment as energy sources, to catalyze chemical reactions, to develop thermoelectrical devices, as 3D solar vapor-generation devices for water desalination, and as efficient photothermal-conversion devices. Anyway, although it has great potential as an alternative biomass to wood to produce BC, thus paving the way for new bio- and circular economy solutions, the study of bamboo-derived biomasses is still in its infancy. In this context, the main scope of this review was to support an increasing production of BBC and ABBC and to stimulate further studies about their possible applications, thus enlarging the current knowledge about these materials and allowing their more rational, safer, and optimized application. To this end, after having provided background concerning BC, its production methods, and its main applications, we have reviewed and discussed the main studies on BBC and ABBC and their applications reported in recent years.
Effects of Climate Change and Human Activities on Soil Erosion in the Xihe River Basin, China

Climate change and human activities are the major factors affecting runoff and sediment load. We analyzed the inter-annual variation trend of the average rainfall, air temperature, runoff and sediment load in the Xihe River Basin from 1969–2015. Pettitt’s test and the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model were used to detect sudden change in hydro-meteorological variables and simulate the basin hydrological cycle, respectively. According to the simulation results, we explored spatial distribution of soil erosion in the watershed by utilizing ArcGIS10.0, analyzed the average erosion modulus by different type of land use, and quantified the contributions of climate change and human activities to runoff and sediment load in changes. The results showed that: (1) From 1969–2015, both rainfall and air temperature increased, and air temperature increased significantly (p < 0.01) at 0.326 °C/10 a (annual). Runoff and sediment load decreased, and sediment load decreased significantly (p < 0.01) at 1.63 × 105 t/10 a. In 1988, air temperature experienced a sudden increase and sediment load decreased. (2) For runoff, R2 and Nash and Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (Ens) were 0.92 and 0.91 during the calibration period and 0.90 and 0.87 during the validation period, for sediment load, R2 and Ens were 0.60 and 0.55 during the calibration period and 0.70 and 0.69 during the validation period, meeting the model’s applicability requirements. (3) Soil erosion was worse in the upper basin than other regions, and highest in cultivated land. Climate change exacerbates runoff and sediment load with overall contribution to the total change of −26.54% and −8.8%, respectively. Human activities decreased runoff and sediment load with overall contribution to the total change of 126.54% and 108.8% respectively. Runoff and sediment load change in the Xihe River Basin are largely caused by human activities.
Joint design of digital and analog processing for downlink C-RAN with large-scale antenna arrays

In millimeter-wave communication systems with large-scale antenna arrays, conventional digital beamforming may not be cost-effective. A promising solution is the implementation of hybrid beamforming techniques, which consist of low-dimensional digital beamforming followed by analog radio frequency (RF) beamforming. This work studies the optimization of hybrid beamforming in the context of a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) architecture. In a C-RAN system, digital baseband signal processing functionalities are migrated from remote radio heads (RRHs) to a baseband processing unit (BBU) in the “cloud” by means of finite-capacity fronthaul links. Specifically, this work tackles the problem of jointly optimizing digital beamforming and fronthaul quantization strategies at the BBU, as well as RF beamforming at the RRHs, with the goal of maximizing the weighted downlink sum-rate. Fronthaul capacity and per-RRH power constraints are enforced along with constant modulus constraints on the RF beamforming matrices. An iterative algorithm is proposed that is based on successive convex approximation and on the relaxation of the constant modulus constraint. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated by numerical simulation results.
HardBorders: a new haptic approach for selection tasks in 3D menus

In this paper, we introduce a 3D menu with a new technique of haptic guidance, for virtual environments. The 3D menu consists in a thin polyhedral shape, with the items at the corners. The HardBorders technique haptically simulates the collisions of the pointer with the borders of the polyhedron, making it glide towards the items of the menu. A comparison with 2 reference modalities has been performed, showing a clear advantage of our HardBorders technique.
Energy efficient preceding C-RAN downlink with compression at fronthaul

This paper considers a downlink transmission of cloud radio access network (C-RAN) in which precoded baseband signals at a common baseband unit are compressed before being forwarded to radio units (RUs) through limited fronthaul capacity links. We investigate the joint design of precoding, multivariate compression and RU-user selection which maximizes the energy efficiency of downlink C-RAN networks. The considered problem is inherently a rank-constrained mixed Boolean nonconvex program for which a globally optimal solution is difficult and computationally expensive to find. In order to derive practically appealing solutions, we invoke some useful relaxation and transformation techniques to arrive at a more tractable (but still nonconvex) continuous program. To solve the relaxation problem, we propose an iterative procedure based on DC algorithms which is provably convergent. Numerical results demonstrate the superior of the proposed solution in terms of achievable energy efficiency compared to existing schemes.
High-Frequency Workpiece Image Recognition Model Integrating Multi-Level Network Structure

High-frequency workpieces have the characteristics of complex intra-class textures and small differences between classes, leading to the problem of low recognition rates when existing models are applied to the recognition of high-frequency workpiece images. We propose in this paper a novel high-frequency workpiece image recognition model that uses EfficientNet-B1 as the basic network and integrates multi-level network structures, designated as ML-EfficientNet-B1. Specifically, a lightweight mixed attention module is first introduced to extract global workpiece image features with strong illumination robustness, and the global recognition results are obtained through the backbone network. Then, the weakly supervised area detection module is used to locate the locally important areas of the workpiece and is introduced into the branch network to obtain local recognition results. Finally, the global and local recognition results are combined in the branch fusion module to achieve the final recognition of high-frequency workpiece images. Experimental results show that compared with various image recognition models, the proposed ML-EfficientNet-B1 model has stronger adaptability to illumination changes, significantly improves the performance of high-frequency workpiece recognition, and the recognition accuracy reaches 98.3%.
Land cover and landform-based upscaling of soil organic carbon stocks on the Brøgger Peninsula, Svalbard

ABSTRACT In this study we assess the total storage, landscape distribution, and vertical partitioning of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks on the Brøgger Peninsula, Svalbard. This type of high Arctic area is underrepresented in SOC databases for the northern permafrost region. Physico-chemical, elemental, and radiocarbon (14C) dating analyses were carried out on thirty-two soil profiles. Results were upscaled using both a land cover classification (LCC) and a landform classification (LFC). Both LCC and LFC approaches provide weighted mean SOC 0–100 cm estimates for the study area of 1.0 ± 0.3 kg C m−2 (95% confidence interval) and indicate that about 68 percent of the total SOC storage occurs in the upper 30 cm of the soil, and about 10 percent occurs in the surface organic layer. Furthermore, LCC and LFC upscaling approaches provide similar spatial SOC allocation estimates and emphasize the dominant role of “vegetated area” (4.2 ± 1.6 kg C m−2) and “solifluction slopes” (6.7 ± 3.6 kg C m−2) in SOC 0–100 cm storage. LCC and LFC approaches report different and complementary information on the dominant processes controlling the spatial and vertical distribution of SOC in the landscape. There is no evidence for any significant SOC storage in the permafrost layer. We hypothesize, therefore, that the Brøgger Peninsula and similar areas of the high Arctic will become net carbon sinks, providing negative feedback on global warming in the future. The surface area that will have vegetation cover and incipient soil development will expand, whereas only small amounts of organic matter will experience increased decomposition due to active-layer deepening.