Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Best Node Selection through Distributed Fast Variable Power Multiple Access

In many wireless applications, it is highly desirable to have a fast mechanism to resolve or select the packet from the user with the highest priority. Furthermore, individual priorities are often known only locally at the users. In this paper we introduce an extremely fast, local-information-based multiple access algorithm that selects the best node in 1.8 to 2.1 slots, which is much lower than the 2.43 slot average achieved by the best algorithm known to date. The algorithm, which we call Variable Power Multiple Access Selection (VP-MAS), uses the local channel state information from the accessing nodes to the receiver, and maps the priorities into the receive power. It is inherently distributed and scales well with the number of users. We show that mapping onto a discrete set of receive power levels is optimal, and provide a complete characterization for it. The power levels are chosen to exploit packet capture that inherently occurs in a wireless physical layer. The VP-MAS algorithm adjusts the expected number of users that contend in each step and their respective transmission powers, depending on whether previous transmission attempts resulted in capture, idle channel, or collision.
Labeled Faces in the Wild: A Database forStudying Face Recognition in Unconstrained Environments

Most face databases have been created under controlled conditions to facilitate the study of specific parameters on the face recognition problem. These parameters include such variables as position, pose, lighting, background, camera quality, and gender. While there are many applications for face recognition technology in which one can control the parameters of image acquisition, there are also many applications in which the practitioner has little or no control over such parameters. This database, Labeled Faces in the Wild, is provided as an aid in studying the latter, unconstrained, recognition problem. The database contains labeled face photographs spanning the range of conditions typically encountered in everyday life. The database exhibits “natural” variability in factors such as pose, lighting, race, accessories, occlusions, and background. In addition to describing the details of the database, we provide specific experimental paradigms for which the database is suitable. This is done in an effort to make research performed with the database as consistent and comparable as possible. We provide baseline results, including results of a state of the art face recognition system combined with a face alignment system. To facilitate experimentation on the database, we provide several parallel databases, including an aligned version.
Truthful Multicast in Selfish Wireless Networks

In wireless networks, it is often assumed that each individual wireless terminal will faithfully follow the prescribed protocols without any deviation– except, perhaps, for a few faulty or malicious ones. Wireless terminals, when owned by individual users, will likely do what is the most beneficial to their owners, i.e., act “selfishly”. Therefore, an algorithm or protocol intended for selfish wireless networks must be designed. In this paper, we specifically study how to conduct efficient multicast routing in selfish wireless networks. We assume that each wireless terminal or communication link will incur a cost when it transits some data. Traditionally, the VCG mechanism has been the only method to design protocols so that each selfish agent will follow the protocols for its own interest to maximize its benefit. The main contributions of this paper are two-folds. First, for each of the widely used multicast structures, we show that the VCG based mechanism does not guarantee that the selfish terminals will follow the protocol. Second, we design the first multicast protocols without using VCG mechanism such that each agent maximizes its profit when it truthfully reports its cost. Extensive simulations are conducted to study the practical performances of the proposed protocols regarding the actual network cost and total payment.
Gaussian Processes for Survival Analysis

We introduce a semi-parametric Bayesian model for survival analysis. The model is centred on a parametric baseline hazard, and uses a Gaussian process to model variations away from it nonparametrically, as well as dependence on covariates. As opposed to many other methods in survival analysis, our framework does not impose unnecessary constraints in the hazard rate or in the survival function. Furthermore, our model handles left, right and interval censoring mechanisms common in survival analysis. We propose a MCMC algorithm to perform inference and an approximation scheme based on random Fourier features to make computations faster. We report experimental results on synthetic and real data, showing that our model performs better than competing models such as Cox proportional hazards, ANOVA-DDP and random survival forests.
Disease -Acetylaspartate in Children with Sickle Cell N Abnormally High Levels of Brain

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The most abundant metabolite visible by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in human brain is N-acetylaspartate (NAA), which is often used as a marker of viable neurons. NAA is anecdotally reported to be elevated in children with sickle cell disease (SCD), even though patients can have brain injury or atrophy. We measured NAA levels rigorously in SCD patients to test the hypothesis that NAA is elevated in this patient population. METHODS: We evaluated 26 children with SCD and 25 age-similar healthy control subjects using a double spin-echo MRS technique to interrogate a 16 cc volume of interest in the basal ganglia. We acquired MRS spectra with an echo time (TE) of 30 ms to evaluate lipids, and with TE (cid:1) 144 to show abundant metabolites against a flat baseline. We characterized metabolite relaxation properties and measured the water peak as an internal standard, to calculate the absolute quantity of metabolites. RESULTS: The ratio of NAA:Choline was significantly elevated in basal ganglia of patients at both echo times ( P <.016), and the absolute quantity of NAA was also elevated, with [NAA] 7–12% higher in patients than in control subjects. The measured increase in [NAA] cannot be explained by metabolite relaxation properties or by differences in tissue water content. CONCLUSION: Brain NAA is greater in children with SCD than in healthy control subjects and appears not to be a reliable marker of viable neurons in SCD patients. Proton MR spectroscopy (MRS
Effects of vildagliptin versus sitagliptin, on cardiac function, heart rate variability and mitochondrial function in obese insulin‐resistant rats

Long‐term high‐fat diet (HFD) consumption has been shown to cause insulin resistance, which is characterized by hyperinsulinaemia with metabolic inflexibility. Insulin resistance is associated with cardiac sympathovagal imbalance, cardiac dysfunction and cardiac mitochondrial dysfunction. Dipeptidyl peptidase‐4 (DPP‐4) inhibitors, vildagliptin and sitagliptin, are oral anti‐diabetic drugs often prescribed in patients with cardiovascular disease. Therefore, in this study, we sought to determine the effects of vildagliptin and sitagliptin in a murine model of insulin resistance.
Performance of Group Testing Algorithms With Near-Constant Tests Per Item

We consider the nonadaptive group testing with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> items, of which <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K = \Theta (N^\theta)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are defective. We study a test design in which each item appears in nearly the same number of tests. For each item, we independently pick <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L$ </tex-math></inline-formula> tests uniformly at random with replacement and place the item in those tests. We analyze the performance of these designs with simple and practical decoding algorithms in a range of sparsity regimes and show that the performance is consistently improved in comparison with standard Bernoulli designs. We show that our new design requires roughly 23% fewer tests than a Bernoulli design when paired with the simple decoding algorithms known as combinatorial orthogonal matching pursuit and definite defectives (DD). This gives the best known nonadaptive group testing performance for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta > 0.43$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and the best proven performance with a practical decoding algorithm for all <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta \in (0,1)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. We also give a converse result showing that the DD algorithm is optimal with respect to our randomized design when <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\theta > 1/2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. We complement our theoretical results with simulations that show a notable improvement over Bernoulli designs in both sparse and dense regimes.
Optical control of mesoscopic spin ensembles in gallium arsenide

We present how optical coherent population trapping (CPT) of the spin of localized semiconductor electrons stabilizes the surrounding nuclear spin bath via the hyperﬁne interaction, resulting in a state which is more ordered than the thermal equilibrium state. We ﬁnd distinct control regimes for diﬀer-ent signs of laser detuning and examine the transition from an unpolarized, narrowed state to a polarized state possessing a bistability. The narrowing of the state yields slower electron spin dephasing and self-improving CPT. Our analysis is relevant for a variety of solid state systems where hyperﬁne-induced dephasing is a limitation for using electron spin coherence.
User interface plasticity: model driven engineering to the limit!

Ten years ago, I introduced the notion of user interface plasticity to denote the capacity of user interfaces to adapt, or to be adapted, to the context of use while preserving usability. The Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approach, which was used for user interface generation since the early eighties in HCI, has recently been revived to address this complex problem. Although MDE has resulted in interesting and convincing results for conventional WIMP user interfaces, it has not fully demonstrated its theoretical promises yet. In this paper, we discuss how to push MDE to the limit in order to reconcile high-level modeling techniques with low-level programming in order to go beyond WIMP user interfaces.
Closed-Form Solution to the Structure from Motion Problem by Fusing Visual and Inertial Sensing

: The structure from motion problem (SfM) consists in determining the three-dimensional structure of the scene by using the measurements provided by one or more sensors over time (e.g. vision sensors, ego-motion sensors, range sensors). Solving this problem consists in simultaneously performing self motion perception (sMP) and depth perception (DP). In the case of visual measurements only, the SfM has been solved up to a scale [5, 7, 11, 17, 26] and a closed form solution has also been derived [11, 17, 26], allowing the determination of the three-dimensional structure of the scene, without the need for any prior knowledge. The case of inertial and visual measurements has particular interest and has been investigated by many disciplines, both in the framework of computer science [3, 14, 15, 27] and in the framework of neuroscience (the visual-vestibular integration for sMP [2, 10, 18, 30] and for DP [8]). Prior work has answered the question of which are the observable modes, i.e. the states that can be determined by fusing visual and inertial measurements [3, 14, 15, 21, 23]. The questions of how to compute these states in the absence of a prior, and of how many solutions are possible, have only been answered very recently [21, 23]. Here we derive a very simple and intuitive derivation of the solution introduced in [21, 23]. We show that the SfM problem can have a unique solution or two distinct solutions or inﬁnite solutions depending on the trajectory, on the number of point-features and on the number of monocular images where the same point-features are seen. Our results are relevant in all the applications which need to solve the SfM problem with low-cost sensors and which do not demand any infrastructure. Additionally, our results could play an important role in neuroscience by providing a new insight on the process of vestibular and visual integration.
Authenticated Append-only Skip Lists

In this work we describe, design and analyze the security of a tamper-evident, append-only data structure for maintaining secure data sequences in a loosely coupled distributed system where individual system components may be mutually distrustful. The resulting data structure, called an Authenticated Append-Only Skip List (AASL), allows its maintainers to produce one-way digests of the entire data sequence, which they can publish to others as a commitment on the contents and order of the sequence. The maintainer can produce efficiently succinct proofs that authenticate a particular datum in a particular position of the data sequence against a published digest. AASLs are secure against tampering even by malicious data structure maintainers. First, we show that a maintainer cannot ``invent'' and authenticate data elements for the AASL after he has committed to the structure. Second, he cannot equivocate by being able to prove conflicting facts about a particular position of the data sequence. This is the case even when the data sequence grows with time and its maintainer publishes successive commitments at times of his own choosing. AASLs can be invaluable in reasoning about the integrity of system logs maintained by untrusted components of a loosely-coupled distributed system.
than 36 h is for temporary ovarian suspension Uterine artery embolization for severe symptomatic ﬁbroids: effects on fertility

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Assembly of Proteorhodopsin for Bioinspired Alternative Energy Applications

Abstract : Proteorhodopsin is an integral membrane protein that functions as a light-driven proton pump, which serves as the basis for an alternative energy device. While many membrane proteins are becoming understood, both structurally and mechanistically, little technology exists for the production and incorporation of this important class of molecules into useful devices. The advantage we have in working with proteorhodopsin is that it can be genetically modified and grown in the laboratory to express different optical and charge properties. The strategy to functionally assemble proteorhodopsin requires manipulation of its charge interaction for induced self-assembly in a lipid bilayer, followed by the binding of the protein-lipid complex onto a conductive substrate, such as Kapton or borosilicate coated with indium tin oxide.
Attention-aware rendering, mobile graphics and games

Figure 1: Top: Subtle Gaze direction, input image for modulation (left). Gaze distribution for modulated image (right). White crosses indicate locations preselected by researchers for modulation [Bailey, McNamara et al. 2009]. Bottom Left: Schematic of the iLab Neuromorphic Vision, a comprehensive set of C++ classes for the development of neuromorphic models of vision [Baldi and Itti 2010]. Bottom Right: In a Search task, a High Level Saliency predictor highlights a vase at a consistent with the context location signifying an easy recovery [Koulieris et al. 2013].
Erlang: Application-Aware Autoscaling for Cloud Microservices

As cloud applications shift from monoliths to loosely coupled microservices, application developers must decide how many compute resources (e.g., number of replicated containers) to assign to each microservice within an application. This decision affects both (1) the dollar cost to the application developer and (2) the end-to-end latency perceived by the application user. Today, individual microservices are autoscaled independently by adding VMs whenever per-microservice CPU or memory utilization crosses a configurable threshold. However, an application user’s end-to-end latency consists of time spent on multiple microservices and each microser-vice might need a different number of VMs to achieve an overall end-to-end latency. We present Erlang, an autoscaler for microservice-based applications, which collectively allocates VMs to microser-vices with a global goal of minimizing dollar cost while keeping end-to-end application latency under a given target. Using 5 open-source applications, we compared Erlang to several utilization and machine learning based autoscalers. We evaluate Erlang across different compute settings on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) in which users manage compute resources, GKE standard, and a new mode of operation in which the cloud provider manages compute infrastructure, GKE Autopilot. Erlang meets a desired median or tail latency target on 53 of 63 workloads where it provides a cost reduction of 19.3%, on average, over the next cheapest autoscaler. Erlang is the most cost effective autoscaling policy for 48 of these 53 workloads. The cost savings from managing a cluster with Erlang result in Erlang paying for its training cost in a few days. On smaller applications,
Porous titanium granules in the surgical treatment of peri-implant osseous defects: a randomized clinical trial.

PURPOSE Porous titanium granules (PTG) may have potential as an osteoconductive bone graft substitute to treat peri-implant osseous defects. The aim of this study was to analyze clinical and radiographic outcomes of peri-implant osseous defects after treatment with PTG. MATERIALS AND METHODS This prospective, randomized, case-control, clinical 12-month study compared open-flap debridement and surface decontamination with titanium curettes and 24% ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid gel (n = 16) to the same protocol but with the addition of PTG (n = 16). One-, two-, and three-wall infrabony defects were included. Patients were given amoxicillin and metronidazole 3 days before surgery and for 7 days afterwards. Implants were submerged and allowed to heal for 6 months. Probing pocket depths, bleeding on probing, implant stability using resonance frequency analysis, and radiographic evaluation were performed at baseline and at 12 months. The threshold for significance was set at . 05. RESULTS Change in radiographic defect height and percent fill of the peri-implant osseous defect significantly favored patients treated with PTG. Both treatment modalities demonstrated significant improvements in probing pocket depth, but significant differences between groups were not observed. The PTG-treated implants showed an increase in implant stability quotient (ISQ) of 1.6 units, compared with a decrease of 0.7 ISQ for the control group. No adverse effects were associated with PTG treatment. CONCLUSIONS Reconstruction with PTG resulted in significantly better radiographic peri-implant defect fill compared with controls; however, the results do not necessarily imply reosseointegration or osseointegration of PTG particles. Improvements in clinical parameters were seen in both groups, but no differences between groups were demonstrated.
Aalborg Universitet An Exploration of Retrieval-Enhancing Methods for Integrated Search in a Digital

Integrated search is defined as searching across different document types and representations simultaneously, with the goal of presenting the user with a single ranked result list containing the optimal mix of document types. In this paper, we compare various approaches to integrating three different types of documents (bibliographic records for articles and books as well as full-text articles) using the iSearch collection: combining all document types in a single index, weighting the different document types using priors, and using collection fusion techniques to merge the retrieval results on three separate indexes corresponding to each of the document types. We find that a properly optimized retrieval model on a single combined index containing all documents without any special treatment performs no worse than our weighting and fusion methods, suggesting that more work is needed on alternative approaches to integrated search.
A High Performance Unified BCD and Binary Adder/Subtractor

Decimal data processing applications have grown exponentially in recent years thereby increasing the need to have hardware support for decimal arithmetic. In this paper, an improved architecture for efficient Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) addition/subtraction is presented that performs binary addition/subtraction without any extra hardware. The architecture works for both signed and unsigned numbers. The design is runtime reconfigurable and maximum utilization of the hardware is a feature of the architecture. Simulation results show that the proposed architecture is at least 32% better in terms of power-delay product than the existing designs.
Innovation and Productivity

Technology is apparently one of the main determining sources of productivity and economic growth and there is a huge literature on productivity, growth and innovation. This paper is aiming to review the main topics related to productivity, growth and innovation activities. In particular, this paper reviews developments in economic growth and productivity at the aggregate country level and it focuses on the different growth pace of the European Union countries, examining the main factors affecting growth, in order to estimate the effects of innovation activities to productivity growth in EU member states and to conclude to some safe results and policy implications.