Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
New Bounds and Generalizations of Locally Recoverable Codes With Availability

We investigate the distance properties of linear locally recoverable codes (LRC codes) with all-symbol locality and availability. New upper and lower bounds on the minimum distance of such codes are derived. The upper bound is based on the shortening method and generalized Hamming weights that are fundamental parameters of any linear codes with many useful applications. This bound improves existing upper bounds. To reduce the gap in between upper and lower bounds, we do not restrict the alphabet size and propose explicit constructions of codes with locality and availability via rank-metric codes. The first construction relies on expander graphs and is better in low rate region. The second construction utilizes the LRC codes developed by Wang et al. as inner codes and is better in high rate region. We also suggest one possible generalization of LRC codes in which the recovering sets can intersect in a small number of coordinates. This feature allows us to increase the achievable code rate and still meet load balancing requirements. We derive upper and lower bounds on the parameters of such codes and present explicit constructions of codes with such a property.
Scarecrow: Deactivating Evasive Malware via Its Own Evasive Logic

Security analysts widely use dynamic malware analysis environments to exercise malware samples and derive virus signatures. Unfortunately, malware authors are becoming more aware of such analysis environments. Therefore, many have embedded evasive logic into malware to probe execution environments before exposing malicious behaviors. Consequently, such analysis environments become useless and evasive malware can damage victim systems with unforeseen malicious activities. However, adopting evasive techniques to bypass dynamic malware analysis is a double-edged sword. While evasive techniques can avoid early detection through sandbox analysis, it also significantly constrains the spectrum of execution environments where the malware activates. In this paper, we exploit this dilemma and seek to reverse the challenge by camouflaging end-user execution environments into analysis-like environments using a lightweight deception engine called SCARECROW. We thoroughly evaluate SCARECROW with real evasive malware samples and demonstrate that we can successfully deactivate 89.56% of evasive malware samples and the variants of ransomware (e.g., WannaCry and Locky) with little or no impact on the most commonly used benign software. Our evaluation also shows that SCARECROW is able to steer state-of-the-art analysis environment fingerprinting techniques so that end-user execution environments with SCARECROW and malware analysis environments with SCARECROW become indistinguishable.
Is α-Amylase an Important Biomarker to Detect Aspiration of Oral Secretions in Ventilated Patients?

Alpha-amylase has emerged as a biomarker of interest in detecting aspiration of oral secretions. In several studies, most ventilated patients have α-amylase values detected in pulmonary secretions. Values of α-amylase are high (as expected) in oral secretions and lowest in bronchoalveolar lavage samples. Around 5–7% of oral α-amylase is detectable in tracheal secretions. Once secretions are aspirated, the duration of detection of α-amylase in pulmonary secretions is unknown. Evidence varies on the relationship between α-amylase and clinical outcomes. Although detection of α-amylase in pulmonary secretions is useful to identify that aspiration has occurred, the lack of standardized reference values, the lack of knowledge regarding duration of detection following aspiration, and mixed findings related to clinical outcomes, limit its usefulness as a measurement tool. If α-amylase is to be used in research and/or clinical practice, additional data are needed to assist in interpretation and application of findings.
Tbx20 Induction Promotes Zebrafish Heart Regeneration by Inducing Cardiomyocyte Dedifferentiation and Endocardial Expansion

Heart regeneration requires replenishment of lost cardiomyocytes (CMs) and cells of the endocardial lining. However, the signaling regulation and transcriptional control of myocardial dedifferentiation and endocardial activation are incompletely understood during cardiac regeneration. Here, we report that T-Box Transcription Factor 20 (Tbx20) is induced rapidly in the myocardial wound edge in response to various sources of cardiac damages in zebrafish. Inducing Tbx20 specifically in the adult myocardium promotes injury-induced CM proliferation through CM dedifferentiation, leading to loss of CM cellular contacts and re-expression of cardiac embryonic or fetal gene programs. Unexpectedly, we identify that myocardial Tbx20 induction activates the endocardium at the injury site with enhanced endocardial cell extension and proliferation, where it induces the endocardial Bone morphogenetic protein 6 (Bmp6) signaling. Pharmacologically inactivating endocardial Bmp6 signaling reduces expression of its targets, Id1 and Id2b, attenuating the increased endocardial regeneration in tbx20-overexpressing hearts. Altogether, our study demonstrates that Tbx20 induction promotes adult heart regeneration by inducing cardiomyocyte dedifferentiation as well as non-cell-autonomously enhancing endocardial cell regeneration.
Mechanism of PV Generation System Damping Electromechanical Oscillations

For physically understanding the dynamic response of the photovoltaic (PV) integrated power system for electromechanical oscillations damping, firstly, this paper develops the linear mathematical model of a single machine infinite bus system integrated by the PV grid-tied inverter under the electromechanical time scale. Then, based on the electric torque analysis method, and the functional route of the PV grid-tied inverter variable active power control (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-control) and reactive power control (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-control) with the power angle or grid frequency feedback as the input control signal, the key factors and influence laws of the integrated system inertia, damping level and synchronization capability are investigated. The developed model shows that enlarging the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller parameters of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and/or <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-control loop can effectively change electromagnetic power distribution to suppress the imbalance power, and equivalently improve the system damping level, synchronization capability and inertial effect, respectively, contributing to actively adjust the grid frequency oscillation amplitude, period and recovery speed to maintain the system control stability according to the grid code demand. Besides, under the same inverter capacity constraint, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-control mode is proved more advantageous than <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-control mode to damp electromechanical oscillations. Finally, the correctness of the physical mechanism analysis is verified by MATLAB simulations and RT-LAB experiments.
THE EFFECT OF BIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF THE CARROT FLY (Psila rosae) ON THE YIELD AND QUALITY OF CARROT (Daucus carota L.) STORAGE ROOTS

Non-chemical methods of agrophage control have gained increasing popularity recently, and particular attention has been paid to enhancing biodiversity in agrocenoses. Inter- cropping, i.e. growing of two or more crops (onions, carrots, dill, beans, Lacy phacelia, mus- tard) simultaneously in the same field, reduces pest infestations. The rationale behind inter- cropping is that different crops planted together act as attractants for beneficial insects (hover- flies, ladybirds) and effectively disorientate the pests (aphids, carrot flies) which are then un- able to find host plants. This study was conducted in the Experimental Garden of the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, in the growing seasons of 2009-2010. The experiment was established on brown soil of quality class IV b, and ridges were prepared in line with the gener- ally observed standards of organic farming. The first experimental factor were six carrot cultivars differing with respect to the growth and development period: 'Deep Purple F1', 'Florida F1', 'Interceptor F1', 'Joba', 'Kazan F1' and 'Purple Haze F1'. The second experimen- tal factor were three methods of carrot fly biocontrol, compared in the following treatments: control - unprotected plants, the application of the biocontrol agent Bioczos BR containing paraffin-coated garlic pulp (10 g cubes), carrots intercropped with dill cv. 'Szmaragd' and car- rots intercropped with Welsh onions cv. 'Parade'. Carrot-dill and carrot-Welsh onion inter- cropping effectively reduced damage to carrot roots caused by carrot fly larvae. The applied biological control methods had a significant effect on carrot yield. The application of Bioczos BR and carrot-Welsh onion intercropping had a beneficial influence on the total and market- able yield of carrot storage roots. Carrot-dill intercropping resulted in a significant yield de- crease. The content of dry matter, total sugars and L-ascorbic acid in carrot roots was affected by the cultivar and the cultivar × biocontrol method interaction. Higher concentrations of dry matter and L-ascorbic acid were noted in carrot cultivars with purple-colored roots, 'Deep Pur- ple F1' and 'Purple Haze F1'. The average nitrate content of carrot storage roots did not exceed the maximum permissible levels set out in the Regulation of the Minister of Health.
Training Neural Nets using only an Approximate Tableless LNS ALU

The Logarithmic Number System (LNS) is useful in applications that tolerate approximate computation, such as classification using multi-layer neural networks that compute nonlinear functions of weighted sums of inputs from previous layers. Supervised learning has two phases: training (find appropriate weights for the desired classification), and inference (use the weights with approximate sum of products). Several researchers have observed that LNS ALUs in inference may minimize area and power by being both low-precision and approximate (allowing low-cost, tableless implementations). However, the few works that have also trained with LNS report at least part of the system needs accurate LNS. This paper describes a novel approximate LNS ALU implemented simply as logic (without tables) that enables the entire back-propagation training to occur in LNS, at one-third the cost of fixed-point implementation.
A New Statistical Channel Model for Emerging Wireless Communication Systems

A new composite fading model is introduced. This shadowed Beaulieu-Xie model is developed to characterize wireless communication in an environment with an arbitrary number of line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight signals, in contrast to the existing Rayleigh, Ricean, generalized Ricean (i.e., <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\kappa -\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula>), and Nakagami-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> models. The proposed model benefits from four parameters that characterize a wide range of fading conditions, unlike existing composite models such as the shadowed Ricean model, the two-wave with diffuse power model, and the fluctuating two-ray model. The proposed shadowed Beaulieu-Xie model is used here to characterize experimental data obtained from fading measurements in 28 GHz outdoor millimeter-wave channels, and it is found to describe the communication environment accurately. We conclude that the proposed composite fading model is particularly useful for characterizing emerging (millimeter-wave and terahertz) wireless communication systems.
A Robust Channel Access Using Cooperative Reinforcement Learning for Congested Vehicular Networks

Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is an emerging technique dedicated to wireless vehicular communication to improve transportation safety by exchanging driving information between vehicles. For safety purposes, vehicles periodically broadcast a safety packet via Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication. Accordingly, VANET safety applications demand a reliable exchange of the safety packet with high Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), acceptable latency, and communication fairness. However, the communication performance significantly degrades due to numerous packet collisions when a large number of vehicles simultaneously access limited channel resources for the safety broadcast. In particular, the problem grows more severe in congested VANETs absent infrastructures since vehicles must control channel access using a self-adaptive scheme without external assistance. Thus, a robust and decentralized channel access protocol for VANETs is required to achieve road safety. In this paper, we propose an intelligent channel access algorithm empowered by cooperative Reinforcement Learning (RL), in which vehicles coordinate the channel access in a fully-decentralized manner. We also consider a proper interaction scheme between vehicles for enhancing the V2V safety broadcast in infrastructure-less congested VANETs. We provide evaluation results with extensive simulations according to various levels of traffic congestion. Simulations confirm the superior performance of the algorithm: the algorithm has a 20% increase in PDR compared to the latest RL-based channel access scheme. Furthermore, the algorithm satisfies the low latency requirement of VANET safety applications as well as both short-term and long-term communication fairness.
Managing State for Failure Resiliency in Network Function Virtualization

Ensuring high scalability (elastic scale-out and consolidation), as well as high availability (failure resiliency) are critical in encouraging adoption of software-based network functions (NFs). In recent years, two paradigms have evolved in terms of the way the NFs manage their state - namely the Stateful (state is coupled with the NF instance) and a Stateless (state is externalized to a datastore) manner. These two paradigms present unique challenges and opportunities for ensuring high scalability and high availability of NFs and NF chains. In this work, we assess the impact on ensuring the correctness of NF state including the implications of non-determinism in packet processing, and carefully analyze and present the benefits and disadvantages of the two state management paradigms. We leverage OpenNetVM and Redis in-memory datastore to implement both state management paradigms and empirically compare the two. Although the stateless paradigm is desirable for elastic scaling, our experimental results show that, even at line-rate packet processing (10 Gbps), stateful NFs can achieve chain-level failover across servers in a LAN incurring less than 10% performance. The state-of-the-art stateless counterparts incur severe throughput penalties. We observe 30-85% overhead on normal processing, depending on the mode of state updated to the externalized datastore.
Research on Drug-Target Interactions Prediction: Network similarity-based approaches

Accurate identification of drug-target interactions can help researchers shorten the time of new drug development and reduce the blindness and cost of new drug research. For this purpose, the link prediction technology is used in this paper to predict the accuracy of 24 kinds of similarity indexes in the Matador database. The accuracy of link prediction based on structural similarity depends on whether the definition of structural similarity can grasp the structural characteristics of the target network well. And it does not need to know the information of nodes and edges of the network in advance. The results show that compared with other algorithms, the accuracy of Local Random Walk (LRW) model is the highest when the step size is 5, and the algorithm with the best area under the ROC curve ( AUC ) stability is Hub Promoted Index (HPI).
Upper gastro-intestinal endoscopy prior to cholecystectomy, a necessity? an observational study in a tertiary care hospital in South India

Background: Cholelithiasis is the most common disease state involving the gallbladder and the biliary tree. Once the USG is reported as cholelithiasis, the patient is usually taken up for cholecystectomy. The patients with cholelithiasis usually present with upper gastro intestinal (UGI) symptoms which may also be attributed to other UGI pathologies. This study focuses on evaluating upper GI endoscopy as an investigative modality to diagnose other associated upper GI pathologies in patients with USG proven gallstones presenting with dyspeptic symptoms.Methods: An observational study was undertaken over a span of 2 years, from June 2016 to May 2018. All the patients who presented with complaints of upper GI symptoms were subjected to undergo USG abdomen. The patients with positive USG findings for cholelithiasis were included and further evaluated by upper GI endoscopy.Results: Out of 100 subjects evaluated during the study period, 58 were females and 42 males. The most common presenting symptom was heartburn (69%), followed by dyspepsia (58%), belching (56%) and nausea/vomiting (53%). Out of 100 patients 44 patients presented with biliary colic and nausea/vomiting (14%). 44 of the subjects were found to have normal mucosal study. Remaining 66% of the subjects had positive endoscopic findings. The most common endoscopic finding was gastro-esophageal-reflux-disease (GERD) (31%). Conclusions: In this study it was found that 66% of the subjects had co-existing UGI pathologies. It is advisable to get UGI endoscopy routinely for patients being planned for cholecystectomy pre-operatively.
Towards a System-Level Model of a Tunable Dual-Frequency Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

In this work, we present a system-level model of a dual-frequency piezoelectric energy harvester based on a folded beam structure. Magnetic actuation is used for tuning the resonance frequency to the ambient frequency and thus achieve maximum power output. A lumped-element model is proposed to describe the mechanical behavior of the harvester’s mechanical structure. Furthermore, mathematical model order reduction is applied to generate a compact, but extremely accurate model of the piezoelectric energy harvester. It is co-simulated with an electrical circuit, a tuning mechanism and a control algorithm.
Post-Zygotic Seed Abortion in Sexual Diploid × Apomictic Tetraploid Intraspecific Paspalum Crosses

In many species of Paspalum, diploid (2x) cytotypes are usually outbreeders due to a self incompatibility system, while tetraploid (4x) conspecific counterparts are pseudogamous self-fertile apomicts. Intraspecific crossability between 2x female and 4x male cytotypes was investigated using classical methods of crossing in P. almum, P. brunneum, P. rufum, P. intermedium and P. quadrifarium. Expected triploid BII hybrids were obtained in P. intermedium (crossability: 0.004%) and in P. brunneum (crossability: 0.015%). In P. rufum, only tetraploid BIII hybrids were achieved with a crossability of 0.025% Looking for a better performance, in vitro ovary rescue was attempted 5 days after pollination in intraspecific 2x × 4x crosses of P. almum, P. quadrifarium, P. intermedium and P. rufum. The method was useful to recover some triploid BII hybrids in P. almum (success rate: 0.49%) and in P. rufum (0.59%), but failed in P. intermedium and P. quadrifarium. Pollen tube growth was usually inhibited at the stigma or style levels after self-pollination in 2x plants, confirming that diploids are self-incompatible. Pollen of 4x cytotypes germinated and penetrated the pistils of diploid conspecific cytotypes. This indicated that no incompatibility system exists in these species to keep the 2x cytotypes from hybridising with 4x conspecific cytotypes as pollen donors. However, after pollination of 2x cytotypes with pollen of 4x counterparts, most ovules showed embryo and endosperm development, but a few days later, endosperms collapsed and embryos stopped their development. As a result of these processes, sexual self-incompatible 2x cytotypes of Paspalum species produced very few triploid hybrids when pollinated with pollen of their apomictic 4x counterparts. Thus, the low diploid-tetraploid crossability was due to the existence of a post-zygotic abortive system and not caused by pre-fertilisation barriers.
Termination detection for fine-grained message-passing architectures

Barrier primitives provided by standard parallel programming APIs are the primary means by which applications implement global synchronisation. Typically these primitives are fully-committed to synchronisation in the sense that, once a barrier is entered, synchronisation is the only way out. For message-passing applications, this raises the question of what happens when a message arrives at a thread that already resides in a barrier. Without a satisfactory answer, barriers do not interact with message-passing in any useful way.In this paper, we propose a new refutable barrier primitive that combines with message-passing to form a simple, expressive, efficient, well-defined API. It has a clear semantics based on termination detection, and supports the development of both globally-synchronous and asynchronous parallel applications.To evaluate the new primitive, we implement it in a prototype large-scale message-passing machine with 49,152 RISC-V threads distributed over 48 FPGAs. We show that hardware support for the primitive leads to a highly-efficient implementation, capable of synchronisation rates that are an order-of-magnitude higher than what is achievable in software. Using the primitive, we implement synchronous and asynchronous versions of a range of applications, observing that each version can have significant advantages over the other, depending on the application. Therefore, a barrier primitive supporting both styles can greatly assist the development of parallel programs.
Killer whale (Orcinus orca) auditory evoked potentials to rhythmic clicks

Temporal auditory mechanisms were measured in killer whales (Orcinus orca) by recording auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) to clicks. Clicks were presented at rates from 10/sec to 1,600/sec. At low rates, clicks evoked an AEP similar to the auditory brainstem response (ABR) of other odontocetes; however, peak latencies of the main waves were 3–3.7 msec longer than in bottlenose dolphins. Fourier analysis of the ABR showed a prominent peak at 300–400 Hz and a smaller one at 800–1,200 Hz. High-rate click presentation (more than 100/sec) evoked a rate-following response (RFR). The RFR amplitude depended little on rate up to 400/sec, decreased at higher rates and became undetectable at 1,120/sec. Fourier analysis showed that RFR fundamental amplitude dependence on frequency closely resembled the ABR spectrum. The fundamental could follow clicks to around 1,000/sec, although higher harmonics of lower rates could arise at frequencies as high as 1,200 Hz. Both RFR fundamental phase dependence on frequency and the response lag after a click train indicated an RFR group delay of around 7.5 msec. This corresponds to the latency of ABR waves PIII-NIV, which indicates the RFR originates as a rhythmic, overlapping ABR sequence. The data suggest the killer whale auditory system can follow high click rates, an ability that may have been selected for as a function of high-frequency hearing and the use of rapid clicks in echolocation.