Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unified Satellite and Terrestrial ACM Design

First step towards integrating satellite and terrestrial standards at the physical layer is to design a uniﬁed packet frame structure, and in particular, a uniﬁed adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) scheme without substantial loss in either of the systems. In this paper we introduce a methodology to design such a set of modulation and coding (MODCOD) combinations. In the ﬁrst step, we design a set of base MODCODs for the AWGN channel. Then, for any other given channel model, we build a new set of MODCODs through a suitable transformation of the base MODCODs. We mainly focus on two types of channels: (a) non-linear satellite channels, and (b) AWGN channels with fading. We compare our results with latest digital video broadcasting standards, namely, DVB-T2 and DVB-S2X
An alarm for a false alarm

That eureka moment when you look at two columns of figures and the little words at the bottom which say ‘p < 0.05’. All of us have felt this euphoria before. The trial we’ve spent years working on is a success! We can show that this drug is better than a placebo! Amidst the celebrations and rush to submit the results to a high impact factor journal, not many of us will stop to consider the actual implications of a p value less than 0.05. If asked to give the definition of the p value, it is not often we hear the correct answer [1]. The p value is the probability of finding the observed, or more extreme, results when the null hypothesis of a study question is true. The significance level at which you reject the null hypothesis is arbitrary, and conventionally 5% (less than 1 in 20 chance of being wrong, p < 0.05) is used. The p value used in the context of hypothesis testing was popularized by Ronald Fisher in his 1925 book, ‘Statistical methods For research workers’ [2], where he suggested giving 0.05 its special status. In order to understand where the magic 0.05 value comes from, we have to look at the normal distribution curve, shown in Figure 1. On the x-axis (often denoted as z in statistics) is the normal distribution of proportions expressed as standard error of the mean (SEM) distant from the mean proportion (defined as zero). The y-axis can be regarded as ‘how often a proportion will occur’, and so the area under the curve represents 100% of all possible proportions. The SEM distant from the mean proportion value for which p = 0.05, i.e. that which covers 95% of the area under the curve, is 1.96. In other words, 95% of the area under a normal distribution curve lies within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean [2], and deviations exceeding twice (~1.96) the standard deviation are thus formally regarded as significant [2]. Since nearly every field of science (with the exception of particle physics) have embraced the use of p < 0.05 as being significant, it is easy to forget that the p value is a continuous variable, and can take on any value between 0 and 1. In addition, the statistical power of the study, seen as ‘how willing we are to make a type-2 error, or accept the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is false’ has to be taken into consideration. The power of the study is conventionally set at 80%, which means that even if the p value is < 0.05, there is a 20% chance that a type-2 error has been made [3]. Though we dream of having a mathematical model which can give us a definitive answer of whether our results are true or not, the p value cannot give us any information about the qualitative Normal distribution
Is the Association with Fiber from Foods in Colorectal Cancer Confounded by Folate Intake?

The effect of multivariate adjustment including folate on the strong protective effect of fiber in foods on colorectal cancer risk in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition was investigated in 1,721 cases identified in the latest follow-up. The inclusion of an additional 656 cases confirmed our previously published results, with a strong and significant reduction in colorectal cancer risk of ∼9% for each uncalibrated quintile increase in fiber (Plinear trend < 0.001) compared with an 8% reduction in our previous report, which had not been adjusted for folate. Inclusion of the other covariates (physical activity, alcohol, smoking, and red and processed meat) confirmed this significant inverse association for colon cancer and strengthened the association with left-sided colon cancer (P < 0.001). After maximum adjustment, the association between fiber and rectal cancer was not significant, as in our previous analysis. The association with fiber from different food sources was analyzed, but again, there were no significance trends after maximum adjustment.
Immune Response to Heat-Shock Protein Correlates With Induction of Insulitis in I-Eα d Transgenic NOD Mice

To evaluate the correlation between heat-shock protein (HSP) and insulitis, we compared lymphocyte proliferative response to Mycobacterium leprae HSP65 of NOD mice with that of I-Eα d transgenic NOD (I-E+NOD) mice, which show no insulitis. We found that splenocytes from 15-week-old NOD mice showed a more marked proliferative response to HSP than did those from age-matched I-E+NOD mice (P < 0.05). We then transferred splenocytes from 12-week-old NOD mice into I-E+NOD mice to induce insulitis in the recipients and examined antibody levels against HSP. By 6 weeks posttransfer, insulitis was successfully transferred to four out of five recipients of NOD splenocytes and antibody levels against HSP were significantly higher in the NOD splenocyte-transferred group than in controls, which showed no insulitis (P < 0.01). These results suggest that immune response to HSP correlates with insulitis in NOD mice. Our results support the assertion that HSP is a useful antigen for investigating the etiology of IDDM.
Sensorless manipulation using transverse vibrations of a plate

The existing industrial parts feeders move the parts through a sequence of mechanical filters that reject parts in unwanted orientations. In this paper we develop a new setup that uses a different vibratory mechanism to systematically manipulate parts, by actively orienting and localizing them. The idea is to generate and change dynamic modes for a plate by varying the applied frequency of oscillation. Depending on the node shapes of the plate for these frequencies, the position and orientation of the parts can be controlled. We develop an analysis of the underlying dynamics, and show that it can be used to predict the behavior of objects placed on the vibrating plate. Using this analysis, we propose that the applied frequencies can be automatically sequenced to obtain a "sensorless" strategy for manipulating a given object.
Eurographics Symposium on Geometry Processing (2005) Progressive Buffers: View-dependent Geometry and Texture Lod Rendering

We introduce a view-dependent level of detail rendering system designed with modern GPU architectures in mind. Our approach keeps the data in static buffers and geomorphs between different LODs using per-vertex weights for seamless transition. Our method is the first out-of-core system to support texture mapping, including a mechanism for texture LOD. This approach completely avoids LOD pops and boundary cracks while gracefully adapting to a specified framerate or level of detail. Our method is suitable for all classes of GPUs that provide basic vertex shader programmability, and is applicable for both out-of-core or instanced geometry. The contributions of our work include a preprocessing and rendering system for view-dependent LOD rendering by geomorphing static buffers using per-vertex weights, a vertex buffer tree to minimize the number of API draw calls when rendering coarse-level geometry, and automatic methods for efficient, transparent LOD control.
Retinitis pigmentosa-associated cystoid macular oedema: pathogenesis and avenues of intervention

Hereditary retinal diseases are now the leading cause of blindness certification in the working age population (age 16–64 years) in England and Wales, of which retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is the most common disorder. RP may be complicated by cystoid macular oedema (CMO), causing a reduction of central vision. The underlying pathogenesis of RP-associated CMO (RP-CMO) remains uncertain, however, several mechanisms have been proposed, including: (1) breakdown of the blood-retinal barrier, (2) failure (or dysfunction) of the pumping mechanism in the retinal pigment epithelial, (3) Müller cell oedema and dysfunction, (4) antiretinal antibodies and (5) vitreous traction. There are limited data on efficacy of treatments for RP-CMO. Treatments attempted to date include oral and topical carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, oral, topical, intravitreal and periocular steroids, topical non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, photocoagulation, vitrectomy with internal limiting membrane peel, oral lutein and intravitreal antivascular endothelial growth factor injections. This review summarises the evidence supporting these treatment modalities. Successful management of RP-CMO should aim to improve both quality and quantity of vision in the short term and may also slow central vision loss over time.
High‐Level Transfer and Long‐Term Expression of the Human β‐Globin Gene in a Mouse Transplant Model a

Abstract: Insertion of a normally functioning human β‐globin gene into the hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) of patients with β‐thalassemia may be an effective approach to the therapy of this disorder. Safe, efficient gene transfer and long‐term, high‐level expression of the transferred human β‐globin gene in animal models are prerequisites for HSC somatic gene therapy. We have recently shown for the first time that, using a modified β‐globin retroviral vector in a mouse transplant model, long‐term, high‐level expression of a transferred human β‐globin gene is possible. The human β‐globin gene continues to be detected up to eight months post‐transplantation of β‐globin‐transduced hematopoietic cells into lethally irradiated mice. The transferred human β‐globin gene is detected in three of five mice surviving long‐term (>4 months) transplanted with bone marrow cells transduced with high‐titer virus. The unrearranged 5.1 kb human β‐globin gene‐containing provirus is seen by Southern blotting in two of these mice. More importantly, long‐term expression of the transferred gene is seen in two mice at levels of 5% and 20% that of endogenous murine β‐globin. We document stem cell transduction by showing continued high‐level expression of the human β‐globin gene in secondarily transplanted recipient mice. These results provide evidence of HSC transduction with a human β‐globin gene in animals and demonstrate that retroviral‐mediated unrearranged human β‐globin gene transfer leads to a high level of human β‐globin gene expression in the long term for the first time. A gene therapy strategy may be a feasible therapeutic approach to the β‐thalassemias if consistent human β‐globin gene transfer and expression into HSC can be achieved.
The complexed structure and antimicrobial activity of a non‐β‐lactam inhibitor of AmpC β‐lactamase

β‐Lactamases are the major resistance mechanism to β‐lactam antibiotics and pose a growing threat to public health. Recently, bacteria have become resistant to β‐lactamase inhibitors, making this problem pressing. In an effort to overcome this resistance, non‐β‐lactam inhibitors of β‐lactamases were investigated for complementarity to the structure of AmpC β‐lactamase from Escherichia coli. This led to the discovery of an inhibitor, benzo (b)thiophene‐2‐boronic acid (BZBTH2B), which inhibited AmpC with a Kit of 27 nM. This inhibitor is chemically dissimilar to β‐lactams, raising the question of what specific interactions are responsible for its activity. To answer this question, the X‐ray crystallographic structure of BZBTH2B in complex with AmpC was determined to 2.25 Å resolution. The structure reveals several unexpected interactions. The inhibitor appears to complement the conserved, R1‐amide binding region of AmpC, despite lacking an amide group. Interactions between one of the boronic acid oxygen atoms, Tyr150, and an ordered water molecule suggest a mechanism for acid/base catalysis and a direction for hydrolytic attack in the enzyme catalyzed reaction. To investigate how a non‐β‐lactam inhibitor would perform against resistant bacteria, BZBTH2B was tested in antimicrobial assays. BZBTH2B significantly potentiated the activity of a third‐generation cephalosporin against AmpC‐producing resistant bacteria. This inhibitor was unaffected by two common resistance mechanisms that often arise against β‐lactams in conjunction with β‐lactamases. Porin channel mutations did not decrease the efficacy of BZBTH2B against cells expressing AmpC. Also, this inhibitor did not induce expression of AmpC, a problem with many β‐lactams. The structure of the BZBTH2B/AmpC complex provides a starting point for the structure‐based elaboration of this class of non‐β‐lactam inhibitors.
The A2iA Multi-lingual Text Recognition System at the Second Maurdor Evaluation

This paper describes the system submitted by A2iA to the second Maurdor evaluation for multi-lingual text recognition. A system based on recurrent neural networks and weighted finite state transducers was used both for printed and handwritten recognition, in French, English and Arabic. To cope with the difficulty of the documents, multiple text line segmentations were considered. An automatic procedure was used to prepare annotated text lines needed for the training of the neural network. Language models were used to decode sequences of characters or words for French and English and also sequences of part-of-arabic words (PAWs) in case of Arabic. This system scored first at the second Maurdor evaluation for both printed and handwritten text recognition in French, English and Arabic.
Efficient Packet Classification with a Hybrid Algorithm

Packet classification categorizes incoming packets into multiple forwarding classes based on pre-defined filters. This categorization makes information accessible for quality of service or security handling in the network. In this paper, we propose a scheme which combines the Aggregate Bit Vector algorithm and the Pruned Tuple Space Search algorithm to improve the performance of packet classification in terms of speed and storage. We also present the procedures of incremental update. Our scheme is evaluated with filter databases of varying sizes and characteristics. The experimental results demonstrate that our scheme is feasible and scalable.
Characterizing the DNA Contacts and Cooperative Binding of F Plasmid TraM to Its Cognate Sites at oriT *

TraM is a DNA binding protein required for conjugative transfer of the self-transmissible IncF group of plasmids, including F, R1, and R100. F TraM binds to three sites in ForiT: two high affinity binding sites, sbmA andsbmB, which are direct repeats of nearly identical sequence involved in the autoregulation of the traM gene; and a lower affinity site, sbmC, an inverted repeat important for transfer, which is situated nearest to the nic site where transfer originates. TraM bound cooperatively to its binding sites atoriT; the presence of sbmA and sbmBincreased the affinity for sbmC 10-fold. Bending oforiT DNA by TraM was minimal, suggesting that TraM, a tetramer, was able to loop the DNA when bound to sbmA andsbmB simultaneously. Hydroxyl radical footprinting of DNA of sbmA and sbmC revealed that TraM contacted the DNA within a region previously delineated by DNase I footprinting. TraM protected the CT bases within the sequence CTAG, which occurred at 12-base intervals on the top and bottom strand of sbmA, most consistently with other protected bases. The footprint onsbmC revealed that the predicted inverted repeats were protected by TraM with a pattern that began at the center of the repeats and radiated outward at 11–12 base intervals toward the 5′-ends of either strand. At high protein concentrations, this pattern extended beyond the footprint defined by DNase I, suggesting that the DNA was wrapped around the protein forming a nucleosome-like structure, which could aid in preparing the DNA for transfer.
Theoretical Solution and Applications of Ocean Bottom Pressure Induced by Seismic Seafloor Motion

Seismic signals captured by ocean bottom pressure sensors, which are designed to record tsunami waves, are largely ignored. In this paper, we derive a simple theoretical solution of the ocean bottom pressure as a function of prescribed seafloor motion. All the assumptions are clearly stated and analyzed. The solution is checked by comparing the seafloor displacement and pressure from three M7+ earthquakes, recorded by ocean bottom seismometers and pressure gauges located off the Japanese coast. We then show two applications. First, using the seafloor displacement data recorded by an ocean bottom seismometer, the pressure amplitude recorded by the associated pressure gauge is corrected, and vice versa. Second, pressure recordings from Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake are converted to seafloor displacements, which are then utilized to estimate the earthquake focal mechanism. Thus, we demonstrate that seismic signals recorded by pressure sensors have great potential for fast estimate of earthquake source parameters.
A new approach to zone identification based on considering features with high semantic richness

In this paper, we propose a new approach to zone identification based on considering features with high semantic richness such as specialized names and mode of verbs belonging to a text's domain of interest and besides that mode of verbs, while taking into account features with less computational cost compared to those of conventional methods. Out of the scenarios of selecting features for identifying a zone based on classifying the sentences in a text, we came to notice that in the scenario where specialized names and mode of verbs are taken into account together with reduced versions of conventional features including history, an accuracy rate of 61% (resp. 81%) is obtained which is higher than those belonging to both Liakata's and Fisas's approach. Also, to have a genuine comparison, both Liakata's and Fisas's corpuses are used in our experiments. Such accuracy is obtained at the place where less computational cost is taken for extracting the features.
Landscape features affect gene flow of Scottish Highland red deer (Cervus elaphus)

Landscape features have been shown to strongly influence dispersal and, consequently, the genetic population structure of organisms. Studies quantifying the effect of landscape features on gene flow of large mammals with high dispersal capabilities are rare and have mainly been focused at large geographical scales. In this study, we assessed the influence of several natural and human‐made landscape features on red deer gene flow in the Scottish Highlands by analysing 695 individuals for 21 microsatellite markers. Despite the relatively small scale of the study area (115 × 87 km), significant population structure was found using F‐statistics (FST = 0.019) and the program structure, with major differentiation found between populations sampled on either side of the main geographical barrier (the Great Glen). To assess the effect of landscape features on red deer population structure, the ArcMap GIS was used to create cost‐distance matrices for moving between populations, using a range of cost values for each of the landscape features under consideration. Landscape features were shown to significantly affect red deer gene flow as they explained a greater proportion of the genetic variation than the geographical distance between populations. Sea lochs were found to be the most important red deer gene flow barriers in our study area, followed by mountain slopes, roads and forests. Inland lochs and rivers were identified as landscape features that might facilitate gene flow of red deer. Additionally, we explored the effect of choosing arbitrary cell cost values to construct least cost‐distance matrices and described a method for improving the selection of cell cost values for a particular landscape feature.
On approximating optimum repairs for functional dependency violations

We study the problem of repairing an inconsistent database that violates a set of functional dependencies by making the smallest possible value modifications. For an inconsistent database, we define an optimum repair as a database that satisfies the functional dependencies, and minimizes, among all repairs, a distance measure that depends on the number of corrections made in the database and the weights of tuples modified. We show that like other versions of the repair problem, checking the existence of a repair within a certain distance of a database is NP-complete. We also show that finding a constant-factor approximation for the optimum repair for any set of functional dependencies is NP-hard. Furthermore, there is a small constant and a set of functional dependencies, for which finding an approximate solution for the optimum repair within the factor of that constant is also NP-hard. Then we present an approximation algorithm that for a fixed set of functional dependencies and an arbitrary input inconsistent database, produces a repair whose distance to the database is within a constant factor of the optimum repair distance. We finally show how the approximation algorithm can be used in data cleaning using a recent extension to functional dependencies, called conditional functional dependencies.
It's not easy being green

Large-scale Internet applications, such as content distribution networks, are deployed across multiple datacenters and consume massive amounts of electricity. To provide uniformly low access latencies, these datacenters are geographically distributed and the deployment size at each location reflects the regional demand for the application. Consequently, an application's environmental impact can vary significantly depending on the geographical distribution of end-users, as electricity cost and carbon footprint per watt is location specific. In this paper, we describe FORTE: Flow Optimization based framework for request-Routing and Traffic Engineering. FORTE dynamically controls the fraction of user traffic directed to each datacenter in response to changes in both request workload and carbon footprint. It allows an operator to navigate the three-way tradeoff between access latency, carbon footprint, and electricity costs and to determine an optimal datacenter upgrade plan in response to increases in traffic load. We use FORTE to show that carbon taxes or credits are impractical in incentivizing carbon output reduction by providers of large-scale Internet applications. However, they can reduce carbon emissions by 10% without increasing the mean latency nor the electricity bill.
Improving Translation via Targeted Paraphrasing

Targeted paraphrasing is a new approach to the problem of obtaining cost-effective, reasonable quality translation that makes use of simple and inexpensive human computations by monolingual speakers in combination with machine translation. The key insight behind the process is that it is possible to spot likely translation errors with only monolingual knowledge of the target language, and it is possible to generate alternative ways to say the same thing (i.e. paraphrases) with only monolingual knowledge of the source language. Evaluations demonstrate that this approach can yield substantial improvements in translation quality.