Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-Edge type Unequal Error Protection LDPC codes

Irregular low-density parity check (LDPC) codes are particularly well-suited for transmission schemes that require unequal error protection (UEP) of the transmitted data due to the different connection degrees of its variable nodes. However, this UEP capability is strongly dependent on the connection profile among the protection classes. This paper applies a multi-edge type analysis of LDPC codes for optimizing such connection profile according to the performance requirements of each protection class. This allows the construction of UEP-LDPC codes where the difference between the performance of the protection classes can be adjusted and with an UEP capability that does not vanish as the number of decoding iterations grows.
Mapping method between image and natural sentence

In this paper we espouse to build a scoring procedure that evaluates the similarity between a sentence and an image. This approach is attractive, because it is symmetric: given an image (resp. sentence), one can search for the best sentence (resp. image) in a large set. Furthermore, because the learning cost is independent from the amount of data, the system has scalability, which makes it useful with large-scale data.
Diurnal cardiovascular patterns in spontaneously hypertensive and Wistar-Kyoto rats.

This study was designed to determine whether diurnal patterns of blood pressure, heart rate, or locomotor activity differed among two substrains of Wistar-Kyoto rats, derived originally from Charles River or Taconic Farms stock, or the spontaneously hypertensive rat. Cardiovascular parameters were continuously monitored over 24 hours. Resting systolic and diastolic blood pressure values were statistically different among the three groups both during the lights-on (rest) and lights-off (active) phases of the cycle with blood pressure of spontaneously hypertensive rats greater than that of Wistar-Kyoto rats from Taconic Farms, which was greater than that of Wistar-Kyoto rats from Charles River. The largest difference in arterial pressure between Wistar-Kyoto/Taconic Farms and Wistar-Kyoto/Charles River was during the lights-on period. Heart rates of all rats decreased during the lights-on period; Wistar-Kyoto/Charles River had the largest decrease (-70 +/- 5 beats/min), Wistar-Kyoto/Taconic Farms had the least (-17 +/- 2 beats/min), and in spontaneously hypertensive rats the decrease was intermediate (-29 +/- 3 beats/min). The pronounced diurnal variation in pressure and heart rate exhibited by Wistar-Kyoto/Charles River was not present in either Wistar-Kyoto/Taconic Farms or spontaneously hypertensive rats. Blood pressure magnitude correlated with locomotor activity during both periods, although all groups showed minimal activity during the rest period. Observed differences between Wistar-Kyoto/Charles River and Wistar-Kyoto/Taconic Farms were not due to a lack of or an abnormality in baroreceptor reflex function. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Retinal blood vessel segmentation using geodesic voting methods

Methods to segment retinal blood vessels are presented. Many authors have used minimal cost paths, or similarly geodesics relative to a weight potential P, to find a vessel pathway between two end points. We focus on the use of a set of such geodesic paths to extract retinal blood vessels, using minimal interaction. The approach consists in computing geodesics from a set of end points scattered in the image in such way that there is a high geodesic density on the vessels. This geodesic density is used to approximate the centerlines and walls of the vessels. The methods were applied to segment blood vessels from images of the retina.
MC-CDMA with quadrature spreading for wireless communication systems

Multi-Carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) systems using the Orthogonal Frequency Division Division Multiple Access (OFDM) technique resolve the frequency selectivity in multipath fading channels and have good spectral properties. The addition of a spread spectrum component to the OFDM introduces a frequency diversity gain that can combat deep multipath fading situations. In this paper a MC-CDMA system operating over frequency selective, slowly fading channels is considered and its performance is studied analytically and by computer simulations. We consider the downlink of a cellular radio system where for each user a BPSK modulation and a quadrature (complex) spreading code is used. The spreading codes are arranged in a way that reduces the effect of the multipath fading channel and restores some of the orthogonality losses between users. The obtained results show considerable performance improvement compared to conventional OFDM and to MC-CDMA that uses single spreading codes. The effect of frequency offsets on the system performance is also addressed in this paper. Its superior performance and low complexity receiver make MC-CDMA with quadrature spreading codes suitable for future wireless communication systems to achieve the requirements of high quality services, high speed, and low cost-receiver.
Endothelial-Vasoprotective Effects of High-Density Lipoprotein Are Impaired in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus but Are Improved After Extended-Release Niacin Therapy

Background— High-density lipoprotein (HDL)–raising therapies are currently under intense evaluation, but the effects of HDL may be highly heterogeneous. We therefore compared the endothelial effects of HDL from healthy subjects and from patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and low HDL (meeting the criteria for metabolic syndrome), who are frequently considered for HDL-raising therapies. Moreover, in diabetic patients, we examined the impact of extended-release (ER) niacin therapy on the endothelial effects of HDL. Methods and Results— HDL was isolated from healthy subjects (n=10) and patients with type 2 diabetes (n=33) by sequential ultracentrifugation. Effects of HDL on endothelial nitric oxide and superoxide production were characterized by electron spin resonance spectroscopy analysis. Effects of HDL on endothelium-dependent vasodilation and early endothelial progenitor cell–mediated endothelial repair were examined. Patients with diabetes were randomized to a 3-month therapy with ER niacin (1500 mg/d) or placebo, and endothelial effects of HDL were characterized. HDL from healthy subjects stimulated endothelial nitric oxide production, reduced endothelial oxidant stress, and improved endothelium-dependent vasodilation and early endothelial progenitor cell–mediated endothelial repair. In contrast, these beneficial endothelial effects of HDL were not observed in HDL from diabetic patients, which suggests markedly impaired endothelial-protective properties of HDL. ER niacin therapy improved the capacity of HDL to stimulate endothelial nitric oxide, to reduce superoxide production, and to promote endothelial progenitor cell–mediated endothelial repair. Further measurements suggested increased lipid oxidation of HDL in diabetic patients, and a reduction after ER niacin therapy. Conclusions— HDL from patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome has substantially impaired endothelial-protective effects compared with HDL from healthy subjects. ER niacin therapy not only increases HDL plasma levels but markedly improves endothelial-protective functions of HDL in these patients, which is potentially more important. Clinical Trial Registration— clinicaltrials.gov. Identifier: NCT00346970.
A Psychometric Review of the Personality Inventory for DSM–5 (PID–5): Current Status and Future Directions

ABSTRACT The paradigm of personality psychopathology is shifting from one that is purely categorical in nature to one grounded in dimensional individual differences. Section III (Emerging Measures and Models) of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. [DSM–5]; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), for example, includes a hybrid categorical/dimensional model of personality disorder classification. To inform the hybrid model, the DSM–5 Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group developed a self-report instrument to assess pathological personality traits—the Personality Inventory for the DSM–5 (PID–5). Since its recent introduction, 30 papers (39 samples) have been published examining various aspects of its psychometric properties. In this article, we review the psychometric characteristics of the PID–5 using the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing as our framework. The PID–5 demonstrates adequate psychometric properties, including a replicable factor structure, convergence with existing personality instruments, and expected associations with broadly conceptualized clinical constructs. More research is needed with specific consideration to clinical utility, additional forms of reliability and validity, relations with psychopathological personality traits using clinical samples, alternative methods of criterion validation, effective employment of cut scores, and the inclusion of validity scales to propel this movement forward.
Structure Recovery via Hybrid Variational Surface Approximation

Aiming at robust surface structure recovery, we extend the powerful optimization technique of variational shape approximation by allowing for several different primitives to represent the geometric proxy of a surface region. While the original paper only considered planes, we also include spheres, cylinders, and more complex rollingball blend patches. The motivation for this choice is the fact that most technical CAD objects consist of patches from these four categories. The robust segmentation and global optimization properties which have been observed for the variational shape approximation carry over to our hybrid extension. Hence, we can use our algorithm to segment a given mesh model into characteristic patches and provide a corresponding geometric proxy for each patch. The expected result that we recover surface structures more robustly and thus obtain better approximations with a smaller number of primitives, is validated and demonstrated on a number of examples.
Tipifarnib-Induced Apoptosis in Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Multiple Myeloma Cells Depends on Ca2+ Influx through Plasma Membrane Ca2+ Channels

A major contributing factor to the high mortality rate associated with acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma is the development of resistance to chemotherapy. We have shown that the combination of tipifarnib, a nonpeptidomimetic farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), with bortezomib, a proteosome inhibitor, promotes synergistic death and overcomes de novo drug resistance in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines. Experiments were undertaken to identify the molecular mechanisms by which tipifarnib produces cell death in acute myeloid leukemia and multiple myeloma cell lines (U937 and 8226, respectively). Tipifarnib, but not other FTIs tested [N-[4-[2(R)-amino-3-mercaptopropyl]amino-2-phenylbenzoyl]methionine methyl ester trifluoroacetate salt (FTI-277) and 2′-methyl-5-((((1-trityl-1H-imidazol-4-yl)methyl)amino)methyl)-[1,1′-biphenyl]-2-carboxylic acid (FTI-2153), promotes elevations in intracellular free-calcium concentrations ([Ca2+]i) in both cell lines. These elevations in [Ca2+]i were accompanied by highly dynamic plasmalemmal blebbing and frequently resulted in membrane lysis. The tipifarnib-induced elevations in [Ca2+]i were not blocked by thapsigargin or ruthenium red, but were inhibited by application of Ca2+-free extracellular solution and by the Ca2+ channel blockers Gd3+ and La3+. Conversely, 2-aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2-APB) potentiated the tipifarnib-evoked [Ca2+]i overload. Preventing Ca2+ influx diminished tipifarnib-evoked cell death, whereas 2-APB potentiated this effect, demonstrating a link between tipifarnib-induced Ca2+ influx and apoptosis. These data suggest that tipifarnib exerts its effects by acting on a membrane channel with pharmacological properties consistent with store-operated channels containing the Orai3 subunit. It is noteworthy that Orai3 transcripts were found to be expressed at lower levels in tipifarnib-resistant 8226/R5 cells. Our results indicate tipifarnib causes cell death via a novel mechanism involving activation of a plasma membrane Ca2+ channel and intracellular Ca2+ overload.
Heap Memory Management in Prolog with Tabling: Principles and Practice

In this paper we describe the design and the implementation of the GNU Prolog system. This system draws on our previous experience of compiling Prolog to C in the wamcc system and of compiling finite domain constraints in the clp(FD) system. The compilation scheme has however been redesigned in order to overcome the drawbacks of compiling to C. In particular, GNU-Prolog is based on a low-level mini-assembly platform-independent language that makes it possible to avoid compiling C code, and thus drastically reduces compilation time. It also makes it possible to produce small stand-alone executable files as the result of the compilation process. Interestingly, GNU Prolog is now compliant to the ISO standard, includes several extensions (OS interface, sockets, global variables, etc) and integrates a powerful constraint solver over finite domains. The system is efficient and in terms of performance is comparable with commercial systems for both the Prolog and constraint aspects.
SmoothFlood: Decreasing redundant messages and increasing search quality of service in peer-to-peer networks

Flooding search is a basic searching scheme for unstructured peer-to-peer networks. This technique produces exponentially redundant messages in each hop. Subsequent growths of redundant messages will limit system scalability and will cause unnecessary traffic in network areas. To improve this searching scheme and reduce redundant messages, this paper proposed a novel algorithm (SmoothFlood) which divides flooding scheme into two stages. In first stage algorithm follows standard flooding by the limited number of hops, but in the next stage it will choose nosy nodes in each region. These nodes maintain the data index of all clients' nodes. This proposed algorithm extends the search quality by reducing redundant messages in each hop. Simulation results show it will decrease more than 65 percentages of redundant messages and will save up to 70 percentages of searching traffic.
Fuzzy Logic in System Voltage and Reactive Power Control

This paper presents results of research aimed at improving efficiency of coordinated on-line control of system voltage and reactive power on the basis of developing models, methods, and a control system, integrating traditional numerical techniques with fuzzy logic technology. An approach associated with experimental design is considered to construct diverse types of sensitivity indices, which serve as the basis for multi-attribute evaluating efficiency of control actions and, therefore, for forming rules included in knowledge base. Rules providing comprehensive and flexible solutions are considered. Questions of constructing and tuning linguistic variables as well as rational carrying out fuzzy logic procedures are discussed. Key-Words: Voltage and Reactive Power Control, Sensitivity Indices, Experimental Design, Fuzzy Logic.
Predicting Cognitively Salient Modifiers of the Constitutive Parts of Concepts

When subjects describe concepts in terms of their characteristic properties, they often produce composite properties, e. g. , rabbits are said to have long ears, not just ears. We present a set of simple methods to extract the modifiers of composite properties (in particular: parts) from corpora. We achieve our best performance by combining evidence about the association between the modifier and the part both within the context of the target concept and independently of it. We show that this performance is relatively stable across languages (Italian and German) and for production vs. perception of properties.
A biogeographic assessment of the Samoan Archipelago

This report examines the marine biogeography of the Samoan Archipelago (~14o S latitude along the international date-line) with a focus on regional ocean climate, connectivity among islands due to larval transport, distributions of reef fish and coral communities, and the extent of existing marine protected areas. Management decisions and prior assessments in the archipelago have typically been split along the international political boundary between the islands of Samoa and those of American Samoa despite their close proximity and shared resources. A key goal in this assessment was to compile data from both jurisdictions and to conduct the characterization across the entire archipelago. The report builds upon earlier assessments by re-analyzing and interpreting many pre-existing datasets, adding more recent biogeographic data sources, and by combining earlier findings into a multidisciplinary summary of marine biogeography. The assessment is divided into 5 chapters and supporting appendices. Each chapter was written and reviewed in collaboration with subject matter specialists and local experts. In Chapter 1, a short introduction to the overall scope and approach of the report is provided. In Chapter 2, regional ocean climate is characterized using remote sensing datasets and discussed in the context of local observations. In Chapter 3, regional ocean currents and transport of coral and fish larvae are investigated among the islands of the archipelago and surrounding island nations. In Chapter 4, distinct reef fish and coral communities across the archipelago are quantified on the basis of overall biodiversity, abundance, and community structure. In Chapter 5, the existing network of MPAs in American Samoa is evaluated based on the habitats, reef fish, and coral communities that are encompassed. Appendices provide analytical details omitted from some chapters for brevity as well as supplemental datasets needed as inputs for the main chapters in the assessment. Appendices include an inventory of regional seamounts, a description of shore to shelf edge benthic maps produced for Tutuila, analytical details of reef fish and coral datasets, and supplemental information on the many marine protected areas in American Samoa.
Approximate entropy as a measure of irregularity for psychiatric serial metrics.

OBJECTIVES The quantification of subtle patterns in sequential data, and their changes, has considerable potential utility throughout psychiatry, including the analyses of mood ratings, heart rate, respiratory, and electroencephalographic recordings. METHODS Approximate entropy (ApEn), a relatively recently developed statistic quantifying serial irregularity, has been applied in numerous studies throughout mathematics and other fields of study, especially biology. RESULTS We discussed applications of ApEn, both extant and potential, of most relevance to psychiatrists. We provided a mechanistic interpretation of lowered ApEn values, and discusses the relationship between ApEn and other (both classical and complexity) measures of serial dynamics. We also briefly discussed cross-ApEn, a thematically similar quantification of two-variable asynchrony that can aid in uncovering subtle disruptions in complicated network dynamics. CONCLUSIONS ApEn and cross-ApEn have significant potential to consequentially enhance present statistical methodologies of analysis of psychiatric data, in both clinical and in research settings.
Genome-Wide Profiling of Papillary Thyroid Cancer Identifies MUC1 as an Independent Prognostic Marker

Clinicopathological variables used at present for prognostication and treatment selection for papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs) do not uniformly predict tumor behavior, necessitating identification of novel prognostic markers. Complicating the assessment is the long natural history of PTC and our rudimentary knowledge of its genetic composition. In this study we took advantage of differences in clinical behavior of two distinct variants of PTC, the aggressive tall-cell variant (TCV) and indolent conventional PTC (cPTC), to identify molecular prognosticators of outcome using complementary genome wide analyses. Comparative genome hybridization (CGH) and cDNA microarray (17,840 genes) analyses were used to detect changes in DNA copy number and gene expression in pathological cPTC and TCV. The findings from CGH and cDNA microarray analyses were correlated and validated by real-time PCR and immunohistochemical analyses on a series of 100 cases of cPTC and TCV. Genes identified by this approach were evaluated as prognostic markers in cPTC by immunohistochemistry on tissue arrays. CGH identified significant differences in the presence (76 versus 27%; P = 0.001) and type of DNA copy number aberrations in TCV compared with cPTC. Recurrent gains of 1p34–36, 1q21, 6p21–22, 9q34, 11q13, 17q25, 19, and 22 and losses of 2q21–31, 4, 5p14-q21, 6q11–22, 8q11–22, 9q11–32, and 13q21–31 were unique to TCV. Hierarchical clustering of gene expression profiles revealed significant overlap between TCV and cPTC, but further analysis identified 82 dysregulated genes differentially expressed among the PTC variants. Of these, MUC1 was of particular interest because amplification of 1q by CGH correlated with MUC1 amplification by real-time PCR analysis and protein overexpression by immunohistochemistry in TCV (P = 0.005). Multivariate analysis revealed a significant association between MUC1 overexpression and treatment outcome, independent of histopathological categorization (P = 0.03). Analysis of a validation series containing a matched group of aggressive and indolent cPTCs confirmed the association between MUC1 overexpression and survival (relative risk, 2.3; 95% confidence interval, 1.1–5.5; P = 0.03). Our data suggest that MUC1 dysregulation is associated with aggressive behavior of PTC and may serve as a prognostic marker and potential therapeutic target in this disease.
Affective classification of generic audio clips using regression models

We investigate acoustic modeling, feature extraction and feature selection for the problem of affective content recognition of generic, non-speech, non-music sounds. We annotate and analyze a database of generic sounds containing a subset of the BBC sound effects library. We use regression models, longterm features and wrapper-based feature selection to model affect in the continuous 3-D (arousal, valence, dominance) emotional space. The frame-level features for modeling are extracted from each audio clip and combined with functionals to estimate long term temporal patterns over the duration of the clip. Experimental results show that the regression models provide similar categorical performance as the more popular Gaussian Mixture Models. They are also capable of predicting accurate affective ratings on continuous scales, achieving 62-67% 3-class accuracy and 0.69-0.75 correlation with human ratings, higher than comparable numbers in literature.
Detecting hardware Trojans in unspecified functionality through solving satisfiability problems

For modern complex designs it is impossible to fully specify design behavior, and only feasible to verify functionally meaningful scenarios. Hardware Trojans modifying only unspecified functionality are not possible to detect using existing verification methodologies and Trojan detection strategies. We propose a detection methodology for these Trojans by 1) precisely defining “suspicious” unspecified functionality in terms of information leakage, and 2) formulating detection as a satisfiability problem that can take advantage of the recent advances in both boolean and satisfiability modulo theory (SMT) solvers. The formulated detection procedure can be applied to a gate-level design using commercial equivalence checking tools, or directly to the Verilog/VHDL code by reasoning about the satisfiability of SMT expressions built from traversing the data-flow graph. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on an adder coprocessor and a UART communication controller infected with Trojans which process information leaked from the on-chip bus during idle cycles using signals with only partially specified behavior.