Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dark Count Impact for First Photon Discriminators for SPAD Digital Arrays in PET

To increase contrast in positron emission tomography (PET) images, researchers are investigating detectors that reach below the nanosecond timing resolution. This allows a tight coincidence window which reduces random coincidence counts in the acquired data, as well as to include time-of-flight information into the reconstruction algorithms. With this goal in mind, single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) arrays have been under study for their excellent timing performances. However, their spurious dark counts can blur the start of PET signals where timing information is the most precise and create false starts in the acquisition system, introducing dead time. To minimize these problems in digital SPAD systems using a single time to digital converter (TDC) per PET channel, dark count discriminator circuits are required to reduce timing errors and increase the triggering efficiency in presence of dark counts. This paper compares the performance of a probabilistic and a novel delay line based dark count discriminator. Simulations of a SPAD array investigate the impact of dark counts on triggering efficiency and coincidence timing. Results show that the probabilistic discriminator provides excellent event recovery with regard to dark counts at the cost of some coincidence timing resolution. On the other hand, the delay line discriminator maintains the peak coincidence timing resolution but does not provide as much efficiency at high dark count rate levels.
3D Scanning: A Comprehensive Survey

This paper provides an overview of 3D scanning methodologies and technologies proposed in the existing scientific and industrial literature. Throughout the paper, various types of the related techniques are reviewed, which consist, mainly, of close-range, aerial, structure-from-motion and terrestrial photogrammetry, and mobile, terrestrial and airborne laser scanning, as well as time-of-flight, structured-light and phase-comparison methods, along with comparative and combinational studies, the latter being intended to help make a clearer distinction on the relevance and reliability of the possible choices. Moreover, outlier detection and surface fitting procedures are discussed concisely, which are necessary post-processing stages.
Isolation of angiotensin II binding proteins from normal human plasma by affinity chromatography.

ABSTRACT By affinity chromatography with angiotensin II-substituted Sepharose, several proteins were isolated from human plasma. The proteins were partially characterized by physicochemical and immunological techniques. Proteins with α β and γ electrophoretic mobilities were shown to be present. In vitro binding of angiotensin was established for all the isolated protein fractions by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, except gamma globulin. Among the eluted proteins angiotensinase activity was demonstrated. The presence of a nondialyzable pressor substance with a molecular weight in excess of 100,000 was also established. This pressor activity could be suppressed by the addition of angiotensin II antiserum.
Ontogeny and Allometry of Body Shape in the Blacktail Shiner, Cyprinella venusta

Abstract Ontogenetic changes in body shape and its associated allometry were studied in the Blacktail Shiner, Cyprinella venusta, using geometric morphometric methods. We used a single, large sample (n = 397; 182 males, 215 females), collected in Catahoula Creek, Jourdan River drainage, Hancock County, Mississippi. Ten body landmarks were digitized from each specimen, which yielded partial warp scores that were used as shape variables to describe body shape change during ontogeny, assess sexual dimorphism, and investigate the relationship between reproductive status and ontogenetic body shape change. We also assessed the effect of sexual dimorphism on size and body shape. The null hypothesis of isometry during ontogeny was strongly rejected by multivariate regression of shape on size for both sexes (males, P < 0.0001, F = 21.970; females, P < 0.0001, F = 16.238). We found large, highly significant sexually dimorphic differences in the body shapes of males and females (MANOVA for overall shape, P < 0.0001, F = 7.535, Wilks' lambda, 0.758), which remained significant using MANCOVA with size as a covariate (log SL, P < 0.0001, F = 34.872, Wilks' lambda, 0.438; log CS, P < 0.0001, F = 34.829, Wilks' lambda, 0.439). Moreover, the ontogeny of body shape differs between males and females. There were highly significant shape differences among reproductive classes within males and females. These findings suggest that change in reproductive status may occur in concert with body shape change.
Improving Speaker Verification Performance in Presence of Spoofing Attacks Using Out-of-Domain Spoofed Data

Automatic speaker verification (ASV) systems are vulnerable to spoofing attacks using speech generated by voice conversion and speech synthesis techniques. Commonly, a countermeasure (CM) system is integrated with an ASV system for improved protection against spoofing attacks. But integration of the two systems is challenging and often leads to increased false rejection rates. Furthermore, the performance of CM severely degrades if in-domain development data are unavailable. In this study, therefore, we propose a solution that uses two separate background models – one from human speech and another from spoofed data. During test, the ASV score for an input utterance is computed as the difference of the log-likelihood against the target model and the combination of the log-likelihoods against two background models. Evaluation experiments are conducted using the joint ASV and CM protocol of ASVspoof 2015 corpus consisting of text-independent ASV tasks with short utterances. Our proposed system reduces error rates in the presence of spoofing attacks by using out-of-domain spoofed data for system development, while maintaining the performance for zero-effort imposter attacks compared to the baseline system.
DISCUSSION OF CLUSTERING ON DISSIMILARITY REPRESENTATIONS FOR DETECTING MISLABELLED SEISMIC SIGNALS AT NEVADO DEL RUIZ VOLCANO BY MAURICIO OROZCO-ALZATE, AND CÉSAR GERMÁN CASTELLANOS-DOMÍNGUEZ

The authors are to be congratulated for a systematic investigationof the accurate and non subjective classifying approach in seismic research. The authors have conducted several clustering algorithms to the seismic event records from Volcanological and SeismologicalObservatory at Manizales. Their objective was to improve the grouping of seismic data (i.e., volcano-tectonic earthquakes, long-period earthquakes and icequakes) digitized at 100.16 Hz sampling frequency.Their study seems adding new approach to their previous work of Langer et al. (2006) who applied different classification techniques to seismic data.
Human cell‐mediated immune responses to antigenic fractions of Salmonella typhi

The proliferative responses of peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 10 subjects that had typhoid fever, and healthy volunteers without history of typhoid fever or immunization against disease, were analysed with antigen fractions from two protein extracts of Salmonella typhi. Fractions from each extract were separated by sodium dodecyl sulphate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS–PAGE) electrophoresis, transferred to nitrocellulose filters by electroblotting and processed to obtain antigen‐bearing nitrocellulose particles for use in lymphocyte cultures. Although the individual proliferative responses were heterogeneous we identified two main immunogenic regions of 29–32 × 103 MW and 45–56 × 103 MW for both extracts. Even though there was no one particular antigenic fraction capable of stimulating lymphocytes from all individuals with a previous history of typhoid fever, the combination of three fractions 29–32, 41–45, 63–71 × 103 MW could be stimulatory for cells of 90% of these individuals. Also, four subjects that did not respond to unfractionated antigens gave proliferative responses to several fractions of the same extract. We have identified the main immunogenic fractions of S. typhi that might play a role during typhoid infection and postinfection immunity, and merit further purification and characterization.
A novel block cipher design paradigm for secured communication

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are commonly used to conduct tasks (e.g. monitor and surveillance) in various civilian applications from a remote location. Wireless communications (i.e. radio frequency) are often used to remotely pilot the UAV and stream data back to the operator. The characteristics of the wireless communication channel allows attackers to monitor and manipulate the operation of the UAV through passive and active attacks. Cryptography is selected as a countermeasure to mitigate these threats; however, a drawback of using cryptography is the impact on the real-time operation and performance of the UAV. This paper proposes the Permutation Substitution Network (PSN) design paradigm with an instance presented which is the Alternative Advanced Encryption Standard (AAES) and analysis of its performance against the standardised Substitution Permutation Network (SPN) design paradigm the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Results indicate that using the PSN paradigm is a feasible approach in comparison to the SPN design paradigm.
Bulk Organic Matter and Nitrogen Removal from Reclaimed Water During Groundwater Recharge by Enhanced Direct Injection Well

Water shortages lead to increasing attention to artificial groundwater recharge by reclaimed water. A new kind of approach, enhanced direct injection‐well recharge (EnDir) consisting of short‐ and long‐term soil treatment, is considered to be suitable for large cities in China. In this paper, EnDir was simulated by soil columns in the laboratory with the secondary effluent as raw water that was ozonated before EnDir. Laboratory‐scale experiments demonstrate that the short‐term part of EnDir can remove 47 to 60% dissolved organic carbon (DOC), convert 5 mg/L of ammonia‐nitrogen to equivalent nitrate‐nitrogen, and offer preferred removal of non‐UV‐absorbing organics. Soluble microbial byproducts and fulvic‐acid‐like materials can be ozonated and then partially biodegraded. The residuals of organic matter as a refractory fraction are biodegraded continuously during the long‐term part. The DOC value of 1.8 to 2.5 mg/L can be reached, and 40% of organic matter with molecular weight less than 500 Da can be removed after full‐term EnDir.
Scale Invariant Value Computation for Reinforcement Learning in Continuous Time

Natural learners must compute an estimate of future out- comes that follow from a stimulus in continuous time. Criti-cally, the learner cannot in general know a priori the relevant time scale over which meaningful relationships will be observed. Widely used reinforcement learning algorithms dis- cretize continuous time and use the Bellman equation to estimate exponentially-discounted future reward. However, ex- ponential discounting introduces a time scale to the computation of value, implying that the relative values of various states depend on how time is discretized. This is a serious problem in continuous time as successful learning requires prior knowledge of the solution. We discuss a recent computational hypothesis, developed based on work in psychology and neuroscience, for computing a scale-invariant timeline of future events. This hypothesis efﬁciently computes a model for future time on a logarithmically-compressed scale. Here we show that this model for future prediction can be used to generate a scale-invariant power-law-discounted estimate of expected future reward. The scale-invariant timeline could provide the centerpiece of a neurocognitive framework for reinforcement learning in continuous time.
A simple and efficient protocol for isolation of high molecular weight DNA from filamentous fungi, fruit bodies, and infected plant tissues.

Molecular approaches have become an important tool for mycologists studying fungal systematics, molecular evolution, population genetics or plant-fungus interactions. For this purpose the analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), PCR-based techniques like amplification of polymorphic sequences by one random primer (RAPDs) or amplification of defined genomic regions are applied. Prerequisite for such studies is the rapid isolation of pure genomic DNA of high molecular weight not only allowing simultaneous processing of large numbers of samples but also providing reproducibility with regard to restriction, ligation, and PCR. Most common problems encountered in fulfilling these conditions are the rather high production of polysaccharides by some fungal cultures, and extraction of insufficient amounts of DNA from fruit bodies or from lignified and/or infected plant tissues. Few published protocols include steps for efficient removal of polysaccharides (Do and Adams 1991). Moreover, most procedures contain phenol—chloroform treatments (e.g. Garber and Yoder 1983, Blaiseau et al. 1992) and/or more than one precipitation (e.g. Rodriguez and Yoder 1991: four precipitations) — both latter steps are possible causes of shearing. The short protocol given below combines inactivation of proteins by SDS/Proteinase K with precipitation of acidic polysaccharides by hot CTAB in the presence of SDS and high salts (Kim et al. 1990) and only a single selective precipitation of DNA with isopropanol (Marmur 1961, Cryer et al. 1975). The method is appropriate for simultanous processing of many samples because all steps can be done in Eppendorf tubes, but it can also be scaled up easily for bulk preparations. A treatment with methanol containing 0.1 % mercaptoethanol preceding DNA extraction was performed when basidiocarps and plant tissues contained large amounts of reactive compounds (resins, phenolics) interfering with solubilization of DNA. Methanol extraction was found to be superior over other solvents such as acetone (Schneiderbauer et al. 1991). In this way we isolated DNAs from a wide variety of fungi including Fusarium, Pseudocercosporella, Phytophthora, Setosphaeria, Armillaria, Heterobasidion, Boletus, Russula, Lactarius, Suillus, Cortinarius, and from conifer roots and needles (Picea abies, Pinus sylvestris). DNAs were subjected to Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis to verify their high molecular weight: the majority of DNA molecules was in the size range of 50-150 kbp and only insignificant amounts of DNA <50 kbp were present (Figure 1, lane 1). DNAs are suited as substrate for restriction, ligation and PCR (Figure 1, lanes 4 6 and 8-10). Yields depend on the species/isolate. For example, of Fusarium spp. yield averaged 100 ng from 30 mg dried mycelium with an average purity measured as A26o/28O °f 1 -78 ± 0.05. Needles and basidiocarps yielded less (10-30 /*g).
Notice of RetractionSuburban-Rural Contrasts of Carbon Dioxide Fluxes in Beijing

Turbulent fluxes of carbon dioxide have been measured for at a suburban and a rural sites in Beijing city simultaneously during the period from June to December in 2009. The results show that Suburban play a role in carbon source with fluxes being always positive thought a day both in summer and in winter. In addition, daytime, nighttime and daily mean values of CO2 fluxes were all greater in winter than those in summer influenced by vegetation activity in summer and domestic heating in winter. Fluxes at the rural areas exhibited pronounced biogenic features with negative daytime fluxes and constant release of CO2 due to respiration at night in summer, and always close to zero in winter. More CO2 fluxes measurements to conduct at various urban land-use types are required in the further.
An adaptive filter based channel estimation framework for large MIMO systems

In this paper an adaptive filter based channel estimation framework is introduced for large MIMO systems. The adaptive algorithms used are Least Mean Square (LMS) and Recursive Least Square (RLS). The system model considered is Centralised Antenna System (CAS). The convergence performance of both LMS and RLS based channel estimation is simulated and the computational complexity of each algorithm is computed. The convergence performance of LMS adaptive channel estimation w.r. t varying step size is studied and similarly the convergence performance of RLS adaptive channel estimation w.r. t varying forgetting factor and regularisation factor is studied.
Vulnerability assessment of water resources in Egypt to climatic change in the Nile Basin

The impacts of global climate change on the water resources of the Nile River Basin were evaluated using simulation models. Four climate change scenarios were evaluated (baseline, GISS, GFDL, and UKMO). The complete impact of climatic changes in the Nile cannot be fully predicted with confidence, as some models forecast increased flows, while others project significant decreases. Hourever, it was observed that the Nile River flow is extremely sensitive to ambient temperature and precipitatlon changes, and it is possible that the effects of climatic fluctuations would be severe. Several water management options were identified to help adapt Nlle River management to a changing global climate.
VORTICITY GENERATION IN LOCALIZED MAGNETIC FIELDS

The generation of vorticity in localized magnetic fields is explored under the low magnetic Reynolds number approximation. Analytic solutions for a creeping flow past a magnetic point dipole are obtained through a perturbation method. Also, numerical calculations for the flow past a finite size magnetic dipole are presented. It is shown that vortical structures may become unstable when inertial effects are not negligible. Introduction. Non-uniformities are commonly used to generate vorticity in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows. For instance, the use of solid obstacles in the flow under uniform magnetic fields has been widely explored both theoretically and experimentally to understand vortex formation and evolution (1, 2). Vorticity can also be created under uniform fields through the expansion or contraction of duct geometry. Another interesting possibility of vortex generation in the channel flow under uniform fields is due to inhomogeneities in the electrical conductivity of the walls, as has been demonstarted by Alpher et al. (3) and Buhler (4). It is also well known that vorticity can be generated due to fringing magnetic fields. In fact, most of the investigations of flows in fringing fields has been devoted to the analysis of duct flows with a field that varies in the streamwise direction as it approximately occurs at the entrance or exit of the poles of a magnet. In this case, current loops are elongated in the flow direction giving rise to streamwise current density components that produce Lorentz forces pointing towards the side walls. These forces are responsible for the creation of M-shape velocity profiles with high side-layer velocitites (5). The strong shear layers created by the non- uniform field remain confined by the side walls, which determine their evolution inside or outside the magnetic field. Actually, in channel flows a non-uniform field acts as an electromagnetic brake, as those commonly used in metallurgical applications. It is then possible to visualize a non-uniform field as an obstacle for the flow and rise the question of how the flow evolution would develop in the ab- sence of confining side walls. In experiments performed in a thin electrolytic layer with a localized moving magnetic field, Honji and Haraguchi (6, 7) demonstarted that generation of vorticity in inhomogeneous magnetic fields may lead to time- dependent flows with complex vortical structures. They used a shallow layer of salt water contained in a long tank with an electric current injected transversally to the tank axis. A permanent magnet located externally but close to the layer was moved at a constant velocity along the center line of the water tank. In the wake behind the region influenced by the field, different flow patterns including a wavy motion, symmetric vortex pairs and periodic vortex shedding were observed depending on the velocity of the magnets and the injected electric current (6, 7). New experimental evidence was recently obtained by Afanasyev and Korabel (8)
Blood lactate and heart rate during national and international women's basketball.

AIM In order to measure game intensity in female basketball players, 2 teams (Olympic National Team - I -and a team at 1(st) National Division - N) were studied for a total of 12 games (10 official competitions and 2 practice games -P). METHODS Both blood lactate concentration ([La](b)) and mean heart rate (HR) were measured during the games and then compared with a progressive field test where maximal blood lactate (max[La](b)), individual lactate threshold and maximal heart rate (HR max) values were obtained. All different categories (International, National and Practice) and positions (Guard, Forward and Center) were taken into account in this study. RESULTS Differences (p<0.05) in HR were found between all positions (Guard=185+/-5.9; Forward=175+/-11 and Center=167+/-12 beats x min(-1)) and between the International team and the rest of the categories (International=186+/-6; National=175+/-13 and Practice=170+/-11 beats x min(-1)). The [La](b) differed between the Guard and the other 2 positions (Guard=5.7+/-2.1; Forward=4.2+/-2.1 and Center=3.9+/-2.0 mmol x L(-1)) and between Practice and the rest of the categories (International=5.0+/-2.3; National=5.2+/-2.0 and Practice=2.7+/-1.2 mmol x L(-1)). The game intensity of International players reached 94.6% of their maximum HR value, whereas National players reached 90.8%, this percentage descending to 89.8% during Practice. International games reached the individual lactate threshold at 89.2% of the maximum HR; National games at 88.6%. CONCLUSION We can conclude that the game intensity of female basketball increases according to the level of competition. It may also differ according to playing position, being greatest in guards. The game intensity at international level surpasses the individual lactate threshold, whereas it reaches a lower level in training games.
Soil management in rainfed olive orchards may result in conflicting effects on olive production and soil fertility

The adoption of a sustainable soil management system is essential for the steep slopes and low fertility soils still supporting rainfed olive orchards in the Mediterranean basin. The effect of the soil management on olive yield, tree nutritional status and soil fertility was studied in a rainfed olive orchard located in NE Portugal that had been managed since its earliest days as a sheep-walk. In 2001, three different soil management systems were established: Sheepwalk, in which the vegetation was managed with a flock of sheep; Tillage, where the vegetation was controlled by conventional tillage; and Glyphosate, where a glyphosate-based herbicide was applied. The soil management systems had a pronounced effect on olive yield. The accumulated olive yields between 2002 and 2011 were 187.2, 142.9 and 89.5 kg tree ‐1 , respectively in the Glyphosate, Tillage and Sheep-walk treatments. However, the effect of soil management on tree nutritional status was not so clear. On the other hand, the pools of organic carbon and N in the soil, and also the soil available N and phosphorus (P), were found to be less in the Glyphosate and Tillage treatments in comparison with the Sheep-walk. In these soils, N appeared as a much more limiting factor for crop growth than P. In rainfed orchards, the tolerance to herbaceous vegetation appears to be a determining factor in sustainability, which regulates annual crop yields and soil fertility. The higher the tolerance to herbaceous species, the lower the olive yields, but the better are the soil fertility parameters.