Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive turbo-coded hybrid-ARQ in OFDM systems over fading channels

The performance of an adaptively-modulated and adaptive-rate hybrid automatic-repeat-request (hybrid-ARQ) scheme is proposed for wideband communications based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). The adaptation scheme presents the optimal code rate and signal constellation in order to maximize the spectral efficiency per sub-carrier. By employing type-III turbo hybrid-ARQ with OFDM, utilization of a complete set of sub-carriers is achieved. The adaptation scheme is presented for both Gaussian and fading channels. It is found that the proposed adaptive approach achieves near capacity rates for wideband transmission.
A community perspective on the concept of marine holobionts: state-of-the-art, challenges, and future directions

Host-microbe interactions play crucial roles in marine ecosystems, but we still have very little understanding of the mechanisms that govern these relationships, the evolutionary processes that shape them, and their ecological consequences. The holobiont concept is a renewed paradigm in biology that can help describe and understand these complex systems. It posits that a host and its associated microbiota, living together in a long-lasting relationship, form the holobiont, and have to be studied together, as a coherent biological and functional unit, in order to understand the biology, ecology and evolution of the organisms. Here we discuss critical concepts and opportunities in marine holobiont research and identify key challenges in the field. We highlight the potential economic, sociological, and environmental impacts of the holobiont concept in marine biological, evolutionary, and environmental sciences with comparisons to terrestrial science whenever appropriate. A deeper understanding of such complex systems, however, will require further technological and conceptual advances. The most significant challenge will be to bridge functional research on simple and tractable model systems and global approaches. This will require scientists to work together as an (inter)active community in order to address, for instance, ecological and evolutionary questions and the roles of holobionts in biogeochemical cycles.
Story Forms Detection in Text through Concept-Based Co-Clustering

A story is defined as actors taking actions that culminate in resolutions. In this paper, we extract subject - verb - object relationships from paragraphs and generalize them into semantic conceptual representations. Overlapping generalized concepts and relationships correspond to archetypes/targets and actions that characterize story forms. We present an analytic framework which implements co-clustering based on generalized conceptual relationships to automatically detect such story forms. Co-clustering can help in identifying similarities that exist in low-dimensional sub-spaces of sparse data such as textual paragraphs. Through co-clustering, we detect not only the clusters themselves but also their characteristic features which can be useful in describing and summarizing their contents. We perform co-clustering of stories using two different types of features: standard unigrams/bigrams and generalized concepts. We show that the residual error of factorization with concept-based features is significantly lower than the error with standard keyword-based features. Qualitative evaluations also suggest that concept-based features yield more coherent, distinctive and interesting story forms compared to those produced by using standard keyword-based features.
Long-term radio variability of AGN: flare characteristics

Aims. We have studied the flare characteristics of 55 AGN at 8 different frequency bands between 4.8 and 230 GHz. Our extensive database enables us to study the various observational properties of flares in these sources and compare our results with theoretical models. Methods. We visually extracted 159 individual flares from the flux density curves and calculated different parameters, such as the peak flux density and duration, in all the frequency bands. The selection of flares is based on the 22 and 37 GHz data from Metsahovi Radio Observatory and 90 and 230 GHz data from the SEST telescope. Additional lower frequency 4.8, 8, and 14.5 GHz data are from the University of Michigan Radio Observatory. We also calculated variability indices and compared them with earlier studies. Results. The observations seem to adhere well to the shock model, but there is still large scatter in the data. Especially the time delays between different frequency bands are difficult to study due to the incomplete sampling of the higher frequencies. The average duration of the flares is 2.5 years at 22 and 37 GHz, which shows that long-term monitoring is essential for understanding the typical behaviour in these sources. It also seems that the energy release in a flare is independent of the duration of the flare.
MANET Routing and Data Security with Multiple Packet Collision Control Using Acyclic Node-Links

MANET (Mobile Ad-hoc Network) is an autonomous system facing several issues such as attacks due to the wireless communication media and limitation related to routing. Routing algorithm optimizes different performance metrics on single and multi-path communication. But, the problem occurs on selecting correct route path and provisioning of security for multiple packet transmission from source to destination node in MANET. Conversely, data packet transmission strategy over multiple route paths takes longer routing convergent time. All nodes in the mobile ad-hoc network is used for establishing the routing but the periodic performance fail on maintaining security level during packet transmission over multiple paths. Besides, Encryption Standard algorithms used consumes space unnecessarily. To overcome the difficulty of time and space complexity during packet transmission in MANET, PCC-MSR (Packets Collision Control based Multipath Secure Routing) method is proposed in this paper. First, Acyclic based Node-Link Routing approach in PCC-MSR is implemented to establish multiple route paths for efficient packet transfer. The collision control multiple packet transferring operation achieves minimal convergent time rate using the proposed method. Second, a method called as the Optimized Packet Cooperative Control is introduced to manage information about all packets transmitted through multiple paths. Finally, Multipath Secure Routing is carried out through H-EDES (Homomorphism based Enhanced Data Encryption Standard). H-EDES achieves higher security level with minimal space complexity rate on storing the encrypted information. Experiment is conducted on factors such as convergent time rate on multi path routing, security level on packet transfer from source to destination, and space complexity taken on encrypted data.
The Significance of Reading Order in Document Recognition and Its Evaluation

Reading order detection and representation is an important task in many digitisation scenarios involving the preservation of the logical structure of a document. The corresponding need for the evaluation of reading order results generated by layout analysis methods poses a particular challenge due to potential deviations between ground truth and actually detected segmentation of the page. To this end a novel evaluation approach that responds to this problem by incorporating region correspondence analysis is proposed. Furthermore, a sophisticated reading order representation scheme is presented and used by the system allowing the grouping of objects with ordered and/or unordered relations. This is a typical requirement for documents with complex layouts such as magazines and newspapers. The evaluation method has been validated using the results of two state-of-the-art OCR / layout analysis systems and a basic top-to-bottom reading order detection algorithm applied on representative samples from the PRImA contemporary and the IMPACT historical document datasets.
Complete nucleotide sequence of chikungunya virus and evidence for an internal polyadenylation site.

In this study, the complete genomic sequence of chikungunya virus (CHIK; S27 African prototype) was determined and the presence of an internal polyadenylation [I-poly(A)] site was confirmed within the 3' non-translated region (NTR) of this strain. The complete genome was 11805 nucleotides in length, excluding the 5' cap nucleotide, an I-poly(A) tract and the 3' poly(A) tail. It comprised two long open reading frames that encoded the non-structural (2474 amino acids) and structural polyproteins (1244 amino acids). The genetic location of the non-structural and structural proteins was predicted by comparing the deduced amino acid sequences with the known cleavage sites of other alphaviruses, located at the C-terminal region of their virus-encoded proteins. In addition, predicted secondary structures were identified within the 5' NTR and repeated sequence elements (RSEs) within the 3' NTR. Amino acid sequence homologies, phylogenetic analysis of non-structural and structural proteins and characteristic RSEs revealed that although CHIK is closely related to o'nyong-nyong virus, it is in fact a distinct virus. The existence of I-poly(A) fragments with different lengths (e.g. 19, 36, 43, 91, 94 and 106 adenine nucleotides) at identical initiation positions for each clone strongly suggests that the polymerase of the alphaviruses has a capacity to create poly(A) by a template-dependant mechanism such as 'polymerase slippage', as has been reported for vesicular stomatitis virus.
From Video and Audio Recurrences to Unsupervised Program Structuring

This paper addresses the problem of unsupervised TV programs structuring. Program structuring allows direct and non linear access to the desired parts of a program. Our work addresses the structuring of recurrent TV programs like news, entertainment programs, TV shows, TV magazines. In our previous work [1] we proposed a program structuring method based on the detection of video recurrences. In this paper we extend our study to audio recurrences and verify their influence on the final structuring. We evaluate the structuring results on both approaches (audio and video) separately and jointly. We use for evaluation a 62 hours dataset corresponding to 97 episodes of TV programs. Keywords-TV Program Structuring, Non-linear Browsing, Audio and Video Recurrence Detection, TV Content Indexing.
Greipp on Steroid Responsiveness Lymphoblasts following Hydroxyurea Treatment : Lack of Effect Elevated Glucocorticoid Receptor Binding in Cultured Human

While studying the effects of chemotherapy on glucocorticoid receptor (GR) binding levels in hentatological malignancies, we observed a sizable increase in nuclear GR binding of (3H)dexamethasone in peripheral leukocytes from a chronic basophilic leukemia patient following treat ment with hydroxyurea plus prednisone, but not after prednisone alone. This apparent clinical effect of hydroxyurea led to an examination of hydroxyurea effects on GR binding and sensitivity in the glucocorticoidsensitive human lymphoblast cell line GM4672A. GR binding levels in GM4672A cells were measured following a 3-day exposure to 50 Â¿IM hydroxyurea, a concentration chosen to have a minimal but measurable effect on cellular growth rates with little or no effect on cellular viability. Under these conditions, nuclear (3H]dexamethasone receptor binding measured by Scatchard analysis using a whole-cell assay was elevated 2.4-fold over control values (P < 0.05), while cytosolic residual receptor binding (measured at 37Â°C) remained unchanged. Thus, the total cellular content of measurable GR was increased, and this increase was totally accounted for by GR capable of nuclear binding. Hydroxyurea treatment of GM4672A cells had no effect on the affinity of nuclear or cytosolic GR for |3H)dexamethasone. The increase in measurable nuclear-bound receptors occurred in a time-dependent manner over a period of 3 days and was fully reversible within 3 days following removal of hydroxyurea. The increase in receptor binding could not be explained by the slight alterations in cell cycle kinetics which occur at this low level of hy droxyurea. Despite increased receptor binding, cellular glucocorticoid responsiveness was unaltered as assessed by dexamethasone inhibition of cell growth and dexamethasone inhibition of a urokinase-like plasminogen activator. Thus, increased nuclear and total cellular GR binding levels in hydroxyurea-treated GM4672A cells are not associated with increased glucocorticoid responsiveness.
A novel 0.5 V 15 μW 1.3 MHz temperature-compensated analog PWM-controller for switch-mode converters

This paper presents a novel analog delay-line based puls-width modulation controller with temperature compensation. All circuits are designed in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS twin well process. The resented voltage reference provides a supply and temperature independent output voltage of 250 mV. In addition, a ring oscillator is introduced which utilizes bulk-modulated pMOS transistors. All circuits operate within a temperature range of −20 °C to +120 °C, and a supply voltage of down to 0.5 V. The oscillator's frequency is 1.3 MHz ± 45 kHz, the total power consumption is 15 μW at 0.5 V.
An approach to an IP over WDM transmission network modelling

The paper describes an approach to the optical transmission network modeling. The modeling process is based on two main assumptions -transmission network carries IP datagrams using the layer 2 protocol as a framing technique and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is used as a transmission technique on the physical layer. Protection and restoration mechanisms have been implemented on the photonic layer and QoS is supported by the Internet protocol. An IP over WDM network structure has been presented, along with the description of the optical component modeling process.
Structured Condition Number and Backward Error for Eigenvalue Problems

In this paper, we investigate condition number and backward error for eigenvalue problems. Results on unstructured condition number for a simple eigenvalue are recalled and then a definition of a structured condition number is given for linear structures that are Toeplitz, circulant, Hankel, symmetric, Hermitian and skew-Hermitian. For these structures (except for circulant), we show that the unstructured condition number equals the structured condition number. We generalize these results to eigenvalues of matrix polynomials. We also study structured backward error for matrix polynomials.
Hanseniaspora uvarum from Winemaking Environments Show Spatial and Temporal Genetic Clustering

Hanseniaspora uvarum is one of the most abundant yeast species found on grapes and in grape must, at least before the onset of alcoholic fermentation (AF) which is usually performed by Saccharomyces species. The aim of this study was to characterize the genetic and phenotypic variability within the H. uvarum species. One hundred and fifteen strains isolated from winemaking environments in different geographical origins were analyzed using 11 microsatellite markers and a subset of 47 strains were analyzed by AFLP. H. uvarum isolates clustered mainly on the basis of their geographical localization as revealed by microsatellites. In addition, a strong clustering based on year of isolation was evidenced, indicating that the genetic diversity of H. uvarum isolates was related to both spatial and temporal variations. Conversely, clustering analysis based on AFLP data provided a different picture with groups showing no particular characteristics, but provided higher strain discrimination. This result indicated that AFLP approaches are inadequate to establish the genetic relationship between individuals, but allowed good strain discrimination. At the phenotypic level, several extracellular enzymatic activities of enological relevance (pectinase, chitinase, protease, β-glucosidase) were measured but showed low diversity. The impact of environmental factors of enological interest (temperature, anaerobia, and copper addition) on growth was also assessed and showed poor variation. Altogether, this work provided both new analytical tool (microsatellites) and new insights into the genetic and phenotypic diversity of H. uvarum, a yeast species that has previously been identified as a potential candidate for co-inoculation in grape must, but whose intraspecific variability had never been fully assessed.
When Directions Fail 1 When Directions Fail --investigation of Getting Lost Behaviour in Adults with Acquired Brain Injury

IN PRESS with BRAIN INJURY – Please do not distribute or duplicate. When Directions Fail 2 Structured Abstract Primary Objective: Investigate and describe getting lost behaviour and wayfinding strategies among acquired brain injury (ABI) survivors and matched controls. Research Design: Matched control group comparison design Methods & Procedures: We compared wayfinding performance of 18 adults with acquired brain injury to controls matched for gender, age, and education. Participants followed written directions along an eight-step route in an unfamiliar neighborhood, with three intentionally challenging choice-points. They used a cellular phone to request assistance if they became lost. Dependent measures included accuracy, directness, and wayfinding strategy. Statistical and qualitative analyses explored group themes and differences. Main Results: Participants with ABI demonstrated significantly greater on-route wayfinding errors and hesitancy than matched controls. The ABI group requested assistance over the cell phone more frequently than controls and required more attempts at reorientation with concrete, salient directions in order to reorient in the field. Participants in the control group anticipated errors with greater frequency than those with ABI. Conclusions: ABI survivors demonstrated greater challenges with wayfinding than matched controls. Reorientation required concrete, explicit redirection with reference to salient landmarks. Implications for clinical practice and assistive technology are discussed. When Directions Fail 3 Introduction The ability to navigate one's community is a critical component of successful community reintegration following brain injury [1,2]. Cognitive, physical, and sensory impairments often limit a person's ability to drive [3,4,5], use public transportation [6], or travel on foot [7]. Navigation can be conceptualized as a spatial problem solving process that requires awareness, decision making, planning, and ongoing monitoring for error detection and correction [8,9]. These processes represent common areas of impairment for survivors of traumatic brain injury, and disrupt community navigation, or wayfinding. Wayfinding & Cognitive Impairments Navigation among individuals with cognitive impairments has been the subject of many investigations in the past decade. A growing body of neuropsychological literature has investigated the relation between specific navigational sub-skills and lesion site [10,11]. More specifically, researchers have attempted to describe spatial representation and navigation impairments associated with neglect syndrome [12,13]. Wayfinding difficulties have also been investigated in people with cognitive impairments due to progressive illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease in an attempt to identify the types of wayfinding problems and the associated cognitive correlates [9,14,15]. It has been suggested that spatial disorientation and wayfinding problems may be a sensitive indicator of the …
The Effect of Local Fiscal Policies on Urban Wage Structure

While it has long been recognized that average wages vary strikingly across regions and urban areas, differences in the variance of wages remain relatively unexplored. In this paper we empirically examine differences in the extent and persistence of wage dispersion across urban areas. Using data from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses, we show that metropolitan area wage distributions vary, that the variation is substantial, and that it is not entirely accounted for by differences in the supply of workers with different skills or the size or geographic region of the city. We find that the differences in wage distributions across cities are highly persistent. We investigate whether there is a link between local fiscal policy and the degree of dispersion in the wage structure, and find evidence that such a relationship exists. Cities with higher overall taxes, fewer transfers from state and federal governments, and a greater share of spending on public health and community development appear to have higher levels of overall dispersion. In addition, we find that cities that rely more heavily on property taxes have greater dispersion in the lower half of the wage distribution, and cities with higher expenditures on education have more dispersion in the upper half.
Identification of Genomic Predictors of Atrioventricular Conduction: Using Electronic Medical Records as a Tool for Genome Science

Background— Recent genome-wide association studies in which selected community populations are used have identified genomic signals in SCN10A influencing PR duration. The extent to which this can be demonstrated in cohorts derived from electronic medical records is unknown. Methods and Results— We performed a genome-wide association study on 2334 European American patients with normal ECGs without evidence of prior heart disease from the Vanderbilt DNA databank, BioVU, which accrues subjects from routine patient care. Subjects were identified by combinations of natural language processing, laboratory queries, and billing code queries of deidentified medical record data. Subjects were 58% female, of mean (±SD) age 54±15 years, and had mean PR intervals of 158±18 ms. Genotyping was performed with the use of the Illumina Human660W-Quad platform. Our results identify 4 single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs6800541, rs6795970, rs6798015, rs7430477) linked to SCN10A associated with PR interval (P=5.73×10−7 to 1.78×10−6). Conclusions— This genome-wide association study confirms a gene heretofore not implicated in cardiac pathophysiology as a modulator of PR interval in humans. This study is one of the first replication genome-wide association studies performed with the use of an electronic medical records–derived cohort, supporting their further use for genotype-phenotype analyses.
Loss of Frataxin activates the iron/sphingolipid/PDK1/Mef2 pathway in mammals

Friedreich’s ataxia (FRDA) is an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disease caused by mutations in Frataxin (FXN). Loss of FXN causes impaired mitochondrial function and iron homeostasis. An elevated production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was previously proposed to contribute to the pathogenesis of FRDA. We recently showed that loss of frataxin homolog (fh), a Drosophila homolog of FXN, causes a ROS independent neurodegeneration in flies (Chen et al., 2016). In fh mutants, iron accumulation in the nervous system enhances the synthesis of sphingolipids, which in turn activates 3-phosphoinositide dependent protein kinase-1 (Pdk1) and myocyte enhancer factor-2 (Mef2) to trigger neurodegeneration of adult photoreceptors. Here, we show that loss of Fxn in the nervous system in mice also activates an iron/sphingolipid/PDK1/Mef2 pathway, indicating that the mechanism is evolutionarily conserved. Furthermore, sphingolipid levels and PDK1 activity are also increased in hearts of FRDA patients, suggesting that a similar pathway is affected in FRDA. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.20732. 001