Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A DVB-S2 Signal Generator with Forward Satellite Channel Impairments

This paper presents a flexible and adaptable instrument for generating DVB-S2 signals for multi-level testing and performance analysis of satellite receivers. The instrument is based on a high level system model that describes and implements the processing chain of the DVB-S2 transmission system and GEO satellite channel impairments insertion mechanisms, while it utilizes high-speed and high resolution DACs for output signals generation. With the contribution of such a setup, numerous validation and verification tests, under real conditions, can be performed on prototype implementations and realization development stages of emerging DVB-S2 satellite receivers
Overview of knowledge extraction techniques in five question-answering systems

Knowledge extraction is a complex process allowing the identification of previously unknown structures and potentially useful original information from big masses of data. Among its domains of application, we find the question answering systems. This article aims to provide an overview of five Q/A systems : IntelliServe, LaSIE, Quantum, SBLD and Watson. IntelliServe and Watson are commercial and the others are dedicated to the field of research. Each of these systems uses special techniques for the treatment of requests as well as for the extraction of the response.
Convergence of linear coupled Riccati equations with applications to distributed filtering in sensor networks

This paper studies the convergence property of a class of linear coupled Riccati equations and applies it to convergence analysis of distributed filtering algorithms. Firstly a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence of linear distributed algebraic Riccati equations is proposed. Then based on Kalman filtering algorithm and weighted average strategy, optimal filtering algorithms are designed for two special random networks, and their statistical convergence conditions are further given. Specially, for homogeneous sensor networks, convergence conditions on the sensing/communication link loss probability of the network are also explicitly given.
Increased expression of the receptor for advanced glycation end-products in human peripheral neuropathies

Diabetic neuropathy and idiopathic neuropathy are among the most prevalent neuropathies in human patients. The molecular mechanism underlying pathological changes observed in the affected nerve remains unclear but one candidate molecule, the receptor for advanced glycation end‐products (RAGE), has recently gained attention as a potential contributor to neuropathy. Our previous studies revealed that RAGE expression is higher in porcine and murine diabetic nerve, contributing to the inflammatory mechanisms leading to diabetic neuropathy. Here, for the first time, we focused on the expression of RAGE in human peripheral nerve.
Active Q Adaptor: A Programmable Management System Integrator for TMN

This paper discusses the Active Q Adaptor, which can improve TMN by providing integratibility and programmability. Key concepts in this proposed adaptor include a dynamic MO and a message routing function. The dynamic MO, whose attributes are defined in terms of meta-data and whose behavior is implemented with any script languages, is programmable in run time. With the message routing function, which allows management-protocol-independent access of MO, managers are able to efficiently integrate agents that employ diverse managed information models and protocols. Furthermore, the adaptor’s CORBA-based distribution of functions makes it scaleable and adds to its high performance. With these features, our programmable Active Q Adaptor is able to create an integrated network management system; this can be applied to end-toend management of, for example, customer premise networks, as such IP networks linked through ATM backbones. Y. Kiriha et al., “ Active Q Adaptor: A Programmable Management System Integrator for TMN” in DSOM98 2
Pinning Synchronization of Complex Networks Via Cooperative Heterogeneous Information

Abstract Synchronization is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature. Over the last two decades, the synchronization of complex networks receives an increasing attention. This paper aims at developing a new pinning synchronization approach for complex networks by using the heterogeneous information of different nodes cooperatively. Heterogeneous information means the different observation of the reference signal. In detail, different from the traditional pinning control idea, this paper utilizes different feedback gains to cope with the corresponding personalized observations of a specific static reference signal for each node to realize network synchronization. Based on our proposed method, this paper obtains three fundamental pinning synchronization theorems with necessary and sufficient conditions for undirected connected networks, strongly connected networks, and networks with a spanning tree, respectively. Following the above theorems, this paper also designs the feedback gains and coupling strength for networks to achieve synchronization. Finally, the numerical simulations are given to validate the proposed approach.
Cell infiltration into a 3D electrospun fiber and hydrogel hybrid scaffold implanted in the brain

Tissue engineering scaffolds are often designed without appropriate consideration for the translational potential of the material. Solid scaffolds implanted into central nervous system (CNS) tissue to promote regeneration may require tissue resection to accommodate implantation. Or alternatively, the solid scaffold may be cut or shaped to better fit an irregular injury geometry, but some features of the augmented scaffold may fail to integreate with surrounding tissue reducing regeneration potential. To create a biomaterial able to completely fill the irregular geometry of CNS injury and yet still provide sufficient cell migratory cues, an injectable, hybrid scaffold was created to present the physical architecture of electrospun fibers in an agarose/methylcellulose hydrogel. When injected into the rat striatum, infiltrating macrophages/microglia and resident astrocytes are able to locate the fibers and utilize their cues for migration into the hybrid matrix. Thus, hydrogels containing electrospun fibers may be an appropriate platform to encourage regeneration of the injured brain.
Supporting Custom Quality Models to Analyse and Compare Open-Source Software

The analysis and comparison of open source software can be improved by means of quality models supporting the evaluation of the software systems being compared and the final decision about which of them has to be adopted. Since software quality can mean different things in different scenarios, quality models should be flexible in order to accommodate the needs of different users. Over the years several quality models have been proposed. Even though some of them are tool supported, they are not designed to be extended or customized to better accommodate the requirements of specific business contexts. In this paper, instead of having a fixed model, we propose a workflow and a tool chain to support the specification of custom quality models, which can guide the automated analysis of open source software.
Identifying stochastic biochemical networks from single-cell population experiments: A comparison of approaches based on the Fisher information

In biochemical reaction networks stochasticity arising from molecular fluctuations often plays an important role. Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies which employed single-cell population experiments and used the measured stochasticity to estimate the parameters of stochastic kinetic models. Currently, there exist two approaches for extracting information about the model parameters from the observed variability. One uses the complete distribution of the measured population and is usually computationally very expensive, whereas the other uses only low-order moments and thereby sacrifices a part of the information in order to reduce the computational cost. Here, using three qualitatively different benchmark models, we investigate on the one hand how much information can be gained by exploiting the single-cell resolution of population experiments and on the other hand how much information is lost if only low-order moments of the measured distributions are considered. Our study allows one to better understand the advantage of single-cell population experiments and to gain insights into when and where moment-based parameter inference methods for their analysis are appropriate.
THE DETECTION OF LOCAL SHAPE CHANGES VIA THE GEOMETRY OF HOTELLING’S T 2 FIELDS 1

This paper is motivated by the problem of detecting local changes or diﬀerences in shape between two samples of objects via the non-linear deformations required to map each object to an atlas standard. Local shape changes are then detected by high values of the random ﬁeld of Hotelling’s T 2 statistics for detecting a change in mean of the vector deformations at each point in the object. To control the null probability of detecting a local shape change, we use the recent result of Adler (1998) that the probability that a random ﬁeld crosses a high threshold is very accurately approximated by the expected Euler characteristic (EC) of the excursion set of the random ﬁeld above the threshold. We give an exact expression for the expected EC of a Hotelling’s T 2 ﬁeld, and we study the behaviour of the ﬁeld near local extrema. This extends previous results for Gaussian random ﬁelds (Adler, 1981) and χ 2 , t and F ﬁelds (Worsley, 1994; Cao, 1998). For illustration, these results are applied to the detection of diﬀerences in brain shape between a sample of 29 males and 23 females.
Visual Analysis of a Research Group's Performance thanks to Linked Open Data

Managing data within a research unit is not a trivial task due to the high number of entities to deal with: projects, researchers, publications, attended events, etc. When all these data are exposed on a public website, the need to have it updated is fundamental to avoid getting an incorrect impression of the group's performance. As research centres websites are usually quite static, external documents are generated by managers, resulting in data redundancy and out-of-date records. In this paper, we show our efforts to manage all these data using Labman, a web framework that deals with all the data, links entities and publishes them as Linked Open Data, allowing to get insightful information about the group's productivity using visual analytics and interactive charts.
Improving semantic texton forests with a Markov random field for image segmentation

Semantic image segmentation is a major and challenging problem in computer vision, which has been widely researched over decades. Recent approaches attempt to exploit contextual information at different levels to improve the segmentation results. In this paper, we propose a new approach for combining semantic texton forests (STFs) and Markov random fields (MRFs) for improving segmentation. STFs allow fast computing of texton codebooks for powerful low-level image feature description. MRFs, with the most effective algorithm in message passing for training, will smooth out the segmentation results of STFs using pairwise coherent information between neighboring pixels. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method on two well-known benchmark datasets including the 21-class MSRC dataset and the VOC 2007 dataset. The experimental results show that our method impressively improved the segmentation results of STFs. Especially, our method successfully recognizes many challenging image regions that STFs failed to do.
Introduction to the Issue on Emerging Technologies for Video Compression

The ten papers in this special issue focus on emerging technologies for video compression. There are contributions related to four key research areas: 1) the merging HEVC standardization process; 2)advances in 3-D coding; 3) quality assessment for next generation codecs; and 4) new compression methods exploiting spatio-temporal content analysis and synthesis.
A Hybrid Recommendation System Based on Human Curiosity

Traditional recommendation systems use multiple computational techniques to perform personalized recommendations, and can consider the interests of users and even the context in which they live. However, they usually ignore each individual's personality factors, and hence, the recommendations generated overwhelmingly consider that all the users are identical psychologically. They ignore, for example, the curiosity level of each user, which may indicate that individuals with a high level of curiosity seek visit exotic locations and/or not yet visited by them, or even individuals with a low curiosity level tend to do the same things they did in the past, uninterested in new or different areas. Our paper presents a complete hybrid recommendation system considering the curiosity level of each individual as a decisive factor to recommend sites of South America. In order to prove the efficiency of our system in contrast to traditional recommendation systems, as well as to measure the satisfaction of users about the recommendations, we performed some preliminary experiments with the participation of 105 Brazilian volunteers. The first results indicate that considering the level of curiosity of a user increases the satisfaction with the recommendations.
Hawkmoth flight stability in turbulent vortex streets

SUMMARY Shedding of vortices is a common phenomenon in the atmosphere over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. However, it is unclear how these vortices of varying scales affect the flight performance of flying animals. In order to examine these interactions, we trained seven hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) (wingspan ~9 cm) to fly and feed in a wind tunnel under steady flow (controls) and in the von Kármán vortex street of vertically oriented cylinders (two different cylinders with diameters of 10 and 5 cm) at speeds of 0.5, 1 and 2 m s−1. Cylinders were placed at distances of 5, 25 and 100 cm upstream of the moths. Moths exhibited large amplitude yaw oscillations coupled with modest oscillations in roll and pitch, and slight increases in wingbeat frequency when flying in both the near (recirculating) and middle (vortex dominated) wake regions. Wingbeat amplitude did not vary among treatments, except at 1 m s−1 for the large cylinder. Yaw and roll oscillations were synchronized with the vortex shedding frequencies in moths flying in the wake of the large cylinder at all speeds. In contrast, yaw and pitch were synchronized with the shedding frequency of small vortices at speeds ≤1 m s−1. Oscillations in body orientation were also substantially smaller in the small cylinder treatment when compared with the large cylinder, regardless of temporal or non-dimensional spatial scale. Moths flying in steady conditions reached a higher air speed than those flying into cylinder wakes. In general, flight effects produced by the cylinder wakes were qualitatively similar among the recirculating and vortex-dominated wake regions; the magnitude of those effects, however, declined gradually with downstream distance.
Genome-Wide Identification and Expression Analysis of WRKY Transcription Factors under Multiple Stresses in Brassica napus

WRKY transcription factors play important roles in responses to environmental stress stimuli. Using a genome-wide domain analysis, we identified 287 WRKY genes with 343 WRKY domains in the sequenced genome of Brassica napus, 139 in the A sub-genome and 148 in the C sub-genome. These genes were classified into eight groups based on phylogenetic analysis. In the 343 WRKY domains, a total of 26 members showed divergence in the WRKY domain, and 21 belonged to group I. This finding suggested that WRKY genes in group I are more active and variable compared with genes in other groups. Using genome-wide identification and analysis of the WRKY gene family in Brassica napus, we observed genome duplication, chromosomal/segmental duplications and tandem duplication. All of these duplications contributed to the expansion of the WRKY gene family. The duplicate segments that were detected indicated that genome duplication events occurred in the two diploid progenitors B. rapa and B. olearecea before they combined to form B. napus. Analysis of the public microarray database and EST database for B. napus indicated that 74 WRKY genes were induced or preferentially expressed under stress conditions. According to the public QTL data, we identified 77 WRKY genes in 31 QTL regions related to various stress tolerance. We further evaluated the expression of 26 BnaWRKY genes under multiple stresses by qRT-PCR. Most of the genes were induced by low temperature, salinity and drought stress, indicating that the WRKYs play important roles in B. napus stress responses. Further, three BnaWRKY genes were strongly responsive to the three multiple stresses simultaneously, which suggests that these 3 WRKY may have multi-functional roles in stress tolerance and can potentially be used in breeding new rapeseed cultivars. We also found six tandem repeat pairs exhibiting similar expression profiles under the various stress conditions, and three pairs were mapped in the stress related QTL regions, indicating tandem duplicate WRKYs in the adaptive responses to environmental stimuli during the evolution process. Our results provide a framework for future studies regarding the function of WRKY genes in response to stress in B. napus.
An Approach in Semi-automating the Database Schema Integration Process

The problem of database schema integration has been thoroughly examined during the past two decades. Several methodologies have been proposed in the literature that employ different methods to resolve conflicts between heterogeneous databases and create a global view of the underlying data. In the recent years, research is focusing in automating the schema integration process to cope with the continuous growth in the number of data sources and the constant increase in their sizes. This paper adopts a particular schema integration methodology and aims to semi-automate it. We investigate how data mining and machine learning techniques can be utilised to accomplish this goal.
SimHash-based Effective and Efficient Detecting of Near-Duplicate Short Messages

Detecting near-duplicates within huge repository of short message is known as a challenge due to its short length, frequent happenings of typo when typing on mobile phone, flexibility and diversity nature of Chinese language, and the target we prefer, near-duplicate. In this paper, we discuss the real problem met in real application, and try to look for a suitable technique to solve this problem. We start with the discussion of the seriousness of near-duplicate existing in short messages. Then, we review how SimHash works, and its possible merits for finding near-duplicates. Finally, we demonstrate a series of findings, including the problem itself and the benefits brought by SimHash-based approach, based on experiments with 500 thousands of real short messages crawled from Internet. The discussion here is believed a valuable reference for both researchers and applicants.
In Vitro Characterization of Ephedrine-Related Stereoisomers at Biogenic Amine Transporters and the Receptorome Reveals Selective Actions as Norepinephrine Transporter Substrates

Ephedrine is a long-studied stimulant available both as a prescription and over-the-counter medication, as well as an ingredient in widely marketed herbal preparations, and is also used as a precursor for the illicit synthesis of methamphetamine. Ephedrine is related to phenylpropanolamine, a decongestant removed from the market place due to concerns that its use increased the risk of hemorrhagic stroke. Standard pharmacology texts emphasize that ephedrine is both a direct and indirect adrenergic agonist, activating adrenergic receptors both by direct agonist activity as well as by releasing norepinephrine via a carrier-mediated exchange mechanism. Chemically, ephedrine possesses two chiral centers. In the present study, we characterized the stereoisomers of ephedrine and the closely related compounds pseudoephedrine, norephedrine, pseudonorephedrine (cathine), methcathinone, and cathinone at biogenic amine transporters and a large battery of cloned human receptors (e.g., “receptorome”). The most potent actions of ephedrine-type compounds were as substrates of the norepinephrine transporter (EC50 values of about 50 nM) followed by substrate activity at the dopamine transporter. Screening the receptorome demonstrated weak affinity at α2-adrenergic and 5-hydroxytryptamine7 receptors (Ki values 1–10 μM) and no significant activity at β-adrenergic or α1-adrenergic receptors. Viewed collectively, these data indicate that the pharmacological effects of ephedrine-like phenylpropanolamines are likely mediated by norepinephrine release, and although sharing mechanistic similarities with, they differ in important respects from those of the phenylpropanonamines methcathinone and cathinone and the phenyisopropylamines methamphetamine and amphetamine.
Fill it up: Exploiting partial dependency annotations in a minimum spanning tree parser

Unsupervised models of dependency parsing typically require large amounts of clean, unlabeled data plus gold-standard part-of-speech tags. Adding indirect supervision (e.g. language universals and rules) can help, but we show that obtaining small amounts of direct supervision - here, partial dependency annotations - provides a strong balance between zero and full supervision. We adapt the unsupervised ConvexMST dependency parser to learn from partial dependencies expressed in the Graph Fragment Language. With less than 24 hours of total annotation, we obtain 7% and 17% absolute improvement in unlabeled dependency scores for English and Spanish, respectively, compared to the same parser using only universal grammar constraints.
Smooth trajectory planning for a car in a structured world

The trajectory planning for a car-i.e. a nonholonomic vehicle whose turning radius is lower bounded-is studied in a static and structured world. For the structure of the world, the existence of natural lanes within which the vehicle is able to move is assumed. A smooth trajectory planner is proposed which, when given the polygonal line S representing the spine of a lane generates a trajectory C avoiding the obstacles of the world and which is smooth-i.e. without backing up maneuvers-and executable by the vehicle according to its own kinematic constraints. C is topologically equivalent to S-i.e. C must remain in the lane defined by S. C is made up of straight segments and circular arcs. <<ETX>>