Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information bounds and flatness factor approximation for fading wiretap MIMO channels

In this article, the design of secure lattice coset codes for general wireless channels with fading and Gaussian noise is studied. Recalling the eavesdropper's probability and information bounds, a variant of the latter is given from which it is explicitly seen that both quantities are upper bounded by (increasing functions of) the expected flatness factor of the faded lattice related to the eavesdropper. By making use of a recently developed approximation of the theta series of a lattice, it is further shown how the average flatness factor can be approximated numerically. In particular, based on the numerical computations, the average flatness factor not only bounds but also orders correctly the performance of different lattices.
Adaptive Gaze Control in Natural Environments

The sequential acquisition of visual information from scenes is a fundamental component of natural visually guided behavior. However, little is known about the control mechanisms responsible for the eye movement sequences that are executed in the service of such behavior. Theoretical attempts to explain gaze patterns have almost exclusively concerned two-dimensional displays that do not accurately reflect the demands of natural behavior in dynamic environments or the importance of the observer's behavioral goals. A difficult problem for all models of gaze control, intrinsic to selective perceptual systems, is how to detect important but unexpected stimuli without consuming excessive computational resources. We show, in a real walking environment, that human gaze patterns are remarkably sensitive to the probabilistic structure of the environment, suggesting that observers handle the uncertainty of the natural world by proactively allocating gaze on the basis of learned statistical structure. This is consistent with the role of reward in the oculomotor neural circuitry and supports a reinforcement learning approach to understanding gaze control in natural environments.
Feature‐based groupwise registration by hierarchical anatomical correspondence detection

Groupwise registration has been widely investigated in recent years due to its importance in analyzing population data in many clinical applications. To our best knowledge, most of the groupwise registration algorithms only utilize the intensity information. However, it is well known that using intensity only is not sufficient to achieve the anatomically sound correspondences in medical image registration. In this article, we propose a novel feature‐based groupwise registration algorithm to establish the anatomical correspondence across subjects by using the attribute vector that is defined as the morphological signature for each voxel. Similar to most of the state‐of‐the‐art groupwise registration algorithms, which simultaneously estimate the transformation fields for all subjects, we develop an energy function to minimize the intersubject discrepancies on anatomical structures and drive all subjects toward the hidden common space. To make the algorithm efficient and robust, we decouple the complex groupwise registration problem into two easy‐to‐solve subproblems, namely (1) robust correspondence detection and (2) dense transformation field estimation, which are systematically integrated into a unified framework. To achieve the robust correspondences in the step (1), several strategies are adopted. First, the procedure of feature matching is evaluated within a neighborhood, rather than only on a single voxel. Second, the driving voxels with distinctive image features are designed to drive the transformations of other nondriving voxels. Third, we take advantage of soft correspondence assignment not only in the spatial domain but also across the population of subjects. Specifically, multiple correspondences are allowed to alleviate the ambiguity in establishing correspondences w.r. t. a particular subject and also the contributions from different subjects are dynamically controlled throughout the registration. Eventually in the step (2), based on the correspondences established for the driving voxels, thin‐plate spline is used to propagate correspondences on the driving voxels to other locations in the image. By iteratively repeating correspondence detection and dense deformation estimation, all the subjects will be aligned onto the common space. Our feature‐based groupwise registration algorithm has been extensively evaluated over 18 elderly brains, 16 brains from NIREP (with 32 manually delineated labels), 40 brains from LONI LPBA40 (with 54 manually delineated labels), and 12 pairs of normal controls and simulated atrophic brain images. In all experiments, our algorithm achieves more robust and accurate registration results, compared with another groupwise algorithm and a pairwise registration method. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
From Knowledge Organization to Knowledge Representation

So far, within the Library and Information Science (LIS) community, Knowledge Organization (KO) has developed its own very successful solutions to document search, allowing for the classification and search of millions of books. However, current KO solutions are limited in expressivity as they only support queries by document properties, e.g., by title, author and subject. In parallel, within the Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Web communities, Knowledge Representation (KR), has developed very powerful end expressive techniques which, via the use of ontologies, support queries by any entity property (e.g., the properties of the entities described in a document). However, KR has not scaled yet to the level of KO, mainly because of the lack of a precise and scalable entity specification methodology. In this paper we present DERA, a new methodology, inspired by the faceted approach, as introduced in KO, that retains all the advantages of KR and compensates for the limitations of KO. DERA guarantees at the same time quality, extensibility, scalability and effectiveness in search.
Reliability Comparison of a Dual Boost and a Triangular Current Mode Resonant-Transition PFC Converter Topology

In PFC rectifier systems for telecom applications, a general trend towards higher efficiency and also higher power density converter designs can be observed. Due to the passive components and the switching losses, a compromise between power density and efficiency has to be made. A possibility to overcome this limitation are soft-switched converter systems, which, however, often come along with a higher component count, a higher component stress and/or a more complex control. These issues might impair the system reliability although the lower losses might reduce the thermal stress of the components. Therefore, in this work the reliability of a relatively simple, hard switched dual boost PFC rectifier and a soft switched triangular current mode PFC is evaluated and the components influencing the reliability most are identified. The evaluation is based on the prediction models given in IEC TR 62380.
Optimal Placement and Sizing Method to Improve the Voltage Stability Margin in a Distribution System Using Distributed Generation

Recently, integration of distributed generation (DG) in distribution systems has increased to high penetration levels. The impact of DG units on the voltage stability margins has become significant. Optimization techniques are tools which can be used to locate and size the DG units in the system, so as to utilize these units optimally within certain limits and constraints. Thus, the impacts of DG units issues, such as voltage stability and voltage profile, can be analyzed effectively. The ultimate goal of this paper is to propose a method of locating and sizing DG units so as to improve the voltage stability margin. The load and renewable DG generation probabilistic nature are considered in this study. The proposed method starts by selecting candidate buses into which to install the DG units on the system, prioritizing buses which are sensitive to voltage profile and thus improve the voltage stability margin. The DG units' placement and sizing is formulated using mixed-integer nonlinear programming, with an objective function of improving the stability margin; the constraints are the system voltage limits, feeders' capacity, and the DG penetration level.
On Errors and Failures in Distributed Systems Built to CORBA and COM Standards

CORBA and COM are standards for building distributed object oriented applications usually composed of several components. We report on the sources and type of errors and failures in such applications. These were identified by an examination of the specifications of CORBA and COM. While errors creep into an application during design and coding, failures arise during the execution of the application. Information presented here is considered useful for the design and use of a testing tool that can help assess (a) the completeness of a test of an application and (b) the behavior of the application in the presence of component failures. Applications with built-in fault-tolerance can benefit from such a tool in that the tool can help evaluate the “goodness” of the fault tolerance mechanism.
HEVAL: Yet Another Human Evaluation Metric

Machine translation evaluation is a very important activity in machine translation development. Automatic evaluation metrics proposed in literature are inadequate as they require one or more human reference translations to compare them with output produced by machine translation. This does not always give accurate results as a text can have several different translations. Human evaluation metrics, on the other hand, lacks inter-annotator agreement and repeatability. In this paper we have proposed a new human evaluation metric which addresses these issues. Moreover this metric also provides solid grounds for making sound assumptions on the quality of the text produced by a machine translation.
Configurable memory organisation for communication applications

A configurable memory organisation for the execution of Hiperlan/2 transceiver baseband processing and MPEG2 decoding is presented. The configuration of the memory system is done by controlling the DSP processor's access to memory buses with an external processor and switches. The configurable memory organisation allows the scaling of system capacity to the needs of the applications and makes the use of the capacity more effective. The architecture was modelled and evaluated using a systemC simulator and workload models. The clock frequency can be reduced by up to 25% if a configurable memory system is used instead of a bus-based shared memory. The memory latency with configurable memory organisation was less than 50% of the latency of the shared memory solution.
Automatic analysis of flexibly connected rigid 3D objects for an OBASC

An algorithm for automatic analysis of flexibly connected rigid 3D object components is described. The developed algorithm is used for image analysis in an object–based analysis–synthesis coder (OBASC)[2] based on the source model of flexibly connected rigid 3D object components. T o find the flexibly connected 3D object components, a local 3D motion estimation technique, using a motion compensated Kalman Filter and a local luminance error model, is applied. In order to improve the accuracy and the reliability of the estimates, results obtained in previous frames are considered for the actual analysis. The ef ficiency of the developed algorithm is measured by the amount of model failures.
Predicting the Impact of Alternative Splicing on Plant MADS Domain Protein Function

Several genome-wide studies demonstrated that alternative splicing (AS) significantly increases the transcriptome complexity in plants. However, the impact of AS on the functional diversity of proteins is difficult to assess using genome-wide approaches. The availability of detailed sequence annotations for specific genes and gene families allows for a more detailed assessment of the potential effect of AS on their function. One example is the plant MADS-domain transcription factor family, members of which interact to form protein complexes that function in transcription regulation. Here, we perform an in silico analysis of the potential impact of AS on the protein-protein interaction capabilities of MIKC-type MADS-domain proteins. We first confirmed the expression of transcript isoforms resulting from predicted AS events. Expressed transcript isoforms were considered functional if they were likely to be translated and if their corresponding AS events either had an effect on predicted dimerisation motifs or occurred in regions known to be involved in multimeric complex formation, or otherwise, if their effect was conserved in different species. Nine out of twelve MIKC MADS-box genes predicted to produce multiple protein isoforms harbored putative functional AS events according to those criteria. AS events with conserved effects were only found at the borders of or within the K-box domain. We illustrate how AS can contribute to the evolution of interaction networks through an example of selective inclusion of a recently evolved interaction motif in the MADS AFFECTING FLOWERING1-3 (MAF1–3) subclade. Furthermore, we demonstrate the potential effect of an AS event in SHORT VEGETATIVE PHASE (SVP), resulting in the deletion of a short sequence stretch including a predicted interaction motif, by overexpression of the fully spliced and the alternatively spliced SVP transcripts. For most of the AS events we were able to formulate hypotheses about the potential impact on the interaction capabilities of the encoded MIKC proteins.
3D head model fitting evaluation protocol on synthetic databases for acquisition system comparison

Automatic face recognition has been integrated in many systems thanks to the improvement of face comparison algorithms. One of the main applications using facial biometry is the identity authentication at border control, which has already been adopted by a lot of airports. In order to proceed to a fast identity control, gates have been developed, to extract the ID document information on the one hand, and to acquire the facial information of the user on the other hand. The design of such gates, and in particular their camera configuration, has a high impact on the output acquisitions and therefore on the quality of the extracted facial features. Since it is very difficult to validate such gates by testing different configurations on real data in exactly the same conditions, we propose a validation protocol based on simulated passages. This method relies on synthetic sequences, which can be generated using any camera configuration with fixed parameters of identities and poses, and can also integrate different lighting conditions. We detail this methodology and present results in terms of geometrical error obtained with different camera configurations, illustrating the impact of the gate design on the 3D head fitting accuracy, and hence on facial authentication performances.
A computational model of three nonword repetition tests

The non-word repetition test has been regularly used to examine children’s vocabulary acquisition, and yet there is no clear explanation of all of the effects seen in non-word repetition. This paper presents a study of 25 5-6 year-old children’s repetition performance on three non-word repetition tests that vary in the degree of their lexicality. EPAM-VOC, a model of children’s vocabulary acquisition, is then presented that captures the children’s performance in all three repetition tests. The model represents a clear explanation of how working memory and long-term linguistic knowledge interact in a way that is able to simulate performance in non-word repetition.
Functional imaging of brain activity in conscious monkeys responding to sexually arousing cues

Olfactory cues can elicit intense emotional responses. This study used fMRI in male common marmoset monkeys to identify brain areas associated with sexual arousal in response to odors of ovulating female monkeys. Under light anesthesia, monkeys were secured in a specially designed restrainer and positioned in a 9.4 T magnetic resonance spectrometer. When fully conscious, they were presented with the scents of both ovariectomized and ovulating monkeys. The sexually arousing odors of the ovulating monkeys enhanced signal intensity in the preoptic area and anterior hypothalamus compared to the odors of ovariectomized monkeys. These data corroborate previous findings in monkeys based on invasive electrical lesion and stimulation techniques and demonstrate the feasibility of using non-invasive functional imaging on fully conscious common marmosets to study cue-elicited emotional responses.
Pegasus: Planning for Execution in Grids

1 Motivation Grid computing has made great progress in the last few years. The basic mechanisms for accessing remote resources have been developed as part of the Globus Toolkit and are now widely deployed and used. Among such mechanisms are: § Information services, which allow for the discovery and monitoring of resources. The information provided can be used to find the available resources and select the resources which are the most appropriate for the task. § Security services, which allow users and resources to mutually authenticate and allows the resources to authorize users based on local policies. § Resource management, which allows for the scheduling of jobs on particular resources. § Data management services, which enable users and applications to manage large, distributed and replicated data sets. Some of the available services deal with locating particular data sets, others with efficiently moving large amounts of data across wide area networks. With the use of the above mechanisms, one can manually find out about the resources and schedule the desired computations and data movements. However, this process is time consuming and can potentially be complex. As the result it is becoming increasingly necessary to develop higher level services which can automate the process and provide an adequate level of performance and reliability.
Bridging Hierarchical Ontologies for Interoperability and Query Reformulation

Ontology merging and integration is a collaborative process. We overcome the traditional integration approaches and propose bridge ontology architecture to cope with representational heterogeneity among ontologies for interoperability. It handles all the possible complications of relationships among the ontologies during matching and mapping phases. Proposed architecture accommodates class-based, relation-based, instances-based, and composite-based mapping. We also propose an approach to prioritize the relationships to improve the performance during mapping process. Proposed architecture is a generic solution and can be used to interoperate ontologies as a standard.
A Network File Storage Model with Security and Information Retrieval Support

The rapid development of network technologies has seen the use of network as a media for file storage and sharing. Files stored on network are expected to be shared in a safe and effective manner. Most recent researches on secure network storage focus solely on security and give little concern to support for information retrieval and in turn information sharing. This paper presents a novel network storage model which integrates techniques in compression, encryption and information retrieval. It effectively satisfies the concern for both security and sharing. Its performance is also demonstrated via experiments on a prototype system.
Cotton Leaf Curl Multan Virus-Derived Viral Small RNAs Can Target Cotton Genes to Promote Viral Infection

RNA silencing is a conserved mechanism in plants that targets viruses. Viral small RNAs (vsiRNAs) can be generated from viral double-stranded RNA replicative intermediates within the infected host, or from host RNA-dependent RNA polymerases activity on viral templates. The abundance and profile of vsiRNAs in viral infections have been reported previously. However, the involvement of vsiRNAs during infection of the Geminiviridae family member cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuD), which causes significant economic losses in cotton growing regions, remains largely uncharacterized. Cotton leaf curl Multan virus (CLCuMuV) associated with a betasatellite called Cotton leaf curl Multan betasatellite (CLCuMuB) is a major constraint to cotton production in South Asia and is now established in Southern China. In this study, we obtained the profiles of vsiRNAs from CLCuMV and CLCuMB in infected upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) plants by deep sequencing. Our data showed that vsiRNA that were derived almost equally from sense and antisense CLCuD DNA strands accumulated preferentially as 21- and 22-nucleotide (nt) small RNA population and had a cytosine bias at the 5′-terminus. Polarity distribution revealed that vsiRNAs were almost continuously present along the CLCuD genome and hotspots of sense and antisense strands were mainly distributed in the Rep proteins region of CLCuMuV and in the C1 protein of CLCuMuB. In addition, hundreds of host transcripts targeted by vsiRNAs were predicted, many of which encode transcription factors associated with biotic and abiotic stresses. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis of selected potential vsiRNA targets showed that some targets were significantly down-regulated in CLCuD-infected cotton plants. We also verified the potential function of vsiRNA targets that may be involved in CLCuD infection by virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) and 5′-rapid amplification of cDNA end (5′-RACE). Here, we provide the first report on vsiRNAs responses to CLCuD infection in cotton.
The hmsHFRS Operon of Xenorhabdus nematophila Is Required for Biofilm Attachment to Caenorhabditis elegans

ABSTRACT The bacterium Xenorhabdus nematophila is an insect pathogen and an obligate symbiont of the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae. X. nematophila makes a biofilm that adheres to the head of the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a capability X. nematophila shares with the biofilms made by Yersinia pestis and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. As in Yersinia spp. , the X. nematophila biofilm requires a 4-gene operon, hmsHFRS. Also like its Yersinia counterparts, the X. nematophila biofilm is bound by the lectin wheat germ agglutinin, suggesting that β-linked N-acetyl-d-glucosamine or N-acetylneuraminic acid is a component of the extracellular matrix. C. elegans mutants with aberrant surfaces that do not permit Yersinia biofilm attachment also are resistant to X. nematophila biofilms. An X. nematophila hmsH mutant that failed to make biofilms on C. elegans had no detectable defect in symbiotic association with S. carpocapsae, nor was virulence reduced against the insect Manduca sexta.
Crowdsourced Evaluation of Personalization and Diversi- fication Techniques in Web Search

services have been proven to be a valuable re- source for search system evaluation or creation of test collections. However, there are still no clear protocols to perform a user- centered evaluation of approaches that consider user factors, such as personalization or diversification of results. In this work we present two complementary evaluation methodologies to evaluate personalization and/or diversification techniques. Our preliminary results are encouraging, as they are consistent with previous ex- perimental results. This leads us to believe that these evaluation methodologies could allow performing inexpensive user-centered evaluations. As a result of this work, a test collection for personal- ized and diversification approaches has been made available.