Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supporting Video Applications with Header Error Protection in 802 . 11-based Networks

In a multi-hop network, the throughput is essentially important for real-time applications due to their high bit rate requirement. We investigate the performance of multimedia applications in wireless networks and the impact of various error control protocols. In particular, we propose a two stage error control scheme that improves the effective throughout of wireless networks. We apply error control to the packet header and packet load separately. The network intermediate nodes either use header FEC or header CRC checksum to successfully transport the packets from the source to the destination. Only at the destination, the error of the load is corrected. We compare the proposed schemes with 802.11 protocol and show that header error protection strategy can effectively increase the throughput, reduce the delay, and improve the video performance, via both theoretical analysis and simulation results. I. I NTRODUCTION Unlike general data transmission which needs error free delivery at each protocol layer, multimedia data can tolerate bit errors in a received packet. Some applications, such as voice over IP or video streaming, have a higher data rate requirement than accuracy requirement. In addition to congestion related packet loss and delay, that is seen in wired packet switched networks, wireless networks have to deal with a time varying, error prone, physical channel that in many instances is also severely bandwidth constrained. As such, the methods needed for wireless multimedia applications are fundamentally different from wired ones. Protocol design, such as link layer error control may impact the performance of the network and these applications. This work is supported by ARO under contract number DAAD19-00-1-0559.
Distinct from IL-12 Infection and Induces a Cytokine Pattern Cryptococcus neoformans Response in IL-23 Enhances the Inflammatory Cell

IL-23, a heterodimeric cytokine composed of the p40 subunit of IL-12 and a novel p19 subunit, has been shown to be a key player in models of autoimmune chronic inﬂammation. To investigate the role of IL-23 in host resistance during chronic fungal infection, wild-type, IL-12- (IL-12p35 (cid:1) / (cid:1) ), IL-23- (IL-23p19 (cid:1) / (cid:1) ), and IL-12/IL-23- (p40-deﬁcient) deﬁcient mice on a C57BL/6 background were infected with Cryptococcus neoformans . Following infection, p40-deﬁcient mice demonstrated higher mortality than IL-12p35 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice. Reconstitution of p40-deﬁcient mice with rIL-23 prolonged their survival to levels similar to IL-12p35 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice. IL-23p19 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice showed a moderately reduced survival time and delayed fungal clearance in the liver. Although IFN- (cid:2) production was similar in wild-type and IL-23p19 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice, production of IL-17 was strongly impaired in the latter. IL-23p19 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice produced fewer hepatic granulomata relative to organ burden and showed defective recruitment of mononuclear cells to the brain. Moreover, activation of microglia cells and expression of IL-1 (cid:3) , IL-6, and MCP-1
Robust color image retrieval for the World Wide Web

The rapid growth of image archives increases the need for efficient and fast tools that can retrieve and search through a large amount of visual data. In this paper, we propose an efficient method of extracting the image color content, which serves as an image digital signature, allowing us to efficiently index and retrieve the content of large, heterogeneous multimedia Internet based databases. We apply the proposed method for the retrieval of images from the WEBMUSEUM Internet database, containing a collection of fine art images and show that the new method of image color representation is robust to image distorsions caused by resizing and compression and can be incorporated into existing retrieval systems which exploit the information on color content in digital images.
Applications of Genetic Algorithm in Power System Control Centers

Electric power systems are the structures that have the purpose of generating, transporting and distributing electricity. These structures are composed of energy generating plants, transmission lines, distribution systems and elevating and distribution substations. The biggest challenge of this type of system is that the electrical energy is not a material that can be stored. That is, so it is required by the load (which can be a driver in an industry or the mere light of a lamp in a residence) this energy must be generated, transported and delivered to the user instantly.
Insulin Growth Factor-I in Protein-Energy Malnutrition during Rehabilitation in Two Nutritional Rehabilitation Centres in Burkina Faso

Objective. To investigate the relationship between IGF-I and the nutritional status of West-African children hospitalised for nutritional rehabilitation. Patients and methods. A cohort study was performed in two centres for nutritional rehabilitation and education (CREN) in Burkina Faso. Children were followed and the anthropometric data as well as the capillary blood samples were taken on the 7th and on the 14th days after their admission. IGF-I levels were determined from dried blood spots on filter paper on IGF-I RIA, after separation of the IGF-I from its binding proteins, using Sep-Pak chromatography. Results. A total of 59 children was included in the cohort. The IGF-I mean geometric values (SD) were 6.3 (1.4) μg/L on admission, 8.6 (1.8) μg/L at day 7 and 13.6 (2.0) μg/L at day 14. The differences between these values were statistically significant (P < .001). There is a significant correlation between the changes of IGF-I with the change of weight for height Z-score (P = .01). Conclusion. These results suggest that IGF-I can be considered as a potential marker to follow the nutritional status of children admitted in hospital for protein and energy malnutrition.
QRFP-Deficient Mice Are Hypophagic, Lean, Hypoactive and Exhibit Increased Anxiety-Like Behavior

How the hypothalamus transmits hunger information to other brain regions to govern whole brain function to orchestrate feeding behavior has remained largely unknown. Our present study suggests the importance of a recently found lateral hypothalamic neuropeptide, QRFP, in this signaling. Qrfp-/- mice were hypophagic and lean, and exhibited increased anxiety-like behavior, and were hypoactive in novel circumstances as compared with wild type littermates. They also showed decreased wakefulness time in the early hours of the dark period. Histological studies suggested that QRFP neurons receive rich innervations from neurons in the arcuate nucleus which is a primary region for sensing the body’s metabolic state by detecting levels of leptin, ghrelin and glucose. These observations suggest that QRFP is an important mediator that acts as a downstream mediator of the arcuate nucleus and regulates feeding behavior, mood, wakefulness and activity.
Sum-rate maximizing in downlink massive MIMO systems with circuit power consumption

The downlink of a single cell base station (BS) equipped with large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is investigated in this paper. As the number of antennas at the base station becomes large, the power consumed at the RF chains cannot be anymore neglected. So, a circuit power consumption model is introduced in this work. It involves that the maximal sum-rate is not obtained when activating all the available RF chains. Hence, the aim of this work is to find the optimal number of activated RF chains that maximizes the sum-rate. Computing the optimal number of activated RF chains must be accompanied by an adequate antenna selection strategy. First, we derive analytically the optimal number of RF chains to be activated so that the average sum-rate is maximized under received equal power. Then, we propose an efficient greedy algorithm to select the sub-optimal set of RF chains to be activated with regards to the system sum-rate. It allows finding the balance between the power consumed at the RF chains and the transmitted power. The performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with the optimal performance given by brute force search (BFS) antenna selection. Simulations allow to compare the performance given by greedy, optimal and random antenna selection algorithms.
State Estimation and Control of Electric Loads to Manage Real-Time Energy Imbalance

This paper explores methods to coordinate aggregations of thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs; including air conditioners and refrigerators) to manage frequency and energy imbalances in power systems. We focus on opportunities to centrally control loads with high accuracy but low requirements for sensing and communications infrastructure. We compare cases when measured load state information (e.g., power consumption and temperature) is 1) available in real time; 2) available, but not in real time; and 3) not available. We use Markov chain models to describe the temperature state evolution of populations of TCLs, and Kalman filtering for both state and joint parameter/state estimation. A look-ahead proportional controller broadcasts control signals to all TCLs, which always remain in their temperature dead-band. Simulations indicate that it is possible to achieve power tracking RMS errors in the range of 0.26%-9.3% of steady state aggregated power consumption. We also report results in terms of the generator compliance threshold which is commonly used in industry. Results depend upon the information available for system identification, state estimation, and control. Depending upon the performance required, TCLs may not need to provide state information to the central controller in real time or at all.
Management of QoS and data freshness in RTDBSs using feedback control scheduling and data versions

These recent years, a lot of real-time applications are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their data needs, resulting in a greater demand for real-time data services. Real-time database systems (RTDBS) can manage these applications, but the workload in these systems is unpredictable, then RTDBS may become overloaded. A lot of work dealing with quality of service (QoS) has been done to control the transient overshoot. They are based on feedback control real-time scheduling theory. In this paper, we propose a work which allows to execute transactions before their deadlines while using the fresh data. We have extended the feedback-based miss ratio control, by using a multi versions data architecture to guarantee a set of requirements on the behavior of RTDBS and we have considered two data management policies. In the first policy, we have limited the maximum number of data versions and this number is the same for all the data items. In the second policy, the number is dynamically adjusted for each data item.
Recovery-based real-time static scheduling for battery life optimization

A real-time, static scheduling algorithm for battery life optimization has been presented in this paper. The work aims to extend existing battery aware scheduling techniques. It differs from previous work as it takes into consideration many aspects of battery recovery that were not considered previously. This allows for further enhancement of the system battery life by up to 29.41%. The scheduling algorithm achieves a total battery life extension of up to 37.7%.
Detection-based accented speech recognition using articulatory features

We propose an attribute-based approach to accented speech recognition based on automatic speech attribute transcription with high efficiency detection of articulatory features. In order to utilize appropriate and extensible phonetic and linguistic knowledge, conditional random field (CRF) is designed to take frame-level inputs with binary feature functions. The use of CRF with merely the state features to generate probabilistic phone lattices is then utilized to solve the phone under-generation problem. Finally an attribute discrimination module is incorporated to handle a diversity of accent changes without retraining any model, leading to flexible “plug ‘n’ play” modular design. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated on three typical Chinese accents, namely Guanhua, Yue and Wu. Our method yields a significant absolute phone recognition accuracy improvement 5.04%, 4.68% and 6.06% for the corresponding three accent types over a conventional monophone HMM system. Compared to a context-dependent triphone HMM system, we achieve comparable phone accuracies at only less than 20% of the computation cost. In addition, our proposed method is equally applicable to speaker-independent systems handling multiple accents.
Mutual Calibration for 3D Thermal Mapping

Abstract Three-dimensional digital heat distribution maps are needed to assess the energy efficiency of real estates. The availability of such maps are of great importance for reducing the ecological footprint of houses, buildings, and factories. Designing estates has reached the point, where so-called Passivhaus buildings make extensive use of the intrinsic heat from internal sources such as waste heat from lighting, white goods, and other electrical devices, but without using dedicated heaters. In our approach for creating high-precise heat distribution maps a robot is equipped with a 3D laser scanner, a thermal camera, and a color camera. Data from all the sensors are combined to model the environment precisely. This paper describes the setup of the sensors and the processing of the acquired data, including the automatic co-calibration needed to fulfill this task.
The effect of aging and cardiac disease on that portion of QT interval variability that is independent of Heart Rate Variability

Our goal was to remove all readily explainable (extrinsic) portions of beat-to-beat QT interval variability (QTV) from total QTV so as to derive the purest possible measure of intrinsic QTV. For this purpose we developed a model that describes extrinsic QTV based on other factors ascertainable from the ECG, such as changes in RR intervals, voltage amplitudes and QRS-T angles. Five-min supine high-fidelity 12-lead ECGs were acquired from 101 individuals, including from 20 healthy young men (age 21plusmn1) and from three groups of middle-aged individuals (52plusmn11 years) with increasing levels of cardiac disease. By fitting our model data to the measured QT interval signal, we calculated the explained (extrinsic) part of QTV, and the difference between the measured and the calculated QT signal represented the ldquounexplainedrdquo (or intrinsic) part of QTV. Results suggest that the ratio of unexplained to explained QTV increases with both age and cardiac disease.
Functional brain imaging using a blood oxygenation sensitive steady state

Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional MRI (fMRI) is an important method for functional neuroimaging that is sensitive to changes in blood oxygenation related to brain activation. While BOLD imaging has good spatial coverage and resolution relative to other neuroimaging methods (such as positron emission tomography (PET)), it has significant limitations relative to other MRI techniques, including poor spatial resolution, low signal levels, limited contrast, and image artifacts. These limitations derive from the coupling of BOLD functional contrast to sources of image degradation. This work presents an alternative method for fMRI that may over‐come these limitations by establishing a blood oxygenation sensitive steady‐state (BOSS) that inverts the signal from deoxygenated blood relative to the water signal. BOSS fMRI allows the imaging parameters to be optimized independently of the functional contrast, resulting in fewer image artifacts and higher signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR). In addition, BOSS fMRI has greater functional contrast than BOLD. BOSS fMRI requires careful shimming and multiple acquisitions to obtain a precise alignment of the magnetization to the SSFP frequency response. Magn Reson Med 50:675–683, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Identifying and tracking suspicious activities through IP gray space analysis

Campus or enterprise networks often have many unassigned IP addresses that collectively form IP gray space within the address blocks of such networks. Using one-month traffic data collected in a large campus network, we have monitored a significant amount of unwanted traffic towards IP gray space in various forms, such as worms, port scanning, and denial of service attacks. In this paper, we apply a heuristic algorithm to extract the IP gray space in our campus network. Subsequently, we analyze the behavioral patterns such as dominant activities and target randomness, of the gray space traffic for individual outside hosts. By correlating and contrasting the traffic towards IP gray addresses and live end hosts, we find the gray space traffic provides unique insight for uncovering the behavior, and intention,of anomalous traffic towards live end hosts. Finally, we demonstrate the applications of gray space traffic for identifying SPAM behavior, detecting malicious scanning and worm activities that successfully compromise end hosts.
Fine-Grained Refinement on TPM-Based Protocol Applications

Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a coprocessor for detecting platform integrity and attesting the integrity to the remote entity. There are two obstacles in the application of TPM: minimizing trusted computing base (TCB) for reducing risk of flaws in TCB, for which a number of convincing solutions have been developed; formal guarantees on each level of TCB, where the formal methods on analyzing the application level have not been well addressed. To the best of our knowledge, there is no general formal framework for developing the TPM-based protocol applications, which not only guarantees the security but also makes it easier for design. In this paper, we make fine-grained refinement on TPM-based security protocols to illustrate our formal solution on the application level by using the Event-B language. First, we modify the classical Dolev-Yao attacker model, which assumes normal entity's compliance with the protocol even without TPM's protection. Thus, the classical security protocols are vulnerable in this modified attacker model. Second, we make stepwise refinement of the security protocol by refining the protocol events and adding security constraints. From the fifth refinement, we make a case study to illustrate the entire refinement and further formally prove the key agreement protocol from DAAODV, the TPM-based routing protocol, under the extended Dolev-Yao attacker model. The refinement provides another way of formal modeling the TPM-based security protocols and a more fine-grained model to satisfy with the rigorous security requirement of applying TPM. Finally, we prove all the proof obligations generated by Rodin, an Eclipse-based IDE for Event-B, to ensure the soundness of our proposal.
Calculating likely Parallelism within Dependant Conjunctions for Logic Programs

The rate at which computers are becoming faster at sequential execution has dropped significantly. Instead parallel processing power is increasing, and multicore computers are becoming more common. Automatically parallelising programs is becoming much more desirable. Parallelising programs written in imperative programming languages is difficult and often leads to unreliable software. Parallelising programs in declarative languages is easy, to the extent that compilers are able to do this automatically. However this often leads to cases where the overheads of parallel execution outweigh the speedup that might have been available by parallelising the program. This thesis describes a new implicit parallelism implementation that calculates the speedup due to parallelism in dependent conjunctions for Mercury — a purely declarative logic programming language. This is done by analysing profiling data and a representation of the program in order to determine when during the execution of a parallel conjunct variables are likely to be produced and consumed. This enables us to calculate how long a conjunct may have to wait for a variable to be produced, and how much parallelism is actually available in a parallel conjunction. This information should enable the compiler to parallelise a program only in places where doing so is profitable. We expect that two of the components we implemented for our implicit parallelism analysis, coverage profiling and a generic feedback framework, will also be quite useful in other applications. For example this can help the compiler select the best calls to inline.
The light‐activated signaling pathway in SCN‐projecting rat retinal ganglion cells

In mammals, the master circadian clock resides in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. The period and phase of the circadian pacemaker are calibrated by direct photic input from retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). SCN‐projecting RGCs respond to light in the absence of rod‐ and cone‐driven synaptic input, a property for which they are termed intrinsically photosensitive. In SCN‐projecting RGCs, light activates a nonselective cationic current that displays inward and outward rectification. The goal of the present study was to investigate the identity of the light‐activated ion channel and the intracellular signaling pathway leading to its activation. We considered two candidate channels, cyclic nucleotide‐gated (CNG) channels and transient receptor potential (TRP) channels, which mediate vertebrate and invertebrate phototransduction, respectively. We report that the intrinsic light response relies upon a G‐protein‐dependent process. Although our data indicate that cyclic nucleotides modulate the signaling pathway, CNG channels do not appear to conduct the light‐activated current because (i) cyclic nucleotides in the pipette solution do not activate a conductance or completely block the light response, (ii) CNG channel blockers fail to inhibit the light response, (iii) the effects of internal and external divalent cations are inconsistent with their effects on CNG channels, and (iv) immunohistochemistry reveals no CNG channels in SCN‐projecting RGCs. Finally, we show that the pharmacology of the light‐activated channel resembles that of some TRPC channel family members; the response is blocked by lanthanides and ruthenium red and SK&F 96365, and is enhanced by flufenamic acid and 1‐oleoyl‐2‐acetyl‐sn‐glycerol. Furthermore, immunohistochemical experiments reveal that TRPC6 is expressed in many RGCs, including those that express melanopsin.
Comparison of characteristics and function of translation termination signals between and within prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms

Six diverse prokaryotic and five eukaryotic genomes were compared to deduce whether the protein synthesis termination signal has common determinants within and across both kingdoms. Four of the six prokaryotic and all of the eukaryotic genomes investigated demonstrated a similar pattern of nucleotide bias both 5′ and 3′ of the stop codon. A preferred core signal of 4 nt was evident, encompassing the stop codon and the following nucleotide. Codons decoded by hyper-modified tRNAs were over-represented in the region 5′ to the stop codon in genes from both kingdoms. The origin of the 3′ bias was more variable particularly among the prokaryotic organisms. In both kingdoms, genes with the highest expression index exhibited a strong bias but genes with the lowest expression showed none. Absence of bias in parasitic prokaryotes may reflect an absence of pressure to evolve more efficient translation. Experiments were undertaken to determine if a correlation existed between bias in signal abundance and termination efficiency. In Escherichia coli signal abundance correlated with termination efficiency for UAA and UGA stop codons, but not in mammalian cells. Termination signals that were highly inefficient could be made more efficient by increasing the concentration of the cognate decoding release factor.