Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
QoS-Aware Routing and Admission Control in Shadow-Fading Environments for Multirate MANETs

Providing quality of service (QoS) assurances in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is difficult due to node mobility, contention for channel access, a lack of centralized co-ordination, and the unreliable nature of the wireless channel. A QoS-aware routing (QAR) protocol and an admission control (AC) protocol are two of the most important components of a system attempting to provide QoS guarantees in the face of the above mentioned difficulties faced. Many QAR and AC-based solutions have been proposed, but such network layer solutions are often designed and studied with idealized lower layer models in mind. This means that existing solutions are not designed for dealing with practical phenomena such as shadow fading and the link quality-dependent fluctuation of link transmission rates. This paper proposes and evaluates new solutions for improving the performance of QAR and AC protocols in the face of mobility, shadowing, and varying link SINR. It is found that proactively maintaining backup routes for active sessions, adapting transmission rates, and routing around temporarily low-SINR links can noticeably improve the reliability of assured throughput services.
Impact of Traffic Mix and Packet Sampling on Anomaly Visibility

Detection of network traffic anomalies is a key requirement for the provisioning of a reliable networking Infrastructure. In this paper, we examine how anomaly metrics are affected by different environmental settings. To evaluate the effect of the traffic mix on the anomaly visibility, we use traces collected at the different border routers of a medium size national ISP. Since the traces consist of unsampled NetFlow traces, we further examine the impact of sampling on the selected metrics. For our analysis, we use our knowledge of the Blaster and Witty worms to establish a baseline of normal traffic against which we measure the size of the anomaly at various sampling rates. To evaluate the impact of the traffic mix, we compare the visibility of the anomaly for the four different routers and discuss the results. Among other results, we find that traffic mix characteristics sometimes compensate or even boost anomaly visibility in sampled views. We further show that, depending on the anomaly and the traffic mix, some anomaly metrics outperform unsampled data views even at sampling rates of up to 1 out of 10000 packets.
Segmentation and Estimation of Spatially Varying Illumination

In this paper, we present an unsupervised method for segmenting the illuminant regions and estimating the illumination power spectrum from a single image of a scene lit by multiple light sources. Here, illuminant region segmentation is cast as a probabilistic clustering problem in the image spectral radiance space. We formulate the problem in an optimization setting, which aims to maximize the likelihood of the image radiance with respect to a mixture model while enforcing a spatial smoothness constraint on the illuminant spectrum. We initialize the sample pixel set under each illuminant via a projection of the image radiance spectra onto a low-dimensional subspace spanned by a randomly chosen subset of spectra. Subsequently, we optimize the objective function in a coordinate-ascent manner by updating the weights of the mixture components, sample pixel set under each illuminant, and illuminant posterior probabilities. We then estimate the illuminant power spectrum per pixel making use of these posterior probabilities. We compare our method with a number of alternatives for the tasks of illumination region segmentation, illumination color estimation, and color correction. Our experiments show the effectiveness of our method as applied to one hyperspectral and three trichromatic image data sets.
Sex-biased microRNA expression in mammals and birds reveals underlying regulatory mechanisms and a role in dosage compensation

Sexual dimorphism depends on sex-biased gene expression, but the contributions of microRNAs (miRNAs) have not been globally assessed. We therefore produced an extensive small RNA sequencing data set to analyze male and female miRNA expression profiles in mouse, opossum, and chicken. Our analyses uncovered numerous cases of somatic sex-biased miRNA expression, with the largest proportion found in the mouse heart and liver. Sex-biased expression is explained by miRNA-specific regulation, including sex-biased chromatin accessibility at promoters, rather than piggybacking of intronic miRNAs on sex-biased protein-coding genes. In mouse, but not opossum and chicken, sex bias is coordinated across tissues such that autosomal testis-biased miRNAs tend to be somatically male-biased, whereas autosomal ovary-biased miRNAs are female-biased, possibly due to broad hormonal control. In chicken, which has a Z/W sex chromosome system, expression output of genes on the Z Chromosome is expected to be male-biased, since there is no global dosage compensation mechanism that restores expression in ZW females after almost all genes on the W Chromosome decayed. Nevertheless, we found that the dominant liver miRNA, miR-122-5p, is Z-linked but expressed in an unbiased manner, due to the unusual retention of a W-linked copy. Another Z-linked miRNA, the male-biased miR-2954-3p, shows conserved preference for dosage-sensitive genes on the Z Chromosome, based on computational and experimental data from chicken and zebra finch, and acts to equalize male-to-female expression ratios of its targets. Unexpectedly, our findings thus establish miRNA regulation as a novel gene-specific dosage compensation mechanism.
Questioning skills demonstrated by approved clinical instructors during clinical field experiences.

CONTEXT The current trend in athletic training clinical education places greater emphasis on the quality of interactions occurring between Approved Clinical Instructors (ACIs) and athletic training students (ATSs). Among other attributes, the ability of ACIs to facilitate and direct quality clinical learning experiences may be influenced by the skill with which the ACI is able to use selected teaching strategies. OBJECTIVE To gain insight into ACIs' use of questioning as a specific teaching strategy during the clinical education experiences of undergraduate ATSs. DESIGN Qualitative case study design involving initial and stimulated-recall interviews, prolonged field observations, and audio recording of ACI-ATS interactions. SETTING The primary athletic training facility at one athletic training education program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS The 8 ACI participants included 3 full-time athletic training education program faculty members and 5 graduate-level assistants. The 24 ATS participants included 1 senior, 17 juniors, and 6 sophomores. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Transcribed data collected from 8 initial interviews, 23 field observations, 23 audio-recorded ACI-ATS interactions and 54 stimulated-recall interviews were analyzed through microscopic, open, and axial coding, as well as coding for process. The cognition level of questions posed by ACIs was analyzed according to Sellappah and colleagues' Question Classification Framework. RESULTS The ACI participants posed 712 questions during the 23 observation periods. Of the total questions, 70.37% were classified as low-level cognitive questions and 17.00% as high-level cognitive questions. The remaining 12.64% were classified as other. CONCLUSIONS Although all ACIs used questioning during clinical instruction, 2 distinct questioning patterns were identified: strategic questioning and nonstrategic questioning. The way ACIs sequenced questions (their questioning pattern) appeared to be more important than the number of specific cognitive-level questions posed. Nonstrategic questioning appears to support knowledge and comprehension, whereas strategic questioning appears to support critical thinking.
Molecular-dynamics study of interfacial diffusion between high-permittivity gate dielectrics and germanium substrates

The stability of interfaces with germanium, which has recently been discussed as a replacement for silicon in ultra-large-scale integrated circuits (ULSIs), was studied. Interfacial oxygen diffusion from high-permittivity gate dielectrics (ZrO_2 and HfO_2) into germanium substrates must be suppressed to prevent the formation of interfacial layers between the gate dielectrics and the germanium substrates. Oxygen diffusion was simulated through a molecular-dynamics technique that takes into account many-body interactions and charge transfer between different elements. The simulation results show that the addition of yttrium is effective in suppressing interfacial oxygen diffusion at the ZrO_2/germanium interfaces. On the other hand, the addition of yttrium is not effective in suppressing interfacial oxygen diffusion at the HfO_2/germanium interfaces. The results also show that the diffusion at the ZrO_2/Ge(111) and HfO_2/Ge(111) interfaces is much more suppressed than the diffusion at the ZrO_2/Ge(001) and HfO_2/Ge(001) interfaces.
Illumination gain estimation and tracking in a distributed lighting control system

We consider a distributed lighting control system with multiple networked luminaires, each equipped with a light and presence sensor, and a local controller. Using local sensor inputs and information exchange with limited neighboring controllers, each local controller determines the optimum dimming level of its luminaire so that the lighting power consumption is minimized. This is done under net illumination constraints specified in terms of light sensor set-points. The underlying optimization problem requires knowledge of the illumination gains, i.e. the contributions of luminaire light output to the light sensors. Reflectance changes, e.g. due to occupancy changes or object movements in the environment can change the illumination gains over time, thus affecting the achieved illumination. We address the problem of illumination gain estimation and tracking in a lighting system with distributed asynchronous controllers. A Euclidean projection of the best linear unbiased estimator on the non-negative orthant is used as an initial illumination gain estimate and bounds on mean-squared error performance are obtained. A recursive calibration mechanism to track gain changes is proposed. Illumination performance improvements are shown by numerical results using photometric data.
Vehicle positioning system based on passive planar image markers

In this paper we present an approach for optical vehicle positioning (e.g. fork lifters). Our approach is motivated by planar marker detection systems like ARTag or ARToolkit, in which poses of planar markers relative to the camera can be determined. In contrast to existing optical positioning systems(e.g. SkyTrax), we mount cameras on the ceiling and passive (non-electronic) planar markers on the top of the vehicles. The absence of complex electronic components on the high stressed vehicles enables rapid process integration, which is particularly important for rental vehicles. We have evaluated our method keeping the most important user requirements coverage, costs and accuracy under consideration for three intra-logistic scenarios a) zone monitoring with zone precise positioning, b) storage aisle monitoring with storage place precise positioning and, c) complete driving range monitoring with maximum precision.
A side channel attack countermeasure using system-on-chip power profile scrambling

Since the discovery that hardware used for cryptographic applications could leak secret information through its power or radiation profile a wide range of possible attack methods has been published. The rapid evolution of these side-channel attacks made it increasingly important to minimize this possible information leakage. Additionally timing information also derived from this power profile is used to control fault-attack campaigns to drive the system into an unintended state. Therefore a wide range of leakage countermeasures has been developed for dedicated cryptographic hardware. Contrariwise only little work is available concerning power profile scrambling techniques for cryptographic software implementations running on general purpose architectures. Such implementations often include power management hardware to cope with several power budget constraints which could be used to influence the system's power consumption during run-time. This paper proposes a novel side channel attack countermeasure technique using such power management methods in combination with techniques for power profile manipulation. State-of-the-art power estimation hardware using a reduced power model allows for the efficient on-line monitoring and manipulation of the power consumption and radiation profile.
A Parallel Depth-Aided Exemplar-Based Inpainting for Real-Time View Synthesis on GPU

Synthesizing new images from given image pair and their corresponding depth maps is an essential function for many 3D video applications. Exemplar-based in painting methods have been proposed in recent years to be used to restore newly synthesized images by strategically filling the missing pixels which don't have any references due to occlusion. Due to the prioritized filling process, the in painting methods usually result in high computational complexity and can hardly reach real-time performance. In this paper, a parallel depth-aided in painting method is proposed to address the efficiency issue of this kind of high performance algorithms. In order to reduce the computation, the proposed method searches for background pixels in a restricted search range on the reference images for effective context filling. Then a partially parallel strategy is proposed to speedup the in painting process while maintaining its high restoration accuracy. Finally the method is implemented with CUDA on NVidia graphic card GTS450. The experiment results showed that the proposed method could produce the best on par results and is suitable for real-time multi-view image synthesis.
CONFINED CONCRETE COLUMNS WITH STUBS

The critical sections of columns in a framed structure subjected to earthquake loads are invariably adjacent to the beam-column/slab joints or the footings. External restraint provided by the heavy elements alters the behavior of the adjacent sections and may not always prove conservative. To simulate this behavior, 6 reinforced concrete columns were tested under cyclic flexure and shear while simultaneously subjected to a constant axial load. The variables in the test program were the amount of lateral steel, steel configuration, and level of axial load. From a comparison of the results with those from similar prismatic specimens tested earlier, it was concluded that the stub enhanced the adjacent section's flexural strength by more than 20%. The details of the study are described, and these and other findings are presented and discussed.
Properties of ultra-large CaF2 crystals for the high NA optics

CaF2(Calcium fluoride) lens materials are required for the most important component of the ArF laser lithography stepper for the reason of its excellent transparency in DUV region and excellent laser durability as compared with quartz. Last year we reported to succeed in growing both <111> and <100> crystals, which had 210m diameter and 150mm length by the Czochralski (CZ) method with high productivity1). The obtained CaF2 crystal had low stress birefringence by way of the optimized annealing process. Although, for the higher NA system, larger CaF2 single crystals are required for the lens materials having the high quality and high productivity. To meet the above mentioned demands, we made efforts to produce and succeeded the first in the world ultra-large (φ300mm over) and high quality CaF2 single crystal by the CZ method with high productivity. The crystal had very low stress birefringence, good transparency in DUV region and good homogeneity. It was also easy to control the orientation of the crystal by the selection of seed crystal.
A new detection method of soft breakdown in ultra-thin gate oxides by light-emission analysis

We clarified that the SBD in ultra-thin oxides with the large direct tunneling current in which masks the SBD event can be detected by using the adequate threshold of the intensity in light-emission analysis. This new method is a WLR tool for monitoring oxides integrity instead of V-RAMP test.
A New Integrated Mobile Architecture for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

In wireless heterogeneous environment, the integration of wireless access network will be accomplished by seamless handover which contains many challenges i.e. service mobility, vertical handover, common authentication, unified accounting/billing, security mechanisms, QoS and service provisioning, etc. Toward this direction, our research aims to provide a complete integration of heterogeneous network architecture and support a fit mobility management for network to seamless handover. This paper offers an HIP-based vertical handover idea in heterogeneous wireless network. We propose a mobile integrated architecture in personal communication system. Moreover, we hope to contribute our research to beyond 4G (B4G) wireless networks.
Real time determination of bacterial in vivo ribosome translation elongation speed based on LacZα complementation system

Bacterial growth significantly depends on protein synthesis catalyzed by ribosome. Ribosome translation elongation speed is a key factor determining the bacterial protein synthesis rate. However, existing methods for determining translation elongation speed have limited applications. Here we developed a simple and convenient method for measuring bacterial translation elongation speed based on LacZα complementation system. It enables the measurement of in vivo translation elongation speed of different individual genes. Tests related to ribosome translation elongation speed under various growth perturbations including different nutrient conditions, low temperature, a low-speed ribosome mutant, and fusidic acid treatment, were performed to quantitatively validate this method. Using this approach, we further found that nutrient starvation caused a remarkable slow-down of ribosome translation of Escherichia coli (E. coli). We also studied the dynamic change of translation elongation speed during the process of nutrient up-shift. This method will boost the quantitative understanding of bacterial ribosome translation capacity and growth.
Pixel-Based Machine Learning in Medical Imaging

Machine learning (ML) plays an important role in the medical imaging field, including medical image analysis and computer-aided diagnosis, because objects such as lesions and organs may not be represented accurately by a simple equation; thus, medical pattern recognition essentially require “learning from examples. ” One of the most popular uses of ML is classification of objects such as lesions into certain classes (e.g., abnormal or normal, or lesions or nonlesions) based on input features (e.g., contrast and circularity) obtained from segmented object candidates. Recently, pixel/voxel-based ML (PML) emerged in medical image processing/analysis, which use pixel/voxel values in images directly instead of features calculated from segmented objects as input information; thus, feature calculation or segmentation is not required. Because the PML can avoid errors caused by inaccurate feature calculation and segmentation which often occur for subtle or complex objects, the performance of the PML can potentially be higher for such objects than that of common classifiers (i.e., feature-based MLs). In this paper, PMLs are surveyed to make clear (a) classes of PMLs, (b) similarities and differences within (among) different PMLs and those between PMLs and feature-based MLs, (c) advantages and limitations of PMLs, and (d) their applications in medical imaging.
Bringing Internet connectivity to rural Zambia using a collaborative approach

This paper presents an initiative to bring connectivity to rural Zambia using a collaborative approach. In particular, it focuses on a proof-of-concept Internet service that has been implemented in rural Macha located in the Southern Province of Zambia. The service operates using satellite terminals (for connection to the Internet) and a wireless local area network. The provision of Internet access has enabled local health institutes to operate more effectively and given local people the opportunity to communicate and explore new ideas. It has also created new employment opportunities and generated several projects including a data entry service and a sunflower farming initiative. Being a rural area, several problems hamper progress including frequent electricity outages and the exorbitant cost of bandwidth. International collaboration has been established between LinkNet, the Meraka Institute (South Africa), TNO (Netherlands) and the global research alliance. With its partners, LinkNet addresses the main challenges through applied research and innovation and targets an upscaling of its activities throughout rural Zambia and beyond.
Trace-Orthonormal Full-Diversity Cyclotomic Linear Dispersion Codes Using Coordinate Interleaving

In this paper, we improve the Trace-orthonormal full-diversity cyclotomic space-time codes using coordinate interleaving. We find that in the original design of full-rate full-diversity cyclotomic linear dispersion codes (FR-FD LDC), the constellation is restricted. Fortunately, a coordinate interleaving method enables not only symbol-level diversity but also coordinate-level diversity for high rate LD code design. Using this method, we can improve the performance of the cyclotomic LD codes over the constellations without the constellation restriction, in block and fast fading channels.
The Non-Random Brain: Efficiency, Economy, and Complex Dynamics

Modern anatomical tracing and imaging techniques are beginning to reveal the structural anatomy of neural circuits at small and large scales in unprecedented detail. When examined with analytic tools from graph theory and network science, neural connectivity exhibits highly non-random features, including high clustering and short path length, as well as modules and highly central hub nodes. These characteristic topological features of neural connections shape non-random dynamic interactions that occur during spontaneous activity or in response to external stimulation. Disturbances of connectivity and thus of neural dynamics are thought to underlie a number of disease states of the brain, and some evidence suggests that degraded functional performance of brain networks may be the outcome of a process of randomization affecting their nodes and edges. This article provides a survey of the non-random structure of neural connectivity, primarily at the large scale of regions and pathways in the mammalian cerebral cortex. In addition, we will discuss how non-random connections can give rise to differentiated and complex patterns of dynamics and information flow. Finally, we will explore the idea that at least some disorders of the nervous system are associated with increased randomness of neural connections.
A Unified Approach to Building and Controlling Spiking Attractor Networks

Extending work in Eliasmith and Anderson (2003), we employ a general framework to construct biologically plausible simulations of the three classes of attractor networks relevant for biological systems: static (point, line, ring, and plane) attractors, cyclic attractors, and chaotic attractors. We discuss these attractors in the context of the neural systems that they have been posited to help explain: eye control, working memory, and head direction; locomotion (specifically swimming); and olfaction, respectively. We then demonstrate how to introduce control into these models. The addition of control shows how attractor networks can be used as subsystems in larger neural systems, demonstrates how a much larger class of networks can be related to attractor networks, and makes it clear how attractor networks can be exploited for various information processing tasks in neurobiological systems.