Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust Packet Scheduling in Wireless Cellular Networks

This paper addresses the following robust scheduling problem: Given that only coarse-grained channel state information (i.e., bounds on channel errors, but not the fine-grained error pattern) is available, how to design a robust scheduler that ensures worst-case optimal performance? To solve this problem, we consider two coarse-grained channel error models and take a zero-sum game theoretic approach, in which the scheduler and the channel error act as non-cooperative adversaries in the scheduling process. Our results show that in the heavy channel error case, the optimal scheduler adopts a threshold form. It does not schedule a flow if the price (the flow is willing to pay) is too small, in order to maximize the system revenue. Among the scheduled flows, the scheduler schedules a flow with a probability inversely proportional to the flow price such that the risk of being caught by the channel error adversary is minimized. We also show that in the mild channel error model, the robust scheduling policy exhibits a balanced trade-off between a greedy decision and a conservative policy. The scheduler is likely to take a greedy decision if it evaluates the risk of encountering the channel error adversary now to be small. Therefore, robust scheduling does not always imply conservative decision. The scheduler is willing to take “risks” to expect higher gain in some scenarios. Our solution also shows that probabilistic scheduling may lead to higher worst-case performance compared to traditional deterministic policies. Finally, the current efforts show the feasibility to explore a probabilistic approach to cope with dynamic channel error conditions.
Post‐traumatic stress disorder, child abuse history, birthweight and gestational age: a prospective cohort study

Please cite this paper as: Seng J, Low L, Sperlich M, Ronis D, Liberzon I. Post‐traumatic stress disorder, child abuse history, birthweight and gestational age: a prospective cohort study. BJOG 2011;118:1329–1339.
Log-Euclidean free-form deformation

The Free-Form Deformation (FFD) algorithm is a widely used method for non-rigid registration. Modifications have previously been proposed to ensure topology preservation and invertibility within this framework. However, in practice, none of these yield the inverse transformation itself, and one loses the parsimonious B-spline parametrisation. We present a novel log-Euclidean FFD approach in which a spline model of a stationary velocity field is exponentiated to yield a diffeomorphism, using an efficient scaling-and-squaring algorithm. The log-Euclidean framework allows easy computation of a consistent inverse transformation, and offers advantages in group-wise atlas building and statistical analysis. We optimise the Normalised Mutual Information plus a regularisation term based on the Jacobian determinant of the transformation, and we present a novel analytical gradient of the latter. The proposed method has been assessed against a fast FFD implementation (F3D) using simulated T1- and T2-weighted magnetic resonance brain images. The overlap measures between propagated grey matter tissue probability maps used in the simulations show similar results for both approaches; however, our new method obtains more reasonable Jacobian values, and yields inverse transformations.
Extracting note onsets from musical recordings

Automatic temporal segmentation of music signals into note onsets is central for a large number of audio applications. In this paper, we present a variation of a previously existing note onset detection method, based on the so-called spectral energy flux. The proposed algorithm has a lower computational cost and incorporates a more accurate estimation of the frequency content derivative, yielding better results for a wide range of music signals. The performance of the system was validated using a database of musical recordings containing 670 note onsets. This database was hand-labeled and cross validated by three annotators. Comparisons to previous work are also presented along with possible directions of future research.
Interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction solar cells: Towards an industrially applicable structuring method

We report on the investigation and comparison of two different processing approaches for interdigitated back contacted silicon heterojunction solar cells: our photolithography-based reference procedure and our newly developed shadow mask process. To this end, we analyse fill factor losses in different stages of the fabrication process. We find that although comparably high minority carrier lifetimes of about 4 ms can be observed for both concepts, the shadow masked solar cells suffer yet from poorly passivated emitter regions and significantly higher series resistance. Approaches for addressing the observed issues are outlined and first solar cell results with efficiencies of about 17 % and 23 % for shadow masked and photolithographically structured solar cells, respectively, are presented.
Schoen flies Motion Generator: A New Non Redundant Parallel Manipulator with Unlimited Rotation Capability

Nowadays an important research effort is devoted to lower mobility parallel manipulators. The existing solutions often suffer from parallel mechanisms drawbacks, i.e. small workspace and limited rotation capability. A new concept of parallel manipulators providing Schoen flies motions (motions of well-known SCARA robot) is introduced in this paper. The proposed manipulator, based on the idea of articulated traveling plate explored by the authors, has an unlimited rotation capability without using motion transformation, ampli fication neither redundancy.
Excess of Serotonin (5-HT) Alters the Segregation of Ispilateral and Contralateral Retinal Projections in Monoamine Oxidase A Knock-Out Mice: Possible Role of 5-HT Uptake in Retinal Ganglion Cells During Development

Retinal ganglion cell (RGCs) project to the ipsilateral and contralateral sides of the brain in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN) and the superior colliculus (SC). Projections from both eyes are initially intermingled until postnatal day 3 (P3) but segregate into eye-specific layers by P8. We report that this segregation does not occur in monoamine oxidase A knock-out mice (MAOA-KO) that have elevated brain levels of serotonin (5-HT) and noradrenaline. The abnormal development of retinal projections can be reversed by inhibiting 5-HT synthesis from P0 to P15. We found that in MAOA-KO mice, 5-HT accumulates in a subpopulation of RGCs and axons during embryonic and early postnatal development. The RGCs do not synthesize 5-HT but reuptake the amine from the extracellular space. In both MAOA-KO and normal mice, high-affinity uptake of 5-HT and serotonin transporter (SERT) immunoreactivity are observed in retinal axons from the optic cup to retinal terminal fields in the SC and dLGN. In the dLGN, transient SERT labeling corresponds predominantly to the ipsilateral retinal projection fields. We show that, in addition to SERT, developing RGCs also transiently express the vesicular monoamine transporter gene VMAT2: thus, retinal axons could store 5-HT in synaptic vesicles and possibly use it as a borrowed neurotransmitter. Finally we show that the 5-HT-1B receptor gene is expressed by RGCs throughout the retina from E15 until adult life. Activation of this receptor is known, from previous studies, to reduce retinotectal activity; thus 5-HT in excess could inhibit activity-dependent segregation mechanisms. A hypothesis is proposed whereby, during normal development, localized SERT expression could confer specific neurotransmission properties on a subset of RGCs and could be important in the fine-tuning of retinal projections.
Radiation pressure force from optical cycling on a polyatomic molecule

We demonstrate multiple photon cycling and radiative force deflection on the triatomic free radical strontium monohydroxide (SrOH). Optical cycling is achieved on SrOH in a cryogenic buffer-gas beam by employing the rotationally closed P ( N ″ = 1 ) branch of the vibronic transition X ˜ 2 Σ + ( 000 ) ↔ A ˜ 2 Π 1 / 2 ( 000 ) . A single repumping laser excites the Sr–O stretching vibrational mode, and photon cycling of the molecule deflects the SrOH beam by an angle of 0.2 ° via scattering of ∼100 photons per molecule. This approach can be used for direct laser cooling of SrOH and more complex, isoelectronic species.
Using chord distance descriptors to enhance music information retrieval: student research abstract

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is an established field that provides solutions to analyze, retrieve, classify, recommend, or visualize music. From many applications, however, only a fraction will provide results that are meaningful for musicians [4]. Scoring functions may use descriptors that are difficult to describe for the end-user, and visualizations are often bound to signal aspects of music such as displaying waveform. We have developed a music analysis system which is based on music theory and contains visualizations meaningful for those interested in harmony aspects of music. Music is first segmented to chords by known techniques, providing the basis that musicians understand. From there, distances between chords are evaluated by a novel approach and new descriptors are formed, based on recent music theory studies. End-user can visualize the musical piece and find interesting sequences in a color temperature graph. While having the music visualized, user can retrieve similar musical pieces, understanding the similarity between the chord progressions.
Effects of image blur on visual perception and affective response

Obscure visual environments impair visual perception and result in the worse performances in object detection, identification, and recognition. Blurred images might also induce negative affective responses to the visual environment such as fear or uncanniness. However, the effect of image blur on the affective responses is still open. The present study investigated the effects of image blur on the object detection and the feeling of uncanniness. In a psychological experiment, we presented pictures of natural images depicting a person, an animal, or an object and asked participants to indicate whether the picture depicted a face or an animal and to rate how strongly they felt the picture was uncanny. The images were blurred by the lowpass filter of various cutoff frequencies. We found that the more blurry images, namely images filtered by the lower cutoff frequencies, were more difficult in face/animal detection as well as they were rated as more uncanny. However, the effective cutoff frequencies in the modulations on the uncanniness rating and face/animal detectability did not overlap; the uncanniness and detectability did not show clear correlation. These results clearly demonstrated that the image blur elicits the negative affective responses. Furthermore, although the image blur influences both visual perception and affective response in a similar fashion, the feelings of uncanniness and face/animal detectability were not related directly from each other.
Assessing context and learning for isizulu tone recognition

Prosody plays an integral role in spoken language understanding. In isiZulu, a Nguni family language with lexical tone, prosodic information determines word meaning. We assess the impact of models of tone and coarticulation for tone recognition. We demonstrate the importance of modeling prosodic context to improve tone recognition. We employ this less commonly studied language to assess models of tone developed for English and Mandarin, finding common threads in coarticulatory modeling. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of semi-supervised and unsupervised tone recognition techniques for this less-resourced language, with weakly supervised approaches rivaling supervised techniques.
Effects of estradiol with and without testosterone on body composition and relationships with lipids in postmenopausal women

ObjectiveThe cardioprotective effects of postmenopausal estrogen replacement therapy are mediated by several mechanisms, including favorable effects on lipids and lipoproteins. The extent to which the latter reflects modification of body fat distribution by sex steroids is not known. Hence, we investigated the relationships between changes in lipids and measures of body composition in postmenopausal women who were administered estrogen therapy with and without testosterone. DesignWe randomized 33 postmenopausal women to treatment with either estradiol 50 mg (E) alone or estradiol 50 mg plus testosterone 50 mg implants (E&T) administered every 3 months for 2 years in conjunction with cyclic oral progestins for women with an intact uterus. ResultsBoth therapies were associated with sustained reductions in total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. In women who received E but not E&T, hip (p < 0.001) and abdominal circumferences (p < 0.05) and fat mass:fat-free mass (FM:FFM) ratio over the abdomen (p < 0.05) declined. E&T but not E resulted in increased FFM (p < 0.001) and a reduced FM:FFM ratio (p < 0.05). For E but not E&T, the decrease in LDL cholesterol was significantly related to changes in total and compartmental body fat and to change in the FM:FFM ratio (p < 0.05). ConclusionEstrogen replacement has effects on body fat distribution in postmenopausal women that are associated with improved lipid parameters. Addition of parenteral testosterone does not negate the favorable effects of estrogen on LDL cholesterol levels but may attenuate the reduction in centralized body fat achieved with E implants.
Interactive visual clustering of large collections of trajectories

One of the most common operations in exploration and analysis of various kinds of data is clustering, i.e. discovery and interpretation of groups of objects having similar properties and/or behaviors. In clustering, objects are often treated as points in multi-dimensional space of properties. However, structurally complex objects, such as trajectories of moving entities and other kinds of spatio-temporal data, cannot be adequately represented in this manner. Such data require sophisticated and computationally intensive clustering algorithms, which are very hard to scale effectively to large datasets not fitting in the computer main memory. We propose an approach to extracting meaningful clusters from large databases by combining clustering and classification, which are driven by a human analyst through an interactive visual interface.
A Statistical Test for Joint Distributions Equivalence

We provide a distribution-free test that can be used to determine whether any two joint distributions $p$ and $q$ are statistically different by inspection of a large enough set of samples. Following recent efforts from Long et al. [1], we rely on joint kernel distribution embedding to extend the kernel two-sample test of Gretton et al. [2] to the case of joint probability distributions. Our main result can be directly applied to verify if a dataset-shift has occurred between training and test distributions in a learning framework, without further assuming the shift has occurred only in the input, in the target or in the conditional distribution.
Mathematical and physical modeling of thermal stratification phenomena in steel ladles

By means of CFD numerical modeling, a systematic analysis of the similarity between steel ladles and hot-water model regarding natural convection phenomena was studied. The key similarity criteria we found to be dependent on the dimensionless numbers Fr and βΔT. These similarity criteria suggested that hot-water models with scale in the range between 1/5 and 1/3 and using hot water with temperature of 45 °C or higher are appropriate for simulating natural convection in steel ladles. With this physical model, thermal stratification phenomena due to natural convection in steel ladles were investigated. By controlling the cooling intensity of water model to correspond to the heat loss rate of steel ladles, which is governed by Fr and βΔT, the temperature profiles measured in the water bath of the model were to deduce the extent of thermal stratification in liquid steel bath in the ladles. Comparisons between mathematically simulated temperature profiles in the prototype steel ladles and those physically simulated by scaling-up the measured temperatures profiles in the water model showed good agreement. This proved that it is feasible to use a 1/5 scale water model with 45 °C hot water to simulate natural convection in steel ladles. Therefore, besides mathematical CFD models, the physical hot-water model provided an additional means of studying fluid flow and heat transfer in steel ladles.
Schizophrenia: genetics, prevention and rehabilitation

Objective: Genetic factors are largely implicated in predisposing to schizophrenia. Environmental factors contribute to the onset of the disorder in individuals at increased genetic risk. Cognitive deficits have emerged as endophenotypes and potential therapeutic targets for schizophrenia because of their association with functional outcome. The aims of this review were to analyse the joint effect of genetic and environmental (G×E) factors on liability to schizophrenia and to investigate relationships between genes and cognitive endophenotypes focusing on practical applications for prevention and rehabilitation. Methods: Medline search of relevant studies published between 1990 and 2008. Results: In schizophrenia, examples of G×E interaction include the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) (Val158Met) polymorphism, which was found to moderate the onset of psychotic manifestations in response to stress and to increase the risk for psychosis related to cannabis use, and neurodevelopmental genes such as AKT1 (serine-threonine kinase), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), DTNBP1 (dysbindin) and GRM3 (metabotropic glutamate receptor 3), which were associated with development of schizophrenia in adulthood after exposure to perinatal obstetric complications. Neurocognitive deficits are recognised as core features of schizophrenia that facilitate the onset of the disorder and have a great impact on functional outcome. Neurocognitive deficits are also endophenotypes that have been linked to a variety of genes [COMT, neuregulin (NRG1), BDNF, Disrupted-In-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) and dysbindin] conferring susceptibility to schizophrenia. Recently, it has emerged that cognitive improvement during rehabilitation therapy was under control of COMT (Val158Met) polymorphism. Conclusion: This review could indicate a pivotal role of psychiatric genetics in prevention and rehabilitation of schizophrenic psychoses.
Chickenpox Is Not Always Benign: Postvaricella Purpura Fulminans Requires Prompt and Aggressive Treatment

We present 2 patients, who were admitted owing to rapidly progressing purpuric lesions due to postvaricella purpura fulminans, a coagulopathy leading to life- or limb-threatening thrombosis caused by a severe transient autoimmune protein S deficiency. Laboratory results were being consistent with disseminated intravascular coagulation secondary to protein S deficiency; treatment with fresh frozen plasma, intravenous immunoglobulins, and prednisone was started. In our experience, a prompt therapy may limit the course and the extent of the disease. We present a review of the topic with supporting literature for the therapeutic options. Therefore, we should be reminded that purpura fulminans is a rare but severe complication of chickenpox, which demands quick action.
Exploiting N-gram Importance and Wikipedia based Additional Knowledge for Improvements in GAAC based Document Clustering

This paper provides a solution to the issue: “How can we use Wikipedia based concepts in document clustering with lesser human involvement, accompanied by effective improvements in result? ” In the devised system, we propose a method to exploit the importance of N-grams in a document and use Wikipedia based additional knowledge for GAAC based document clustering. The importance of N-grams in a document depends on several features including, but not limited to: frequency, position of their occurrence in a sentence and the position of the sentence in which they occur, in the document. First, we introduce a new similarity measure, which takes the weighted N-gram importance into account, in the calculation of similarity measure while performing document clustering. As a result, the chances of topical similarity in clustering are improved. Second, we use Wikipedia as an additional knowledge base both, to remove noisy entries from the extracted N-grams and to reduce the information gap between N-grams that are conceptually-related, which do not have a match owing to differences in writing scheme or strategies. Our experimental results on the publicly available text dataset clearly show that our devised system has a significant improvement in performance over bag-of-words based state-of-the-art systems in this area.
Providing social contacts and objects for nibbling moderates reactivity and oral behaviors in veal calves.

The aim of this work was to assess the role of social and physical enrichment in the adaptation of veal calves to their environment. We compared calves housed in individual stalls that varied in the extent of contacts they allowed between neighbors (16 calves: open partitions; 16 calves: solid partitions; 32 calves: solid and extended partitions preventing all contact). All but 16 out of the 32 isolated calves were provided with a piece of tire and a chain, objects they could easily nibble. We assessed time budget, behavioral reactions to a water throw, neuroendocrine responses to stress (ACTH challenge and catecholamine synthesis), health, and growth. Calves kept in isolation displayed more startled reactions (16 isolated calves vs 5 non-isolated calves were startled by the throw, P < .05). Calves without objects spent more time nibbling at the feeding grille (5 vs 3% time, P < .01), licking their lips and tongue-rolling (7 vs 4% time, P < .05). Social contacts and the provision of objects had no incidence on neuroendocrine measurements and growth. Contacts with neighbors resulted in a slight but nonsignificant rise in disease. Depriving calves of social contacts increases behavioral reactivity, probably because there are no peer animals through which reactions can be moderated, and the lack of adequate objects to nibble promotes self-directed activities.
Vaccination with SesC Decreases Staphylococcus epidermidis Biofilm Formation

ABSTRACT The increased use of medical implants has resulted in a concomitant rise in device-related infections. The majority of these infections are caused by Staphylococcus epidermidis biofilms. Immunoprophylaxis and immunotherapy targeting in vivo-expressed, biofilm-associated, bacterial cell surface-exposed proteins are promising new approaches to prevent and treat biofilm-related infections, respectively. Using an in silico procedure, we identified 64 proteins that are predicted to be S. epidermidis surface exposed (Ses), of which 36 were annotated as (conserved) hypothetical. Of these 36 proteins, 5 proteins—3 LPXTG motif-containing proteins (SesL, SesB, and SesC) and 2 of the largest ABC transporters (SesK and SesM)—were selected for evaluation as vaccine candidates. This choice was based on protein size, number of antigenic determinants, or the established role in S. epidermidis biofilm formation of the protein family to which the candidate protein belongs. Anti-SesC antibodies exhibited the greatest inhibitory effect on S. epidermidis biofilm formation in vitro and on colonization and infection in a mouse jugular vein catheter infection model that includes biofilms and organ infections. Active vaccination with a recombinant truncated SesC inhibited S. epidermidis biofilm formation in a rat model of subcutaneous foreign body infection. Antibodies to SesC were shown to be opsonic by an in vitro opsonophagocytosis assay. We conclude that SesC is a promising target for antibody mediated strategies against S. epidermidis biofilm formation.