Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cutaneous Leishmaniasis Parasites in Panamá and Costa Rica

The eco-epidemiology of American cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL) is driven by animal reservoir species that are a source of infection for sand flies that serve as vectors infecting humans with Leishmania spp parasites. The emergence and re-emergence of this disease across Latin America calls for further studies to identify reservoir species associated with enzootic transmission. Here, we present results from a survey of 52 individuals from 13 wild mammal species at endemic sites in Costa Rica and Panama where ACL mammal hosts have not been previously studied. For Leishmania spp. diagnostics we employed a novel PCR technique using blood samples collected on filter paper. We only found Leishmania spp parasites in one host, the two-toed sloth, Choloepus hoffmanni. Our findings add further support to the role of two-toed sloths as an important ACL reservoir in Central America.
Analyzing the turbo decoder using the Gaussian approximation

In this paper, we introduce a simple technique for analyzing the iterative decoder that is broadly applicable to different classes of codes defined over graphs in certain fading as well as AWGN channels. The technique is based on the observation that the extrinsic information from constituent MAP decoders is well approximated by Gaussian random variables when the inputs to the decoders are Gaussian. The independent Gaussian model implies the existence of an iterative decoder threshold that statistically characterizes the convergence of the iterative decoder. Despite the idealization of the model and the simplicity of the analysis technique, the predicted threshold values are in excellent agreement with the waterfall regions observed experimentally in the literature when the codeword lengths are large.
X-band outphasing power amplifier with internal load modulation measurements

This paper presents a general measurement based design method for outphasing amplifiers. Both isolated and non-isolated combiners are designed based on individual PA load-pull measurements, in order to load modulate two 0. 15μm GaN MMIC power amplifiers at 10.1GHz. Load modulation measurements are performed at ports internal to the PA, with the inclusion of couplers in the combiner and a four-port LSNA, to gain insight into the dynamics of load modulation during outphasing operation. Both outphasing systems exhibit a peak PAE greater than 41.5% at a peak output power greater than 35.7 dBm.
NONPARAMETRIC NONLINEAR CAUSALITY TESTING WITH STEPWISE MULTIVARIATE FILTERING ”

The present study investigates the linear and nonlinear causal linkages in exchange, equity and derivatives markets. Specifically, in case of exchange markets, among six currencies denoted relative to United States dollar (USD), namely EUR, GBP, JPY, CHF, AUD and CAD. The prime motivation for choosing these exchange rates comes from the fact that they are the most liquid and widely traded, covering about 90% of total FX trading worldwide. The data spans two periods (PI: 3/20/1991 – 3/20/1997, PII: 3/20/2003 – 3/20/2007) before and after the structural break of the Asian financial crisis, which set a platform for departure for causality testing. In case of derivatives markets, between daily spot and futures prices for maturities of 1, 2, 3 and 4 months of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil. The data cover two periods October 1991-October 1999 and November 1999-October 2007, with the latter being significantly more turbulent. Finally in case of stock markets, among NIKKEI 255, FTSE100 and NYSE. The data spans four periods (PI: 3/20/1991 – 3/20/2007, PII: 3/20/1991 – 3/20/1997, PIII: 3/20/2003 – 3/20/2007, PIV: 3/20/2000 – 3/22/2004), namely the total period, a preand post-bubble period and an in-bubble period. The structural break point is again the Asian financial crisis. We apply a new nonparametric test for Granger non-causality as well as the conventional linear Granger test on the return time series after controlling for cointegration. In addition to the traditional pairwise analysis, we test for causality while correcting for the effects of the other variables in a multi-variate formulation. To check if any of the observed causality is strictly nonlinear in nature, we also examine the nonlinear causal relationships of VAR or VECM filtered residuals. Finally, we investigate the hypothesis of nonlinear noncausality after controlling for conditional heteroskedasticity in the data using a GARCHBEKK model. Our approach allows the entire variance-covariance structure of the time series interrelationship to be incorporated in order to explicitly capture the volatility spillover mechanism. In case of exchange markets, whilst the nonparametric test statistics are smaller in some cases, significant nonlinear causal linkages persisted even after GARCH filtering during both the preand post-Asian crisis period. This indicates that currency returns may exhibit asymmetries and statistically significant higher-order moments. Similar 1 E-mail addresses: Stelios.Bekiros@eui.eu , S.Bekiros@uva.nl (corresponding author); Tel. : +39-055-4685-698. This study was conducted at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance (CeNDEF), Department of Quantitative Economics, University of Amsterdam.
Selection of evolutionary approach based hybrid data mining algorithms for decision support systems and business intelligence

The business intelligence is constantly changing, and it is becoming more complex. Organizations, private and public, are under pressures that force them to respond quickly to changing conditions and to be innovative in the way they operate. Such activities require organizations to be agile and to make frequent and quick strategic, tactical, and operational decisions. In today's era, we observe major changes in how managers use computerized support in making decisions. As more number of decision-makers become computer literate, decision support systems (DSS) is evolving from its beginning as a personal support tool and is becoming the shared resource in an organization. Data mining has been an active area of research in last two decades. Integration of data mining and decision support systems (DSS) can lead to the improved performance and can enable the tackling of new types of problems. In the recent past, there has been an increasing interest in applying evolutionary methods to Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and a number of successful applications of Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Genetic Programming (GP) to KDD have been demonstrated. No single algorithm has been found to be superior over all others for all data sets. This paper sheds some light on the selection of evolutionary approach based hybrid classification models in diversity of datasets from different domains. NNEP-C (s), XCS-C (s) GFS-GP-C(s) evolved from the combination of genetic algorithm and other techniques as neural network, self evolving GA and fuzzy learning have been tested on five datasets based on selected quality measures like predictive accuracy and training time. XCS-C(s) shows faster speed as compared to its competitor NNEP-C(s). GFS-GP-C(s) is the slowest one.
A parameterization of leaf phenology for the terrestrial ecosystem component of climate models

Leaf phenology remains one of the most difficult processes to parameterize in terrestrial ecosystem models because our understanding of the physical processes that initiate leaf onset and senescence is incomplete. While progress has been made at the molecular level, for example by identifying genes that are associated with senescence and flowering for selected plant species, a picture of the processes controlling leaf phenology is only beginning to emerge. A variety of empirical formulations have been used with varying degrees of success in terrestrial ecosystem models for both extratropical and tropical biomes. For instance, the use of growing degree-days (GDDs) to initiate leaf onset has received considerable recognition and this approach is used in a number of models. There are, however, limitations when using GDDs and other empirically based formulations in global transient climate change simulations. The phenology scheme developed for the Canadian Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (CTEM), designed for inclusion in the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis coupled general circulation model, is described. The representation of leaf phenology is general enough to be applied over the globe and sufficiently robust for use in transient climate change simulations. Leaf phenology is functionally related to the (possibly changing) climate state and to atmospheric composition rather than to geographical boundaries or controls implicitly based on current climate. In this approach, phenology is controlled by environmental conditions as they affect the carbon balance. A carbon-gain-based scheme initiates leaf onset when it is beneficial for the plant, in carbon terms, to produce new leaves. Leaf offset is initiated by unfavourable environmental conditions that incur carbon losses and these include shorter day length, cooler temperatures, and dry soil moisture conditions. The comparison of simulated leaf onset and offset times with observation-based estimates for temperate and boreal deciduous, tropical evergreen, and tropical deciduous plant functional types at selected locations indicates that the phenology scheme performs satisfactorily. Model simulated leaf area index and stem and root biomass are also compared with observational estimates to illustrate the performance of CTEM.
Energy packet networks: adaptive energy management for the cloud

In the presence of limitations in the availability of energy for data centres, especially in dense urban areas, a novel system that we call an Energy Packet Network is discussed as a means to provide energy on demand to Cloud Computing servers. This approach can be useful in the presence of renewable energy sources, and if scarce sources of energy must be shared by multiple computational units whose peak to average power consumption ratio is high. Such a system will use energy storage units to best match and smooth the intermittent supply and the intermittent demand. The analysis of such systems based on queueing networks is suggested and applied to a special case for illustration.
Phylogeography by Diffusion on a Sphere

Techniques for reconstructing geographical history along a phylogeny can answer many interesting question about the geographical origins of species. Bayesian models based on the assumption that taxa move through a diffusion process have found many applications. However, these methods rely on diffusion processes on a plane, and do not take the spherical nature of our planet in account. This makes it hard to perform analysis that cover the whole world, or do not take in account the distortions caused by projections like the Mercator projection. In this paper, we introduce a Bayesian phylogeographical method based on diffusion on a sphere. When the area where taxa are sampled from is small, a sphere can be approximated by a plane and the model results in the same inferences as with models using diffusion on a plane. For taxa samples from the whole world, we obtain substantial differences. We present an efficient algorithm for performing inference in an Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm, and show applications to small and large samples areas. Availability: The method is implemented in the GEO_SPHERE package in BEAST 2, which is open source licensed under LGPL.
UNCOVERING SPATIOTEMPORAL DYNAMICS FROM NON-TRAJECTORY DATA

1. DESIGN PROBLEM In a previous project [5], we analyzed and compared hundreds of bike sharing networks worldwide, predominantly based on station fill levels that we recorded continuously over a period of 17 months. We illustrated how we can support users with a wide range of expertise to understand and intelligently leverage this type of data in their decision-making. Our interactive visualization can reveal interesting insights, not only into patterns of bicycle usage but also into underlying spatiotemporal dynamics of a city (see Figure 1).
MiMaze, a Multiuser Game on the Internet

This report describes the design, the implementation, and the evaluation of MiMaze, a totally distributed game on the Internet. This work focusses on the mechanisms that have to be used to make it possible to play the game on the Internet. Our major contribution is to have designed MiMaze with a distributed architecture, without any server. MiMaze consequently uses a multicast communication system based on RTP/UDP/IP to which have been added mechanisms to guaranty the consistency of the game, whatever the network delay is. MiMaze has been designed with the DIS rules. This report provides a detailed evaluation of the game, as well as elements of monitoring to compare the "efficiency" of such applications. Missing mechanisms and future works are discussed at the end of the report.
Molecular dynamics simulations of shallow nitrogen and silicon implantation into diamond

Ossi Lehtinen,1 Boris Naydenov,2 Pia Börner,1 Kristina Melentjevic,2 Christoph Müller,2 Liam Paul McGuinness,2 Sebastien Pezzagna,3 Jan Meijer,3 Ute Kaiser,1 and Fedor Jelezko2 1Central Facility for Electron Microscopy, Group of Electron Microscopy of Materials Science, Ulm University, 89081 Ulm, Germany 2Institute for Quantum Optics, Ulm University, 89081 Ulm, Germany 3Institut für Experimentelle Physik II, Universität Leipzig, 04103 Leipzig, Germany (Received 15 October 2015; published 11 January 2016)
Adsorption and Diffusion of Benzene in ITQ-1 Type Zeolite: Grand Canonical Monte Carlo and Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

The methods of grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulation and molecular dynamics (MD) are used for investigating the adsorption and diffusion of benzene in ITQ-1 zeolite. First, the adsorption energies and preferred adsorption sites of benzene in ITQ-1 are determined by using GCMC simulations. The obtained mass clouds show that the diffusion and the mobility of benzene mainly happen in 12-MR supercages where the preferred adsorption sites of benzene can be divided to three separate adsorption sites. Then MD simulations are employed to analyze the dynamic diffusion processes in zeolite. The calculated diffusion coefficients are compared with the results of Sastre et al. (Sastre, G.; Catlow, C.; Corma, A. J. Phys. Chem. 1999, 103, 5187). From the trajectories followed by the benzene molecules, it can be seen that the guest molecules do not diffuse in both channel systems, and only intracage mobility is seen in the supercage voids. Moreover, the two benzene molecules near the S2 and S3 sites prefer to ado.
HAPTIC EXPLORATION OF VIRTUAL BUILDINGS USING NON-REALISTIC HAPTIC RENDERING

Abstract This paper argues that the goal of reducing the differences between features within a 3D model and the use of 3D haptic space of the force feedback device is not necessarily desirable. We present the idea of a non-realistic haptic rendering system. We examine in detail the mapping of 3D data structures onto 3D haptic space and show the use of information layers which are based on a logical decomposition of the information space to be presented, rather than a purely geometric decomposition of an underlying geomertic model. As an example for the different techniques we use the virtual reconstruction of the palace of Otto the Great. 1 Introduction Current applications which use force feedback devices aim at improving haptic simulation and the rendering algorithms in connection with objects or geometric models. Depending on the task there are different directions of research such as the simulation of surface properties (for example haptic textures, stiffness as well as static and dynamic friction [3]), static objects (for example visco-elastic and plastic objects [10]), dynamic objects (for example buttons, sliders, etc. 1]), interaction [techniques (point- and ray-based rendering [5]), and the manipulation of objects (see [7]). The common goal of all these techniques is to improve the perceivable realism of the simulated haptic world. However, Colwell, Petrie et al. [2] how in their studies that blind and visually impaired peoples have various serious problems making use of force feedback devices for exploring these realistic virtual worlds. The first result is that users temporarily get lost in the virtual haptic space. Especially after exploring an individual object of a scene, users have difficulties keeping the probe in contact with the object. This makes the recognition of the shape of objects more difficult. The second important point which they observed is that users often have difficulties recognizing complex objects. This holds true even when these objects are constructed from simple components like cuboids which are easy to recognize in isolation. Finally, blind users are not very good at assessing the sizes of objects they have touched in a 3D haptic environment. All aspects were observed under the condition that the virtual worlds were created using realistic representations. These results show that the abilities of users to recognize objects are limited when using force feedback devices. In this paper, we present methods for non-realistic haptic rendering (NRHR) which reduces the complexity of the geometric data to be displayed and which uses additional representation and interaction techniques in compensation. n this context, we examine the mapping of a 3D modelI onto the useable haptic space in detail and divided it into two different parts. On the one hand, we
A Channel Switching Scheme for IPTV Systems

One of the main challenges in IPTV systems is the reduction of startup delays, especially in channel switchings. While this problem does not exist in traditional television, in IPTV systems it is relevant, due to bandwidth limitation as well as the employment of buffers and overlay structures. Since the possibility of switching channels quickly is appreciated by users, the reduction of startup delays is an important issue to be addressed in IPTV systems. This paper proposes a novel scheme for fast channel switching that reduces the occurrences of latencies caused by buffers and overlay structures.
Optimization for Maximizing the Expected Value of Order Statistics

Authors are encouraged to submit new papers to INFORMS journals by means of a style file template, which includes the journal title. However, use of a template does not certify that the paper has been accepted for publication in the named journal. INFORMS journal templates are for the exclusive purpose of submitting to an INFORMS journal and should not be used to distribute the papers in print or online or to submit the papers to another publication.
Title Strong Evidence of a Combination Polymorphism of the Tyrosine Kinase 2 Gene and the Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 Gene as a DNA-Based Biomarker for Susceptibility to Crohn ' s Disease in the Japanese Population

Objective An association between susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and polymorphisms of both the tyrosine kinase 2 gene (TYK2) and the signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 gene (STAT3) was examined in a Japanese population in order to identify the genetic determinants of IBD. Methods The study subjects comprised 112 patients with ulcerative colitis, 83 patients with Crohn’s disease (CD), and 200 healthy control subjects. Seven tag single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in TYK2 and STAT3 were detected by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism. Results The frequencies of a C allele and its homozygous C/C genotype at rs2293152 SNP in STAT3 in CD patients were significantly higher than those in control subjects (P=0.007 and P=0.001, respectively). Furthermore, out of four haplotypes composed of the two tag SNPs (rs280519 and rs2304256) in TYK2, the frequencies of a Hap 1 haplotype and its homozygous Hap 1/Hap1 diplotype were significantly higher in CD patients in comparison to those in control subjects (P=0.023 and P=0.024, respectively). In addition, the presence of both the C/C genotype at rs2293152 SNP in STAT3 and the Hap 1/Hap 1 diplotype of TYK2 independently contributes to the pathogenesis of CD and significantly increases the odds ratio to 7.486 for CD (P=0.0008). Conclusion TYK2 and STAT3 are genetic determinants of CD in the Japanese population. This combination polymorphism may be useful as a new genetic biomarker for the identification of high-risk individuals susceptible to CD.
Subspace Coding for Networks with Different Level Messages

We study the asymptotically-achievable rate region of subspace codes for wireless network coding, where receivers have different link capacities due to the access ways or the faults of the intermediate links in the network. Firstly, an outer bound of the achievable rate region in a two-receiver network is derived from a combinatorial method. Subsequently, the achievability of the outer bound is proven by code construction, which is based on superposition coding. We show that the outer bound can be achieved asymptotically by using the code presented by Koetter and Kschischang, and the outer bound can be exactly attained in some points by using a q-analog Steiner structure. Finally, the asymptotically-achievable rate region is extended to the general case when the network has m receivers with different levels.
Innovation and competition in the smartphone industry : Is there a dominant design ?

The mobile phone industry is a very innovative segment within the ICT sector and the smartphone is becoming the standard configuration among the different types of mobile devices. Technical change and new product proliferation have made this industry extremely dynamic, even if market shares are highly concentrated in the hands of very few companies. The present article investigates whether a dominant design has emerged in the smartphone industry. In particular, it studies the evolution in hardware components relying upon an original dataset of product characteristics including all smartphones launched in the market between 2004 and 2013. Results show that, despite some convergence in the introduction of vertical innovations, product differentiation still characterizes the competition among manufacturers and a dominant design has not yet emerged. & 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.