Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spatial Modulation for More Spatial Multiplexing: RF-Chain-Limited Generalized Spatial Modulation Aided MM-Wave MIMO With Hybrid Precoding

The application of hybrid precoding in millimeter wave (mm-wave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has been proven effective for reducing the number of radio frequency (RF) chains. However, the maximum number of independent data streams is conventionally restricted by the number of RF chains, which limits the spatial multiplexing gain. To further improve the achievable spectral efficiency (SE), in this paper we propose a generalized spatial modulation aided mm-wave MIMO system to convey an extra data stream via the index of the active antennas group, while no extra RF chain is required. Moreover, we propose a hybrid analog and digital precoding scheme for SE maximization. Based on a narrowband mm-wave-MIMO channel assumption, a closed-form lower bound is derived to quantify the achievable SE of the proposed system. By utilizing this lower bound as the cost function, a two-step algorithm is proposed to optimize the hybrid precoder. The proposed algorithm not only utilizes the concavity of the cost function over the digital power allocation vector but also invokes the convex $\ell _\infty$ relaxation to handle the non-convex constraint imposed by analog precoding. Finally, the proposed scheme is shown via simulations to outperform state-of-the-art mm-wave MIMO schemes in terms of achievable SE.
Draft Genome Sequence of Mn(II)-Oxidizing Pseudomonas resinovorans Strain MO-1

ABSTRACT Pseudomonas resinovorans strain MO-1, which possesses a high ability to oxidize Mn(II), has been isolated from oligotrophic pond sediment. The draft genome sequence consists of 6,252,942 bp and has a G+C content of 63.4%. Strain MO-1 has 5,694 coding sequences, including 13 putative Mn(II) oxidation genes.
A new approach to microstrip coupled-resonator bandpass filter design

In this paper, a new approach to microstrip coupled-resonator bandpass filter design is proposed. The usual procedure of ladder prototype synthesis and ladder into coupled resonator prototype conversion is used. Instead of semi-empirical approach to determine gaps, a calculation method based on odd/even impedances (Zo and Ze) and electromagnetic field density distribution along the resonator is introduced. The proposed approach is verified by example of several S-band bandpass filters design for active phase array radar system. Full EM-simulation in Ansys HFSS is used. Simulation results confirm good working ability of proposed approach.
An online algorithm for joint long-term base station activation and beamforming in green downlink MISO networks

In modern wireless networks, optimizing the association between base stations (BSs) and users effectively improves network performance. On the other hand, a frequently changing BS-user association renders considerable operational burden for network management, e.g., it consumes extra power to awaken the deactivated BSs and to support users' switching among BSs. This motivates us to balance the flexibility and stability of BS-user association, leading to a long-term BS association problem. In this paper, we address this by considering the green communication problem in a MISO network where multiple BSs cooperatively forward information to multiple users. We minimize total power consumption (including not only the transmit power and device maintenance power, but also the switching power consumed as the BS-user association changes) by joint long-term BS activation and beamforming, i.e., we jointly optimize the active BSs, the transmit beamformer and the user switching frequency among BSs. Due to the inherent causality constraints on channel state information (CSI), we develop an online algorithm for the optimization problem, utilizing the sample average approximation (SAA) method. To improve the algorithm's efficiency, we further fit the problem into the framework of alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), and finally design a low-complexity distributed online algorithm for the green communication problem.
Toolflows for Mapping Convolutional Neural Networks on FPGAs

In the past decade, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have demonstrated state-of-the-art performance in various Artificial Intelligence tasks. To accelerate the experimentation and development of CNNs, several software frameworks have been released, primarily targeting power-hungry CPUs and GPUs. In this context, reconfigurable hardware in the form of FPGAs constitutes a potential alternative platform that can be integrated in the existing deep-learning ecosystem to provide a tunable balance between performance, power consumption, and programmability. In this article, a survey of the existing CNN-to-FPGA toolflows is presented, comprising a comparative study of their key characteristics, which include the supported applications, architectural choices, design space exploration methods, and achieved performance. Moreover, major challenges and objectives introduced by the latest trends in CNN algorithmic research are identified and presented. Finally, a uniform evaluation methodology is proposed, aiming at the comprehensive, complete, and in-depth evaluation of CNN-to-FPGA toolflows.
Adler : A Resilient , High-Performance and Energy-Efficient UAV-Enabled Sensor System

Sensor networks have been widely studied, but implementing a real system that achieves resilience, high performance and energy efficiency simultaneously is still a challenging task. We present Adler, a real unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enabled sensor system that can meet that challenge for general applications. We demonstrate Adler in three fundamental applications: localization, gathering and network reconfiguration. Evaluation results validate Adler’s ability to achieve resilience, high performance and energy efficiency. Using Adler’s application program interfaces (APIs), it is easy to evaluate algorithms for a pure sensor system or a UAV-enabled sensor system. Adler’s source code is available at https://github.com/hku-systems/adler.
Change scheduling based on business impact analysis of change-related risk

In today's enterprises, the alignment of IT service infrastructures to continuously changing business requirements is a key cost driver, all the more so as most severe service disruptions can be attributed to the introduction of changes into the IT service infrastructure. Change management is a disciplined process for introducing required changes with minimum business impact. Considering the number of business processes in an enterprise and the complexity of the dependency network of processes to invoked services, one of the most pressing problems in change management is the risk-aware prioritization and scheduling of vast numbers of service changes. In this paper we introduce a model for estimating the business impact of operational risk resulting from changes. We determine the business impact based on the number and types of business process instances affected by a change-related outage and quantify the business impact in terms of financial loss. The model takes into account the network of dependencies between processes and services, probabilistic change-related downtime, uncertainty in business process demand, and various infrastructural characteristics. Based on the analytical model, we derive decision models aimed at scheduling single or multiple correlated changes with the lowest expected business impact. The models are evaluated using simulations based on industry data.
The two-hop MISO broadcast network with quantized delayed CSIT

We consider a downlink two-hop MISO broadcast network with a 2-antenna source communicating to 2 single-antenna destinations, assisted by 2 single-antenna intermediate relays. We investigate spectrally efficient transmission schemes and their achieved sum degrees of freedom (DoF), with quantized delayed channel state information (CSI) feedback. Assuming Grassmannian vector quantization, we study two feedback scenarios according to the feedback range limit, namely global-range feedback, i.e., the source can receive the feedback signals from both the relays and the destinations, and one-hop-range feedback, i.e., each node can only attain the feedback information of its upcoming hop. We establish a sum DoF lower bound for each case. Our results reveal that when the quantization rate at relays B<sub>R</sub> = α<sub>1</sub>log<sub>2</sub>(SNR) and at destinations B<sub>D</sub> = α<sub>2</sub>log<sub>2</sub>(SNR) for min{α<sub>1</sub>, α<sub>2</sub>} ≥ 1, the optimal sum DoF 4 over 3 can be achieved with finite-rate delayed feedback.
A Genome-Wide Association Study of Female Sexual Dysfunction

Background Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is an important but controversial problem with serious negative impact on women’s quality of life. Data from twin studies have shown a genetic contribution to the development and maintenance of FSD. Methodology/Principal Findings We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on 2.5 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 1,104 female twins (25–81 years of age) in a population-based register and phenotypic data on lifelong sexual functioning. Although none reached conventional genome-wide level of significance (10×-8), we found strongly suggestive associations with the phenotypic dimension of arousal (rs13202860, P = 1.2×10−7; rs1876525, P = 1.2×10−7; and rs13209281 P = 8.3×10−7) on chromosome 6, around 500kb upstream of the locus HTR1E (5-hydroxytryptamine receptor 1E) locus, related to the serotonin brain pathways. We could not replicate previously reported candidate SNPs associated with FSD in the DRD4, 5HT2A and IL-1B loci. Conclusions/Significance We report the first GWAS of FSD symptoms in humans. This has pointed to several “risk alleles” and the implication of the serotonin and GABA pathways. Ultimately, understanding key mechanisms via this research may lead to new FSD treatments and inform clinical practice and developments in psychiatric nosology.
Physiological Fluid Flow Moderates Fibroblast Responses to TGF‐β1

Fibroblasts are the major cellular component of connective tissue and experience mechanical perturbations due to matrix remodelling and interstitial fluid movement. Transforming growth factor β1 (TGF‐β1) can promote differentiation of fibroblasts in vitro to a contractile myofibroblastic phenotype characterised by the presence of α‐smooth muscle actin (α‐SMA) rich stress fibres. To study the role of mechanical stimulation in this process, we examined the response of primary human fibroblasts to physiological levels of fluid movement and its influence on fibroblast differentiation and responses to TGF‐β1. We reported that in both oral and dermal fibroblasts, physiological levels of fluid flow induced widespread changes in gene expression compared to static cultures, including up‐regulation of genes associated with TGFβ signalling and endocytosis. TGF‐β1, activin A and markers of myofibroblast differentiation including α‐SMA and collagen IA1 were also increased by flow but surprisingly the combination of flow and exogenous TGF‐β1 resulted in reduced differentiation. Our findings suggest this may result from enhanced internalisation of caveolin and TGF‐β receptor II. These findings suggest that a) low levels of fluid flow induce myofibroblast differentiation and b) fluid flow antagonises the fibroblast response to pro‐differentiation signals such as TGF‐β1. We propose that this may be a novel mechanism by which mechanical forces buffer responses to chemical signals in vivo, maintaining a context‐specific fibroblast phenotype. J. Cell. Biochem. 118: 878–890, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Identifying functional populations among the interneurons in laminae I-III of the spinal dorsal horn

The spinal dorsal horn receives input from primary afferent axons, which terminate in a modality-specific fashion in different laminae. The incoming somatosensory information is processed through complex synaptic circuits involving excitatory and inhibitory interneurons, before being transmitted to the brain via projection neurons for conscious perception. The dorsal horn is important, firstly because changes in this region contribute to chronic pain states, and secondly because it contains potential targets for the development of new treatments for pain. However, at present, we have only a limited understanding of the neuronal circuitry within this region, and this is largely because of the difficulty in defining functional populations among the excitatory and inhibitory interneurons. The recent discovery of specific neurochemically defined interneuron populations, together with the development of molecular genetic techniques for altering neuronal function in vivo, are resulting in a dramatic improvement in our understanding of somatosensory processing at the spinal level.
Fibroblast contraction occurs on release of tension in attached collagen lattices: Dependency on an organized actin cytoskeleton and serum

The generation of tension in granulation tissue undergoing contraction is believed to be a cell‐mediated event. In this study we used attached collagen lattices as a model system for studying the cellular mechanisms of tension generation by fibroblasts in an extracellular matrix. Fibroblasts in attached collagen lattices developed stress fibers, surface associated fibronectin fibrils, and a fibronexus‐like transmembrane association interconnecting the two structural components. Release of the attached collagen lattice from its points of attachment resulted in a rapid, symmetrical contraction of the collagen lattice. Rapid contraction occurred within the first 10 minutes after release of the lattice from the substratum, with greater than 70% of the contraction occurring within the first 2 minutes. Rapid contraction resulted in a shortening of the elongate fibroblasts and compaction of the stress fibers with their subsequent disappearance from the cell. Cytochalasin D treatment prior to release disrupted the actin cytoskeleton and completely inhibited rapid contraction. The removal of serum prior to release inhibited rapid contraction, while the re‐addition of serum restored rapid contraction. These results demonstrate that fibroblasts can develop tension in an attached collagen lattice and that upon release of tension the fibroblasts undergo contraction resulting in a rapid contraction of the collagen lattice. Fibroblast contraction is dependent upon an organized actin cytoskeleton and is promoted by the presence of serum.
Tagging and Verifying an Amharic News Corpus

The paper describes work on verifying, correcting and retagging a corpus of Amharic news texts. A total of 8715 Amharic news articles had previously been collected from a web site, and part of the corpus (1065 articles; 210,000 words) then morphologically analysed and manually part-of-speech tagged. The tagged corpus has been used as the basis for testing the application to Amharic of machine learning techniques and tools developed for other languages. This process made it possible to spot several errors and inconsistencies in the corpus which has been iteratively refined, cleaned, normalised, split into folds, and partially re-tagged by both automatic and manual means.
Phylodynamics and evolutionary epidemiology of African swine fever p72-CVR genes in Eurasia and Africa

African swine fever (ASF) is a complex infectious disease of swine that constitutes devastating impacts on animal health and the world economy. Here, we investigated the evolutionary epidemiology of ASF virus (ASFV) in Eurasia and Africa using the concatenated gene sequences of the viral protein 72 and the central variable region of isolates collected between 1960 and 2015. We used Bayesian phylodynamic models to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the virus, to identify virus population demographics and to quantify dispersal patterns between host species. Results suggest that ASFV exhibited a significantly high evolutionary rate and population growth through time since its divergence in the 18th century from East Africa, with no signs of decline till recent years. This increase corresponds to the growing pig trade activities between continents during the 19th century, and may be attributed to an evolutionary drift that resulted from either continuous circulation or maintenance of the virus within Africa and Eurasia. Furthermore, results implicate wild suids as the ancestral host species (root state posterior probability = 0.87) for ASFV in the early 1700s in Africa. Moreover, results indicate the transmission cycle between wild suids and pigs is an important cycle for ASFV spread and maintenance in pig populations, while ticks are an important natural reservoir that can facilitate ASFV spread and maintenance in wild swine populations. We illustrated the prospects of phylodynamic methods in improving risk-based surveillance, support of effective animal health policies, and epidemic preparedness in countries at high risk of ASFV incursion.
Nanostructured Thin Film Electrocatalysts for PEM Fuel Cells - A Tutorial on the Fundamental Characteristics and Practical Properties of NSTF Catalysts

This tutorial reviews the key aspects and literature to date around the nanostructured thin film (NSTF) electrocatalyst technology platform for PEM fuel cells and electrolyzers. The NSTF technology is to date the only practical example of an extended surface area catalyst shown to effectively address several of the performance, cost and durability barriers facing cathode and anode catalysts for fuel cell vehicles. The unique physical characteristics of these ultra-thin, low Pt-loaded electrodes also require alternative solutions for water management and impurity tolerance. We present an overview of the NSTF electrocatalysts' four primary differentiating features, to show how their material and basic geometric and material characteristics translate to functional performance factors. We conclude by briefly recounting the historical origins of the NSTF material with the recommendation that the field of ordered organic molecular solids represents a large opportunity for developing tailored support materials for heterogeneous catalysis.
Hybrid Planning in Self-Adaptive Systems

Self-adaptive software systems make decisions at run time that seek to change their behavior in response to faults, changing environments and attacks. Therefore, having an appropriate planning approach to find an adaptation plan is critical to successful self-adaptation. For many realistic systems, ideally one would like to have a planning approach that is both quick and finds an optimal adaptation plan. However, due to the fundamental trade-off between quality and timeliness of planning, often designers have to compromise between an approach that is quick to find a plan and an approach that is slow but finds an optimal plan. To deal with this trade-off, this work proposes a hybrid planning approach that combines more than one planning approach to bring their benefits together.
Isaac Kofi Mensah , Jianing Mi , Cheng Feng Determinants of E-Government Services Adoption from the African Students ’ Perspective

The patronage of e-government services (demand side of e-government) is vital to the successful implementation of egovernment initiatives. The purpose of this study is to explore the predictors determining the willingness of African students in China to adopt and use e-government services. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) will be used as the theoretical foundation for this research. Research instrument will be developed and administered to 500 African students in China. Factors such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and culture will be investigated to determine its significant impact on the willingness to use e-government services. This study is a research in progress. The outcome of this study will provide valuable recommendations to improve the provision of public services through e-government. Keywords—E-government, e-government services, predictors UTAUT.
A Bandwidth Variation Pattern-Differentiated Rate Adaptation for HTTP Adaptive Streaming Over an LTE Cellular Network

Currently, HTTP adaptive streaming (HAS) is the state-of-the-art technology for mobile video streaming. The rate adaptation of HAS has been designed to make a trade-off between two contrasting requirements, i.e., enhancing the quality of a video, and reducing the probability of video freezes, by adaptively switching between different video bitrates during a video playback session. This process becomes more challenging when moving onto an long term evolution (LTE) cellular network due to the unstable nature of the wireless channel. In this paper, we propose the bandwidth variation pattern-differentiated rate adaptation (BVPDRA) algorithm for LTE cellular networks. Unlike prior works, BVPDRA does not strike a balance between the stableness and responsiveness of bitrate switching in the case of bandwidth capacity variations. BVPDRA differentiates between bandwidth variation patterns of the LTE cellular network as either constant bandwidth fluctuations or instantaneous bandwidth hopping. Accordingly, BVPDRA operates with a dual character: for the constant bandwidth fluctuations, BVPDRA performs smoothed bandwidth prediction and conservative rate switching to minimize video quality version oscillations; for the instantaneous bandwidth hopping, BVPDRA performs positive bandwidth prediction and aggressive rate switching to maximize the bandwidth utilization and minimize the risk of playback stalling. We empirically evaluate the performance of BVPDRA on an LTE cellular network testbed. The results demonstrate that BVPDRA achieves a higher average bitrate, and lower rebuffering ratio with a reduced bitrate switching frequency.
Caffeinated and caffeine-free beverages and risk of type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND Consumption of caffeinated beverages such as coffee and tea has been associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). Paradoxically, short-term metabolic studies have shown that caffeine impairs postprandial glycemic control. OBJECTIVE The objective was to prospectively examine the association of caffeinated compared with caffeine-free beverages, including coffee, tea, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), and carbonated artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs), with T2D risk. DESIGN We prospectively observed 74,749 women from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS, 1984-2008) and 39,059 men from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS, 1986-2008) who were free of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer at baseline. RESULTS We documented 7370 incident cases of T2D during 24 y of follow-up in the NHS and 2865 new cases during 22 y of follow-up in the HPFS. After major lifestyle and dietary risk factors were controlled for, caffeinated and caffeine-free SSB intake was significantly associated with a higher risk of T2D in the NHS (RR per serving: 13% for caffeinated SSBs, 11% for caffeine-free SSBs; P < 0.05) and in the HPFS (RR per serving: 16% for caffeinated SSBs, 23% for caffeine-free SSBs; P < 0.01). Only caffeine-free ASB intake in NHS participants was associated with a higher risk of T2D (RR: 6% per serving; P < 0.001). Conversely, the consumption of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee was associated with a lower risk of T2D [RR per serving: 8% for both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee in the NHS (P < 0.0001) and 4% for caffeinated and 7% for decaffeinated coffee in the HPFS (P < 0.01)]. Only caffeinated tea was associated with a lower T2D risk among NHS participants (RR per serving: 5%; P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION Irrespective of the caffeine content, SSB intake was associated with a higher risk of T2D, and coffee intake was associated with a lower risk of T2D.