Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Applications of Entropy in Finance: A Review

Although the concept of entropy is originated from thermodynamics, its concepts and relevant principles, especially the principles of maximum entropy and minimum cross-entropy, have been extensively applied in finance. In this paper, we review the concepts and principles of entropy, as well as their applications in the field of finance, especially in portfolio selection and asset pricing. Furthermore, we review the effects of the applications of entropy and compare them with other traditional and new methods.
A Boltzmann-Based Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for a General Resource Scheduling Model

Most researchers employed common functional models when managing scheduling problems with controllable processing times. However, in many complicated manufacturing systems with a high diversity of jobs, these functional resource models fail to reflect their specific characteristics. To fulfill these requirements, we apply a more general model, the discrete model. Traditional functional models can be viewed as special cases of such model. In this paper, the discrete model is implemented on a problem of minimizing the weighted resource allocation subject to a common deadline on a single machine. By reducing the problem to a partition problem, we demonstrate that it is NP-complete, which addresses the difficult issue of the guarantee of both the solution quality and time cost. In order to tackle the problem, we develop an estimation of distribution algorithm based on an approximation of the Boltzmann distribution. The approximation strategy represents a tradeoff between complexity and solution accuracy. The results of the experiments conducted on benchmarks show that, compared with other alternative approaches, the proposed algorithm has competitive behavior, obtaining 74 best solutions out of 90 instances.
Bioinformatics and Systems Biology: bridging the gap between heterogeneous student backgrounds

Teaching students with very diverse backgrounds can be extremely challenging. This article uses the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology MSc in Amsterdam as a case study to describe how the knowledge gap for students with heterogeneous backgrounds can be bridged. We show that a mix in backgrounds can be turned into an advantage by creating a stimulating learning environment for the students. In the MSc Programme, conversion classes help to bridge differences between students, by mending initial knowledge and skill gaps. Mixing students from different backgrounds in a group to solve a complex task creates an opportunity for the students to reflect on their own abilities. We explain how a truly interdisciplinary approach to teaching helps students of all backgrounds to achieve the MSc end terms. Moreover, transferable skills obtained by the students in such a mixed study environment are invaluable for their later careers.
The Norwegian Internet Voting Protocol: A new Instantiation

The Norwegian government ran trials of internet remote voting during the 2011 municipal elections and the 2013 parliamentary elections. From a simplified version of the voting protocol used there, the essential cryptographic operations of the voting protocol has been put together into a cryptosystem in which one can build the voting protocol on top of. This paper proposes a new instantiation of the underlying cryptosystem, improving our confidence in the security of the cryptosystem. The new instantiation is mostly similar to a previously defined instantiation, but allows parts of the security proof to be significantly improved.
Combined (identity-based) public key schemes

Consider a scenario in which parties use a public key encryption scheme and a signature scheme with a single public key/private key pair—so the private key sk is used for both signing and decrypting. Such a simultaneous use of a key is in general considered poor cryptographic practice, but from an efficiency point of view looks attractive. We offer security notions to analyze such violations of key separation. For both the identityand the non-identity-based setting, we show that— although being insecure in general—for schemes of interest the resulting combined (identity-based) public key scheme can offer strong security guarantees.
Study the structural and optical behaviour of polyaniline/ZrO2 nanocomposites

In nanoscience, hybrid material based on polymer and nanoparticles are of great interest because of much improved properties of components. Polymers are of enormous interest because of their various properties like flexibility, low weight and easy processing. Here, we studied the influence of ZrO2 nanoparticles on the structural and optical properties of Polyaniline (PANI). ZrO2 mixed with PANI, improve its structural and optical properties. XRD studies reveal that ZrO2 nanoparticles exist in the tetragonal phase in ZrO2/PANI nanocomposites. UV-Vis spectroscopic studies have been carried out to understand the presence of various energy levels and their involvement in absorbance of light. In PANI nanocomposites, aniline monomer attach with ZrO2 nanoparticles through p-p stacking interaction, Vander waal force and hydrogen bonding interaction.In nanoscience, hybrid material based on polymer and nanoparticles are of great interest because of much improved properties of components. Polymers are of enormous interest because of their various properties like flexibility, low weight and easy processing. Here, we studied the influence of ZrO2 nanoparticles on the structural and optical properties of Polyaniline (PANI). ZrO2 mixed with PANI, improve its structural and optical properties. XRD studies reveal that ZrO2 nanoparticles exist in the tetragonal phase in ZrO2/PANI nanocomposites. UV-Vis spectroscopic studies have been carried out to understand the presence of various energy levels and their involvement in absorbance of light. In PANI nanocomposites, aniline monomer attach with ZrO2 nanoparticles through p-p stacking interaction, Vander waal force and hydrogen bonding interaction.
Particle-based anisotropic surface meshing

This paper introduces a particle-based approach for anisotropic surface meshing. Given an input polygonal mesh endowed with a Riemannian metric and a specified number of vertices, the method generates a metric-adapted mesh. The main idea consists of mapping the anisotropic space into a higher dimensional isotropic one, called "embedding space". The vertices of the mesh are generated by uniformly sampling the surface in this higher dimensional embedding space, and the sampling is further regularized by optimizing an energy function with a quasi-Newton algorithm. All the computations can be re-expressed in terms of the dot product in the embedding space, and the Jacobian matrices of the mappings that connect different spaces. This transform makes it unnecessary to explicitly represent the coordinates in the embedding space, and also provides all necessary expressions of energy and forces for efficient computations. Through energy optimization, it naturally leads to the desired anisotropic particle distributions in the original space. The triangles are then generated by computing the Restricted Anisotropic Voronoi Diagram and its dual Delaunay triangulation. We compare our results qualitatively and quantitatively with the state-of-the-art in anisotropic surface meshing on several examples, using the standard measurement criteria.
Multiscale modelling approach to determine the specific heat of cementitious materials

Abstract A hierarchical multi-scale modelling of cement-based materials devoted here to the determination of the mechanical properties and specific heat of this kind of materials is presented in this paper. This multiscale modelling approach is used to study cementitious materials from nanoscale to mesoscale. Despite the tremendous increase in the multi-scale investigations of cement-based materials, the physical origins of their thermal properties at the nanoscale and their upscaling to the macroscopic properties are still little studied. In this paper, through the investigation of the vibrational states of the unit cells of the various phases of the Hardened Cement Paste as well as their energy phonons using the Debye model, we determine the specific heat of these phases. Then the use of the composite spheres assemblage model enables us to calculate this property for a w/c = 0.45 cement paste and the corresponding mortar (870 J/kg/K for the well-hydrated cement paste, and 742 J/kg/K for the mortar).
A Novel Downlink Coordination Scheme for CoMP SU-MIMO

Coordinated multiple point transmission/reception (CoMP) is considered as an effective approach for inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) in LTE-A, which can improve cell-edge and average cell throughputs. In this paper, a novel downlink coordination scheme consisting of two steps was proposed for CoMP single-user multi-input multi-output (CoMP SU-MIMO). Firstly, combining the conventional network-defined method with UE-specific one, we proposed a CoMP Cooperation Set (CCS) selection method which could provide most of the achievable throughput gain with lower complexity. Secondly, a resource allocation scheme was provided for the coordination among overlapping CCSs, by inheriting the idea of fair treatment for cell-center users and cell-edge users and conquering the limitation of the conventional schemes which could be only used for non-overlapping CCS method. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme could increase the system throughput significantly as well as improve the fairness between cell-center users and cell-edge users compared with the existing schemes.
Hysteresis Modeling of Piezoelectric Actuators and Feed-Forward Compensation Algorithm Research

Piezoelectric ceramic actuators have wide application prospects in precision positioning and measurement technology, but its hysteresis characteristics cause a lot of restrictions to their applications. To solve this problem, this paper summary the hysteresis characteristic of piezoelectric ceramics, and collect the data through the experiment, analyze and research the piezoelectric ceramic hysteresis curves at different excitation signal effect, and the fitting curve is got based on the experimental data in order to establish hysteresis model of piezoelectric ceramic actuators by using of the curve fitting toolbox of MATLAB. Then the inverse model is obtained and the inverse compensation feed-forward control algorithm is proposed. The experiment results show that the piezoelectric ceramic actuators meet the basic linear relationship between the input voltage signal and the output displacement, and eliminate hysteresis nonlinear of the piezoelectric actuators.
Arterial Smooth Muscle Mitochondria Amplify Hydrogen Peroxide Microdomains Functionally Coupled to L-Type Calcium Channels.

RATIONALE Mitochondria are key integrators of convergent intracellular signaling pathways. Two important second messengers modulated by mitochondria are calcium and reactive oxygen species. To date, coherent mechanisms describing mitochondrial integration of calcium and oxidative signaling in arterial smooth muscle are incomplete. OBJECTIVE To address and add clarity to this issue, we tested the hypothesis that mitochondria regulate subplasmalemmal calcium and hydrogen peroxide microdomain signaling in cerebral arterial smooth muscle. METHODS AND RESULTS Using an image-based approach, we investigated the impact of mitochondrial regulation of L-type calcium channels on subcellular calcium and reactive oxygen species signaling microdomains in isolated arterial smooth muscle cells. Our single-cell observations were then related experimentally to intact arterial segments and to living animals. We found that subplasmalemmal mitochondrial amplification of hydrogen peroxide microdomain signaling stimulates L-type calcium channels, and that this mechanism strongly impacts the functional capacity of the vasoconstrictor angiotensin II. Importantly, we also found that disrupting this mitochondrial amplification mechanism in vivo normalized arterial function and attenuated the hypertensive response to systemic endothelial dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS From these observations, we conclude that mitochondrial amplification of subplasmalemmal calcium and hydrogen peroxide microdomain signaling is a fundamental mechanism regulating arterial smooth muscle function. As the principle components involved are fairly ubiquitous and positioning of mitochondria near the plasma membrane is not restricted to arterial smooth muscle, this mechanism could occur in many cell types and contribute to pathological elevations of intracellular calcium and increased oxidative stress associated with many diseases.
Pathogenicity and Commensalism Recognition Contribute to Fungal Differential IL-17 Production and Mannan

Inthis study,wepresent evidenceofdifferentialTh17responsesinhumanmonocyte-derived dendriticcells exposedtothepathogenic Candida albicans or the nonpathogenic Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We use different forms of the microorganisms, cells, hyphae, and spores, as a toolbox to dissect the role of surface mannan in the fungal immune response. In contrast to the S. cerevisiae yeast cell-induced Th1 response, dendritic cells stimulated with spores or C. albicans hyphae induce cellular responses shifted toward Th17 differentiation. The differential recognition of speciﬁc mannan structures is the master regulator of the discrimination between harmful and harmless fungi. The switch between spores and yeast is crucial for the commensalism of S. cerevisiae and depends on the use of a different receptor repertoire. Understanding the role of cell wall recognition during infection might lead to understanding the boundaries between safety and pathogenicity. The Journal of Immunology , 2010, 184: 000–000.
Multimedia for Art ReTrieval (M4ART)

The prototype of an online Multimedia for Art ReTrieval (M4ART) system is introduced, which provides entrance to the digitized collection of the National Gallery of the Netherlands (the Rijksmuseum). The current online system of the Rijksmuseum is text-based and requires expert knowledge concerning the work searched for, else it fails in retrieving it. M4ART extends this system with querying by an example image that can be uploaded to the system or can be selected through browsing the collection. The global color distribution and (optionally) a set of texture features of the example image are extracted and compared with those of the images in the collection. Hence, based on either text or content-based features, the collection can be queried. Moreover, the matching process of M4ART can be inspected. With the latter feature, M4ART not only integrates the means to inspect collections by both experts and laypersons in one system but also provides the means to let the user to understand its working. These characteristics make M4ART a unique system to access, enhance, and retrieve the knowledge available in digitized art collections.
Contextual recognition of head gestures

Head pose and gesture offer several key conversational grounding cues and are used extensively in face-to-face interaction among people. We investigate how dialog context from an embodied conversational agent (ECA) can improve visual recognition of user gestures. We present a recognition framework which (1) extracts contextual features from an ECA's dialog manager, (2) computes a prediction of head nod and head shakes, and (3) integrates the contextual predictions with the visual observation of a vision-based head gesture recognizer. We found a subset of lexical, punctuation and timing features that are easily available in most ECA architectures and can be used to learn how to predict user feedback. Using a discriminative approach to contextual prediction and multi-modal integration, we were able to improve the performance of head gesture detection even when the topic of the test set was significantly different than the training set.
Effects of Nucleus Pulposus on Nerve Root Neural Activity, Mechanosensitivity, Axonal Morphology, and Sodium Channel Expression

Study Design. This study analyzed the effects of autografted nucleus pulposus on nerve root axon morphology, neurophysiologic function, and sodium channel expression. Objectives. To investigate the chronic effects of the epidural implantation of nucleus pulposus on nerve root morphology, neural activity, ectopic discharge, mechanosensitivity, and sodium channel expression. Summary of Background Data. It has been reported that ectopic discharges were recorded antidromically from sural nerve on compressing nucleus pulposus exposed spinal nerves. However, it is not clear what the effects of nucleus pulposus are on ectopic discharges recorded directly from the spinal nerve roots. It is also not clear what the effects of nucleus pulposus are on the threshold pressure to provoke ectopic discharges in the spinal nerves. Sodium channel content increases in remodeling axons after nerve injury, but it is not clear what the effects of nucleus pulposus are on sodium channel expression in spinal nerve. Methods. Forty-six male Sprague-Dawley rats were used, 20 in a nucleus pulposus-implanted group, 18 in a fat-implanted group, and 8 in a normal group. Fresh autografted nucleus pulposus or fat tissue was implanted into the dorsal epidural space at the L4–L5 disc level. On the 7th, 21st, or 42nd day, neurophysiologic recordings were made to determine nerve root response to compression. Nerve roots were then harvested to determine sodium channel protein concentration and histologic changes in the nerve root. The correlations between sodium channel density and neural activity and mechanosensitivity of dorsal root were analyzed statistically. Results. Ectopic discharge rate was higher in nucleus pulposus 7-day group. Threshold pressure to evoke ectopic discharges was lower in the nucleus pulposus 7-day group, and higher in the nucleus pulposus 42-day group compared to the normal group. Sodium channel protein density increased in the nucleus pulposus 7-day and nucleus pulposus 21-day group compared to normal nerve. Sodium channel density changes were not correlated to threshold pressure. Ectopic discharge rate increased with increase of sodium channel density in the nerve roots. The number of axons with neuropathy increased in the nucleus pulposus 7-day and 21-day groups. Conclusions. Acute exposure of nerve root to nucleus pulposus resulted in increased number of axons with neuropathy, higher intensity of ectopic discharges on compression, and nerve mechanosensitization. Chronic exposure resulted in mechanical desensitization. Changes of sodium channel density were correlated to ectopic discharge rate.
A role of cellular prion protein in programming T‐cell cytokine responses in disease

The cellular prion protein (PrPC) is widely expressed in neural and non‐neural tissues, but its function is unknown. Elucidation of the part played by PrPC in adaptive immunity has been a particular conundrum: increased expression of cell surface PrPChas been documented during T‐cell activation, yet the functional significance of this activation remains unclear, with conflicting data on the effects of Prnp gene knockout on various parameters of T‐cell immunity. We show here that Prnp mRNA is highly inducible within 8‐24 h of T‐cell activation, with surface protein levels rising from 24 h. When measured in parallel with CD69 and CD25, PrPC is a late activation antigen. Consistent with its up‐regulation being a late activation event, PrP deletion did not alter T‐cell‐antigen presenting cell conjugate formation. Most important, activated PrP0/0T cells demonstrated much reduced induction of several T helper (Th) 1, Th2, and Th17 cytokines, whereas others, such as TNF‐α and IL‐9, were unaffected. These changes were investigated in the context of an autoimmune model and a bacterial challenge model. In experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, PrP‐knockout mice showed enhanced disease in the face of reduced IL‐17 responses. In a streptococcal sepsis model, this constrained cytokine program was associated with poorer local control of infection, although with reduced bacteremia. The findings indicate that PrPC is a potentially important molecule influencing T‐cell activation and effector function. —Ingram, R.J., Isaacs, J.D. , Kaur, G. , Lowther, D.E. , Reynolds, C.J., Boyton,R. J., Collinge, J., Jackson, G.S. , Altmann, D.M. A role of cellular prion protein in programming T‐cell cytokine responses in disease. FASEB J. 23, 1672–1684 (2009)
Wireless RF-based energy harvesting for two-way relaying systems

In this paper, we investigate the Energy Harvesting (EH)-based two-way relaying system using Amplify-and-Forward (AF) and Decode-and-Forward (DF) strategies. The relay is considered as an EH node that harvests the received Radio Frequency (RF) signal and uses this harvested energy to forward the information. Two relaying protocols based on Time Switching (TS) and Power Splitting (PS) receiver architectures are proposed to enable EH and information processing at the relay. Analytical throughput expressions are derived and optimized for both protocols. The goal is to find the optimal TS and PS ratios that maximize the total throughput Numerical results illustrate the performance of TS and PS protocols for different strategies, and show that at high signal-to-noise ratio, PS is superior to TS, and AF is superior to DF in terms of achievable sum-rate.
Using opcode sequences in single-class learning to detect unknown malware

Malware is any type of malicious code that has the potential to harm a computer or network. The volume of malware is growing at a faster rate every year and poses a serious global security threat. Although signature-based detection is the most widespread method used in commercial antivirus programs, it consistently fails to detect new malware. Supervised machine-learning models have been used to address this issue. However, the use of supervised learning is limited because it needs a large amount of malicious code and benign software to be labelled first. In this study, the authors propose a new method that uses single-class learning to detect unknown malware families. This method is based on examining the frequencies of the appearance of opcode sequences to build a machine-learning classifier using only one set of labelled instances within a specific class of either malware or legitimate software. The authors performed an empirical study that shows that this method can reduce the effort of labelling software while maintaining high accuracy.