Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bit interleaved coded modulation with space time block codes for OFDM systems

Wireless systems often implement one or more types of diversity in order to achieve reliable communication. Different types of diversity techniques such as temporal, frequency, code, and spatial have been developed. Besides the destructive multipath nature of wireless channels, frequency selective channels pose intersymbol interference (ISI) while offering frequency diversity for well designed systems. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) combats ISI very well by converting the frequency selective channel into parallel flat fading channels. On the other hand, bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) has a high performance for flat fading Rayleigh channels. The combination of BICM and OFDM exploits the diversity that is inherited within frequency selective fading channels. Hence, BICM-OFDM is a very effective technique to provide diversity gain. , employing frequency diversity. Orthogonal space-time block codes (STBC) make use of spatial diversity by coding in space and time. Thus, diversity in frequency and space can be taken advantage of by combining BICM-OFDM and STBC. We show and quantify both analytically and via simulations that, for frequency selective fading channels, BICM-STBC-OFDM systems can fully and successfully exploit frequency and space diversity to the maximum available extent.
A Fuzzy System for Content Based Retrieval

Content based retrieval in multimedia databases has recently gained much interest. Image data is the most commonly used multimedia data type. Various content based retrieval systems for image data have been developed based on image features such as texture, color, edge, and shape that can be extracted from the image. Three major inherent characteristics of the existing content based retrieval systems are imprecision, a large number of feature values and the user's preferences. Existing content based retrieval systems deal with \imprecision" providing partial information through user interfaces such as \retrieve all the images that have color similar to this". Moreover, these systems, developed on visual properties, lack of formal models. Moreover, these systems deal with all possible values of visual properties such as color. The visual properties are extracted from the image and stored into the database as an indexable summary information. The users are unable to express their needs in terms of such a large feature values. This leads to a paradigm of \query by example image". Furthermore, these systems provide a user interface to deal with the user's preferences. The user provides his/her preferences to the feature such as 0.8 to color and 0.2 to shape through the user interface. However, it is not easy for the user to provide preferences in terms of numeric values. To solve the problems, the paper proposes a fuzzy system for content based retrieval. The system models imprecision using fuzzy data model, and limits the values of visual properties within the range of human perception. Moreover, the proposed system allows users to provide their preferences using linguistic terms. Thus the system supports image retrieval based on the values of visual properties connned within the range of human perception using a fuzzy linguistic query language.
Performance Analysis of Dual-Hop AF Systems With Interference in Nakagami-$m$  Fading Channels

In this letter, we investigate the performance of dual-hop channel state information-assisted amplify-and-forward relaying systems over Nakagami-m fading channels in the presence of multiple interferers at the relay. Assuming integer fading parameter m, we derive closed-form expressions for the exact outage probability and accurate approximation for symbol error rate of the system. Furthermore, we look into the asymptotical high signal to noise ratio regime, and characterize the diversity order achieved by the system. All the analytical results are validated via Monte Carlo simulations.
A new approach in dynamic traveling salesman problem: a hybrid of ant colony optimization and descending gradient

Nowadays swarm intelligence-based algorithms are being used widely to optimize the dynamic traveling salesman problem (DTSP). In this paper, we have used mixed method of Ant Colony Optimization (AOC)and gradient descent to optimize DTSP which differs with ACO algorithm in evaporation rate and innovative data. This approach prevents premature convergence and scape from local optimum spots and also makes it possible to find better solutions for algorithm. In this paper, we are going to offer gradient descent and ACO algorithm which in comparison to some former methods it shows that algorithm has significantly improved routes optimization.
Reducing Congestion for Routing Algorithms in Opportunistic Networks with Socially-Aware Node Behavior Prediction

Since mobile devices nowadays have become ubiquitous, several types of networks formed over such devices have been proposed. One such approach is opportunistic networking, which is based on a store-carry-and-forward paradigm, where nodes store data and carry it until they reach a suitable node for forwarding. The problem in such networks is how to decide which the next hop will be, since nodes do not have a global view of the network. An inefficient opportunistic routing algorithm can lead to the congestion of a network, because same groups of nodes send messages between each other, without the destination actually receiving the data (or receiving it with a high delay). We describe here a routing algorithm for opportunistic networks that avoids congestion and the overcrowding of nodes, by routing messages only to nodes that have a high chance of reaching a message's destination. This is performed with the use of social networks and node behavior prediction. We show that our algorithm outperforms existing algorithms such as BUBBLE Rap in terms of delivery cost and hit rate, as well as the rate of congestion introduced in the networks.
Firing characteristics of deep layer neurons in prefrontal cortex in rats performing spatial working memory tasks.

Single cells were recorded with 'tetrodes' in regions of the rat medial prefrontal cortex, including those which are targets of hippocampal afferents, while rats were performing three different behavioral tasks: (i) an eight-arm radial maze, spatial working memory task, (ii) a figure-eight track, delayed spatial alternation task, and (iii) a random food search task in a square chamber. Among 187 recorded units, very few exhibited any evidence of place-specific firing on any of the behavioral tasks, except to the extent that different spatial locations were related to distinct phases of the task. Furthermore, no prefrontal unit showed unambiguous spatially dependent delay activity that might mediate working memory for spatial locations. Rather, the cells exhibited diverse correlates that were generally associated with the behavioral requirements of performing the task. This included firing related to intertrial intervals, onset or end of trials, selection of specific arms on the eight-arm radial maze, delay periods, approach to or departure from goals, and selection of paths on the figure-eight track. Although a small number of cells showed similar behavioral correlates across tasks, the majority of cells showed no consistent correlate when recorded across multiple tasks. Furthermore, some units did not exhibit altered firing patterns in any of the three tasks, while others showed changes in firing that were not consistently related to specific behaviors or task components. These results are in agreement with previous lesion and behavioral studies in rats that suggest a prefrontal cortical role in encoding 'rules' (i.e. structural features) or behavioral sequences within a task but not in encoding allocentric spatial information. Given that the hippocampal projection to this cortical region is capable of undergoing LTP, our data lead to the hypothesis that the role of this projection is not to impose spatial representations upon prefrontal activity, but to provide a mechanism for learning the spatial context in which particular behaviors are appropriate.
The influence of prostate volume on cancer detection in the Chinese population

In western populations, prostate volume (PV) has been proven to be one of the strongest predictors of detecting prostate cancer (PCa) in biopsies. We performed this study in a biopsy cohort, to evaluate associations among the prostate volume, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and PCa detection in the Chinese population. Between the years, 2007–13, 1486 men underwent prostate biopsy at Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. The study population was divided into two groups for analysis according to total PSA (tPSA) range (4 ng ml−1 < tPSA ≤20 ng ml−1 and tPSA > 20 ng ml−1). PV, age, tPSA, digital rectal examination (DRE) and transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) results were also included in the analysis. Although the positive biopsy rates decreased in both tPSA range groups, the downtrend was more pronounced in the 4 ng ml−1 < tPSA ≤20 ng ml−1 group; therefore, we focused on 853 men in this group with increasing PV. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, only DRE was found to be associated with PCa in four PV groups (P < 0.05) and tPSA did not show a good predictive ability when PV exceeded 50 ml (P > 0.05). Further, it may suggest that with increasing PV, the cancer detection rate decreased in men with different tPSA, DRE and TRUS nodule statuses (all P values for trends were <0.001). Our study indicates that in tPSA ranging from 4 to 20 ng ml−1, the use of PV ranges of 0–35 ml, 35–50 ml and > 50 ml might be taken into consideration for the biopsy decision-making in the Chinese population.
Proactive Service Discovery in Pervasive Environments

Pervasive environments are characterized by rich and dynamic context, where users need to be continuously informed about services relevant to their current context. Implicit discovery requests, triggered by changes of user context, available services, or user preferences are prevalent in such environments. This paper proposes a proactive service discovery approach for pervasive environments to address these implicit requests. Services and user preferences are described by a formal context model, which effectively captures the dynamics of context and the relationship between services and users. Based on the model, we propose a proactive discovery algorithm to continuously present the most relevant services to the user in response to changes of context, services or user preferences. Numeric coding methods are applied in different phases of the algorithm to improve its performance. A proactive service discovery system is proposed and the context model is grounded in a smart home environment. Experimental results show that our approach can efficiently provide the user with up-to-date information about useful services.
Promyelocytic leukemia (PML) gene expression is a prognostic factor in ampullary cancer patients.

BACKGROUND Promyelocytic leukemia (PML) tumor suppressor gene plays a key role in acute PML pathogenesis but its involvement in pathogenesis and prognosis of solid cancers has not been defined yet. PATIENTS AND METHODS In all, 62 ampullary adenocarcinoma patients who underwent curative surgery between 1996 and 2005 were included. Expression analysis of PML was carried out by immunohistochemical staining and correlated with disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). RESULTS In 24 tumor specimens (38.7%), PML was classified as absent, in 16 (25.8%) as focally expressed and in 22 (35.5%) as diffusely expressed. By univariate analysis, DFS was significantly influenced by pathological T stage (P=0.03), lymph nodal involvement (P=0.002), and PML expression (P=0.001). DFS in patients without PML expression was 28.0 months versus 45.1 and 75.5 for patients with focal and diffuse expression, respectively. OS in the group of patients without PML expression, with focal expression, and with diffuse expression was 40, 48, and 77 months, respectively (P=0.002). By a multivariate analysis, PML expression was the strongest prognostic factor for DFS (P=0.003) and the only statically significant prognostic factor for OS (P=0.009). CONCLUSIONS Our preliminary data suggest PML as a novel prognostic tool for ampullary cancer patients.
Emotional adaptive training for speaker verification

Speaker verification suffers from significant performance degradation with emotion variation. In a previous study, we have demonstrated that an adaptation approach based on MLLR/CMLLR can provide a significant performance improvement for verification on emotional speech. This paper follows this direction and presents an emotional adaptive training (EAT) approach. This approach iteratively estimates the emotion-dependent CMLLR transformations and re-trains the speaker models with the transformed speech, which therefore can make use of emotional enrollment speech to train a stronger speaker model. This is similar to the speaker adaptive training (SAT) in speech recognition. The experiments are conducted on an emotional speech database which involves speech recordings of 30 speakers in 5 emotions. The results demonstrate that the EAT approach provides significant performance improvements over the baseline system where the neutral enrollment data are used to train the speaker models and the emotional test utterances are verified directly. The EAT also outperforms another two emotionadaptation approaches in a significant way: (1) the CMLLR-based approach where the speaker models are trained with the neutral enrollment speech and the emotional test utterances are transformed by CMLLR in verification; (2) the MAP-based approach where the emotional enrollment data are used to train emotion-dependent speaker models and the emotional utterances are verified based on the emotion-matched models.
Ultrasonic trapping in capillaries for trace-amount biomedical analysis

A longitudinal hemispherical standing-wave ultrasonic trap for size-selective separation of microspheres in small-diameter capillaries is described. The trap utilizes the competition between acoustic radiation forces and viscous drag forces on spheres suspended in a liquid inside 20– 75-mm-diam fused silica capillaries. Experiments performed on 3.0and 4.7mm-diam latex spheres demonstrate the principles of trapping and verify the theoretically calculated size-dependent forces on the spheres. The spheres are detected by the use of laser-induced fluorescence. The goal is to use the trap for separation and ultrahigh-sensitivity detection of trace amounts of proteins and other macromolecules containing two antigenic sites, by binding the target molecule with high specificity to antibody-coated latex spheres. © 2001 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1376412 #
Moral Identity and Its Links to Ethical Ideology and Civic Engagement

The study explored the role of moral identity (internalization and symbolization) in the civic engagement (attitude and behaviour) of youth through ethical ideology (idealism). A total of 217 individuals (M = 22.5, SD = 3.4) comprising of 104 girls and 113 boys completed three scales, namely, moral identity scale, ethics position questionnaire (EPQ) and civic engagement scale. The results showed that moral identity internalization significantly predicted civic engagement attitude and moral identity symbolization significantly predicted civic engagement behaviour. Furthermore, idealism partially mediated the relationship between moral identity and civic engagement (attitude).
When and where next: individual mobility prediction

The ability to predict when an individual mobile user will leave his current location and where we will move next enables a myriad of qualitatively different Location-Based Services (LBSes) and applications. To this extent, the present paper proposes a statistical method that explicitly performs these related temporal and spatial prediction tasks in three continuous, sequential phases. In the first phase, the method continuously extracts grid-based staytime statistics from the GPS coordinate stream of the location-aware mobile device of the user. In the second phase, from the grid-based staytime statistics, the method periodically extracts and manages regions that the user frequently visits. Finally, in the third phase, from the stream of region-visits, the method continuously estimates parameters for an inhomogeneous continuous-time Markov model and in a continuous fashion predicts when the user will leave his current region and where he will move next. Empirical evaluations, using a number of long, real world trajectories from the Geo-Life data set, show that the proposed method outperforms a state-of-the-art, rule-based trajectory predictor both in terms of temporal and spatial prediction accuracy.
The Effects of Comprehensive Warm-Up Programs on Proprioception, Static and Dynamic Balance on Male Soccer Players

Purpose The study investigated the effects of FIFA 11+ and HarmoKnee, both being popular warm-up programs, on proprioception, and on the static and dynamic balance of professional male soccer players. Methods Under 21 year-old soccer players (n = 36) were divided randomly into 11+, HarmoKnee and control groups. The programs were performed for 2 months (24 sessions). Proprioception was measured bilaterally at 30°, 45° and 60° knee flexion using the Biodex Isokinetic Dynamometer. Static and dynamic balances were evaluated using the stork stand test and Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT), respectively. Results The proprioception error of dominant leg significantly decreased from pre- to post-test by 2.8% and 1.7% in the 11+ group at 45° and 60° knee flexion, compared to 3% and 2.1% in the HarmoKnee group. The largest joint positioning error was in the non-dominant leg at 30° knee flexion (mean error value = 5.047), (p<0.05). The static balance with the eyes opened increased in the 11+ by 10.9% and in the HarmoKnee by 6.1% (p<0.05). The static balance with eyes closed significantly increased in the 11+ by 12.4% and in the HarmoKnee by 17.6%. The results indicated that static balance was significantly higher in eyes opened compared to eyes closed (p = 0.000). Significant improvements in SEBT in the 11+ (12.4%) and HarmoKnee (17.6%) groups were also found. Conclusion Both the 11+ and HarmoKnee programs were proven to be useful warm-up protocols in improving proprioception at 45° and 60° knee flexion as well as static and dynamic balance in professional male soccer players. Data from this research may be helpful in encouraging coaches or trainers to implement the two warm-up programs in their soccer teams.
Advanced models of cellular genetic algorithms evaluated on SAT

Cellular genetic algorithms (cGAs) are mainly characterized by their spatially decentralized population, in which individuals can only interact with their neighbors. In this work, we study the behavior of a large number of different cGAs when solving the well-known 3-SAT problem. These cellular algorithms differ in the policy of individuals update and the population shape, since these two features affect the balance between exploration and exploitation of the algorithm. We study in this work both synchronous and asynchronous cGAs, having static and dynamically adaptive shapes for the population. Our main conclusion is that the proposed adaptive cGAs outperform other more traditional genetic algorithms for a well known benchmark of 3-SAT.
Qualitatively predicting acetylation and methylation areas in DNA sequences.

Eukaryotic genomes are packaged by the wrapping of DNA around histone octamers to form nucleosomes. Nucleosome occupancy, acetylation, and methylation, which have a major impact on all nuclear processes involving DNA, have been recently mapped across the yeast genome using chromatin immunoprecipitation and DNA microarrays. However, this experimental protocol is laborious and expensive. Moreover, experimental methods often produce noisy results. In this paper, we introduce a computational approach to the qualitative prediction of nucleosome occupancy, acetylation, and methylation areas in DNA sequences. Our method uses support vector machines to discriminate between DNA areas with high and low relative occupancy, acetylation, or methylation, and rank k-gram features based on their support for these DNA modifications. Experimental results on the yeast genome reveal genetic area preferences of nucleosome occupancy, acetylation, and methylation that are consistent with previous studies. Supplementary files are available from http://www.jaist. ac.jp/~tran/nucleosome/.
Motion compression applied to guidance of a mobile teleoperator

Telepresence aims at giving a human user the impression of being present in a remote environment. However, the user is actually situated in a user environment and his motion is tracked. A mobile teleoperator in the remote environment replicates this motion. The user can thus control the mobile teleoperator's locomotion by walking. A stereo-camera system mounted on the mobile teleoperator constantly records live camera images and transfers them to the user environment, where they are presented to the user on a head-mounted display. This paper presents a long distance experiment, in which a mobile teleoperator was controlled over a standard Internet connection by natural locomotion. Without further processing of the user's motion data, however, only exploration of a remote environment of the same size or smaller than the user environment is possible. As this is not desirable, we use motion compression, an optimal nonlinear transformation of the user's path. This algorithm allows controlling free motion in an arbitrarily large target environment from a limited user environment.
Serum lipocalin-2 levels are positively associated with not only total body fat but also visceral fat area in Chinese men

AbstractSerum lipocalin-2 (LCN2) plays an important role in the regulation of the obesity-associated dysmetabolic state and cardiovascular disease. However, relatively little is known about the relationship between serum LCN2 levels and body fat content and distribution. We examined the associations of total body fat content and abdominal fat distribution with serum LCN2 levels in Chinese men.The study was based on a cross-sectional analysis of data for 1203 Chinese men aged 22 to 78 years from the Shanghai Obesity Study. Body fat percentage (fat%) was assessed by bioelectrical impedance analysis, and magnetic resonance imaging was adopted to quantify the visceral fat area (VFA) and subcutaneous fat area (SFA). Serum levels of LCN2 were measured with a standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method.Subjects with a high fat% had higher serum LCN2 levels than those with a normal fat% regardless of their body mass index category (<25 and ≥25 kg/m2). The frequency of isolated high VFA was increased with increasing quintiles of serum LCN2 levels (P < 0.001), but the frequency of isolated high SFA did not differ between quintiles of serum LCN2 levels. A trend of increasing VFA was observed with increasing serum LCN2 levels (P < 0.001). Multiple stepwise regression analysis showed that VFA was positively associated with serum LCN2 levels, independent of overall obesity and other confounding factors (standardized &bgr; = 0.082, P = 0.008). Serum LCN2 levels are positively correlated with body fat content and independently associated with VFA in Chinese men.