Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Modified Sample Entropy to Characterize Aging-Associated Microvascular Dysfunction

Cutaneous microvascular function can be assessed by skin blood flow (SBF) response to thermal stimuli. Usually, the activities of the regulatory mechanisms are quantified by means of spectral analysis of the response. However, spectral measures are unable to characterize the nonlinear dynamics of SBF signal. Sample entropy (SampEn) is a commonly used nonlinear measure of the degree of regularity of time series. However, SampEn value depends on the relationship between the frequency of the studied dynamics and sampling rate. Hence, when time series data are oversampled, SampEn may give misleading results. We modified the definition of SampEn by including a lag between successive data points of the vectors to be compared to address the oversampled issue. The lag could be chosen as the first minimum of the auto mutual information function of the time series. We tested the performance of modified SampEn using simulated signals and SBF data in the young and old groups. The results indicated that modified SampEn yields consistent results for different sampling rates in simulated data, but SampEn cannot. Blood flow data showed a higher degree of regularity during the maximal vasodilation period as compared to the baseline in both groups and a higher degree of regularity in the older group as compared to the young group. Furthermore, our results showed that during the second peak the more regular behavior of blood flow oscillations (BFO) is mainly attributed to enhanced cardiac oscillations. This study suggests that the modified SampEn approach may be useful for assessing microvascular function.
Optimization of operating BW for indoor optical wireless OFDM transmission with IM/DD

This paper quantifies the optimal utilized bandwidth (BW) of indoor optical wireless transmission using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) by varying the number of transmitted bits per OFDM symbol. Due to its power efficiency, asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) is selected as a unipolar OFDM scheme. To further improve its power efficiency, ACO-OFDM is optimized through the bit loading technique where some target BER is fixed. For the transmission bit rates of 20 and 30 Mbps, the optimal operating BW is identified based on the required transmit optical power, and is neither the smallest nor the largest in the considered range of BW in which the cyclic prefix (CP) length is sufficient to avoid intersymbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI).
Domain specific ontology on computer science

In this paper we introduce the application system based on the domain specific ontology. Some design problems of the ontology are discussed. The ontology is based on the WordNet's database and consists of Turkish and English terms on computer science and informatics. Second we present the method for determining a set of words, which are related to a given concept and computing the degree of semantic relatedness between them. The presented method has been used for semantic searching process, which is carried out by our application.
Orientifolds, mirror symmetry and superpotentials

We consider orientifolds of Calabi-Yau 3-folds in the context of Type IIA and Type IIB superstrings. We show how mirror symmetry can be used to sum up worldsheet instanton contributions to the superpotential for Type IIA superstrings. The relevant worldsheets have the topology of the disc and ${\bf RP^2}$.
Redundancy-aware maximal cliques

Recent research efforts have made notable progress in improving the performance of (exhaustive) maximal clique enumeration (MCE). However, existing algorithms still suffer from exploring the huge search space of MCE. Furthermore, their results are often undesirable as many of the returned maximal cliques have large overlapping parts. This redundancy leads to problems in both computational efficiency and usefulness of MCE. In this paper, we aim at providing a concise and complete summary of the set of maximal cliques, which is useful to many applications. We propose the notion of τ-visible MCE to achieve this goal and design algorithms to realize the notion. Based on the refined output space, we further consider applications including an efficient computation of the top-k results with diversity and an interactive clique exploration process. Our experimental results demonstrate that our approach is capable of producing output of high usability and our algorithms achieve superior efficiency over classic MCE algorithms.
Internationalisation: case studies of two Australian and United States universities

Higher education has undergone significant change as universities have sought to respond to government reforms in a period of globalisation. One major reform that globalisation has introduced is the reduction in state funding for higher education. Universities have turned to other resources to provide funding and one of these is the recruitment of international students. The focus of this thesis is on contrasting the internationalisation policies of two nations, Australia and the United States, by analysing published policies, statistics and carrying out interviews on two campuses. Two universities, one in Australia and the other in the United States, served as case studies to examine the strategies used to implement these policies. Approximately 100 participants were interviewed, including administrators and faculty members, international and domestic students. Each university featured internationalisation as a goal in its mission statement. By integrating intercultural and global dimensions into the teaching, research and service functions of a university, internationalisation encompasses a multitude of activities that provide an educational experience. While administrators generally stated that the implementation of strategic plans to achieve international goals had been successful, many faculty members, domestic and international students were of the view that international goals were yet to be realised. These contrasting discourses revealed that each university was falling short of achieving its internationalisation goals. Faculty members and domestic and international students expressed dissatisfaction about cultural insensitivity, lack of adequate services that offered housing and emotional/social support, and language barriers. At the same time, each university was achieving some of its internationalisation goals. In conclusion, strategies are suggested that might improve the implementation of internationalisation at both universities.
Optimal location of FACTS devices to enhance power system security

This paper compares three heuristic methods (SA, TS and GA) applied to the optimal location of FACTS devices in a power system. The optimizations are made on three parameters: the location of the devices, their types and their sizes. The FACTS devices are located in order to enhance the system security. Five types of FACTS controllers are modeled for steady-state studies: TCSC, TCVR, TCPST, SVC and UPFC. Simulations are performed on an IEEE 118-bus power system for several numbers of devices. Results show that the three algorithms converge to similar optimal solutions. The security margin of the system may be increased with the use of FACTS devices, but some limitations are observed. The locations of the devices and their influence areas are analyzed.
Bayesian Nonparametric Models for Community Detection

We propose a series of Bayesian nonparametric statistical models for community detection in graphs. We model the probability of the presence or absence of edges within the graph. Using these models, we naturally incorporate uncertainty and variability and take advantage of nonparametric techniques, such as the Chinese restaurant process and the Dirichlet process. Some of the contributions include: (a) the community structure is directly modeled without specifying the number of communities a priori; (b) the probabilities of edges within or between communities may be modeled as varying by community or pairs of communities; (c) some nodes can be classified as not belonging to any community; and (d) Bayesian model diagnostics are used to compare models and help with appropriate model selection. We start by fitting an initial model to a well-known network dataset, and we develop a series of increasingly complex models. We propose Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms to carry out the estimation as well as an approach for community detection using the posterior distributions under a decision theoretical framework. Bayesian nonparametric techniques allow us to estimate the number and structure of communities from the data. To evaluate the proposed models for the example dataset, we discuss model comparison using the deviance information criterion and model checking using posterior predictive distributions. Supplementary materials are available online.
Old Age at Diagnosis Is Associated With Favorable Outcomes in Korean Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Background/Aims Despite the rising incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Asian populations, data regarding clinical characteristics of patients in Asia based on age at diagnosis are relatively sparse. The aim of this study was to compare clinical characteristics based on the age at diagnosis according to the Montreal Classification in Korean IBD patients. Methods We recruited consecutive patients with IBD at two tertiary hospitals and retrospectively reviewed their medical information. Patients were divided into three groups according to their age at diagnosis: youth (<17 years), young adult (17-40 years), and middle-old (>40 years). The main clinical characteristics for comparison were the achievement of a remission state at the last follow-up visit, cumulative rate of surgery, and cumulative use of immunomodulators and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) blockers during the follow-up period. Results In total, 346 IBD patients were included (Crohn's disease [CD] 146 and ulcerative colitis 200; 36 youth, 202 young adult, and 113 middle-old). The middle-old group with CD was characterized by a predominance of uncomplicated behavior (P=0.013) and a lower frequency of perianal disease (P=0.009). The middle-old group was associated more with a less aggressive disease course than the younger group, as shown by more frequent remission (P=0.004), being less likely to undergo surgery (P<0.001), and lower cumulative use of immunomodulators and TNFα blockers (P<0.001). Conclusions Age at diagnosis according to the Montreal Classification is an important prognostic factor for Korean IBD patients.
The CD14 rs2569190 TT Genotype Is Associated with an Improved 30-Day Survival in Patients with Sepsis: A Prospective Observational Cohort Study

According to previous investigations, CD14 is suggested to play a pivotal role in initiating and perpetuating the pro-inflammatory response during sepsis. A functional polymorphism within the CD14 gene, rs2569190, has been shown to impact the pro-inflammatory response upon stimulation with lipopolysaccharide, a central mediator of inflammation in sepsis. In this study, we hypothesized that the strong pro-inflammatory response induced by the TT genotype of CD14 rs2569190 may have a beneficial effect on survival (30-day) in patients with sepsis. A total of 417 adult patients with sepsis (and of western European descent) were enrolled into this observational study. Blood samples were collected for rs2569190 genotyping. Patients were followed over the course of their stay in the ICU, and the 30-day mortality risk was recorded as the primary outcome parameter. Sepsis-related organ failure assessment (SOFA) scores were quantified at sepsis onset and throughout the observational period to monitor organ failure as a secondary variable. Moreover, organ support-free days were evaluated as a secondary outcome parameter. TT-homozygous patients were compared to C-allele carriers. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed a higher 30-day mortality risk among C-allele carriers compared with T homozygotes (p = 0.0261). To exclude the effect of potential confounders (age, gender, BMI and type of infection) and covariates that varied at baseline with a p-value < 0.2 (e.g., comorbidities), we performed multivariate Cox regression analysis to examine the survival time. The CD14 rs2569190 C allele remained a significant covariate for the 30-day mortality risk in the multivariate analysis (hazard ratio, 2.11; 95% CI, 1.08-4.12; p = 0.0282). The 30-day mortality rate among C allele carriers was 23%, whereas the T homozygotes had a mortality rate of 13%. Additionally, an analysis of organ-specific SOFA scores revealed a significantly higher SOFA-Central nervous system score among patients carrying the C allele compared with T-homozygous patients (1.9±1.1 and 1.6±1.0, respectively; p = 0.0311). In conclusion, CD14 rs2569190 may act as a prognostic variable for the short-term outcome (30-day survival) in patients with sepsis.
Ecological Validity and the Evaluation of Speech Summarization Quality

There is little evidence of widespread adoption of speech summarization systems. This may be due in part to the fact that the natural language heuristics used to generate summaries are often optimized with respect to a class of evaluation measures that, while computationally and experimentally inexpensive, rely on subjectively selected gold standards against which automatically generated summaries are scored. This evaluation protocol does not take into account the usefulness of a summary in assisting the listener in achieving his or her goal. In this paper we study how current measures and methods for evaluating summarization systems compare to human-centric evaluation criteria. For this, we have designed and conducted an ecologically valid evaluation that determines the value of a summary when embedded in a task, rather than how closely a summary resembles a gold standard. The results of our evaluation demonstrate that in the domain of lecture summarization, the well-known baseline of maximal marginal relevance [1] is statistically significantly worse than human-generated extractive summaries, and even worse than having no summary at all in a simple quiz-taking task. Priming seems to have no statistically significant effect on the usefulness of the human summaries. This is interesting because priming had been proposed as a technique for increasing kappa scores and/or maintaining goal orientation among summary authors. In addition, our results suggest that ROUGE scores, regardless of whether they are derived from numerically-ranked reference data or ecologically valid human-extracted summaries, may not always be reliable as inexpensive proxies for task-embedded evaluations. In fact, under some conditions, relying exclusively on ROUGE may lead to scoring human-generated summaries very favourably even when a task-embedded score calls their usefulness into question relative to using no summaries at all.
An Efficient Method for GPS Multipath Mitigation Using the Teager-Kaiser-Operator-based MEDLL

An efficient method for GPS multipath mitigation is proposed. The motivation for this proposed method is to integrate the Teager-Kaiser Operator (TKO) with the Multipath Estimating Delay Lock Loop (MEDLL) module to mitigate the GPS multipath efficiently. The general implementation process of the proposed method is that we first utilize the TKO to operate on the received signal’s Auto-Correlation Function (ACF) to get an initial estimate of the multipaths. Then we transfer the initial estimated results to the MEDLL module for a further estimation. Finally, with a few iterations which are less than those of the original MEDLL algorithm, we can get a more accurate estimate of the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) signal, and thus the goal of the GPS multipath mitigation is achieved. The simulation results show that compared to the original MEDLL algorithm, the proposed method can reduce the computation load and the hardware and/or software consumption of the MEDLL module, meanwhile, without decreasing the algorithm accuracy.
Constraining LDPC degree distributions for improved error floor performance

The error floor performance of finite-length irregular low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes can be very poor if code degree distributions are chosen to optimize the threshold performance. In this paper we show that by constraining the optimization process, a balance between threshold and error floor' performance can be obtained. The resulting degree distributions give the best threshold performance subject to some minimum requirement on the error floor
Real-coded Genetic Algorithms, Virtual Alphabets, and Blocking

This paper presents a theory of convergence for real coded genetic algorithms GAs that use oating point or other high cardinality codings in their chromosomes The theory is consistent with the theory of schemata and postulates that selection dominates early GA performance and restricts subsequent search to intervals with above average function value dimension by dimension These intervals may be further subdivided on the basis of their attraction under genetic hillclimbing Each of these subintervals is called a virtual character and the collection of characters along a given dimension is called a virtual alphabet It is the virtual alphabet that is searched during the recombinative phase of the genetic algorithm and in many problems this is su cient to ensure that good solutions are found Although the theory helps suggest why many problems have been solved using real coded GAs it also suggests that real coded GAs can be blocked from further progress in those situations when local optima separate the virtual characters from the global optimum
60GHz 45nm PA for linear OFDM signal with predistortion correction achieving 6.1% PAE and −28dB EVM

A 45nm CMOS 60 GHz PA optimized for linear modulation with 6dbm saturated power and 13dB gain is presented when biased at 70uA/um. A maximum power added efficiency (PAE) of 19.4% 8dBm Psat and 18dB gain is achieved for 200uA/um bias point. The PA was tested using a predistortion algorithm and OFDM packets, and achieved PAE of 6.1% with −28dB EVM and 9% with −20dB EVM at output powers of −2dBm and +1dBm respectively. To our knowledge this is the first publication of a 45nm PA design analyzing the tradeoff between EVM and PAE at the 60 GHz frequency range and using predistortion algorithms to boost efficiency and power.
International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007 Design, Implementation and Performance Evaluation of a Fuzzy Control System for a Ph Neutralisation Process Pilot Plant Iv Testing and Evaluation of the Controller International Conference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems 2007

The control of a pH neutralisation plant is known to present challenges due to the highly nonlinear dynamic characteristics of the process. This paper describes the design, implementation and testing of a fuzzy control system on a pilot plant equipped with industry-standard instrumentation and control valves. The tests carried out show a performance that is satisfactory in terms both of steady state and transient characteristics. I INTRODUCTION The control of pH arises in a wide range of industries, including wastewater treatment, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and chemical processing. The general aim of this form of control is to maintain the pH value within a liquid at a specific level, which can be important in order to comply with environmental requirements and quality standards. In general the purpose of a pH neutralisation plant is to neutralise the waste product solution which may arise as a result of some manufacturing process before discharging it to the environment. In such cases the control of pH value to an acceptable environmental and legislative standard is very important [1]. The requirement in terms of the pH value for effluent from a wastewater treatment plant is usually in the range 6 to 8. This is mainly to protect life and to avoid damage due to corrosion. Shinskey [2] describes wastewater treatment applications as one of the most challenging pH control problems encountered in industry. The most widely used approach to control of pH in such applications involves continuous control and is based upon feedback principles. The most generally applied forms of feedback control in this type of application are Proportional, Integral and Derivative control (PID) and Proportional plus Integral control (PI). In some cases feedback control, which is essentially corrective in its action, is combined with feedforward control which can provide an element of predictive or preventive control action. Feedforward control schemes can compensate for any measured disturbance before it affects the process but in order to implement such an approach it is normally necessary to make additional process measurements. The challenging and highly nonlinear nature of the pH control problem has led to a significant amount of research over the past thirty years on the control of pH neutralisation processes. Much interest has been shown in the potential for self-tuning and adaptive systems and the work of Proudfoot, Gawthrop and Jacobs [3], Henson and Seborg [4], Jutila [5], Lee, Lee and Park [6] and Gustaffson and Waller …
Toward a replication culture: Speech production research in the classroom

Our understanding of human sound systems is increasingly shaped by experimental studies. What we can learn from a single study, however, is limited. It is of critical importance to evaluate and substantiate existing findings in the literature by directly replicating published studies. Our publication system, however, does not reward direct replications in the same way as it rewards novel discoveries. Consequently, there is a lack of incentives for researchers to spend resources on conducting replication studies, a situation that is particularly true for speech production experiments, which often require resourceful data collection procedures and recording environments. In order to sidestep this issue, we propose to run direct replication studies with our students in the classroom. This proposal offers an easy and inexpensive way to conduct large-scale replication studies and has valuable pedagogical advantages for our students. To illustrate the feasibility of this approach, we report on two classroom-based replication studies on incomplete neutralization, a speech phenomenon that has sparked many methodological debates in the past. We show that in our classroom studies, we not only replicated incomplete neutralization effects, but our studies yielded effect magnitudes comparable to laboratory experiments and meta analytical estimates. We discuss potential challenges to this approach and outline possible ways to help us substantiate our scientific record.
Salient Keypoint Detection using Entropy Map for Iris Biometric

This paper presents a novel approach to detect salient keypoints from the textured region in iris of an individual for efficient recognition. Salient regions are visually pre-attentive distinct portions in an image. Entropy from local segments within an image is used as the significant measure of saliency. To know the entropy value of such portions, an entropy map is generated. Local feature extraction is achieved from the segmented annular iris. Salient keypoint detection is performed using the proposed method, and subsequently each point is represented using Speeded-Up Robust Feature (SURF) descriptor. Finally, matching is performed and the recognition accuracy is calculated from the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. All experiments are done on publicly available BATH and CASIAv3 databases.