Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time-Space Trade-os for Voronoi Diagrams

Let S be a planar n-point set. Classically, one can nd the Voronoi diagram VD( S) for S in O(n logn) time and O(n) space. We study the situation when the available workspace is limited: for s2f1;:::;ng, an s-workspace algorithm has read-only access to an input array with the points from S in arbitrary order, and it may use only O(s) additional words of (log n) bits for reading and writing intermediate data. We describe a randomized s-workspace algorithm for nding VD( S) in expected time O((n 2 =s) logs + n logs log s). This almost matches the optimal running times for both constant and linear workspace and provides a continuous trade-o between them.
NWC: Node Weight Computation in MANETs

As mobile devices are getting more and more ubiquitous, the paradigm of wireless Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) is gaining popularity. Especially distributed real-time applications are attractive for their users in this environment. To help manage these applications in MANETs, previously we developed a distributed algorithm called PBS (priority based selection). PBS divides the ad hoc network into zones and selects and maintains a set of nodes, which act as zone servers, to manage these zones. The zone server selection applies node priority comparison, which reflects the node's capabilities to act as zone server. In this paper, we propose a mechanism called NWC (node weight computation) to be applied in the node priority comparison of PBS. NWC computes the node weight, on which the priority comparison is based, as the weighted linear combination of the node parameters. The parameter weights are extracted from the so-called service profile which reflects the characteristics and requirements of the given service. To create this profile we developed a procedure using factorial design via simulations and multi-objective optimization. Our NWC mechanism, applying the created service profile, assigns the highest priorities to the best suited nodes for a given service type and thus designates the most powerful nodes to be selected as zone servers by PBS. Moreover, the weight computation of NWC can be used by other clustering algorithms in MANETs, too.
Word fluency in Williams syndrome: Evidence for unusual semantic organisation?

Introduction : Tests of semantic fluency require participants to produce as many examples as possible of a category in a limited time. It has been suggested that individuals with Williams syndrome perform relatively well on such tasks, and in addition produce particularly unusual category exemplars. This may reflect an abnormal organisation of semantic information. Methods : A study is reported which tests these claims, by comparing the semantic fluency of a group of individuals with Williams syndrome with that of controls matched for level of vocabulary. Individuals' responses are analysed in terms of absolute number of items produced, frequency and typicality of these items as category exemplars, and the ordering of semantically related items. Results : The results show that individuals with Williams syndrome produce as many items as controls, and that the items produced are not particularly unusual or atypical. However, the ordering of items provides evidence that individuals with Williams syndrome may have less sophisticated underlying semantic structures. Conclusions : The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the development of conceptual knowledge in Williams syndrome.
Women in Islamic Communities: The Quest for Gender Justice Research

This article, in the context of jurisprudential social legitimacy of Muslim women's roles and rights, discusses the factors lying behind seemingly contradictory policies towards gender equality in Muslim countries. It first examines the influence of religious institutions over interpretation and application of Muslim women's roles and rights. Second, it discusses the deference social policy gives to the views of these institutions and the extent to which it intersects with the principles of gender justice. The article concludes with some issues and research questions for internationally and nationally concerned groups to consider when planning for the improvement of the status of women in Muslim communities.
Energy-Efficient Sensing in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Compressed Sensing

Sensing of the application environment is the main purpose of a wireless sensor network. Most existing energy management strategies and compression techniques assume that the sensing operation consumes significantly less energy than radio transmission and reception. This assumption does not hold in a number of practical applications. Sensing energy consumption in these applications may be comparable to, or even greater than, that of the radio. In this work, we support this claim by a quantitative analysis of the main operational energy costs of popular sensors, radios and sensor motes. In light of the importance of sensing level energy costs, especially for power hungry sensors, we consider compressed sensing and distributed compressed sensing as potential approaches to provide energy efficient sensing in wireless sensor networks. Numerical experiments investigating the effectiveness of compressed sensing and distributed compressed sensing using real datasets show their potential for efficient utilization of sensing and overall energy costs in wireless sensor networks. It is shown that, for some applications, compressed sensing and distributed compressed sensing can provide greater energy efficiency than transform coding and model-based adaptive sensing in wireless sensor networks.
Characterization of White Spot Syndrome Virus Envelope Protein VP51A and Its Interaction with Viral Tegument Protein VP26

ABSTRACT In this study, we characterize a novel white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) structural protein, VP51A (WSSV-TW open reading frame 294), identified from a previous mass spectrometry study. Temporal-transcription analysis showed that vp51A is expressed in the late stage of WSSV infection. Gene structure analysis showed that the transcription initiation site of vp51A was 135 bp upstream of the translation start codon. The poly(A) addition signal overlapped with the translation stop codon, TAA, and the poly(A) tail was 23 bp downstream of the TAA. Western blot analysis of viral protein fractions and immunoelectron microscopy both suggested that VP51A is a viral envelope protein. Western blotting of the total proteins extracted from WSSV virions detected a band that was close to the predicted 51-kDa mass, but the strongest signal was around 72 kDa. We concluded that this 72-kDa band was in fact the full-length VP51A protein. Membrane topology assays demonstrated that the VP51A 72-kDa protein is a type II transmembrane protein with a highly hydrophobic transmembrane domain on its N terminus and a C terminus that is exposed on the surface of the virion. Coimmunoprecipitation, colocalization, and yeast two-hybrid assays revealed that VP51A associated directly with VP26 and indirectly with VP28, with VP26 acting as a linker protein in the formation of a VP51A-VP26-VP28 complex.
Improved Word Similarity Computation for Chinese Using Sub-word Information

In the Chinese language, words consist of characters each of which is composed of one or more components. Almost every individual Chinese character has a specific meaning, and the meaning of a word is usually highly related to the characters that comprise it. Likewise, sub-character components often make a predictable contribution to the meaning of a character, and in general characters that have the same components have similar or related meanings. It is easy to automatically decompose words into characters and their components. In this paper, we improve on a corpus-based approach to computing word similarity in Chinese by extending it according to the characters and components shared between words. In an evaluation on 30,000 word types (noun, verb and adjective), we obtain a 39% relative improvement compared with a state-of-the-art baseline.
Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Cannabinoids in Hemp Nut Using Response Surface Methodology: Optimization and Comparative Study

Hemp nut is commonly incorporated into several food preparations; however, most countries set regulations for hemp products according to their cannabinoid content. In this study, we have developed an efficient microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) method for cannabinoids (i.e., Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, cannabidiol, and cannabinol) in hemp nut. Optimization of the MAE procedure was conducted through single factor experiments and response surface methodology (RSM). A comparative study was also conducted to determine the differences in the extraction yields and morphology of hemp nut between MAE and reference extraction methods, namely heat reflux extraction (HRE), Soxhlet extraction (SE), supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), and ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE). Among the independent variables in RSM, the temperature was the most significant parameter. The optimal conditions of MAE were as follows: extraction solvent of methanol, microwave power of 375 W, temperature of 109 °C, and extraction time of 30 min. Compared with reference extraction methods, MAE achieved the highest extraction yields of total cannabinoids in hemp nut (6.09 μg/g for MAE; 4.15 μg/g for HRE; 5.81 μg/g for SE; 3.61 μg/g for SFE; 3.73 μg/g for UAE) with the least solvent consumption and shortest time. Morphological observations showed that substantial cell rupturing occurred in the microstructure of hemp nut after MAE, indicating enhanced dissolution of the target compounds during the extraction process. The MAE method is thus a rapid, economic, and environmentally friendly extraction method that is both effective and practical for industrial applications.
Identification of residual tumor with intraoperative contrast-enhanced ultrasound during glioblastoma resection.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assess the capability of contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) to identify residual tumor mass during glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) surgery, to increase the extent of resection. METHODS The authors prospectively evaluated 10 patients who underwent surgery for GBM removal with navigated ultrasound guidance. Navigated B-mode and CEUS were performed prior to resection, during resection, and after complete tumor resection. Areas suspected for residual tumors on B-mode and CEUS studies were localized within the surgical field with navigated ultrasound and samples were sent separately for histopathological analysis to confirm tumor presence. RESULTS In all cases tumor remnants were visualized as hyperechoic areas on B-mode, highlighted as CEUS-positive areas, and confirmed as tumoral areas on histopathological analysis. In 1 case only, CEUS partially failed to demonstrate residual tumor because the residual hyperechoic area was devascularized prior to ultrasound contrast agent injection. In all cases CEUS enhanced B-mode findings. CONCLUSIONS As has already been shown in other neoplastic lesions in other organs, CEUS is extremely specific in the identification of residual tumor. The ability of CEUS to distinguish between tumor and artifacts or normal brain on B-mode is based on its capacity to show the vascularization degree and not the echogenicity of the tissues. Therefore, CEUS can play a decisive role in the process of maximizing GBM resection.
Digital social research, social media and the sociological imagination: surrogacy, augmentation and re-orientation

Technological innovation in digital communications, epitomised in the shift from the informational web (Web1.0) to the interactional web (Web2.0), provokes new opportunities and challenges for social research. Web2.0 technologies, particularly the new social media (e.g. social networking, blogging and micro-blogging) as well as the increased accessibility of the World Wide Web through highly portable and prevalent devices like smart phones, tablets and netbooks generates new forms of data which are of significance for social research as well as new methods and techniques for analysing this kind of data. Even though we are in the midst of this rapid innovation, it is nonetheless possible to distinguish three basic lines of argument about its current and prospective impact on social research. Some commentators suggest this innovation generates methods and data that can act as a surrogate for more traditional quantitative and qualitative research designs such as experiments, sample surveys and in-depth interviews. Others argue that digital communication technologies re-orientate social research around new objects, populations and techniques of analysis. It can also be argued that digital social research augments, but needs to be used in conjunction with, more traditional methods. C. WrightMills’ classic statement of The Sociological Imagination is used to clarify the distinctive contribution of digital social research; what can it do that traditional methods cannot in understanding how social relations are constituted, how they can change and how they generate social identities. It is argued that digital social research, particularly the analysis of new social media, is distinctive in capturing naturally occurring or ‘user-generated’ data at the level of populations in real or near-real-time. Consequently, it offers the hitherto unrealisable possibility of studying social processes as they unfold at the level of populations as contrasted with their official construction through the use of ‘terrestrial’ research instruments and curated data-sets. Realising this research potential entails the development of digital ‘observatories’ such as the Cardiff Online Social Media ObServatory. The paper concludes with a discussion of the political and ethical, as well as the technological, implications of observatories, focusing in particular on tensions between the ‘panoptic’ and ‘synoptic’ powers of digital observatories and the allied possibilities of a ‘signature science’.
Fast lossy compression of 3D unit vector sets

We propose a new efficient ray compression method to be used prior to transmission in a distributed Monte Carlo rendering engine. In particular, we introduce a new compression scheme for unorganized unit vector sets (ray directions) which, combined with state-of-the-art positional compression (ray origin), provides a significant gain in precision compared to classical ray quantization techniques. Given a ray set which directions lie in a subset of the Gauss sphere, our key idea consists in mapping it to the surface of the whole unit sphere, for which collaborative compression achieves a high signal-over-noise ratio. As a result, the rendering engine can distribute efficiently massive ray waves over large heterogeneous networks, with potentially low bandwidth. This opens a way toward Monte Carlo rendering in cloud computing, without the need to access specialized hardware such as rendering farms, to harvest the latent horsepower present in public institutions or companies.
Expression and processing of emotions: Relationships with cd4+ levels in 42 hiv-positive asymptomatic individuals

Abstract Background: The study investigated the relationship between CD4+ levels and two emotion-related measures, one of expressed emotion (Hostility directed Inwards, Hdl) and one of capacity for emotional processing (Referential Activity, RA). Method42 HIV-1 positive asymptomatic subjects, under AZT treatment, underwent CD4+ assessment immediately after a brief interview. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using the Gottschalk-Gleser and Referential Activity scales. Of the Gottschalk-Gleser scales, only Hdl was considered. ResultsAs hypothesized, the regression of emotion-related scores on CD4 + levels showed a curvilinearrelationship with Hdl scores, and a linearrelationship with RA scores. Subjects with the best immune status therefore showed intermediate levels of expressed emotion and a high capacity for emotional processing. ConclusionThe findings support the usefulness of working through, rather than releasing emotion. Previous negative findings in the field might be explained by the unjustified assumption of linear relationships between expressed emotion and health.
REDSHIFT EVOLUTION IN THE IRON ABUNDANCE OF THE INTRACLUSTER MEDIUM

Clusters of galaxies provide a closed box within which one can determine the chemical evolution of the gaseous baryons with cosmic time. We studied this metallicity evolution in the hot X-ray emitting baryons through an analysis of XMM-Newton observations of 29 galaxy clusters in the redshift range, 0.3 < z < 1.3. Taken alone, this data set does not show evidence for significant evolution. However, when we also include a comparable sample of 115 clusters observed with Chandra and a lower redshift sample of 70 clusters observed with XMM at z < 0.3, there is definitive evidence for a decrease in the metallicity. This decrease is approximately a factor of two from z = 0 to z ≈ 1, over which we find a least-squares best-fit line Z(z)/Z☉ = (0.46 ± 0.05) − (0.38 ± 0.03)z. The greatest uncertainty in the evolution comes from poorly constrained metallicities in the highest redshift bin.
Discrete SOGI based control of solar photovoltaic integrated unified power quality conditioner

A discrete second order generalized integrator (DSOGI) based control is presented in this work for control of solar photovoltaic integrated unified power quality conditioner (SPV-UPQC). Two DSOGI based band-pass filters are used to extract fundamental positive sequence component (FPSC) of unbalanced grid voltages. The shunt compensator of SPV-UPQC is controlled based on philosophy of drawing balanced positive sequence currents (BPSC) from the point of common coupling (PCC). The shunt compensator has the dual function of compensating for load power quality issues along with injecting power from solar photovoltaic (SPV) array. Sensitive loads are protected against grid voltage fluctuations such as voltage sags/swells etc with the help of the series compensator of SPV-UPQC. A step-up DC-DC converter is used for coupling SPV array to the DC-bus of SPV-UPQC. A Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm generates appropriate duty cycle for the dc-dc converter so that the SPV array is operated at its peak power. The performance of DSOGI based SPV-UPQC is simulated in Matlab-Simulink environment and tested under dynamic conditions of grid voltage disturbances, load disturbances and solar irradiation variation.
Parallelization of the ADAPT 3D Streamer Propagation Code

In order to run Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes on large scale infrastructures, parallel computing has to be used because of the computational intensive nature of the problems. In this paper we investigate the 3D version of the ADAPT platform where we do a coupling between flow partial differential equations and a Poisson equation. This coupling leads to a linear system that we solve using direct methods. The implementation is conducted with the MUMPS parallel multi-frontal direct solver and with METIS for mesh partitioning methods to improve the overall performance of the framework. We also investigate, specifically in this paper, how the mesh partitioning methods are able to optimize the mesh cell distribution of the ADAPT solver.
Properties of intention: component structure and consequences for behavior, information processing, and resistance

Three studies tested the impact of properties of behavioral intention on intention-behavior consistency, information processing, and resistance. Principal components analysis showed that properties of intention formed distinct factors. Study 1 demonstrated that temporal stability, but not the other intention attributes, moderated intention-behavior consistency. Study 2 found that greater stability of intention was associated with improved memory performance. In Study 3, participants were confronted with a rating scale manipulation designed to alter their intention scores. Findings showed that stable intentions were able to withstand attack. Overall, the present research findings suggest that different properties of intention are not simply manifestations of a single underlying construct ("intention strength"), and that temporal stability exhibits superior resistance and impact compared to other intention attributes.
A Novel Three-dimensional Flow Chamber Device to Study Chemokine-directed Extravasation of Cells Circulating under Physiological Flow Conditions

Extravasation of circulating cells from the bloodstream plays a central role in many physiological and pathophysiological processes, including stem cell homing and tumor metastasis. The three-dimensional flow chamber device (hereafter the 3D device) is a novel in vitro technology that recreates physiological shear stress and allows each step of the cell extravasation cascade to be quantified. The 3D device consists of an upper compartment in which the cells of interest circulate under shear stress, and a lower compartment of static wells that contain the chemoattractants of interest. The two compartments are separated by porous inserts coated with a monolayer of endothelial cells (EC). An optional second insert with microenvironmental cells of interest can be placed immediately beneath the EC layer. A gas exchange unit allows the optimal CO2 tension to be maintained and provides an access point to add or withdraw cells or compounds during the experiment. The test cells circulate in the upper compartment at the desired shear stress (flow rate) controlled by a peristaltic pump. At the end of the experiment, the circulating and migrated cells are collected for further analyses. The 3D device can be used to examine cell rolling on and adhesion to EC under shear stress, transmigration in response to chemokine gradients, resistance to shear stress, cluster formation, and cell survival. In addition, the optional second insert allows the effects of crosstalk between EC and microenvironmental cells to be examined. The translational applications of the 3D device include testing of drug candidates that target cell migration and predicting the in vivo behavior of cells after intravenous injection. Thus, the novel 3D device is a versatile and inexpensive tool to study the molecular mechanisms that mediate cellular extravasation.