Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The UPV at GeoCLEF 2008: The GeoWorSE System

This year our system was complemented with a map-based lter. During the indexing phase, all places are disambiguated and assigned their coordinates on the map. These coordinates are stored in a separate index. The search process is carried out in two phases: in the rst one, we search the collection with the same method applied in 2007, which exploits the expansion of index terms by means of WordNet synonyms and holonyms. The next phase consists in a re-ranking of the results of the previous phase depending on the distance of document toponyms from the toponyms in the query, or depending on the fact that the document contains toponyms that are included in an area dened by the query. The area is calculated from the toponyms in the query and their meronyms. This is the rst attempt to use GeoWordNet, a resource that includes the geographical coordinates of the places listed in WordNet, for the Geographical Information Retrieval task. The results show that map-based ltering allows to improve the results obtained by the base system, based only on the textual information.
Directional neighbor discovery in 60 GHz indoor wireless networks

The unlicensed 60 GHz band brings the promise of multi-gigabit data rates to support new applications such as high definition video over wireless links. Signal propagation in the 60 GHz band significantly differs from that in the traditionally used 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The propagation and penetration losses in the 60 GHz band are much higher. Furthermore, the signals are often reflected in indoor settings. Previous physical layer studies show that the use of directional antennas can significantly help in coping with these effects. In this paper, we address the problem of neighbor discovery in the 60 GHz band. We account for not only discovery via direct line-of-sight paths, but also via reflected beams. To the best of our knowledge, none of the previous efforts on higher layer protocols for use with directional antennas account for reflections. We consider two approaches for neighbor discovery (a) direct discovery where each node explicitly discovers its neighbors and, (b) gossip-based discovery where nodes exchange information with regards to their already discovered neighbors. We develop analytical models to capture the performance of the two approaches and validate the models via simulations in indoor settings with obstacles that reflect the transmitted signals. As one might expect, the gossip based discovery incurs a lower neighbor-discovery latency than direct discovery. We examine the impact of system parameters such as varying beamwidth and node density. Our study provides insights on the right choice of system parameters for efficient neighbor discovery in the 60 GHz regime.
Synthesis of Au-Pd Bimetallic Nanoflowers for Catalytic Reduction of 4-Nitrophenol

Due to the great potential to improve catalytic performance, gold (Au) and palladium (Pd) bimetallic catalysts have prompted structure-controlled synthesis of Au-Pd nanoalloys bounded by high-index facets. In this work, we prepared Au-Pd bimetallic nanoflowers (NFs) with a uniform size, well-defined dendritic morphology, and homogeneous alloy structure in an aqueous solution by seed-mediated synthesis. The prepared bimetallic NFs were fully characterized using a combination of transmission electron microscopy, Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-vis) spectroscopy, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry measurements. The catalytic activities of the prepared Au-Pd nanoparticles for 4-nitrophenol reduction were also investigated, and the activities are in the order of Au@Pd NFs > Au-Pd NFs (Au1Pd1 core) > Au-Pd NFs (Au core), which could be related to the content and exposed different reactive surfaces of Pd in alloys. This result clearly demonstrates that the superior activities of Au-Pd alloy nanodendrites could be attributed to the synergy between Au and Pd in catalysts.
IgY Technology: Extraction of Chicken Antibodies from Egg Yolk by Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) Precipitation

Hens can be immunized by means of i.m. vaccination (Musculus pectoralis, left and right, injection volume 0.5-1.0 ml) or by means of Gene-Gun plasmid-immunization. Dependent on the immunogenicity of the antigen, high antibody-titres (up to 1:100,000 - 1:1,000,000) can be achieved after only one or 3 - 4 boost immunizations. Normally, a hen lays eggs continuously for about 72 weeks, thereafter the laying capacity decreases. This protocol describes the extraction of total IgY from egg yolk by means of a precipitation procedure (PEG. Polson et al. 1980). The method involves two important steps. The first one is the removal of lipids and the second is the precipitation of total IgY from the supernatant of step one. After dialysis against a buffer (normally PBS) the IgY-extract can be stored at -20°C for more than a year. The purity of the extract is around 80 %, the total IgY per egg varies from 40-80 mg, dependent on the age of the laying hen. The total IgY content increases with the age of the hen from around 40 mg/egg up to 80 mg/egg (concerning PEG precipitation). The laying capacity of a hen per year is around 325 eggs. That means a total potential harvest of 20 g total IgY/year based on a mean IgY content of 60 mg total IgY/egg (see Table 1).
Gland segmentation in prostate histopathological images

Abstract. Glandular structural features are important for the tumor pathologist in the assessment of cancer malignancy of prostate tissue slides. The varying shapes and sizes of glands combined with the tedious manual observation task can result in inaccurate assessment. There are also discrepancies and low-level agreement among pathologists, especially in cases of Gleason pattern 3 and pattern 4 prostate adenocarcinoma. An automated gland segmentation system can highlight various glandular shapes and structures for further analysis by the pathologist. These objective highlighted patterns can help reduce the assessment variability. We propose an automated gland segmentation system. Forty-three hematoxylin and eosin-stained images were acquired from prostate cancer tissue slides and were manually annotated for gland, lumen, periacinar retraction clefting, and stroma regions. Our automated gland segmentation system was trained using these manual annotations. It identifies these regions using a combination of pixel and object-level classifiers by incorporating local and spatial information for consolidating pixel-level classification results into object-level segmentation. Experimental results show that our method outperforms various texture and gland structure-based gland segmentation algorithms in the literature. Our method has good performance and can be a promising tool to help decrease interobserver variability among pathologists.
Design of a fault-tolerant middleware for metadata management

The Babel File System is a massive storage system, which is made up from three main components: clients, proxy and storage nodes. Each client perceives a single computer, called proxy, which dispatches all service requests randomly to an arbitrary storage node and manages the metadata. However, availability can be compromised if the proxy suddenly halts. To avoid this problem we propose the utilization of a redundant set of proxies. Nevertheless, this solution implies dealing with a consensus problem in order to guarantee the consistency of the metadata copies recorded at each and every proxy. In this paper we propose the use of the Paxos algorithm in order to overcome this problem. Our proposal can be understood as a middleware through which the proxies communicate among themselves to enforce metadata consistency. The experiments showed that, under certain random conditions, the progress of the protocol could be threatened. We propose the mechanisms to address these issues to set the system back to its stable state. However, stability is strongly limited by the correlation between failure and recovery rates.
Turbo channel estimation for bit-interleaved coded modulation

This contribution deals with code-aided channel estimation for bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) for singleand multi-antenna systems. Based on the Expectation-Maximization algorithm, a low-complexity estimator is derived. The receiver iterates between estimation and detection and operates by accepting soft information from the detector. Through computer simulations the proposed estimator, and variations thereof, are investigated in terms of computational complexity, BER performance and mean square error (MSE) performance. Furthermore, the impact of the symbol mapping is investigated.
Minimax Rates of Estimation for High-Dimensional Linear Regression Over q -Balls

Consider the high-dimensional linear regression model y = X β* + w, where y ∈ \BBRn is an observation vector, X ∈ \BBRn × d is a design matrix with d >; n, β* ∈ \BBRd is an unknown regression vector, and w ~ N(0, σ2I) is additive Gaussian noise. This paper studies the minimax rates of convergence for estimating β* in either l2-loss and l2-prediction loss, assuming that β* belongs to an lq -ball \BBBq(Rq) for some q ∈ [0,1]. It is shown that under suitable regularity conditions on the design matrix X, the minimax optimal rate in l2-loss and l2-prediction loss scales as Θ(Rq ([(logd)/(n)])1-q/2). The analysis in this paper reveals that conditions on the design matrix X enter into the rates for l2-error and l2-prediction error in complementary ways in the upper and lower bounds. Our proofs of the lower bounds are information theoretic in nature, based on Fano's inequality and results on the metric entropy of the balls \BBBq(Rq), whereas our proofs of the upper bounds are constructive, involving direct analysis of least squares over lq-balls. For the special case q=0, corresponding to models with an exact sparsity constraint, our results show that although computationally efficient l1-based methods can achieve the minimax rates up to constant factors, they require slightly stronger assumptions on the design matrix X than optimal algorithms involving least-squares over the l0-ball.
Markov Chain for Predicting of Annual Precipitation Based on Entropy Weight

Aimed at the feature of annual precipitation,this paper puts forward a predicting Markov chain method based on entropy weight. Data of precipitation in Hangzhou,from 1956 to 2009,was used as an example. The precipitation can be predicted year by year using the Markov chain models based on entropy weight. Hangzhou past 5 years the results of precipitation yearly basis,respectively：the absolute error of 73mm,27mm,-22mm,-17mm and 20mm;the relative error was 5.66%, 2.03%,-1.59%,-1.08% and 1.30%. The error value of smaller than ±5％ and ±10％ was 36.67% and 60.00% respectively in the 30 years of precipitation prediction. M-K test was applied for nearly 30 years of predicting results for time series analysis, the results show that the prediction data with the increase in prediction accuracy tends to gradually increase.
A distributed approach for top-k star queries on massive information networks

Massive information networks, such as the knowledge graph by Google, contain billions of labeled entities. Star queries, which aim to identify an entity, given a set of related entities, are common on such networks. Answering star queries can be modeled as a graph pattern matching problem. Traditional approaches apply graph indices to accelerate the query processing. Unfortunately, it is so costly that it is nearly infeasible to build indices on billion node graphs since the time or storage complexity of most indexing techniques is super-linear to the graph size. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to identify the top-k best answers for a star query. Instead of using expensive indices, our algorithm utilizes novel bounding techniques to derive the top-k best answers efficiently. Further, the algorithm can be implemented in a distributed manner scaling to billions of entities and hundreds of machines. We demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of our approach through a series of experiments on real-world information networks.
Characteristics of titanium nitride films grown by pulsed laser deposition

Laser physical vapor deposition (LPVD) has been used to grow titanium nitride films on hydrogen-terminated silicon(100) substrates at deposition temperatures ranging from room temperature to 600 °C. A pulsed KrF excimer laser (λ = 248 nm, τ = 25 ns) was used with the deposition chamber maintained at a base pressure of 10^−7 Torr prior to deposition. Different properties of the films were investigated by x-ray diffraction, Auger electron spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, optical, scanning, and high resolution transmission electron microscopy, and measurement of electrical resistivity. When the substrate temperature was low (at and below 500 °C), oxygen atoms from the residual gases were incorporated in the films. The microstructures and resistivities of TiN films were found to be strongly dependent on the temperature of the silicon substrates. The TiN films deposited at 600 °C were oxygen-free, as observed from Auger analysis, and the room temperature resistivity was found to be 14–15 μΩ-cm. Raman spectroscopy of the films showed that the nitrogen-related optical phonon peak increased with deposition temperature in comparison with the titanium-related acoustic peak. Transmission electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction analyses showed that the films were polycrystalline at low temperature with grain size ranging from 300–600 Å, depending on the temperature of the substrate. At 600 °C, the films were found to be single crystals with occasional presence of dislocation loops. The spacing of Moiré fringes in TiN/Si samples deposited at 600 °C established the nearly periodic elastic strain field extending into the TiN and Si at the interface. Although there exists a large misfit between TiN and Si (24.6%), the epitaxial growth of TiN films on Si(100) substrates was explained by means of domain-matched epitaxy with a 4-to-3 match in unit cells for TiN/Si structure, giving rise to a residual lattice misfit of only 4%.
Second harmonic generation imaging of endogenous structural proteins

We find that several key endogenous structural proteins including collagen, acto-myosin, and tubulin give rise to intense second harmonic generation (SHG) and that these structures can be imaged in intact tissues on a laser-scanning microscope. Because SHG is a non-resonant process, this modality suffers little inherent photobleaching or toxicity. In this study we demonstrate the clarity of SHG optical sectioning within unfixed, unstained thick specimens, including fish scales, C. elegans, and mouse muscle, where penetration into tissue upwards of 600 microns was achieved. The simultaneous use of SHG and two-photon excited GFP fluorescence allows for the inference of the molecular isoform that gives rise to SHG from the myofilament lattice in C. elegans. The physical origin of SHG within these tissues is addressed and is attributed to the laser interaction with dipolar protein structures. SHG polarization anisotropy is also used to determine the extent of dipolar order and radial symmetry in the helical structures. Comparisons are drawn between SHG and other forms of microscopy including polarization and fluorescence microscopy, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages.
Virtual Switching Without a Hypervisor for a More Secure Cloud

Cloud computing leverages virtualization to offer resources on demand to multiple "tenants". However, sharing the server and network infrastructure creates new vulnerabilities, where one tenant can attack another by compromising the underlying hypervisor. We design a system that supports virtualized networking using software switches without a hypervisor. In our architecture, the software switch runs in a Switch Domain (DomS) that is separate from the control VM. Both the guest VMs and DomS run directly on the server hardware, with processing and memory resources allocated in advance. Each guest VM interacts with the software switch through a shared memory region using periodic polling to detect network packets. The communication does not involve the hypervisor or the control VM. In addition, any software bugs that crash the software switch do not crash the rest of the system, and a crashed switch can be easily rebooted. Experiments with our initial prototype, built using Xen and Open vSwitch, show that the combination of shared pages and polling offers reasonable performance compared to conventional hypervisor-based solutions.
Spinning of cellulose acetate hollow fiber by dry‐wet technique of 3C‐shaped spinneret

Cellulose acetate hollow fibers were spun by a new method—a dry–wet spinning technique of a 3C-shaped spinneret. The spinning technique parameters effecting the form and the reverse osmosis performances of the hollow fiber were investigated in detail, such as polymer concentration, the kind of solvent and additive, spinneret temperature, extrasion rate, evaporation distance, and take-up rate. Heat treating for different times in several treating baths was tested. The results showed that cellulose acetate hollow fiber spun by this method is feasible and is a kind of “loose” reverse osmosis membrane and suitable to operate at ultralow pressure, 0.8 MPa, and exhibits a higher flux rate at a salt rejection of 60–85% for tap water. Cellulose acetate hollow fiber for ultralow pressure reverse osmosis should find wide application in industrial processes. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The fabrication of patternable silicon nanotips using deep reactive ion etching

This paper presents a novel fabrication method of patternable silicon nanotips. The proposed fabrication method involves four steps: lithography, the first deep reactive ion etching (DRIE), removal of the photoresist and the second DRIE. The fabricated silicon nanotips are well aligned along the edges of microstructures. The plane shape of the microstructure was determined by the patterned shape of the photoresist. It means that the silicon nanotips can be patterned by the patterned shape of the photoresist. The width of the nanotips, 1 µm below the top, was measured to be about 200 nm. The fabricated nanotips were applied to modify the surface of silicon from hydrophilic to superhydrophobic. The contact angle was drastically increased from 79.7° (bare silicon surface) to 158.3° (surface modified with nanotips). Therefore, the surface was modified from hydrophilic to superhydrophobic.
Taking a Lesson From Patients' Recovery Strategies to Optimize Training During Robot-Aided Rehabilitation

In robot-assisted neurorehabilitation, matching the task difficulty level to the patient's needs and abilities, both initially and as the relearning process progresses, can enhance the effectiveness of training and improve patients' motivation and outcome. This study presents a Progressive Task Regulation algorithm implemented in a robot for upper limb rehabilitation. It evaluates the patient's performance during training through the computation of robot-measured parameters, and automatically changes the features of the reaching movements, adapting the difficulty level of the motor task to the patient's abilities. In particular, it can select different types of assistance (time-triggered, activity-triggered, and negative assistance) and implement varied therapy practice to promote generalization processes. The algorithm was tuned by assessing the performance data obtained in 22 chronic stroke patients who underwent robotic rehabilitation, in which the difficulty level of the task was manually adjusted by the therapist. Thus, we could verify the patient's recovery strategies and implement task transition rules to match both the patient's and therapist's behavior. In addition, the algorithm was tested in a sample of five chronic stroke patients. The findings show good agreement with the therapist decisions so indicating that it could be useful for the implementation of training protocols allowing individualized and gradual treatment of upper limb disabilities in patients after stroke. The application of this algorithm during robot-assisted therapy should allow an easier management of the different motor tasks administered during training, thereby facilitating the therapist's activity in the treatment of different pathologic conditions of the neuromuscular system.
Decision trees for identifying predictors of treatment effectiveness in clinical trials and its application to ovulation in a study of women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

BACKGROUND Double-blind, randomized clinical trials are the preferred approach to demonstrating the effectiveness of one treatment against another. The comparison is, however, made on the average group effects. While patients and clinicians have always struggled to understand why patients respond differently to the same treatment, and while much hope has been held for the nascent field of predictive biomarkers (e.g. genetic markers), there is still much utility in exploring whether it is possible to estimate treatment efficacy based on demographic and baseline variables. METHODS The pregnancy in polycystic ovary syndrome (PPCOS) study was a prospective, multi-center, randomized clinical trial comparing three ovulation induction regimens: clomiphene citrate (CC), metformin and the combination of the two. There were 446 women who ovulated in response to the treatments among the entire 626 participants. In this report, we focus on the 418 women who received CC (alone or combined with metformin) to determine if readily available baseline physical characteristics and/or easily obtainable baseline measures could be used to distinguish treatment effectiveness in stimulating ovulation. We used a recursive partitioning technique and developed a node-splitting rule to build decision tree models that reflected within-node and within-treatment responses. RESULTS Overall, the combination of CC plus metformin resulted in an increased incidence of ovulation compared with CC alone. This is particularly so in women with relatively larger left ovarian volumes (≥ 19.5 cubic cm), and a left ovarian volume <19.5 cubic cm was related to treatment outcomes for all subsequent nodes. Women who were older, who had higher baseline insulin, higher waist-to-hip circumference ratio or higher sex hormone-binding globulin levels had better ovulatory rates with CC alone than with the combination of CC plus metformin. CONCLUSIONS Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a phenotypically diverse condition. Both baseline laboratory and clinical parameters can predict the ovulatory response in women with PCOS undergoing ovulation induction. Without a priori hypotheses with regard to any predictors, the observation regarding left ovary volume is novel and worthy of further investigation and validation.
Two-Stage, Pipelined Register Renaming

Register renaming is a performance-critical component of modern, dynamically-scheduled processors. Register renaming latency increases as a function of several architectural parameters (e.g., processor issue width, processor window size, and processor checkpoint count). Pipelining of the register renaming logic can help avoid restricting the processor clock frequency. This work presents a full-custom, two-stage register renaming implementation in a 130-nm fabrication technology. The latency of non-pipelined and two-stage, pipelined renaming is compared, and the underlying performance and complexity tradeoffs are discussed. The two-stage pipelined design reduces the renaming logic depth from 23 fan-out-of-four (FO4) down to 9.5 FO4.
INTEGER SETS HAVING THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF DISTINCT DIFFERENCES

In this paper we study the function D(k,n) which is the maximum of |A ! A| = ! {a ! b : a,b " A} ! over all k-subsets A of {0,. ,n}. We prove that for any fixed real c # 0 and any function k(n) = (c + o(1)) $ n, the limit