Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-Antenna Techniques in Fixed Wireless Links Invited Paper

We present a summary of results based on several years of measurements for urban fixed wireless (FW) channels. Our results are aimed at providing reference data for practical applications in FW services. We discuss temporal stability and fade dynamics of outdoor-outdoor single-input single-output (SISO) channels with and without spatial diversity, a relevant aspect when considering the types of modulations that such a channel can support. Our main findings are that nearby vehicular traffic is the main source of temporal variations, but that in most practical situations temporal fades are very shallow. Spatial fades are quite significant and are stable over time. Diversity has the twofold effect of mitigating these fades and increasing temporal stability. We also present practical results on outdoor- indoor multiple-Input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. Based on empirical data we contrast spectral efficiencies for diverse types of systems, ranging from those that only use multiple antennas for beamforming to those that take full advantage of channel state information. We find that for low signal to noise ratio (SNR), beamforming achieves in practice spectral efficiencies comparable to that of MIMO and that it retains a significant proportion of such spectral efficiency at higher SNR, with the benefit of considerably lower complexity. Index Terms—Diversity, Fixed Wireless, MIMO. over the last decade (3). They can lead to significant gains over single-input single-output (SISO) transmission schemes, using spatial multiplexing to allow the creation of parallel transmission channels. However, the gains are dependent on the channel conditions and the signal to noise plus interference ratio. If this value is low, MIMO transmission may only be able to use a single spatial channel, and beamforming schemes may achieve comparable efficiencies (4). While several simulation based studies have been reported (5), comparison based on actual data is very scarce. We summarize several years of measurements for urban FW channels. We discuss temporal stability and fade dynamics of outdoor-outdoor SISO channels with and without spatial diversity, a relevant aspect when considering the types of modulations that may be used to achieve a high spectral efficiency. We also present empirical re- sults on outdoor-indoor MIMO channels and contrast spectral efficiencies for diverse types of systems, ranging from those that only use multiple antennas for beamforming to those that take full advantage of channel state information (CSI).
Applications of the "Creep-and-Merge" System: Corner Detection

The Creep‐and‐Merge (CAM) segmentation system (described in [3, 2]) is a novel architecture for region-based segmentation; it is designed to be efficient, insensitive to noise, scale and image geometry, capable of applying the widest range of statistical models, and to contain no adjustable parameters. This paper describes the continuing development of higher‐level processing models utilising this system: we present a geometric (“true”) corner detector with good performance, and give qualitative and quantitative comparisons with other leading systems.
Caught Up in Curiosity: Genius Hour in the Kindergarten Classroom

Choice and interest have long been linked to motivation for learning to read and write; however, designing instruction with authentic premises for young children that harness these motivators can prove challenging. In this teaching tip, we describe one kindergarten classroom's experience engaging in Genius Hour, in which children were supported to identify topics about which they were passionate, research those topics, and share their learning with an authentic audience of peers and family members.
Spectrofluorometric and Molecular Docking Studies on the Binding of Curcumenol and Curcumenone to Human Serum Albumin

Curcumenol and curcumenone are two major constituents of the plants of medicinally important genus of Curcuma, and often govern the pharmacological effect of these plant extracts. These two compounds, isolated from C. zedoaria rhizomes were studied for their binding to human serum albumin (HSA) using the fluorescence quench titration method. Molecular docking was also performed to get a more detailed insight into their interaction with HSA at the binding site. Additions of these sesquiterpenes to HSA produced significant fluorescence quenching and blue shifts in the emission spectra of HSA. Analysis of the fluorescence data pointed toward moderate binding affinity between the ligands and HSA, with curcumenone showing a relatively higher binding constant (2.46 × 105 M−1) in comparison to curcumenol (1.97 × 104 M−1). Cluster analyses revealed that site I is the preferred binding site for both molecules with a minimum binding energy of −6.77 kcal·mol−1. However, binding of these two molecules to site II cannot be ruled out as the binding energies were found to be −5.72 and −5.74 kcal·mol−1 for curcumenol and curcumenone, respectively. The interactions of both ligands with HSA involved hydrophobic interactions as well as hydrogen bonding.
Digital Forensic Evidence Examination

This book is about the examination of digital forensic evidence in legal settings. When a legal action involving the formalisms of a court system are involved, and that action involves evidence consisting of 1s and 0s (the binary digits), there are specific concerns that have to be addressed in order to provide accurate facts to those who have to make judgements based on facts. This book provides the scientific basis for examination of digital forensic evidence in a legal context.
Performance of adaptive dereverberation techniques using directivity controlled arrays

The use of optimal postfiltering has been previously proposed to increase the performance of microphone arrays. In this paper, an analysis of the postfilter shows that its behaviour is closely related to the one of the array. This is illustrated by considering a typical videoconferencing context. The results we provide demonstrate that the use of a directivity controlled array is a requirement to ensure a sufficient robustness of the whole system. It is also shown that the dereverberation performed by the postfilter is limited and that its main interest lies in a significant reduction of the acoustic echo even in the double talk case. This attractive property depends on the whole design of the array including its placement versus the acoustic echo sources.
Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species in NG108-15 Cells

This article has not been copyedited and formatted. The final version may differ from this version. Abstract Methamphetamine is a highly addictive psychostimulant drug of abuse that causes neurotoxicity at high or repeated dosing. Earlier studies have demonstrated the ability of the selective sigma receptor ligand AC927 (N-phenethylpiperidine oxalate) to attenuate the neurotoxic effects of methamphetamine in vivo. However, the precise mechanisms through which AC927 conveys its protective effects remain to be determined. Using differentiated NG108-15 cells as a model system, the effects of methamphetamine on neurotoxic endpoints and mediators like apoptosis, necrosis, generation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) and dopamine release were examined in the absence and presence of AC927. Methamphetamine at physiologically relevant micromolar concentrations caused apoptosis in NG108-15 cells. At higher concentrations of methamphetamine, necrotic cell death was observed. At earlier time points, methamphetamine caused ROS/RNS generation which was detected by the fluorigenic substrate CM-H 2 DCFDA in a concentration and time dependent manner. N-acetylcysteine, catalase, and L-NMMA inhibited the ROS/RNS fluorescence signal induced by methamphetamine, suggesting the formation of hydrogen peroxide and reactive nitrogen species. Exposure to methamphetamine also stimulated the release of dopamine from NG108-15 cells into the culture medium. AC927 attenuated methamphetamine-induced apoptosis, necrosis, ROS/RNS generation and dopamine release in NG108-15 cells. Together, the data suggest that modulation of sigma receptors can mitigate methamphetamine-induced cytotoxicity, ROS/RNS generation, and dopamine release in cultured cells.
Extraction of Tourist Destinations and Comparative Analysis of Preferences Between Foreign Tourists and Domestic Tourists on the Basis of Geotagged Social Media Data

Inbound tourism plays an important role in local economies. To stimulate local economies, it is necessary to attract foreign tourists to various areas of a country. This research aims to develop a method of extracting the locations of tourist destinations in a country and to understand what characteristics foreign tourists expect of areas near tourist attractions compared with what domestic tourists expect. In this paper, a tourist destination is defined as a small area that has places of interests for tourists such as historic sites, theme parks, hotels, and restaurants. The methods proposed in this paper are applied to data acquired from Twitter and Foursquare in Japan. The proposed method successfully extracts the locations of tourist destinations and characterizes those locations based on the points of interest in the neighborhood. The results indicate that foreign tourists who come to Japan expect nightlife spots (bars, nightclubs, etc.) to be located in the neighborhood of tourist destinations, in contrast to the expectations of domestic tourists. The proposed methods are applicable to not only Japan, but to any country.
SEMI-CONVERGENCE OF AN ALTERNATING-DIRECTION ITERATIVE METHOD FOR SINGULAR SADDLE POINT PROBLEMS

For large-scale sparse saddle point problems, Peng and Li [12] have recently proposed a new alternating-direction iterative method for solving nonsingular saddle point problems, which is more competitive (in terms of iteration steps and CPU time) than some classical iterative methods such as Uzawa-type and HSS (Hermitian skew splitting) methods. In this paper, we further study this method when it is applied to the solution of singular saddle point problems and prove that it is semi-convergent under suitable conditions.
Implementing the Top-Down Close Algorithm on the TI 6200 Architecture

Partitioned register-set architectures pose a challenge to standard scheduling algorithms. To create an efficient schedule, an instruction scheduler for such an architecture must consider the location of an operand in the register file, the availability of the intercluster data bus, and the profitability of a inter-cluster copy instruction. This technical report presents the implementation of Jingsong He’s Top-Down Close scheduling instruction for the Texas Instrument’s TMS320C6211 architecture. The report discusses the modifications required to implement the algorithm on the architecture and the results of running the algorithm on benchmarks.
A Review of Malaria Prevention and Control in War Areas

Context: Soldiers are confronted with a variety of vector-borne threats and diseases during their missions in war areas. Among all threats, malaria holds an important place as a major health problem in tropical or hyperendemic areas. Malaria control in war areas has been deemed one of the most challenging goals of different armies throughout history. Objectives: This study intends to introduce the integrated vector management (IVM) for the control and prevention of malaria in war areas by employing an appropriate combination of environmental management techniques and other conventional methods of vector control. Data Sources: For this review article, appropriate online databases, including PubMed, Wiley, and ScienceDirect were searched up to November 10th, 2014, using MeSH and free texts. Only English texts comprising research papers, reviews, and reports were included. Study Selection: Forty-three papers were utilized in this review article. The selected studies were classified according to their relation to malaria, war areas, and vector-control methods. Data Extraction: Information from the obtained studies was reviewed only according to the year of the publication and topics. Results: Fifty-five articles, including case reports, research papers, and review studies, were found but only 43 publications met the inclusion criteria. The reviewed publications were categorized into five major groups, viz. transmission, symptoms and diagnosis, chemical control, biological control, and environmental management. Conclusions: This review paper recognizes and supports the IVM as an efficient method for malaria prevention and control in war areas.
'Home' Base and Monetary Base Rules: Elementary Evidence from the 1980s and 1990s

This paper evaluates the quantitative importance of removing U.S. currency held abroad from the monetary base. We nd that a simple macroeconometric model that uses home base has more explanatory power for changes in nominal income than when the total base is used. Moreover, proposed base rules for the conduct of monetary policy perform better when the model for home base is employed. The evidence from our elementary exercises suggests that accounting for foreign holdings of U.S. currency may be important in other contexts also.
Scaling Group Testing Similarity Search

The large dimensionality of modern image feature vectors, up to thousands of dimensions, is challenging the high dimensional indexing techniques. Traditional approaches fail at returning good quality results within a response time that is usable in practice. However, similarity search techniques inspired by the group testing framework have recently been proposed in an attempt to specifically defeat the curse of dimensionality. Yet, group testing does not scale and fails at indexing very large collections of images because its internal procedures analyze an excessively large fraction of the indexed data collection. This paper identifies these difficulties and proposes extensions to the group testing framework for similarity searches that allow to handle larger collections of feature vectors. We demonstrate that it can return high quality results much faster compared to state-of-the-art group testing strategies when indexing truly high-dimensional features that are indeed hardly indexable with traditional indexing approaches.
Reduced-rank LS Channel Estimation for MIMO-OFDM Systems

In this paper reduced-rank least–squares (rr-LS) channel estimation for MIMO-OFDM systems is presented. Conventional LS solution is firstly introduced and a low complexity per-subcarrier based version derived. Then, estimation mean square error is shown to improve when a reduced-rank approach is adopted. In that case, MIMO channel estimation is refined in time domain by setting to the real value the length of the estimated channel. It results that rr-LS represents a convenient choice performing close to the linear MMSE solution.
Evidence for the Importance of Resonance Scattering in X-Ray Emission Line Profiles of the O Star ζ Puppis

We fit the Doppler profiles of the He-like triplet complexes of O VII and N VI in the X-ray spectrum of the O star ζ Pup, using XMM-Newton RGS data collected over ~400 ks of exposure. We find that they cannot be well fit if the resonance and intercombination lines are constrained to have the same profile shape. However, a significantly better fit is achieved with a model incorporating the effects of resonance scattering, which causes the resonance line to become more symmetric than the intercombination line for a given characteristic continuum optical depth τ*. We discuss the plausibility of this hypothesis, as well as its significance for our understanding of Doppler profiles of X-ray emission lines in O stars.
Academic Supports, Cognitive Disability and Mathematics Acheivement for Visually Imparied Youth: A Multilevel Modeling Approach.

Elementary and middle school students who are blind or visually impaired (VI) lag up to three years behind non-disabled peers in mathematics achievement. We investigated the impact of academic supports in the school on mathematics achievement, controlling grade, gender, cognitive disability, and family SES. Data were from SEELS (Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study) that followed a national sample of students over six years. Analyses employed multilevel modeling. We found the extent of academic supports in the school was positively related to mathematics achievement for visually impaired (VI ) students without cognitive disability but not for those with cognitive disability. Gender and socio-economic status (SES) had no effects. Achievement growth was not hampered by cognitive disability. Schools with more academic supports may enhance mathematics learning for VI students without a cognitive disability, and VI students with a cognitive disability may need both a high level of supports and specialized supports to facilitate mathematics achievement.
Efficient Processing of Very Large Graphs in a Small Cluster

Inspired by the success of Google's Pregel, many systems have been developed recently for iterative computation over big graphs. These systems provide a user-friendly vertex-centric programming interface, where a programmer only needs to specify the behavior of one generic vertex when developing a parallel graph algorithm. However, most existing systems require the input graph to reside in memories of the machines in a cluster, and the few out-of-core systems suffer from problems such as poor efficiency for sparse computation workload, high demand on network bandwidth, and expensive cost incurred by external-memory join and group-by. In this paper, we introduce the GraphD system for a user to process very large graphs with ordinary computing resources. GraphD fully overlaps computation with communication, by streaming edges and messages on local disks, while transmitting messages in parallel. For a broad class of Pregel algorithms where message combiner is applicable, GraphD eliminates the need of any expensive external-memory join or group-by. These key techniques allow GraphD to achieve comparable performance to in-memory Pregel-like systems without keeping edges and messages in memories. We prove that to process a graph G=(V, E) with n machines using GraphD, each machine only requires O(|V|/n) memory space, allowing GraphD to scale to very large graphs with a small cluster. Extensive experiments show that GraphD beats existing out-of-core systems by orders of magnitude, and achieves comparable performance to in-memory systems running with enough memories.
Security of Fully Distributed Power System State Estimation: Detection and Mitigation of Data Integrity Attacks

State estimation (SE) plays an essential role in the monitoring and supervision of power systems. In today's power systems, SE is typically done in a centralized or in a hierarchical way, but as power systems will be increasingly interconnected in the future smart grid, distributed SE will become an important alternative to centralized and hierarchical solutions. As the future smart grid may rely on distributed SE, it is essential to understand the potential vulnerabilities that distributed SE may have. In this paper, we show that an attacker that compromises the communication infrastructure of a single control center in an interconnected power system can successfully perform a denial-of-service attack against state-of-the-art distributed SE, and consequently, it can blind the system operators of every region. As a solution to mitigate such a denial-of-service attack, we propose a fully distributed algorithm for attack detection. Furthermore, we propose a fully distributed algorithm that identifies the most likely attack location based on the individual regions' beliefs about the attack location, isolates the identified region, and then reruns the distributed SE. We validate the proposed algorithms on the IEEE 118 bus benchmark power system.
Observational constraints for lithium depletion before the RGB

Precise Li abundances are determined for 54 giant stars mostly evolving across the Hertzsprung gap. We combine these data with rotational velocity and with information related to the deepening of the convective zone of the stars to analyse their link to Li dilution in the referred spectral region. A sudden decline in Li abundance paralleling the one already established in rotation is quite clear. Following similar results for other stellar luminosity classes and spectral regions, there is no linear relation between Li abundance and rotation, in spite of the fact that most of the fast rotators present high Li content. The effects of convection in driving the Li dilution is also quite clear. Stars with high Li content are mostly those with an undeveloped convective zone, whereas stars with a developed convective zone present clear sign of Li dilution.
Unsupervised Learning of Parsimonious General-Purpose Embeddings for User and Location Modeling

Many social network applications depend on robust representations of spatio-temporal data. In this work, we present an embedding model based on feed-forward neural networks which transforms social media check-ins into dense feature vectors encoding geographic, temporal, and functional aspects for modeling places, neighborhoods, and users. We employ the embedding model in a variety of applications including location recommendation, urban functional zone study, and crime prediction. For location recommendation, we propose a Spatio-Temporal Embedding Similarity algorithm (STES) based on the embedding model. In a range of experiments on real life data collected from Foursquare, we demonstrate our model’s effectiveness at characterizing places and people and its applicability in aforementioned problem domains. Finally, we select eight major cities around the globe and verify the robustness and generality of our model by porting pre-trained models from one city to another, thereby alleviating the need for costly local training.
Optimizing signal and image processing applications using Intel libraries

This paper presents optimized signal and image processing libraries from Intel Corporation. Intel Performance Primitives (IPP) is a low-level signal and image processing library developed by Intel Corporation to optimize code on Intel processors. Open Computer Vision library (OpenCV) is a high-level library dedicated to computer vision tasks. This article describes the use of both libraries to build flexible and efficient signal and image processing applications.
Logic Minimization and Testability of 2-SPP Networks

The 2-SPP networks are three-level EXOR-AND-OR forms, with EXOR gates being restricted to fan-in 2. This paper presents a heuristic algorithm for the synthesis of these networks in a form that is fully testable in the stuck-at fault model (SAFM). The algorithm extends the EXPAND-IRREDUNDANT-REDUCE paradigm of ESPRESSO in heuristic mode, and it iterates local minimization and reshape of a solution until no further improvement can be achieved. This heuristic could escape from local minima using a LAST_GASP-like procedure. Moreover, the testability of 2-SPP networks under the SAFM is studied, and the notion of EXOR-irredundancy is introduced to prove that the computed 2-SPP networks are fully testable under the SAFM. Finally, this paper reports a large set of experiments showing high-quality results with affordable run times, handling also examples whose exact solutions could not be computed.
From Amber to Coercion Constraints

Subtyping is a common tool in the design of type systems that ﬁnds its roots in the η -expansion of arrow types and the notion of type containment obtained by closing System F by η -expansion. Although strongly related, subtyping and type containment still signiﬁcantly diﬀer from one another when put into practice. We introduce coercion constraints to relate and generalize subtyping and type containment as well as all variants of F - bounded quantiﬁcation and instance-bounded quantiﬁcation used for ﬁrst-order type inference in the presence of second-order types. We obtain a type system with a clearer separation between computational and erasable parts of terms.