Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fairness Comparisons of Per-flow and Aggregate Marking Schemes in DiffServ Networks

among TCP flows originated from a single customer network in a Differentiated Services (DS) network. In a DS network, performance commitments for customer traffic are often specified at aggregate levels, rather than on the level of individual flows. When we deal with aggregated sources in such networks, we need to consider not only the fairness issues among aggregates but also the fairness issues among individual flows within an aggregate. Target of the measurements was to evaluate how per-flow marking and aggregate marking affect the performance of individual TCP connections when competing with each other within the same Assured Services class. Since aggregation is a key factor in any DS capable network to achieve better link utilization, it is essential that an improvement of QoS should be seen also by individual flows.
An Educational Tool for Hearing Aid Compression Fitting via a Web-based Adjusted Smartphone App

This paper presents an educational tool to learn about how hearing aid compression fitting is prescribed from a signal processing perspective. An interactive web-based program has been developed based on the widely used DSL-v5 fitting rationale. This program can be accessed and used from any internet browser to generate the parameters of compression curves that correspond to the nine frequency bands used in DSL-v5. These parameters are then transferred to a smartphone in the form of a datafile to be used by a compression app, which operates as a virtual hearing aid, running in real-time on both iOS and Android smartphones. This educational tool was found to be very easy-to-use by signal processing engineers as no programming knowledge is needed for adjusting gain across frequency bands and subsequently running the corresponding compression curves in the smartphone app to appropriately compress input sound signals.
Interaction Design as Experienced by Practitioners

In this article the questions `what is interaction design´ and `what does interaction design mean to interaction designers´, are posed. We both look at the way people from within university/academia discuss interaction design as well as how people who label themselves interaction designers understand the area and describe their own practice. The empirical material presented is based on an interview study and a series of workshops. In the data three perspectives on interaction design emerged. This study illuminates that people who label themselves interaction designers assume a more holistic view on their endeavour for making interactive systems usable, they also describe their practice as being more progressive- and design oriented rather than construction- or usability oriented. In their work, respondents report on having acted almost as if they were project leaders, having an insight into the whole design process. Interaction designers build a repertoire of solutions and methods are reused.
The 2003 ABA presidential address: 9/11...this is not a drill!

I am humbled by the honor bestowed upon me to serve as the President of the American Burn Association (ABA). For me, it is the ultimate achievement in a career that started, as with most burn doctors of my generation, as a matter of circumstance and opportunity rather than a matter of choice. Having fallen into the field, however, I must state that I am fortunate and proud to have had the pleasure of working as a member of what I consider the only true “team” in medicine—the burn team. With that introduction, I must take a few moments to thank some very special people who have invested time and patience in me and my career and with whom I share the honor of the presidency. I have had the good fortune to work under several master surgeons who guided my career and opened doors for me. My interest in burn care was inspired by Dr. Roger Sherman, my Chairman of Surgery at the University of South Florida in Tampa. One of his favorite expressions, and one which I use frequently with my residents, was “I can teach a monkey to operate, but I can’t teach him how to think. ” With those words, he stimulated the thinking process in several generations of surgery residents. My second Chairman was Captain William Fouty, the Chief of Surgery at the National Naval Medical Center, where I served two years as staff surgeon and kidney transplanter. Bill knew of my interest in burns and trauma from my residency years and my disappointment with transplantation after about 11 months and, at my request, inquired of his counterpart at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR) in San Antonio how I might learn burn care at the Mecca. The answer was that I would have to sell the Navy blue uniforms and buy green ones and commit to another three years of military life as a member of the Army. I’m sorry, Dr. Pruitt, but I just couldn’t get past the green uniform part. Subsequently, having made the decision to return to the South, Dr. Fouty helped me relocate to Charleston, SC, for a two-year extension of my Navy career. As he retired from the Navy and became the Chair of Surgery at the Washington Hospital Center (WHC), he tempted me to return to the Washington, DC, area with the offer of a job as director of a burn unit. This was a hard decision. I was faced with leaving the land of magnolias, gardenias, and no import tax on grits From The Burn Center at Washington Hospital Center, Washington, District of Columbia. Address correspondence to Marion H. Jordan, MD Director of, The Burn Center at Washington Hospital Center, 110 Irving Street NW, Room 3B-55, Washington, District of Columbia 20010. Copyright © 2004 by the American Burn Association. 0273-8481/2004
Striatal dynamics explain duration judgments

The striatum is an input structure of the basal ganglia implicated in several time-dependent functions including reinforcement learning, decision making, and interval timing. To determine whether striatal ensembles drive subjects’ judgments of duration, we manipulated and recorded from striatal neurons in rats performing a duration categorization psychophysical task. We found that the dynamics of striatal neurons predicted duration judgments, and that simultaneously recorded ensembles could judge duration as well as the animal. Furthermore, striatal neurons were necessary for duration judgments, as muscimol infusions produced a specific impairment in animals’ duration sensitivity. Lastly, we show that time as encoded by striatal populations ran faster or slower when rats judged a duration as longer or shorter, respectively. These results demonstrate that the speed with which striatal population state changes supports the fundamental ability of animals to judge the passage of time.
A performance study framework for Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), which was introduced by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), is widely used in communication networks to provide QoS guaranties to traffic. In this connection-oriented protocol, network failures can cause a serious disruption to critical data traffic which is unacceptable for customers who require highly reliable services. To guarantee high QoS and enhance network performance during failures, researchers have developed different recovery mechanisms for MPLS to ensure rerouting traffic from original faulty paths to alternate paths. In this paper, a comprehensive study is carried out on MPLS recovery mechanisms for protecting and restoring traffic after failure occurrence. In order to model the recovery mechanisms in MPLS networks, a new modeling framework for MPLS recovery was developed on a multi-layer approach. The new framework was designed to be generic and flexible in order to easily model network topologies with different MPLS recovery mechanisms and simulate variable parameters/scenarios for performance analysis purposes.
Penalized Spline of Propensity Methods for Treatment Comparison

ABSTRACT Valid causal inference from observational studies requires controlling for confounders. When time-dependent confounders are present that serve as mediators of treatment effects and affect future treatment assignment, standard regression methods for controlling for confounders fail. Similar issues also arise in trials with sequential randomization, when randomization at later time points is based on intermediate outcomes from earlier randomized assignments. We propose a robust multiple imputation-based approach to causal inference in this setting called penalized spline of propensity methods for treatment comparison (PENCOMP), which builds on the penalized spline of propensity prediction method for missing data problems. PENCOMP estimates causal effects by imputing missing potential outcomes with flexible spline models and draws inference based on imputed and observed outcomes. Under the SUTVA, positivity, and ignorability assumptions, PENCOMP has a double robustness property for causal effects. Simulations suggest that it tends to outperform doubly robust marginal structural modeling when the weights are variable. We apply our method to the multicenter AIDS cohort study to estimate the effect of antiretroviral treatment on CD4 counts in HIV-infected patients. Supplementary materials for this article are available online. Code submitted with this article was checked by an Associate Editor for Reproducibility and is available as an online supplement.
Technological and Organizational Innovation in Chemicals and Related Products

This paper is an historical review of the interaction of organizational and technological change in the chemical, agro-food and pharmaceutical industries. These sectors have at various times had strong linkages to each other, through ownership and technology, such that they have been described collectively as 'the chemicals and related products industry'. Convergence such as this and subsequent divergence are among the organizational changes examined in this paper. Specifically, we focus on mergers, acquisitions, de-mergers and divestments as the mechanism by which such changes have taken place in the boundaries of the industry and its firms. Another important organizational change is also mentioned here, though it is analyzed in more detail elsewhere, namely the increasingly networked nature of the innovating firm and the increasingly distributed nature of the innovation process, also a significant aspect of the changing face of the chemical industry. We trace the developing strategies of chemical and related products firms in response to increasing costs and declining returns to effort in R&D, declining demand for its products, and globalization of production, markets and R&D itself. These strategies were initially to diversify into, or increase their reliance on, higher value-added areas such as drugs, agrochemicals, designer crops, speciality chemicals, advanced materials and catalysts, with an increased R&D focus on the life sciences. This trend interacted with the appearance of biotechnology and subsequently of new techniques of product discovery, design and screening based on IT and biotechnology, and of genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics. We argue that the chemical and related products industry has reinvented itself as, firstly a life sciences industry and a more traditional chemicals and materials industry, and then by a further division of the life sciences industry into agro-food and pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile parallel, demand-oriented strategies have included location of R&D in the business units of multidivisional firms, with a central R&D unit for longer term exploratory research; mergers and acquisitions that secure a stronger footing in countries that represent important markets to the firm concerned; acquisitions by agrochemical firms of seed and plant-breeding companies; and acquisitions by pharmaceutical companies of US prescription management companies.
Ecological connectivity and niche differentiation between two closely related fish species in the mangrove − seagrass − coral reef continuum

We aim to understand ontogenetic shifts in habitat use and feeding patterns by 2 fish species, Lutjanus fulviflamma and L. ehrenbergii, within a tropical seascape in East Africa. Stomach contents and stable isotope signatures of muscle tissues (δ13C and δ15N) were compared between and within species. Fish of all life stages and potential food items were sampled from mangrove creeks, seagrass beds, and coral reefs around Mafia Island, Tanzania. Due to similarities in morphology between species, correct species identity was confirmed using genetic barcoding (mtDNA, partial sequence of cytochrome oxidase subunit I [COI]). Stable isotope analysis in R (based on mixing models) confirmed that δ13C and δ15N values in L. fulviflamma and L. ehrenbergii reflected those of prey items caught in different habitats. Diets and mean δ13C and δ15N values of muscle tissue differed between life stages of fish, indicating ontogenetic changes in habitat and diet. L. fulviflamma and L. ehrenbergii differed in diet and δ13C and δ15N values of muscle tissue, although they overlapped in habitat use, suggesting food resource partitioning between the 2 species. Furthermore, diet overlap indexes were low between subadult species in mangrove and seagrass or coral habitats. L. fulviflamma displayed a diet shift with decreasing importance of small crustaceans in juveniles and an increasing importance of prey fishes in subadults and adults. L. ehrenbergii showed the opposite pattern. The study verifies feeding interlinkage within the mangrove−seagrass−coral reef continuum in Mafia Island by providing strong evidence of ontogenetic migration. Understanding these connections will enhance our ability to manage tropical seascapes, and highlights the need to include multiple habitats in marine protected areas.
Estimating Student Knowledge from Paired Interaction Data

Estimating students’ knowledge based on their interactions with computer-based tutors has the potential to improve learning by decreasing time taking assessments and facilitating personalized interventions. Although there exist good student models for relatively structured topics and tutors, less progress has been made with more open-ended activities. Further, students often complete activities in pairs rather than individually, with no coding to indicate who performed each action. We investigate whether pair interactions with an open-ended chemistry tutor can be used to predict individual student post test performance. Using L1-regularized regression, we show that student interactions with the tutor are predictive both of the average post-test score for the pair and of individual scores. Towards better understanding pair dynamics in this setting, we also find that for pairs composed of students with similar pre-test scores, we can predict the difference in students’ post-test scores.
Dissertation Research : It isn ’ t enough to be smooth

The ISIS team in ISR-2 primarily uses supervised learning techniques to solve classification problems in imagery and therefore has a strong interest in finding linear classification algorithms that are both robust and efficient. Boosting algorithms take a principled approach to finding linear classifiers and they has been shown to be so effective in practice that they are widely used in a variety of domains. In the real world, noisy data is ubiquitous, and this is equally true of the data in use at LANL. Unfortunately, it has been observed that the performance of the most common boosting algorithms deteriorates drastically with noise. The development of boosting algorithms that are robust to noise is only beginning. Virtually all boosting algorithms that have achieved some noise robustness do so by restricting the amount of weight that can be put on any example. This is called smoothing or capping in the literature. In this proposal we present evidence that smoothing is not necessarily the optimal way to achieve noise robustness. We propose to research alternative mechanisms to smoothing to gain insight into the nature of noise robustness and to arrive at algorithms that achieve this efficiently.
Words and Melody Are Intertwined in Perception of Sung Words: EEG and Behavioral Evidence

Language and music, two of the most unique human cognitive abilities, are combined in song, rendering it an ecological model for comparing speech and music cognition. The present study was designed to determine whether words and melodies in song are processed interactively or independently, and to examine the influence of attention on the processing of words and melodies in song. Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) and behavioral data were recorded while non-musicians listened to pairs of sung words (prime and target) presented in four experimental conditions: same word, same melody; same word, different melody; different word, same melody; different word, different melody. Participants were asked to attend to either the words or the melody, and to perform a same/different task. In both attentional tasks, different word targets elicited an N400 component, as predicted based on previous results. Most interestingly, different melodies (sung with the same word) elicited an N400 component followed by a late positive component. Finally, ERP and behavioral data converged in showing interactions between the linguistic and melodic dimensions of sung words. The finding that the N400 effect, a well-established marker of semantic processing, was modulated by musical melody in song suggests that variations in musical features affect word processing in sung language. Implications of the interactions between words and melody are discussed in light of evidence for shared neural processing resources between the phonological/semantic aspects of language and the melodic/harmonic aspects of music.
Myosin VIIA Is Required for Aminoglycoside Accumulation in Cochlear Hair Cells

Myosin VIIA is expressed by sensory hair cells and has a primary structure predicting a role in membrane trafficking and turnover, processes that may underlie the susceptibility of hair cells to aminoglycoside antibiotics. [3H]Gentamicin accumulation and the effects of aminoglycosides were therefore examined in cochlear cultures of mice with different missense mutations in the myosin VIIA gene, Myo7a, to see whether myosin VIIA plays a role in aminoglycoside ototoxicity. Hair cells from homozygous mutant Myo7ash1 mice, with a mutation in a nonconserved region of the myosin VIIA head, respond rapidly to aminoglycoside treatment and accumulate high levels of gentamicin. Hair cells from homozygous mutantMyo7a6J mice, with a mutation at a highly conserved residue close to the ATP binding site of the myosin VIIA head, do not accumulate [3H]gentamicin and are protected from aminoglycoside ototoxicity. Hair cells from heterozygotes of both alleles accumulate [3H]gentamicin and respond to aminoglycosides. Although aminoglycoside uptake is thought to be via apical surface-associated endocytosis, coated pit numbers on the apical membrane of heterozygous and homozygousMyo7a6J hair cells are similar. Pulse–chase experiments with cationic ferritin confirm that the apical endocytotic pathway is functional in homozygousMyo7a6J hair cells. Transduction currents can be recorded from both heterozygous and homozygousMyo7a6J hair cells, suggesting it is unlikely that the drug enters via diffusion through the mechanotransducer channel. The results show that myosin VIIA is required for aminoglycoside accumulation in hair cells. Myosin VIIA may transport a putative aminoglycoside receptor to the hair cell surface, indirectly translocate it to sites of membrane retrieval, or retain it in the endocytotic pathway.
IWFR: Exploiting full-duplex in wireless relay networks

Traditional wireless relay networks have large end-to-end time delay and low throughput because of the limit that it can't receive and forward at the same time. In this paper, we proposed IWFR: Immediate Wireless Full-Duplex Relay which exploits the advantages of full-duplex to shorten the end-to-end time delay and improve the throughput. At the same time, we designed a new implicit acknowledgement mechanism, which can eliminate the ACK overheads and evidently improve the throughput of the relay. To implement IWFR, we also modified the full-duplex node architecture to make it support for immediate relay. Simulation shows that IWFR shortens the end-to-end time delay by 60% on average and improves the throughput to 240% of the original relay.
Comprehensive First‐Line Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Hypertension: Experience From a Single‐Center Tertiary Referral Clinic

European guidelines recommend that patients with hypertension be assessed for asymptomatic organ damage and secondary causes. The authors propose that a single magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan can provide comprehensive first‐line imaging of patients assessed via a specialist hypertension clinic. A total of 200 patients (56% male, aged 51±15 years, office BP 168±30/96±16 mm Hg) underwent MRI of the heart, kidneys, renal arteries, adrenals and aorta. Comparisons were made with other imaging modalities where available. A total of 61% had left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), 14% had reduced ejection fraction, and 15 patients had myocardial infarcts. Echocardiography overdiagnosed LVH in 15% of patients and missed LVH in 14%. Secondary causes were identified in 14.5% of patients: 12 adrenal masses, 10 renal artery stenoses, seven thyroid abnormalities, one aortic coarctation, one enlarged pituitary gland, one polycystic kidney disease, and one renal coloboma syndrome. This comprehensive MRI protocol is an effective method of screening for asymptomatic organ damage and secondary causes of hypertension.
Robust transmission of regions of interest in JPEG2000

We present a technique to robustly transmit regions of interest in the JPEG2000 framework. The technique assumes a prioritized region of interest coding and optimally assigns channel protection to the coded data according to the importance of every packet in the final bit stream. The mean energy of the transform coefficients contained in a packet, and the distance of a packet from the region of interest, determine the importance of every packet. Channel protection is achieved by means of a concatenation of a cyclic redundancy check outer coder and an inner rate-compatible convolutional coder. Simulation results performed over a Rayleigh-fading channel show an improvement in the visual quality of the reconstructed images.
Small worlds and the security of ubiquitous computing

The paper considers the small-world phenomenon in two contexts, ubiquitous computing and security. We argue that small-world properties emerge in ubicomp systems due to their natural occurrence in human-centered networks and their meaning as a system design principle. The relationship of small worlds and security is examined from two viewpoints. First, results on the security of small-world networks are reviewed. Second, we look into how small-world properties are obstacles to, or can be helpful in maintaining security guarantees. We then give an example of how to improve the communication security in large-scale, self-organizing networks.