Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Mixing Patterns of Social Networks : The Impact of Cores , Link Directions , and Dynamics [ Last revised on May 22 , 2011 ]

We extend upon our earlier results measuring the mixing time and advance our understanding of the problem in several directions. We relate the mixing time of social graphs to graph degeneracy, which captures cohesiveness of the graph. We experimentally show that fast-mixing graphs tend to have a larger single core whereas slow-mixing graphs tend to have smaller multiple cores. While this study provides quantitative and empirical evidence relating the mixing time to core structure of social graphs, it also agrees with our previous remarks on the potential relationship between the tight-knit community structure and slow mixing social graphs. Equipped with with these findings, we advance this vein of research in several directions. First, we study several heuristics to improve the mixing time in slow-mixing graphs using their topological structures. Second, we study the impact of link direction and link dynamics on the quality of the mixing time. As anticipated, we find that dynamic social graphs have time-varying mixing characteristics. Counterintuitively, we find directed graphs are faster-mixing than the same graphs when considered without edge direction.
Insights into Korean Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) Based on Mitochondrial Cytochrome b Sequence Variation in East Asia

The red fox (Vulpes vulpes) is the most widely distributed terrestrial carnivore in the world, occurring throughout most of North America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa. In South Korea, however, this species has been drastically reduced due to habitat loss and poaching. Consequently, it is classified as an endangered species in Korea. As a first step of a planned red fox restoration project, preserved red fox museum specimens were used to determine the genetic status of red foxes that had previously inhabited South Korea against red foxes from neighboring countries. Total eighty three mtDNA cytochrome b sequences, including 22 newly obtained East Asian red fox sequences and worldwide red fox sequences from NCBI, were clustered into three clades (i.e., I, II, and III) based on haplotype network and neighbor-joining trees. The mean genetic distance between clades was 2.0%. Clade III contained South Korean and other East Asian samples in addition to Eurasian and North Pacific individuals. In clade III, South Korean individuals were separated into two lineages of Eurasian and North Pacific groups, showing unclear phylogeographic structuring and admixture. This suggests that South Korean red fox populations may have been composed of individuals from these two different genetic lineages.
The sound quality evaluation system for recording device

With fierce competition in the electronic product market, a manufacturer needs to constantly improve the quality of their products. Therefore, in recent years, many sound quality analysis tools have been developed to help them to judge the quality of products. In this paper, we focus on the need for evaluating the sound quality of recording product. The system we proposed is a technical tool that is based on objective measurements, or metrics. The metrics mainly include linearity, frequency response, directivity, harmonic distortion. In the process, a standard sound signal is recorded by various recording devices. To compare and analyze the recorded signals and the original signal, the differences on metrics are obtained. In the objective tests, the quality evaluation of various devices is in according with the differences. The use of the system is discussed and an example is given. Experiments indicate that our proposed system can accurately realize the device evaluation.
Characterizing the Dynamics of Open User Experience Design: The Cases of Firefox and OpenOffice.org

We describe two cases of open user experience (UX) design using the Firefox web browser and OpenOffice.org office suite as case studies. Open UX design refers to activities and practices surrounding designing for the user experience in open source contexts. We analyze the socio-technical complexity of integrating UX activities into the two open source projects using activity awareness, a theoretical framework for understanding team performance in collective endeavors of significant scope, duration, and complexity. The facets of activity awareness are common ground, communities of practice, social capital, and human development. We found differences with the following dynamics in the two open source projects: community building, UX status in the community, decision making, and ways of sharing design information.
MULTIELECTRODE MICROPROBES FOR DEEP-BRAIN STIMULATION FABRICATED USING A NOVEL 3-D SHAPING ELECTROPLATING PROCESS

This paper describes a novel 22-mm-long multi-channel microelectrode suitable for deep-brain stimulation in rodents. The platinum electrodes and conducting interconnects are insulated by silicon nitride and the mechanical support is provided by a 3-D electroplated biocompatible metallic structure. The shape of the probe has been designed to provide sufficient mechanical stiffness for accurate targeting of deep-brain regions while minimizing tissue damage. The probe thickness and width are smoothly tapered from the 200-μm-wide and 150-μm-thick shank to the 10-μm-thick probe tip. The electrical and mechanical properties of the electrode array have been tested and show an impedance of
Coverage and Quality of Antenatal Care Provided at Primary Health Care Facilities in the ‘Punjab’ Province of ‘Pakistan’

Background Antenatal care is a very important component of maternal health services. It provides the opportunity to learn about risks associated with pregnancy and guides to plan the place of deliveries thereby preventing maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. In ‘Pakistan’ antenatal services to rural population are being provided through a network of primary health care facilities designated as 'Basic Health Units and Rural Health Centers. Pakistan is a developing country, consisting of four provinces and federally administered areas. Each province is administratively subdivided in to ‘Divisions’ and ‘Districts’. By population ‘Punjab’ is the largest province of Pakistan having 36 districts. This study was conducted to assess the coverage and quality antenatal care in the primary health care facilities in ‘Punjab’ province of ‘Pakistan’. Methods Quantitative and Qualitative methods were used to collect data. Using multistage sampling technique nine out of thirty six districts were selected and 19 primary health care facilities of public sector (seventeen Basic Health Units and two Rural Health Centers were randomly selected from each district. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with clients, providers and health managers. Results The overall enrollment for antenatal checkup was 55.9% and drop out was 32.9% in subsequent visits. The quality of services regarding assessment, treatment and counseling was extremely poor. The reasons for low coverage and quality were the distant location of facilities, deficiency of facility resources, indifferent attitude and non availability of the staff. Moreover, lack of client awareness about importance of antenatal care and self empowerment for decision making to seek care were also responsible for low coverage. Conclusion The coverage and quality of the antenatal care services in ‘Punjab’ are extremely compromised. Only half of the expected pregnancies are enrolled and out of those 1/3 drop out in follow-up visits.
Interfaith marriage attitudes in Muslim majority countries: A multilevel approach

ABSTRACT This research uses multilevel structural equation modeling to examine Muslims’ attitudes toward interfaith marriage with Christians in 22 countries with a Muslim majority population (N = 21,373). Attitudes toward interfaith marriage, for sons and daughters separately, were measured with single items, and three binary items were used to measure participants’ religious beliefs. Overall attitudes were negative and more negative toward marriage of one’s daughter compared to one’s son. Stronger religious belief was associated with more negative attitudes, but less so for Muslims who perceived more similarities than differences between Islam and Christianity. Perceived religious similarity was associated with more positive attitudes. The proportion of Christians in a country was not associated with interfaith marriage attitudes. However, the association between belief and attitude was found to differ considerably across countries.
Self-localization in wireless sensor networks using particle filtering with progressive correction

A centralized self-localization algorithm is used to estimate sensor locations. From the known positions of at least 3 anchor nodes the remaining sensor positions are estimated using an efficient particle filter (PF) with progressive correction. The measurement model is a simple two-parameter log-normal shadowing model, where the parameters are estimated concurrently. Experiments using Crossbow Imote2 motes show that an error of less than 16% is achievable in an indoor environment. The results demonstrate that by using PF with progressive correction, a small number of measurements and a simple signal propagation model are sufficient to give low localization errors.
Difficulty of predicting interconnect delay in a timing driven FPGA CAD flow

This paper studies the difficulty of predicting interconnect delay in an industrial setting. Fifty industrial circuits, Altera's Quartus II CAD software, and Altera's Stratix and Stratix II FPGA architectures were used in the study. We show that there is a large amount of inherent randomness in a state-of-the-art FPGA placement algorithm. Thus, it is impossible to predict interconnect delay with a high degree of accuracy. Futhermore, we show that a simple timing model can be used to predict some aspects of interconnect timing with just as much accuracy as predictions obtained by running the placement tool itself. Finally, we examine the benefits of using the simple timing model in a timing driven physical synthesis flow, and attempt to establish an upper bound on these possible gains, given the difficulty of interconnect delay prediction.
Design and Implementation of the Operation and Maintenance System in Component-Router

of the Operation and Maintenance System in Component-Router Yong Jiang, Jianping Wu [jyong@csnet1.cs. tsinghua.edu. cn] Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084 Phone: +86-010-62785822 Fax: +86-010-62788109 Abstract: The OAM (Operations and Maintenance) module of a router fulfills the management and manipulation of the router. The OAM is one of the most important sub systems in a router, guaranteeing it to work in going order. With the rapid development of the network protocols, it is increasingly important to dynamically upgrade router's software. In this paper, the authors make a thorough research on the operation and maintenance system in routers. First the CR-OAM (Component-Router-OAM) design requirements and evolutions are introduced. Then the authors present the Component-Router's architecture and the CR-OAM function requirements, that Component-Router is developed by Tsinghua University in China, the design and implementation of the CR-OAM is also described in detail, whose novel feature is the ability to dynamically load and configure extensible component at run time. At last research directions and open problems in this area are discussed.
A Neuromorphic Model to Match the Spiking Activity of Merkel Mechanoreceptors With Biomimetic Tactile Sensors for Bioengineering Applications

A major challenge in upper limb neuroprostheses is to reproduce the tactile feedback as the one provided by the spiking activity of human mechanoreceptors. In this paper, we aim at emulating the firing behavior of Merkel mechanoreceptors, innervated by slowly adapting type I (SA1) receptors, in silico by means of a custom implementation of the Izhikevich spiking neuron model with a porting function of the sensors output. We matched the neuron model output with the sustained firing observed in neurophysiological experiments in response to constant stimuli to the skin. We compared different input transformation functions to find the proper trade-off between agreement with biological spiking activity and model leanness. We identified a porting function that converts the output of physical sensors into the input to artificial spiking models of mechanoreceptors. The porting function was then validated by comparing the firing rate-indentation curve of real mechanoreceptors with the one obtained from an MEMS-based biomimetic tactile sensor platform. From the analysis of the adjusted-residual variance, the two curves result coherent. Therefore, having applied the calibration inverse function to a sensor output, the proposed porting function allows obtaining the proper input to an artificial neuron model, enabling the generation of neuromorphic signals.
New conformal gauging and the electromagnetic theory of Weyl

A new eight-dimensional conformal gauging solves the auxiliary field problem and eliminates unphysical size change from Weyl’s electromagnetic theory. We derive the Maurer–Cartan structure equations and find the zero curvature solutions for the conformal connection. By showing that every one-particle Hamiltonian generates the structure equations we establish a correspondence between phase space and the eight-dimensional base space, and between the action and the integral of the Weyl vector. Applying the correspondence to generic flat solutions yields the Lorentz force law, the form and gauge dependence of the electromagnetic vector potential and minimal coupling. The dynamics found for these flat solutions applies locally in generic spaces. We then provide necessary and sufficient curvature constraints for general curved eight-dimensional geometries to be in 1–1 correspondence with four-dimensional Einstein–Maxwell space–times, based on a vector space isomorphism between the extra four dimensions and the .
Complement expression in the retina is not influenced by short-term pressure elevation

Purpose To determine whether short-term pressure elevation affects complement gene expression in the retina in vitro and in vivo. Methods Muller cell (TR-MUL5) cultures and organotypic retinal cultures from adult mice and monkeys were subjected to either 24-h or 72-h of pressure at 0, 15, 30, and 45 mmHg above ambient. C57BL/6 mice were subjected to microbead-induced intraocular pressure (IOP) elevation for 7 days. RNA and protein were extracted and used for analysis of expression levels of complement component genes and complement component 1, q subcomponent (C1q) and complement factor H (CFH) immunoblotting. Results mRNA levels of complement genes and C1q protein levels in Muller cell cultures remained the same for all pressure levels after exposure for either 24 or 72 h. In primate and murine organotypic cultures, pressure elevation did not produce changes in complement gene expression or C1q and CFH protein levels at either the 24-h or 72-h time points. Pressure-related glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) mRNA expression changes were detected in primate retinal organotypic cultures (analysis of variance [ANOVA]; p<0.05). mRNA expression of several other genes changed as a result of time in culture. Eyes subjected to microbead-induced IOP elevation had no differences in mRNA expression of complement genes and C1q protein levels (ANOVA; p>0.05 for both) with contralateral control and naïve control eyes. Conclusions Short-term elevation of pressure in vitro as well as short-term (1 week) IOP elevation in vivo does not seem to dramatically alter complement system gene expression in the retina. Prolonged expression to elevated pressure may be necessary to affect the complement system expression.
Metric embeddings with outliers

We initiate the study of metric embeddings with \emph{outliers}. Given some metric space $(X,\rho)$ we wish to find a small set of outlier points $K \subset X$ and either an isometric or a low-distortion embedding of $(X\setminus K,\rho)$ into some target metric space. This is a natural problem that captures scenarios where a small fraction of points in the input corresponds to noise. For the case of isometric embeddings we derive polynomial-time approximation algorithms for minimizing the number of outliers when the target space is an ultrametric, a tree metric, or constant-dimensional Euclidean space. The approximation factors are 3, 4 and 2, respectively. For the case of embedding into an ultrametric or tree metric, we further improve the running time to $O(n^2)$ for an $n$-point input metric space, which is optimal. We complement these upper bounds by showing that outlier embedding into ultrametrics, trees, and $d$-dimensional Euclidean space for any $d\geq 2$ are all NP-hard, as well as NP-hard to approximate within a factor better than 2 assuming the Unique Game Conjecture. For the case of non-isometries we consider embeddings with small $\ell_{\infty}$ distortion. We present polynomial-time \emph{bi-criteria} approximation algorithms. Specifically, given some $\epsilon > 0$, let $k_\epsilon$ denote the minimum number of outliers required to obtain an embedding with distortion $\epsilon$. For the case of embedding into ultrametrics we obtain a polynomial-time algorithm which computes a set of at most $3k_{\epsilon}$ outliers and an embedding of the remaining points into an ultrametric with distortion $O(\epsilon \log n)$. For embedding a metric of unit diameter into constant-dimensional Euclidean space we present a polynomial-time algorithm which computes a set of at most $2k_{\epsilon}$ outliers and an embedding of the remaining points with distortion $O(\sqrt{\epsilon})$.
Developing a re-usable web-demonstrator for automatic anaphora resolution with support for manual editing of coreference chains

Automatic markup and editing of anaphora and coreference is performed within one system. The processing is trained using memory based learning, and representations derive from various lexical resources. The current model reaches an expected combined precision and recall of F=62. The further improvement of the coreference detection is work in progress. Editing of coreference is separated into a module working on an xml-file. The editing mechanism can thus be reused in other projects. The editor is designed to store a copy on the server of all files that are edited over the internet using our demonstrator. This might help us to expand our database of texts annotated for anaphora and coreference. Further research includes creating high coverage lexical resources, and modules for other languages. The current system is trained on Norwegian bokm°al, but we hope to extend this to other languages with available tools (e.g. POS-taggers).
A public key audio watermarking using patchwork algorithm

This paper presents a statistical technique for audio watermarking. We describe the application of the promising public key watermarking method to the patchwork algorithm. Its detection process does not need the original content nor the secret key used in the embedding process. Special attention is given to statistical method working in the frequency domain. We will present a solution of robust watermarking of audio data. In this scheme, an extension of patchwork audio watermarking is presented which enables public detection of the watermark. Experimental results show good robustness of the approach against MP3 compression and other common signal processing manipulations.
Reliable Multicast Protocol in Distributed Simulation for Multi-agent Systems

Using computational clusters to simulate multi-agent systems has attracted a considerable amount of interest in recent years because of its ability to perform investigations about large complex systems. Many factors such as the load balancing among the nodes, the communication latencies or the synchronizing the logical processes, however, can impact on its performance. This paper focuses on the minimization of communication costs by proposing using reliable multicast mechanism for reducing communication latency problem. This promises to give an improvement in its performance.
A novel methodology for architecture-level exploration of 3D SoCs

Three-dimensional (3D) integration is an emerging technology that is expected to lead to tremendous benefits in terms of power, delay and silicon area. Moreover, 3D technology continues interconnect advances beyond the CMOS scaling predicted by Moore's Law, which enable new capabilities not available in 2D ICs. This paper proposes a physical design framework that enables rapid evaluation of 3D SOCs under different optimization goals. For demonstration purposes we apply the proposed framework for the 3D physical design of an embedded processor. Experimental results shown that 3D integration can alleviate the constraints posed by increased wire-length, such as power consumption, by about 20% compared to the 2D implementation.
A Probabilistic Approach to Nano-computing

As current silicon-based techniques fast approach their practical limits, the investigation of nanoscale electronics, devices and system architectures becomes a central research priority. It is expected that nano-architectures will confront devices and interconnections with high inherent defect rates, which motivates the search for new architectural principles. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic-based design methodology for designing nano-scale computer architectures based on Markov Random Fields (MRF). The MRF can express arbitrary logic circuits and logic operation is achieved by maximizing the probability of state configurations in the logic network. Maximizing state probability is equivalent to minimizing a form of energy that depends on neighboring nodes in the network. Once we develop a library of elementary logic components, we can link them together to build desired architectures based on the belief propagation algorithm. Belief propagation is a way of organizing the global computation of marginal belief in terms of smaller local computations. Finally, we will illustrate the proposed design methodology with some elementary logic examples.
Catabolism of 4-Hydroxyacids and 4-Hydroxynonenal via 4-Hydroxy-4-phosphoacyl-CoAs*♦

4-Hydroxyacids are products of ubiquitously occurring lipid peroxidation (C9, C6) or drugs of abuse (C4, C5). We investigated the catabolism of these compounds using a combination of metabolomics and mass isotopomer analysis. Livers were perfused with various concentrations of unlabeled and labeled saturated 4-hydroxyacids (C4 to C11) or 4-hydroxynonenal. All the compounds tested form a new class of acyl-CoA esters, 4-hydroxy-4-phosphoacyl-CoAs, characterized by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, accurate mass spectrometry, and 31P-NMR. All 4-hydroxyacids with five or more carbons are metabolized by two new pathways. The first and major pathway, which involves 4-hydroxy-4-phosphoacyl-CoAs, leads in six steps to the isomerization of 4-hydroxyacyl-CoA to 3-hydroxyacyl-CoAs. The latter are intermediates of physiological β-oxidation. The second and minor pathway involves a sequence of β-oxidation, α-oxidation, and β-oxidation steps. In mice deficient in succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase, high plasma concentrations of 4-hydroxybutyrate result in high concentrations of 4-hydroxy-4-phospho-butyryl-CoA in brain and liver. The high concentration of 4-hydroxy-4-phospho-butyryl-CoA may be related to the cerebral dysfunction of subjects ingesting 4-hydroxybutyrate and to the mental retardation of patients with 4-hydroxybutyric aciduria. Our data illustrate the potential of the combination of metabolomics and mass isotopomer analysis for pathway discovery.