Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Error resilient data transport in sensor network applications: A generic perspective

The error recovery problem in wireless sensor networks is studied from a generic resource-constrained energy-optimization perspective. To characterize the features of error recovery schemes that suit the majority of applications, an energy model is developed and inferences are drawn based on a suitable performance metric. For applications that require error control coding, an efficient scheme is proposed based on an interesting observation related to shortened ReedSolomon (RS) codes for packet reliability. It is shown that multiple instances (γ) of RS codes defined on a smaller alphabet combined with interleaving results in smaller resource usage, while the performance exceeds the benefits of a shortened RS code defined over a larger alphabet. In particular, the proposed scheme can have an error correction capability of up to γ times larger than that of the conventional RS scheme without changing the rate of the code with much lower power, timing and memory requirements. Implementation results show that such a scheme is 43% more power efficient compared with the RS scheme with the same code rate. Besides, such an approach results in 46% faster computations and 53% reduction in memory requirements. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Part of this paper was presented in IEEE European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design ECCTD [1].
Risk factors for hypothyroidism in euthyroid thyroid nodule patients with lymphocytic thyroiditis on fine needle aspiration cytology

Background/Aims Lymphocytic thyroiditis as cytology diagnosis from fine needle aspiration (FNA) is frequently detected in patients with thyroid nodules. However, the clinical outcome for upcoming hypothyroid events has been rarely clarified in euthyroid patients. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the data of patient who had lymphocytic thyroitidis on FNA cytology of thyroid nodule from January 2005 to December 2010 at a tertiary referral hospital. In total, 109 patients with follow-up thyroid function tests (TFT) were enrolled. Final outcomes included overt and subclinical hypothyroidism with thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) levels ≥ 10 mIU/L. Potential parameters predicting clinical hypothyroidism were analyzed by multivariate analysis. Results Over the mean follow-up duration of 51.6 months, 14 out of 109 patients (12.8%) developed clinical hypothyroidism that required thyroid hormone replacement. The median onset time to hypothyroidism was 16 months (range, 3 to 88) and ≥ 60% of patients experienced clinical hypothyroidism within 1 year. By multivariate analysis, background thyroiditis (relative risk [RR], 9.78; p = 0.004), thyroid peroxidase antibody positivity (RR, 9.90; p = 0.003), nodule size (RR, 1.24; p < 0.001), and initial TSH (RR, 1.47; p = 0.009) were the independent risk factors for predicting hypothyroidism in euthyroid patients. Conclusions Hypothyroidism frequently occurs during the follow-up in euthyroid patients with thyroid nodules which show lymphocytic thyroiditis on FNA cytology. Close surveillance and regular TFT are needed in high-risk patients for upcoming clinical hypothyroidism.
Additive Update Predictors in Active Appearance Models

The Active Appearance Model (AAM) provides an efficient method for localizing objects that vary in both shape and texture, and uses a linear regressor to predict updates to model parameters based on current image residuals. This study investigates using additive (or ‘boosted’) predictors, both linear and non-linear, as a substitute for the linear predictor in order to improve accuracy and efficiency. We demonstrate: (a) a method for training additive models that is several times faster than the standard approach without sacrificing accuracy; (b) that linear additive models can serve as an effective substitute for linear regression; (c) that linear models are as effective as non-linear models when close to the true solution. Based on these observations, we compare a ‘hybrid’ AAM to the standard AAM for both the XM2VTS and BioID datasets, including cross-dataset evaluations.
Macroscopic and Mechanically Robust Hollow Carbon Spheres with Superior Oil Adsorption and Light‐to‐Heat Evaporation Properties

Hollow carbon spheres (HCSs) represent a special class of functional materials, to which intense interest has been paid in the fields of materials science and chemistry. A major problem with these materials is the lack of sufficient particle engineering and mechanical strength for practical applications and the difficulty of up‐scaling. Herein, we report a general, template‐free, phase‐separation approach, in which the liquid–liquid phase‐inversion process and a gas‐foaming process are coupled for the first time, for fast and continuous processing of uniform HCSs. The obtained HCSs have particle sizes on the millimeter scale, and a hierarchical structure with an interpenetrating, open‐porous, carbon shell and huge external voids, therefore permitting rapid transport of molecules into, throughout, and out of the hollow structure. By evenly dispersing the CNTs in the precursor solution, CNT‐reinforced HCSs can be achieved with significantly enhanced mechanical strength, hydrophobicity, and electronic and thermal properties. The resulting CNT‐reinforced HCSs offer a viable route to remove the engine oil from water in a fixed‐bed system. Moreover, these floatable HCSs can receive and convert sunlight to heat at the water–air interface, resulting in a great enhancement in solar evaporation rate compared to conventional bulk heating schemes.
A 7nm FinFET SRAM using EUV lithography with dual write-driver-assist circuitry for low-voltage applications

SRAM plays an integral role in the power, performance, and area of a mobile system-on-a-chip. To achieve low power and high density, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology is adopted for the 7nm FinFET technology [3-4]. Conventional ArF immersion with a single exposure for an extreme high-resolution patterning shows the limitation of lithographic patterning. Therefore, multi-patterning lithographic technique is applied to support a high-resolution lithography. However, this also includes process variations due to using multi-pattering masks. Alternatively, EUV offers competitive scaling with a single-mask with the benefit of smaller wavelength, which provides smaller process variation with less additional pattering. Figure 11.2. 1 shows a 7nm EUV FinFET 6T high-density (HD) SRAM bitcell with an area of 0. 026μσι2. The pull-up, pass-gate, and pull-down ratios are 1:1:1 for high-density and low-power applications. Another benefit of EUV technology also features a bi-directional metal layer with a scaled pitch that provides an extra degree of freedom for signal and power routing. Figure 11.2. 2 highlights EUV benefits in accordance with bi-directional metals. A uni-directional metal layer requires different metal layer to connect two nets, and have no choice but to support the limited via between two perpendicular metal lines with the limited metal width. A wider metal allows placement of more vias between the metal lines, but it does not demonstrate optimum Power, Performance, and Area (PPA) with redundant parasitic capacitance. However, EUV provides bi-directional metal lines, where the different layers of metal are coherent in the same direction. Therefore, more vias can be placed to reduce the IR-drop with smaller parasitic capacitance and resistance. Figure 11.2. 2 illustrates the delay impact versus stacked-via distance in a standard cell array. It shows that the timing penalty is directly proportional to the stacked via distance in a uni-directional metal routing.
Interaction between the Caenorhabditis elegans centriolar protein SAS-5 and microtubules facilitates organelle assembly

Centrioles are microtubule-based organelles that organize the microtubule network and seed the formation of cilia and flagella. New centrioles assemble through a stepwise process dependent notably on the centriolar protein SAS-5 in Caenorhabditis elegans. SAS-5 and its functional homologues in other species form oligomers that bind the centriolar proteins SAS-6 and SAS-4, thereby forming an evolutionarily conserved structural core at the onset of organelle assembly. Here, we report a novel interaction of SAS-5 with microtubules. Microtubule binding requires SAS-5 oligomerization and a disordered protein segment that overlaps with the SAS-4 binding site. Combined in vitro and in vivo analysis of select mutants reveals that the SAS-5–microtubule interaction facilitates centriole assembly in C. elegans embryos. Our findings lead us to propose that the interdependence of SAS-5 oligomerization and microtubule binding reflects an avidity mechanism, which also strengthens SAS-5 associations with other centriole components and, thus, promotes organelle assembly.
Efficiency of two sample tests via the restricted mean survival time for analyzing event time observations

In comparing two treatments with the event time observations, the hazard ratio (HR) estimate is routinely used to quantify the treatment difference. However, this model dependent estimate may be difficult to interpret clinically especially when the proportional hazards (PH) assumption is violated. An alternative estimation procedure for treatment efficacy based on the restricted means survival time or t‐year mean survival time (t‐MST) has been discussed extensively in the statistical and clinical literature. On the other hand, a statistical test via the HR or its asymptotically equivalent counterpart, the logrank test, is asymptotically distribution‐free. In this article, we assess the relative efficiency of the hazard ratio and t‐MST tests with respect to the statistical power under various PH and non‐PH models theoretically and empirically. When the PH assumption is valid, the t‐MST test performs almost as well as the HR test. For non‐PH models, the t‐MST test can substantially outperform its HR counterpart. On the other hand, the HR test can be powerful when the true difference of two survival functions is quite large at end but not the beginning of the study. Unfortunately, for this case, the HR estimate may not have a simple clinical interpretation for the treatment effect due to the violation of the PH assumption.
ANT Corpus: An Arabic News Text Collection for Textual Classification

We propose in this paper a new online Arabic corpus of news articles, named ANT Corpus, which is collected from RSS Feeds. Each document represents an article structured in the standard XML TREC format. We use the ANT Corpus for Text Classification (TC) by applying the SVM and Naive Bayes (NB) classifiers to assign to each article its accurate predefined category. We study also in this work the contribution of terms weighting, stop-words removal and light stemming on Arabic TC. The experimental results prove that the text length affects considerably the TC accuracy and that titles words are not sufficiently significant to perform good classification rates. As a conclusion, the SVM method gives the best results of classification of both titles and texts parts.
Improved sample preparation for direct quantitative detection of Escherichia coli O157 in soil using qPCR without pre‐enrichment

The prominence of fresh produce as a vehicle for foodborne pathogens such as enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157 is rising, where disease cases can cause hospitalization and in some cases death. This rise emphasises the necessity for accurate and sensitive methods for detection of pathogens in soil, potential sources of contamination of fresh produce. The complexity of the soil matrix has previously proven prohibitive to pathogen detection via molecular methods without the use of a culture enrichment step, thereby excluding the detection of viable but non‐culturable cells. Here, a sample preparation procedure to facilitate a direct qPCR assay is developed for the detection of E. coli O157 in soil, bypassing culture steps in favour of sample separation through pulsification release and filtration. In sand and peat‐based compost, the method is sensitive to 10 CFU g−1 soil. When testing soils from agricultural sites, it was found that several were qPCR positive for E. coli O157 while being culture‐negative, with peat‐based compost possessing a concentration of 200 tir gene copies per gram. This procedure offers a rapid, quantitative assessment of the potential presence of E. coli O157 in soils which can act as a prescreen of their suitability to grow fresh produce safely.
Test–retest reliability and longitudinal analysis of automated hippocampal subregion volumes in healthy ageing and Alzheimer's disease populations

The hippocampal formation is a complex brain structure that is important in cognitive processes such as memory, mood, reward processing and other executive functions. Histological and neuroimaging studies have implicated the hippocampal region in neuropsychiatric disorders as well as in neurodegenerative diseases. This highly plastic limbic region is made up of several subregions that are believed to have different functional roles. Therefore, there is a growing interest in imaging the subregions of the hippocampal formation rather than modelling the hippocampus as a homogenous structure, driving the development of new automated analysis tools. Consequently, there is a pressing need to understand the stability of the measures derived from these new techniques. In this study, an automated hippocampal subregion segmentation pipeline, released as a developmental version of Freesurfer (v6.0), was applied to T1‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 22 healthy older participants, scanned on 3 separate occasions and a separate longitudinal dataset of 40 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. Test–retest reliability of hippocampal subregion volumes was assessed using the intra‐class correlation coefficient (ICC), percentage volume difference and percentage volume overlap (Dice). Sensitivity of the regional estimates to longitudinal change was estimated using linear mixed effects (LME) modelling. The results show that out of the 24 hippocampal subregions, 20 had ICC scores of 0.9 or higher in both samples; these regions include the molecular layer, granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus, CA1, CA3 and the subiculum (ICC > 0.9), whilst the hippocampal fissure and fimbria had lower ICC scores (0.73–0.88). Furthermore, LME analysis of the independent AD dataset demonstrated sensitivity to group and individual differences in the rate of volume change over time in several hippocampal subregions (CA1, molecular layer, CA3, hippocampal tail, fissure and presubiculum). These results indicate that this automated segmentation method provides a robust method with which to measure hippocampal subregions, and may be useful in tracking disease progression and measuring the effects of pharmacological intervention.
The complete mitochondrial genome of Chirolophis japonicus (Perciformes: Stichaeidae)

Abstract The complete mitochondrial genome of Chirolophis japonicus was sequenced for the first time in this study. It is a closed-circular molecule of 16 521 bp in length and contains 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes, an origin of light strand replication (OL), and a control region (CR). The overall base composition of the heavy-strand is 25.5% A, 28.6% T, 18.3% G, and 27.6% C, and the lengths of 2 rRNA genes are 946 and 1692 bp, respectively. Maximum likelihood tree based on all the amino acid sequences of 13 mitochondrial PCGs was constructed, in which C. japonicus is close to three species of infraorder Zoarcales. These results are expected to provide useful molecular data for species identification and further phylogenetic studies of genus Chirolophis.
Toward a Global Phylogeny of the “Living Fossil" Crustacean Order of the Notostraca

Tadpole shrimp (Crustacea, Notostraca) are iconic inhabitants of temporary aquatic habitats worldwide. Often cited as prime examples of evolutionary stasis, surviving representatives closely resemble fossils older than 200 mya, suggestive of an ancient origin. Despite significant interest in the group as ‘living fossils’ the taxonomy of surviving taxa is still under debate and both the phylogenetic relationships among different lineages and the timing of diversification remain unclear. We constructed a molecular phylogeny of the Notostraca using model based phylogenetic methods. Our analyses supported the monophyly of the two genera Triops and Lepidurus, although for Triops support was weak. Results also revealed high levels of cryptic diversity as well as a peculiar biogeographic link between Australia and North America presumably mediated by historic long distance dispersal. We concluded that, although some present day tadpole shrimp species closely resemble fossil specimens as old as 250 mya, no molecular support was found for an ancient (pre) Mesozoic radiation. Instead, living tadpole shrimp are most likely the result of a relatively recent radiation in the Cenozoic era and close resemblances between recent and fossil taxa are probably the result of the highly conserved general morphology in this group and of homoplasy.
Punishment Mechanisms and Their Effect on Cooperation: A Simulation Study

In social dilemmas punishment costs resources, not just from the one who is punished but often also from the punisher and society. Reciprocity on the other side is known to lead to cooperation without the costs of punishment. The questions at hand are whether punishment brings advantages besides its costs, and how its negative side-effects can be reduced to a minimum in an environment populated by agents adopting a form of reciprocity. Various punishment mechanisms have been studied in the economic literature such as unrestricted punishment, legitimate punishment, cooperative punishment, and the hired gun mechanism. In this study all these mechanisms are implemented in a simulation where agents can share resources and may decide to punish other agents when the other agents do not share. Through evolutionary learning agents adapt their sharing/punishing policy. When the availability of resources was restricted, punishment mechanisms in general performed better than no-punishment, although unrestricted punishment was performing worse. When resource availability was high, performance was better in no-punishment conditions with indirect reciprocity. Unrestricted punishment was always the worst performing mechanism. Summarized, this paper shows that, in certain environments, some punishment mechanisms can improve the efficiency of cooperation even if the cooperating system is already based on indirect reciprocity.
An Iterative BRDF/NDVI Inversion Algorithm Based on A Posteriori Variance Estimation of Observation Errors

Current bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) inversions using ordinary least squares (OLS) criterion can be easily contaminated by observations with residual cloud and undetected high aerosols, which leads to abrupt fluctuations in the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series. The OLS criterion assumes the noise has Gaussian distribution, which is often violated due to positive noise biases caused by clouds and high aerosols. A changing-weight iterative BRDF/NDVI inversion algorithm (CWI) based on a posteriori variance estimation of observation errors is presented to explicitly consider the asymmetrically distributed noise and observations with unequal accuracy in the BRDF retrieval. CWI employs a posteriori variance estimation and an NDVI-based indicator to iteratively adjust the weight of each observation according to its noise level. The validation results suggest CWI performs better than the Li-Gao and OLS approaches. The rmse was reduced from 0.074 to 0.028, and the relative error decreased from 13.4% to 3.8% at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Beltsville Agricultural Research Center site. Similarly, at the Harvard Forest site, the rmse was reduced from 0.086 to 0.031, and the relative error decreased from 9.5% to 2.7%. The average noise and relative noise of the CWI NDVI time series over ten EOS Land Validation Core Sites from 2003-2009 was smaller (0.028, 3.7%) than those of MOD13A2 (0.041, 5.2%), MYD13A2 (0.039, 4.9%) and MCD43B4 (0.030, 4.4%). The results demonstrate the robustness of the CWI approach in suppressing the influence of contaminated observations in BRDF retrievals by producing results that are less affected by undetected clouds and high aerosols.
Plastid genome sequence of an ornamental and editable fruit tree of Rosaceae, Prunus mume

Abstract Here we assembled and analyzed the complete chloroplast genome of Prunus mume, a popular ornamental and editable fruit tree of Rosaceae. The cp genome exhibited a circular DNA molecule of 157 712 bp with a typical quadripartite structure consisted of two inverted repeat regions (IRa and IRb) of 26 394 bp separated by large (LSC) and small (SSC) single-copy regions of 85 861 and 19 063 bp, respectively. It encoded 112 unique genes, 19 of which were duplicated in the IR regions, giving a total of 131 genes. Eighteen of these genes harbored one or two introns. GC content was 38.9%, and coding regions accounted for 51.3% of the genome. Phylogenetic analysis showed that P. mume clustered with P. persica and P. kansuensis in the genus Punus. This newly determined chloroplast genome will enhance modern breeding programs for the purpose of genetic improvement of this valuable plant.
On Ordering Multi-Robot Task Executions within a Cyber Physical System

With robots entering the world of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), ordering the execution of allocated tasks during runtime becomes crucial. This is so because, in the real world, there can be several physical tasks that use shared resources that need to be executed concurrently. In this article, we propose a mechanism to solve this issue of ordering task executions within a CPS that inherently handles mutual exclusion. The mechanism caters to a decentralized and distributed CPS comprising nodes such as computers, robots, and sensor nodes and uses mobile software agents that knit through them to aid the execution of the various tasks while also ensuring mutual exclusion of shared resources. The computations, communications, and control are achieved through these mobile agents. Physical execution of the tasks is performed by the robots in an asynchronous and pipelined manner without the use of a clock. The mechanism also features addition and deletion of tasks and insertion and removal of robots facilitating On-The-Fly Programming. As an application, a Warehouse Management System as a CPS has been implemented. The article concludes with the results and discussions on using the mechanism in both emulated and real-world environments.
A constrained formulation for compressive spectral image reconstruction using linear mixture models

Recent hyperspectral imaging systems are constructed on the idea of compressive sensing for efficient acquisition. However, the traditional reconstruction model in compressive hyperspectral imaging has a high computational complexity. In this work, compressive hyperspectral imaging and unmixing are combined for hyperspectral reconstruction in a low-complexity scheme. The compressed hyperspectral measurements are acquired with a single pixel spectrometer. The reconstruction model is represented in a space of lower dimension named linear mixture model. Hyperspectral reconstruction is then formulated as a nonnegative matrix factorization problem with respect to the endmembers and abundances, bypassing high-complexity tasks involving the hyperspectral data cube itself. The nonnegative matrix factorization problem is solved by combining an alternating least-squares based estimation strategy with the alternating direction method of multipliers. The estimated performance of the proposed scheme is illustrated in experiments conducted on a simulated acquisition in real data outperforming in 3dB the state-of-the-art reconstruction algorithms.