Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards a Mobility Metric for Reproducible and Comparable Results in Ad Hoc Networks Research

The performance of a mobile ad hoc network depends on its ability to adapt to changes in the network topology. It is therefore important to understand the relation between node mobility and topology dynamics. While the input parameters of a mobility model allow for generating different simulation scenarios (e.g., by selecting the speed, pause time, system area, and number of nodes), the relation to the actually generated degree of topology dynamics is usually not immediate. Thus, a translation of the mobility model to the resulting topology dynamics is required. A natural way to do this is to introduce the topology change rate (TCR), defined as the number of link changes per time unit as observed by a single node. If we measure the network performance versus the TCR instead of versus ‘incidental’ input parameters of a mobility model, a higher level of abstraction of the results will be achieved, and the reproducability and comparability of the results will be enhanced. This short paper derives in an analytical manner the TCR in a scenario where nodes move according to the random waypoint (RWP) model [5], being the most heavily used mobility model in reseach on ad hoc networks. Recent insights into RWP mobility have shown some unexpected behavior, e.g., with respect to the spatial node distribution [2] and the average velocity over time [8]. These results do not mean that RWP as a mobility model is ‘invalid’, but show the importance of proper use due to thorough understanding of the model. This contribution now provides the link between RWP mobility and the corresponding TCR. We • derive in an analytical manner the TCR as observed by a static node located at the center of a circular area in which mobile nodes move according to RWP model.
A novel higher order shear deformation theory based on the neutral surface concept of FGM plate under transverse load

The static analysis of the simply supported functionally graded plate under transverse load by using a new sinusoidal shear deformation theory based on the neutral surface concept is investigated analytically in the present paper. No transversal shear correction factors are needed because a correct representation of the transversal shearing strain is given. The mechanical properties of the FGM plate are assumed to vary continuously through the thickness according to a power law formulation except Poisson’s ratio, which is kept constant. The equilibrium and stability equations are derived by employing the principle of virtual work. Results are provided for thick to thin plates and for different values of the gradient index k, which subjected to sinusoidal or uniformly distributed lateral loads. The accuracy of the present results is verified by comparing it with finite element solution. From the obtained results, it can be concluded that the proposed theory is accurate and efficient in predicting the displacements and stresses of functionally graded plates.
Cloud filling of total suspended matter, chlorophyll and sea surface temperature remote sensing products by the Data Interpolation with Empirical Orthogonal Functions methodology, application to the BELCOLOUR-1 database

Space-time filling of the gaps in satellite data archives is an important step for the improvement of various marine ecosystem studies. The Data Interpolation with Empirical Orthogonal Functions methodology (DINEOF) allows calculating missing data in geophysical datasets without requiring a priori knowledge about statistics of the full data set [1]. It was successfully applied to SST reconstructions as in [1] and [2]. Here, the DINEOF reconstruction method is applied to surface chlorophyll a (CHL), total suspended matter (TSM) and sea surface temperature (SST) data over the Southern North Sea and English Channel obtained from the BELCOLOUR archive.
Comparing Maps of Mean Monthly Surface Temperature and Precipitation for Alaska and Adjacent Areas of Canada Produced by Two Different Methods

Maps of mean monthly surface temperature and precipitation for Alaska and adjacent areas of Canada, produced by Oregon State University’s Spatial Climate Analysis Service (SCAS) and the Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse (AGDC), were analyzed. Because both sets of maps are generally available and in use by the community, there is a need to document differences between the processes and input data sets used by the two groups to produce their respective set of maps and to identify similarities and differences between the two sets of maps and possible reasons for the differences. These differences do not affect the observed large-scale patterns of seasonal and annual variability. Alaska is divided into interior and coastal zones, with consistent but different variability, separated by a transition region. The transition region has high interannual variability but low long-term mean variability. Both data sets support the four major ecosystems and ecosystem transition zone identified in our earlier work. Differences between the two sets of maps do occur, however, on the regional scale; they reflect differences in physiographic domains and in the treatment of these domains by the two groups (AGDC, SCAS). These differences also provide guidance for an improved observational network for Alaska. On the basis of validation with independent in situ data, we conclude that the data set produced by SCAS provides the best spatial coverage of Alaskan long-term mean monthly surface temperature and precipitation currently available.
The effect of blanking of TDMA interference on radio-astronomical correlation measurements

Radio astronomical observations are increasingly contaminated by man-made communication signals. TDMA signals such as GSM can be suppressed in the time domain by inhibiting the correlation process when the interfering signal is present. In this paper we propose a spectral-temporal detection and blanking scheme applicable to array radiotelescopes. The effectiveness is demonstrated through simulations as well as theoretical analysis.
LOW-COMPLEXITY EQUALIZATION OF TIME-VARYING CHANNELS IN A SINGLE-CARRIER SYSTEM

We consider a single-carrier transceiver, which abides with both fast channel fading and severe inter-block interference. To enable a low-complexity frequency-domain equalizer, it is desired that 1) the channel matrix be approximately banded; and 2) the inter-block interference be reduced. In this paper, we propose an extended data model, which incorporates a receiver window to enforce these two conditions.
University of Birmingham Identification protocols and signature schemes based on supersingular isogeny problems

We present signature schemes whose security relies on computational assumptions relating to isogeny graphs of supersingular elliptic curves. We give two schemes, both of them based on interactive identiﬁcation protocols. The ﬁrst identiﬁcation protocol is due to De Feo, Jao and Plût. The second one, and the main contribution of the paper, makes novel use of an algorithm of Kohel, Lauter, Petit and Tignol for the quaternion version of the (cid:2) -isogeny problem, for which we provide a more complete description and analysis, and is based on a more standard and potentially stronger computational problem. Both identiﬁcation protocols lead to signatures that are existentially unforgeable under chosen message attacks in the random oracle model using the well-known Fiat-Shamir transform, and in the quantum random oracle model using another transform due to Unruh. A version of the ﬁrst signature scheme was independently published by Yoo, Azarderakhsh, Jalali, Jao and Soukharev. This is the full version of a paper published at ASIACRYPT 2017.
Effects of L-carnitine and Pentoxifylline on the Activity of Lactate Dehydrogenase C4 isozyme and Motility of Testicular Spermatozoa in Mice

Background Extracted sperm from the testis have poor motility. Moreover, their motility changes during their journey through epidydimis. Meanwhile, they face high concentration of L-carnitin. In addition, lactate dehydrogenase C4 (LDH-C4) gene disorders has been shown to cause impaired sperm motility, leading to infertility in male mice. The aim of this study was to evaluate sperm motility and LDH-C4 enzyme activity upon L-carnitine (LC) and Pentoxifylline (PTX) administrations in mice. Methods We extracted testicular sperm of 48 mice and divided them into three equal parts. One part was incubated with Ham's F10 medium (control), the other parts were treated with Ham's F10 containing LC and PTX with a final concentration of 1.76 mM, for 30 min at room temperature. Sperm motility was assessed according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria. Sperm LDH-C4 enzyme activity was measured by spectrophotometery method. Statistical analyses were performed using ANOVA and Fisher's LSD test, and a p-value less than 0.05 was considered as a statistically significant difference. Results Sperm motility increased after 30 min of incubation in LC- and PTX-treated group (p<0.001). LC and PTX administrations showed a significant increase in the LDHC4 enzyme activity of sperm compared to that of the controls after 30 min (P=0.04 and 0.01, respectively). Conclusion The effects of LC and PTX on motility of sperm can be explained by an increase in LDH-C4 enzyme activity that may influence male fertility status. We suggest that LC as a non-toxic antioxidant is more suitable for use in assisted reproductive technique protocols than PTX.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus sp. colonizing health care workers of a cancer hospital

The aim of the study was to analyze epidemiological and microbiological aspects of oral colonization by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus of health care workers in a cancer hospital. Interview and saliva sampling were performed with 149 health care workers. Antimicrobial resistance was determined by disk diffusion and minimum inhibitory concentration. Polymerase Chain Reaction, Internal Transcribed Spacer-Polymerase Chain Reaction and Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis were performed for genotypic characterization of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus. Risk factors were determined by logistic regression. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus colonization prevalence was 19.5%, denture wearing (p = 0.03), habit of nail biting (p = 0.04) and preparation and administration of antimicrobial (p = 0.04) were risk factors identified. All methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus were S. epidermidis, 94.4% of them had mecA gene. Closely related and indistinguishable methicillin-resistant S. epidermidis were detected. These results highlight that HCWs which have contact with patient at high risk for developing infections were identified as colonized by MRSE in the oral cavity, reinforcing this cavity as a reservoir of these bacteria and the risk to themselves and patients safety, because these microorganisms may be spread by coughing and talking.
Human Development XIII: The Connection Between the Structure of the Overtone System and the Tone Language of Music. Some Implications for Our Understanding of the Human Brain

The functioning brain behaves like one highly-structured, coherent, informational field. It can be popularly described as a “coherent ball of energy”, making the idea of a local highly-structured quantum field that carries the consciousness very appealing. If that is so, the structure of the experience of music might be a quite unique window into a hidden quantum reality of the brain, and even of life itself. The structure of music is then a mirror of a much more complex, but similar, structure of the energetic field of the working brain. This paper discusses how the perception of music is organized in the human brain with respect to the known tone scales of major and minor. The patterns used by the brain seem to be similar to the overtones of vibrating matter, giving a positive experience of harmonies in major. However, we also like the minor scale, which can explain brain patterns as fractal-like, giving a symmetric “downward reflection” of the major scale into the minor scale. We analyze the implication of beautiful and ugly tones and harmonies for the model. We conclude that when it comes to simple perception of harmonies, the most simple is the most beautiful and the most complex is the most ugly, but in music, even the most disharmonic harmony can be beautiful, if experienced as a part of a dynamic release of musical tension. This can be taken as a general metaphor of painful, yet meaningful, and developing experiences in human life.
Growth-Factor-Driven Rescue to Receptor Tyrosine Kinase (RTK) Inhibitors through Akt and Erk Phosphorylation in Pediatric Low Grade Astrocytoma and Ependymoma

Up to now, several clinical studies have been started investigating the relevance of receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitors upon progression free survival in various pediatric brain tumors. However, single targeted kinase inhibition failed, possibly due to tumor resistance mechanisms. The present study will extend our previous observations that vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)-2, platelet derived growth factor receptor (PDGFR)β, Src, the epidermal growth factor receptor (ErbB) family, and hepatocyte growth factor receptor (HGFR/cMet) are potentially drugable targets in pediatric low grade astrocytoma and ependymoma with investigations concerning growth-factor-driven rescue. This was investigated in pediatric low grade astrocytoma and ependymoma cell lines treated with receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibitors e.g. sorafenib, dasatinib, canertinib and crizotinib. Flow cytometry analyses showed high percentage of cells expressing VEGFR-1, fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR)-1, ErbB1/EGFR, HGFR and recepteur d’origine nantais (RON) (respectively 52-77%, 34-51%, 63-90%, 83-98%, 65-95%). Their respective inhibitors induced decrease of cell viability, measured with WST-1 cell viability assays. At least this was partially due to increased apoptotic levels measured by Annexin V/Propidium Iodide apoptosis assays. EGF, HGF and FGF, which are normally expressed in brain (tumor) tissue, showed to be effective rescue inducing growth factors resulting in increased cell survival especially during treatment with dasatinib (complete rescue) or sorafenib (partial rescue). Growth-factor-driven rescue was less prominent when canertinib or crizotinib were used. Rescue was underscored by significantly activating downstream Akt and/or Erk phosphorylation and increased tumor cell migration. Combination treatment showed to be able to overcome the growth-factor-driven rescue. In conclusion, our study highlights the extensive importance of environmentally present growth factors in developing tumor escape towards RTK inhibitors in pediatric low grade astrocytoma and ependymoma. It is of great interest to anticipate upon these results for the design of new therapeutic trials with RTK inhibitors in these pediatric brain tumors.
Chapter 2 Physical Principle of Optical Tweezers

The radiation pressure of light was first deduced theoretically by James C. Maxwell in 1873 based on his electromagnetic theory [1, 2], and measured experimentally by Lebedev [3], and Nichols and Hull in 1901 [4]. The radiation pressure force exerted on a totally reflecting mirror by an incident beam of light perpendicular to the mirror is Fmirror = 2P/c, where P is the power of the light and c is the speed of light in vacuum [5]. The factor of 2 in the formula is due to reflection. The force is about 7 nN for 1 W of light, which is tiny and had almost no application before the invention of the laser. In contrast to classical light sources, a laser beam can be strongly focused onto a small particle with a diameter on the order of 1 μm. Due to the small mass of the particle, the radiation force of a 1 W laser can be 105 times larger than the gravitational force on the particle, and can therefore have huge effects on the motion of the particle. In 1970, Arthur Ashkin published a seminal paper [6] demonstrating that one could use focused laser beams to accelerate and trap micrometer-sized transparent particles. Optical levitation of oil droplets and glass microspheres in air [7] and vacuum was demonstrated several years later [8]. The laser radiation pressure was soon used to cool and trap atoms [9–12], leading to dramatic breakthroughs in atomic, molecular and optical physics, including a new generation of atomic clocks, and realization of Bose–Einstein condensation and degenerate Fermi gas. In 1986, Ashkin et al. [13] observed stable trapping of dielectric particles with the gradient force of a strongly focused laser beam. This technique was soon used to trap and manipulate viruses and bacteria [14, 15], and became a standard tool in biophysics [5]. In this chapter, we will first explain the principle of optical trapping of microspheres with ray optics, which is valid when the size of the microspheres is much larger than the wavelength of the trapping laser. This will be followed by theoretical calculations of the optical forces on a particle with the Rayleigh approximation, and numerical results of Lorentz-Mie theory. The differences between trapping microspheres in air and in water will be discussed.
WalkRanker: A Unified Pairwise Ranking Model With Multiple Relations for Item Recommendation

Top-N item recommendation techniques, e.g., pairwise models, learn the rank of users' preferred items through separating items into positive samples if user-item interactions exist, and negative samples otherwise. This separation results in an important issue: the extreme imbalance between positive and negative samples, because the number of items with user actions is much less than those without actions. The problem is even worse for "cold-start" users. In addition, existing learning models only consider the observed user-item proximity, while neglecting other useful relations, such as the unobserved but potentially helpful user-item relations, and high-order proximity in user-user, item-item relations. In this paper, we aim at incorporating multiple types of user-item relations into a unified pairwise ranking model towards approximately optimizing ranking metrics mean average precision (MAP), and mean reciprocal rank (MRR). Instead of taking statical separation of positive and negative sets, we employ a random walk approach to dynamically draw positive samples from short random walk sequences, and a rank-aware negative sampling method to draw negative samples for efficiently learning the proposed pairwise ranking model. The proposed method is compared with several state-of-the-art baselines on two large and sparse datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed model outperforms the other baselines with average 4% at different top-N metrics, in particular for cold-start users with 6% on average.
Brain’s functional network clustering coefficient changes in response to instruction (RTI) in students with and without reading disabilities: Multi-leveled reading brain’s RTI

Abstract In students in grades 4 to 9 (22 males, 20 females), two reading disability groups—dyslexia (n = 20) or oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD) (n = 6)—were compared to each other and two kinds of control groups—typical readers (n = 6) or dysgraphia (n = 10) on word reading/spelling skills and fMRI imaging before and after completing 18 computerized reading lessons. Mixed ANOVAs showed significant time effects on repeated measures within participants and between groups effects on three behavioral markers of reading disabilities—word reading/spelling: All groups improved on the three behavioral measures, but those without disabilities remained higher than those with reading disabilities . On fMRI reading tasks, analyzed for graph theory derived clustering coefficients within a neural network involved in cognitive control functions, on a word level task the time x group interaction was significant in right medial cingulate; on a syntax level task the time x group interaction was significant in left superior frontal and left inferior frontal gyri; and on a multi-sentence text level task the time x group interaction was significant in right middle frontal gyrus. Three white matter-gray matter correlations became significant only after reading instruction: axial diffusivity in left superior frontal region with right inferior frontal gyrus during word reading judgments; mean diffusivity in left superior corona radiata with left middle frontal gyrus during sentence reading judgments; and mean diffusivity in left anterior corona radiata with right middle frontal gyrus during multi-sentence reading judgments. Significance of results for behavioral and brain response to reading instruction (RTI) is discussed.
Association for Information Systems Year 2009 Making Sense of IS with the Cynefin Framework

This paper examines aspects of the field of Information Systems (IS) concerned with its diversity and with the rapid changes within the discipline that have been incurred by the continued evolution of the IS artefact. This examination is done in order to establish the suitability of the Cynefin framework, developed for knowledge management, as a suitable tool for sense-making in IS. A description and assessment of the Cynefin framework is provided with its varied applications in both organisational practice and research. The paper then applies the framework to make sense of some historical trends and contemporary issues of IS emphasising their diversity and changing nature. We conclude with speculation on how this approach may help guide future sense-making in IS research.
Evaluation of domestic and Yucatan swine nasal sinus anatomy as models for future sinonasal research of medications delivered by standard instruments used in functional endoscopic sinus surgery

There is a need to find an animal model to study new medications to improve mucosal wound healing after functional endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS). Current literature suggests swine as a potential candidate. The lack of information correlating swine computer tomography (CT) and endoscopic sinonasal anatomy prompted us to investigate them in the domestic and Yucatan swine to determine their feasibility as models to test new medications and drug‐embedded stents applied using FESS techniques.
Transcriptome analysis in Ceratitis capitata to unveil genes involved in ageing-maturation process

The sterile insect technique (SIT) is widely used in integrated programmes against the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae). Information on the age distribution of insects, and more particularly, the knowledge of wild female reproductive status (mature or not) at the time of the sterile male release is one of the key factors for the success of the SIT. In recent years, sequencing analysis has become an important tool in molecular biology. In this work we present a genome-wide expression analysis based on SSH (substractive sequence hybridization) and EST (expressed sequence tag) sequencing and macroarray expression analysis to identify signature genes related to the ageing-maturing process in C. capitata, leading to the successful identification of new putative candidate genes of reproductive status in medfly that would serve as molecular markers for ageing. We have sorted out 94 unigenes from 873 single-pass ESTs, of which 57% have homology with known genes. Ageing-maturing process in C. capitata presents a marked expression pattern accompanied by the increase of transcription level of genes involved in reproduction (vitellogenins, chorion proteins and male-specific serum proteins). Other identified cDNAs (43%) with a differential expression pattern would be also candidates but deserve further studies, as they belong to the unknown function class.