Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reproduction of a plane-wave sound field using an array of loudspeakers

Reproduction of a sound field is a fundamental problem in acoustic signal processing. In this paper, we use a spherical harmonics analysis to derive performance bounds on how well an array of loudspeakers can recreate a three-dimensional (3-D) plane-wave sound field within a spherical region of space. Specifically, we develop a relationship between the number of loudspeakers, the size of the reproduction sphere, the frequency range, and the desired accuracy. We also provide analogous results for the special case of reproduction of a two-dimensional (2-D) sound field. Results are verified through computer simulations.
Rapid and MR-Independent I K1 Activation by Aldosterone during Ischemia-Reperfusion

In ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) context, clinical studies have shown the deleterious effect of high aldosterone levels on ventricular arrhythmia occurrence and cardiac mortality. Previous in vitro reports showed that during ischemia-reperfusion, aldosterone modulates K+ currents involved in the holding of the resting membrane potential (RMP). The aim of this study was to assess the electrophysiological impact of aldosterone on I K1 current during myocardial ischemia-reperfusion. We used an in vitro model of “border zone” using right rabbit ventricle and standard microelectrode technique followed by cell-attached recordings from freshly isolated rabbit ventricular cardiomyocytes. In microelectrode experiments, aldosterone (10 and 100 nmol/L, n=7 respectively) increased the action potential duration (APD) dispersion at 90% between ischemic and normoxic zones (from 95±4 ms to 116±6 ms and 127±5 ms respectively, P<0.05) and reperfusion-induced sustained premature ventricular contractions occurrence (from 2/12 to 5/7 preparations, P<0.05). Conversely, potassium canrenoate 100 nmol/L and RU 28318 1 μmol/l alone did not affect AP parameters and premature ventricular contractions occurrence (except Vmax which was decreased by potassium canrenoate during simulated-ischemia). Furthermore, aldosterone induced a RMP hyperpolarization, evoking an implication of a K+ current involved in the holding of the RMP. Cell-attached recordings showed that aldosterone 10 nmol/L quickly activated (within 6.2±0.4 min) a 30 pS K+-selective current, inward rectifier, with pharmacological and biophysical properties consistent with the I K1 current (NPo =1.9±0.4 in control vs NPo=3.0±0.4, n=10, P<0.05). These deleterious effects persisted in presence of RU 28318, a specific MR antagonist, and were successfully prevented by potassium canrenoate, a non specific MR antagonist, in both microelectrode and patch-clamp recordings, thus indicating a MR-independent I K1 activation. In this ischemia-reperfusion context, aldosterone induced rapid and MR-independent deleterious effects including an arrhythmia substrate (increased APD90 dispersion) and triggered activities (increased premature ventricular contractions occurrence on reperfusion) possibly related to direct I K1 activation.
Wux: UNIX Tools under Windows

Wux is a port of Unix tools to the Microsoft Windows environment. It is based on a library providing a Unix-compatible set of system calls on top of Windows. Unix-derived tools run in parallel, communicating using the Unix pipe abstraction. All processes are run within an application template that gives them basic Windows compatibility such as input and output windows and an icon. The performance of the system is comparable to that of Unix ports to the PC architecture.
Scheduling of Parallel Applications Using Map Reduce On Cloud : A Literature Survey

Most of the current day applications process large amounts of data. There were different trends in computing like mainframes, parallel computing, cluster computing, grid computing as per the requirement of the data size and execution speed. Cloud computing is the new era of computing where efficient utilization of resources can be done with no compromise on data size, execution time and cost of execution. Map Reduce is a programming model which is widely used for processing large scale data intensive applications in cluster, cloud environments. In this paper we have discussed various scheduling algorithms of map reduce tasks. The default schedulers available with Hadoop can be improved to make it more efficient for the cloud environments
An FDIA approach for aircraft based on the Kalman filter

The fault diagnosis, isolation and accommodation techniques (FDIA) play an important role in the advance engine control system, and also can highly improve the reliability of the whole control system. In this paper, we build the engine realtime dynamic linear model in the framework of gain scheduling. Meanwhile, a fast recursive Kalman algorithm has been proposed to build the Kalman filter in order to raise the estimation computation speed of the dynamic system. Finally, this algorithm has been applied to an aeroengine, and experimental result demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed design approach.
Serotonin 2B Receptor (5-HT2B R) Signals through Prostacyclin and PPAR-ß/δ in Osteoblasts

Osteoporosis is due to an imbalance between decreased bone formation by osteoblasts and increased resorption by osteoclasts. Deciphering factors controlling bone formation is therefore of utmost importance for the understanding and the treatment of osteoporosis. Our previous in vivo results showed that bone formation is reduced in the absence of the serotonin receptor 5-HT2B, causing impaired osteoblast proliferation, recruitment, and matrix mineralization. In this study, we investigated the signaling pathways responsible for the osteoblast defect in 5-HT2BR−/− mice. Notably, we investigated the phospholipase A2 pathway and synthesis of eicosanoids in 5-HT2BR−/− compared to wild type (WT) osteoblasts. Compared to control osteoblasts, the lack of 5-HT2B receptors was only associated with a 10-fold over-production of prostacyclin (PGI2). Also, a specific prostacyclin synthase inhibitor (U51605) rescued totally osteoblast aggregation and matrix mineralization in the 5-HT2BR−/− osteoblasts without having any effect on WT osteoblasts. Prostacyclin is the endogenous ligand of the nuclear peroxisome proliferator activated receptor ß/δ (PPAR-ß/δ), and its inhibition in 5-HT2BR−/− cells rescued totally the alkaline phosphatase and osteopontin mRNA levels, cell-cell adhesion, and matrix mineralization. We conclude that the absence of 5-HT2B receptors leads to the overproduction of prostacyclin, inducing reduced osteoblast differentiation due to PPAR-ß/δ -dependent target regulation and defective cell-cell adhesion and matrix mineralization. This study thus reveals a previously unrecognized cell autonomous osteoblast defect in the absence of 5-HT2BR and highlights a new pathway linking 5-HT2B receptors and nuclear PPAR- ß/δ via prostacyclin.
The BOSARIS Toolkit: Theory, Algorithms and Code for Surviving the New DCF

The change of two orders of magnitude in the 'new DCF' of NIST's SRE'10, relative to the 'old DCF' evaluation criterion, posed a difficult challenge for participants and evaluator alike. Initially, participants were at a loss as to how to calibrate their systems, while the evaluator underestimated the required number of evaluation trials. After the fact, it is now obvious that both calibration and evaluation require very large sets of trials. This poses the challenges of (i) how to decide what number of trials is enough, and (ii) how to process such large data sets with reasonable memory and CPU requirements. After SRE'10, at the BOSARIS Workshop, we built solutions to these problems into the freely available BOSARIS Toolkit. This paper explains the principles and algorithms behind this toolkit. The main contributions of the toolkit are: 1. The Normalized Bayes Error-Rate Plot, which analyses likelihood- ratio calibration over a wide range of DCF operating points. These plots also help in judging the adequacy of the sizes of calibration and evaluation databases. 2. Efficient algorithms to compute DCF and minDCF for large score files, over the range of operating points required by these plots. 3. A new score file format, which facilitates working with very large trial lists. 4. A faster logistic regression optimizer for fusion and calibration. 5. A principled way to define EER (equal error rate), which is of practical interest when the absolute error count is small.
Wireless sensor networks for human intruder detection

In this paper we report on the outcomes of a research and demonstration project on human intrusion detection in a large secure space using an ad hoc wireless sensor network. This project has been ∗SmartDetect is a research and demonstration project funded by the ERI (the following are in alphabetical order within category) Faculty Investigators: Bharadwaj Amrutur, G.K. Ananthasuresh, Navakanta Bhat, R.C. Hansdah, Malati Hegde, Joy Kuri, Vinod Sharma, Y.N. Srikant, Rajesh Sundaresan; Project Staff: Tarun Agarwal, S.V. R. Anand, Pallav Bose, Vijay Dewangan, Shalini Keshavamurthy, A.V. Krishna, Pavan Kumar, Sharath Kumar, D. Manjunath, Sundeep Patil, Poornima V.L. , K. Aditya Prasad, Santosh Ramanathan, Anurag Ranjan, Subathra Sampath, Jeena Sebastian, Vishwas Vasuki; Students: Pranav Agrawal, Sahebrao Sidram Baiger, Vinod Kumar Chouhan, Taposh Banerjee, Satyam Dwivedi, Abhishek Gupta, Neeraj Kumar, Prachee Jindal, Premkumar Karumbu, Sambuddha Khan, Girish Krishnan, Syam Krishnan, Chaitanya U. Kshirasagar, K.P. Naveen, Mohan Rathod, Deepak Ravi, U. Raviteja, R. Abu Sajana, Ramanathan Subramanian, Thejas, Amulya Ratna Swain, Lalitha Vadlamani, Leena Zacharias. a unique experience in collaborative research, involving ten investigators (with expertise in areas such as sensors, circuits, computer systems, communication and networking, signal processing and security) to execute a large funded project that spanned three to four years. In this paper we report on the specific engineering solution that was developed: the various architectural choices and the associated specific designs. In addition to developing a demonstrable system, the various problems that arose have given rise to a large amount of basic research in areas such as geographical packet routing, distributed statistical detection, sensors and associated circuits, a low power adaptive micro-radio, and power optimising embedded systems software. We provide an overview of the research results obtained.
Making Watson fast

IBM Watson™ is a system created to demonstrate DeepQA technology by competing against human champions in a question-answering game designed for people. The DeepQA architecture was designed to be massively parallel, with an expectation that low latency response times could be achieved by doing parallel computation on many computers. This paper describes how a large set of deep natural-language processing programs were integrated into a single application, scaled out across thousands of central processing unit cores, and optimized to run fast enough to compete in live Jeopardy! ™ games.
Multicasting control and communications on multihop stack-ring OPS networks

We propose dynamic multicasting on an N=m.n processor; OPS-based stack-ring topology consisting of n processor groups, with m processors each. By considering multicasting, we realize the increased network bandwidth offered by one-to-many optical communications. We assume that each processor has infinite local and network buffers and that the system performs synchronously. Assuming shortest path routing and network packet priority we compute network throughput and latency measures as a function of the packet arrival rate. Balanced networks with m/spl ap/n offer higher throughput for uniform, multicast-free traffic. When the multicasting load and especially the locality of references increase, stack-ring systems with n>m offer higher throughput and reasonable latency. A high level of locality and multicasting are necessary for achieving stack-ring network scalability.
SparkBWA: Speeding Up the Alignment of High-Throughput DNA Sequencing Data

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have led to a huge amount of genomic data that need to be analyzed and interpreted. This fact has a huge impact on the DNA sequence alignment process, which nowadays requires the mapping of billions of small DNA sequences onto a reference genome. In this way, sequence alignment remains the most time-consuming stage in the sequence analysis workflow. To deal with this issue, state of the art aligners take advantage of parallelization strategies. However, the existent solutions show limited scalability and have a complex implementation. In this work we introduce SparkBWA, a new tool that exploits the capabilities of a big data technology as Spark to boost the performance of one of the most widely adopted aligner, the Burrows-Wheeler Aligner (BWA). The design of SparkBWA uses two independent software layers in such a way that no modifications to the original BWA source code are required, which assures its compatibility with any BWA version (future or legacy). SparkBWA is evaluated in different scenarios showing noticeable results in terms of performance and scalability. A comparison to other parallel BWA-based aligners validates the benefits of our approach. Finally, an intuitive and flexible API is provided to NGS professionals in order to facilitate the acceptance and adoption of the new tool. The source code of the software described in this paper is publicly available at https://github.com/citiususc/SparkBWA, with a GPL3 license.
Autophagy attenuates the catabolic effect during inflammatory conditions in nucleus pulposus cells, as sustained by NF-κB and JNK inhibition

Proteoglycan degradation contributing to the pathogenesis of intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is induced by inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-1β (IL-1β). Cell autophagy exists in degenerative diseases, including osteoarthritis and inter-vertebral disc degeneration. However, the autophagy induced by TNF-α and IL-1β and the corresponding molecular mechanism appear to be cell-type dependent. The effect and mechanism of autophagy regulated by TNF-α and IL-1β in IVDs remains unclear. Additionally, the impact of autophagy on the catabolic effect in inflammatory conditions also remains elusive. In the present study, autophagy activator and inhibitor were used to demonstrate the impact of autophagy on the catabolic effect induced by TNF-α. A critical role of autophagy was identified in rat nucleus pulposus (NP) cells: Inhibition of autophagy suppresses, while activation of autophagy enhances, the catabolic effect of cytokines. Subsequently, the autophagy-related gene expression in rat NP cells following TNF-α and IL-1β treatment was observed using immunofluorescence, quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot analysis; however, no association was present. In addition, nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), extracellular signal-regulated kinases and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors and TNF-α were used to determine the molecular mechanism of autophagy during the inflammatory conditions, and only the NF-κB and JNK inhibitor were found to enhance the autophagy of rat NP cells. Finally, IKKβ knockdown was used to further confirm the effect of the NF-κB signal on human NP cells autophagy, and the data showed that IKKβ knockdown upregulated the autophagy of NP cells during inflammatory conditions.
BigPi : Sharing Link Pools in Cloud Networks

In cloud networks, sharing network resources among different VMs is critical to performance isolation. A sharing scheme aims to fully utilize the network resource, and effectively prevent performance interference and even malicious attacks such as Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. Existing bandwidth allocation schemes like Seawall attempt to achieve performance isolation on a per-link basis. However, due to unbalanced congestion created by single-path routes, that level of isolation is suboptimal for multi-rooted trees widely used in todays datacenters. In BigPi, we define a link pool as a set of parallel links from the same rack or pod, and find that if we evenly split each flow into all paths, we can share the bandwidth on the per-link-pool basis. Sharing at the granularity of link pools achieves higher network utilization and per-source fairness, by leveraging all potential paths. Through rigorous analysis and extensive simulation, we show that BigPi is highly scalable, and achieves both stronger isolation and higher overall throughput than that feasible when sharing at a per-link basis. In addition, within a VM, BigPi’s bandwidth allocation achieves higher tail throughput.
Stock Price Volatility, Learning, and the Equity Premium

The determination of stock prices and equilibrium expected rates of return in a general equilibrium setting is still imperfectly understood. In particular, as Grossman and Shiller (1981) and others have argued, stock returns appear to be too volatile given the smooth process for dividends and consumption growth. Mehra and Prescott (1985) claim that this smoothness in consumption and dividend growth gives rise to an “equity premium paradox” since it makes it impossible to explain the equity risk premium with a risk aversion parameter of less than an implausible 35. This paper reconciles the apparent smoothness of aggregate dividends and the volatility of observed stock prices by developing a model of stock prices in a dynamic general equilibrium setting in which learning is important. Dividends, which are one component of the aggregate consumption endowment, are assumed to follow a stochastic process with a mean-reverting drift that is not directly observable by the representative agent but must be estimated from the realized growth rates of dividends and aggregate consumption. The stock price-dividend ratio is shown to depend on the current estimate of the dividend growth rate as well as on the level of uncertainty about the true growth rate. This non-observability of the growth rate of dividends introduces an element of learning into the stock valuation process which is shown to increase the volatility of the stock price and therefore reduce the level of risk aversion required to explain the equity premium. The model is calibrated to the observed joint dividend and consumption process for the US, and is shown to yield an interest rate and stock price process that conform closely to the stylized facts for US capital markets.
Integrin α6Aβ1 Induces CD81-dependent Cell Motility without Engaging the Extracellular Matrix Migration Substrate

It is well established that integrins and extracellular matrix (ECM) play key roles in cell migration, but the underlying mechanisms are poorly defined. We describe a novel mechanism whereby the integrin alpha 6 beta 1, a laminin receptor, can affect cell motility and induce migration onto ECM substrates with which it is not engaged. By using DNA-mediated gene transfer, we expressed the human integrin subunit alpha 6A in murine embryonic stem (ES) cells. ES cells expressing alpha 6A (ES6A) at the surface dimerized with endogenous beta 1, extended numerous filopodia and lamellipodia, and were intensely migratory in haptotactic assays on laminin (LN)-1. Transfected alpha 6A was responsible for these effects, because cells transfected with control vector or alpha 6B, a cytoplasmic domain alpha 6 isoform, displayed compact morphology and no migration, like wild-type ES cells. The ES6A migratory phenotype persisted on fibronectin (Fn) and Ln-5. Adhesion inhibition assays indicated that alpha 6 beta 1 did not contribute detectably to adhesion to these substrates in ES cells. However, anti-alpha 6 antibodies completely blocked migration of ES6A cells on Fn or Ln-5. Control experiments with monensin and anti-ECM antibodies indicated that this inhibition could not be explained by deposition of an alpha 6 beta 1 ligand (e.g., Ln-1) by ES cells. Cross-linking with secondary antibody overcame the inhibitory effect of anti-alpha 6 antibodies, restoring migration or filopodia extension on Fn and Ln-5. Thus, to induce migration in ES cells, alpha 6A beta 1 did not have to engage with an ECM ligand but likely participated in molecular interactions sensitive to anti-alpha 6 beta 1 antibody and mimicked by cross-linking. Antibodies to the tetraspanin CD81 inhibited alpha 6A beta 1-induced migration but had no effect on ES cell adhesion. It is known that CD81 is physically associated with alpha 6 beta 1, therefore our results suggest a mechanism by which interactions between alpha 6A beta 1 and CD81 may up-regulate cell motility, affecting migration mediated by other integrins.
New Spectral State of Supercritical Accretion Flow with Comptonizing Outflow

Supercritical accretion flows inevitably produce radiation-pressure driven outflows, which will Compton up-scatter soft photons from the underlying accretion flow, thereby making hard emission. We perform two dimensional radiation hydrodynamic simulations of supercritical accretion flows and outflows, incorporating such Compton scattering effects, and demonstrate that there appears a new hard spectral state at higher photon luminosities than that of the slim-disk state. In this state, as the photon luminosity increases, the photon index decreases and the fraction of the hard emission increases. The Compton $y$-parameter is of the order of unity (and thus the photon index will be $\sim 2$) when the apparent photon luminosity is ${\sim}30L_{\rm E}$ (with $L_{\rm E}$ being the Eddington luminosity) for nearly face-on sources. This explains the observed spectral hardening of the ULX NGC1313 X-2 in its brightening phase and thus supports the model of supercritical accretion onto stellar mass black holes in this ULX.
Adaptive Two-phase spatial association rules mining method

Since huge amounts of spatial data can be easily collected from various applications, ranging from remote sensing technology to geographical information system, the extraction and comprehension of spatial knowledge is a more and more important task. Many excellent studies on Remote Sensed Image (RSI) have been conducted for potential relationships of crop yield. However, most of them suffer from the performance problem because their techniques for mining association rules are based on Apriori algorithm. In this paper, two efficient algorithms, two-phase spatial association rules mining and adaptive two-phase spatial association rules mining, are proposed for address the above problem. Both methods primarily conduct two phase algorithms by creating Histogram Generators for fast generating coarse-grained spatial association rules, and further mining the fine-grained spatial association rules w.r. t the coarse-grained frequently patterns obtained in the first phase. Adaptive two-phase spatial association rules mining method conducts the idea of partition on an image for efficiently quantizing out non-frequent patterns and thus facilitate the following two phase process. Such two-phase approaches save much computations and will be shown by lots of experimental results in the paper.
The moderating effect of personal and situational characteristics in behavioural factors affecting ports of call

This research aims to study the moderating effects of cruise passengers’ gender, age, education, and prior experiences on a Mediterranean port of call destination image formation and the influence that image and passenger satisfaction has on future behavioural intentions. The partial least squares technique is applied to test the hypotheses developed with a sample of 492 cruise passengers. Our findings show that (1) gender, age, education, and experience have a moderating influence on the image of ports of call, on cruise passengers’ satisfaction, and on future behavioural intentions derived from cruise passengers’ satisfaction; (2) prior experience has a moderating influence on the image formation of ports of call.