Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient and Robust Compressed Sensing using High-Quality Expander Graphs

Expander graphs have been recently proposed to construct efficient compressed sensing algorithms. In particular, it has been shown that any $n$-dimensional vector that is $k$-sparse (with $k\ll n$) can be fully recovered using $O(k\log\frac{n}{k})$ measurements and only $O(k\log n)$ simple recovery iterations. In this paper we improve upon this result by considering expander graphs with expansion coefficient beyond 3/4 and show that, with the same number of measurements, only $O(k)$ recovery iterations are required, which is a significant improvement when $n$ is large. In fact, full recovery can be accomplished by at most $2k$ very simple iterations. The number of iterations can be made arbitrarily close to $k$, and the recovery algorithm can be implemented very efficiently using a simple binary search tree. We also show that by tolerating a small penalty on the number of measurements, and not on the number of recovery iterations, one can use the efficient construction of a family of expander graphs to come up with explicit measurement matrices for this method. We compare our result with other recently developed expander-graph-based methods and argue that it compares favorably both in terms of the number of required measurements and in terms of the recovery time complexity. Finally we will show how our analysis extends to give a robust algorithm that finds the position and sign of the $k$ significant elements of an almost $k$-sparse signal and then, using very simple optimization techniques, finds in sublinear time a $k$-sparse signal which approximates the original signal with very high precision.
Calcium/Calmodulin Kinase II in the Pedunculopontine Tegmental Nucleus Modulates the Initiation and Maintenance of Wakefulness

The pedunculopontine tegmentum nucleus (PPT) is critically involved in the regulation of wakefulness (W) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, but our understanding of the mechanisms of this regulation remains incomplete. The present study was designed to determine the role of PPT intracellular calcium/calmodulin kinase (CaMKII) signaling in the regulation of W and sleep. To achieve this aim, three different concentrations (0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 nmol) of the CaMKII activation inhibitor, KN-93, were microinjected bilaterally (100 nl/site) into the PPT of freely moving rats, and the effects on W, slow-wave sleep (SWS), REM sleep, and levels of phosphorylated CaMKII (pCaMKII) expression in the PPT were quantified. These effects, which were concentration-dependent and affected wake–sleep variables for 3 h, resulted in decreased W, due to reductions in the number and duration of W episodes; increased SWS and REM sleep, due to increases in episode duration; and decreased levels of pCaMKII expression in the PPT. Regression analyses revealed that PPT levels of pCaMKII were positively related with the total percentage of time spent in W (R2 = 0.864; n = 28 rats; p < 0.001) and negatively related with the total percentage of time spent in sleep (R2 = 0.863; p < 0.001). These data provide the first direct evidence that activation of intracellular CaMKII signaling in the PPT promotes W and suppresses sleep. These findings are relevant for designing a drug that could treat excessive sleepiness by promoting alertness.
Gamma Discounting

By incorporating the probability distribution directly into the analysis, this paper proposes a new theoretical approach to resolving the perennial dilemma of being uncertain about what discount rate to use in cost-benefit analysis. A numerical example is constructed from the results of a survey based on the opinions of 2,160 economists. The main finding is that even if every individual believes in a constant discount rate, the wide spread of opinion on what it should be makes the effective social discount rate decline significantly over time. Implications and ramifications of this proposed "gamma-discounting" approach are discussed. (JEL H43) The concept of a "discount rate" is central to economic analysis, as it allows effects occurring at different future times to be compared by converting each future dollar amount into equivalent present dollars. Because of this cen-trality, the choice of an appropriate discount rate is one of the most critical problems in all of economics. And yet, to be perfectly honest, a great deal of uncertainty beclouds this very issue. The problem of the unsure discount rate has long bedeviled benefit-cost analysis but has acquired renewed relevance lately because economists are now being asked to analyze environmental projects or activities the effects of which will be spread out over hundreds of years, and the evaluation of which is therefore extremely sensitive to the discount rate being used. Prominent examples include: global climate change, radioactive waste disposal, loss of biodiversity, thinning of stratospheric ozone, groundwater pollution, minerals depletion, and many others.I The most critical single problem with discounting future benefits and costs is that no consensus now exists, or for that matter has ever existed, about what actual rate of interest to use. Economic opinion is divided on a number of fundamental aspects, including what is the appropriate value of an uncertain future "marginal product of capital," what are the relevant efficiency distortions and how are they possibly magnified by public-sector projects, how should large long-term public investments be placed in the framework of the capital-asset-pricing model, how are we to view intergenerational transfers when future generations are not presently represented, how do we account for equity and other distributional effects in aggregating costs, benefits, and discount rates over individuals or across countries or over time-and so forth, and so on. While economists may differ in their projections of distant future real interest rates (which depend, after all, on the ultimately unpredictable rate …
Effects of bending on paper-based EBG and fractal antennas

This paper describes the effects of bending on four different paper-based antennas - conventional patch antenna, antenna using rectangular EBG, circular EBG and wideband fractal monopole antenna. These antennas were designed with the aid of CST MICROWAVE Studio to operate at 10.15 GHz using photo paper as the substrate having relative permittivity, □r = 3.2. Since these antennas were designed using a flexible substrate, it is important to observe the effects of bending on their performance. From the simulations, it was observed that antennas using circular EBG showed less mismatch degradation when bent. In addition, the simulations indicated different designs exhibited different effects under bending. Furthermore, the frequency shift of fractal monopole was less severe.
pmoA-Based Analysis of Methanotrophs in a Littoral Lake Sediment Reveals a Diverse and Stable Community in a Dynamic Environment

ABSTRACT Diversity and community structure of aerobic methane-oxidizing bacteria in the littoral sediment of Lake Constance was investigated by cloning analysis and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) fingerprinting of the pmoA gene. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a high diversity of type I and type II methanotrophs in the oxygenated uppermost centimeter of the sediment. T-RFLP profiles indicated a high similarity between the active methanotrophic community in the oxic layer and the inactive community in an anoxic sediment layer at a 10-cm depth. There were also no major changes in community structure between littoral sediment cores sampled in summer and winter. By contrast, the fingerprint patterns showed substantial differences between the methanotrophic communities of littoral and profundal sediments.
Enabling Dynamic Access Control for Controller Applications in Software-Defined Networks

Recent findings have shown that network and system attacks in Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) have been caused by malicious network applications that misuse APIs in an SDN controller. Such attacks can both crash the controller and change the internal data structure in the controller, causing serious damage to the infrastructure of SDN-based networks. To address this critical security issue, we introduce a security framework called AEGIS to prevent controller APIs from being misused by malicious network applications. Through the run-time verification of API calls, AEGIS performs a fine-grained access control for important controller APIs that can be misused by malicious applications. The usage of API calls is verified in real time by sophisticated security access rules that are defined based on the relationships between applications and data in the SDN controller. We also present a prototypical implementation of AEGIS and demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency by performing six different controller attacks including new attacks we have recently discovered.
Random Multiple Access for M2M Communications with QoS Guarantees

We propose a novel random multiple access (RMA) scheme with quality of service (QoS) guarantees for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. We consider a slotted uncoordinated data transmission period during which machine type communication (MTC) devices transmit over the same radio channel. Based on the latency requirements, MTC devices are divided into groups of different sizes, and the transmission frame is divided into subframes of different lengths. In each subframe, each group is assigned an access probability based on which an MTC device decides to transmit replicas of its packet or remain silent. The base station (BS) employs successive interference cancellation (SIC) to recover all the superposed packets. We derive the closed form expressions for the average probability of device resolution for each group, and we use these expressions to design the access probabilities. The accuracy of the expressions is validated through Monte Carlo simulations. We show that the designed access probabilities can guarantee the QoS requirements with high reliability and high energy efficiency. Finally, we show that RMA can outperform standard coordinated access schemes as well as some of the recently proposed M2M access schemes for cellular networks.
Immune evolutionary programming-based locomotion control of autonomous mobile robot

This paper investigates a robust locomotion control of a mobile robot based on a new evolutionary programming called immune genetic algorithm (IGA). It explores the principle in natural immune system (NIS) which focuses mainly on: somatic hypermutation, immune memory, and gene libraries, and then, the obtained enhanced genetic algorithm (GA) is used to evolve the three control parameters used in a robust locomotion controller to obtain time optimal, shortest path, and minimum energy performance. The simulation experiments demonstrated that this novel evolutionary algorithm is also more adaptable and accurate than the other algorithms proposed in the literature.
P-glycoprotein mediated efflux limits substrate and drug uptake in a preclinical brain metastases of breast cancer model

The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a specialized vascular interface that restricts the entry of many compounds into brain. This is accomplished through the sealing of vascular endothelial cells together with tight junction proteins to prevent paracellular diffusion. In addition, the BBB has a high degree of expression of numerous efflux transporters which actively extrude compounds back into blood. However, when a metastatic lesion develops in brain the vasculature is typically compromised with increases in passive permeability (blood-tumor barrier; BTB). What is not well documented is to what degree active efflux retains function at the BTB despite the changes observed in passive permeability. In addition, there have been previous reports documenting both increased and decreased expression of P-glycoprotein (P-gp) in lesion vasculature. Herein, we simultaneously administer a passive diffusion marker (14C-AIB) and a tracer subject to P-gp efflux (rhodamine 123) into a murine preclinical model of brain metastases of breast cancer. We observed that the metastatic lesions had similar expression (p > 0.05; n = 756–1214 vessels evaluated) at the BBB and the BTB. Moreover, tissue distribution of R123 was not significantly (p > 0.05) different between normal brain and the metastatic lesion. It is possible that the similar expression of P-gp on the BBB and the BTB contribute to this phenomenon. Additionally we observed P-gp expression at the metastatic cancer cells adjacent to the vasculature which may also contribute to reduced R123 uptake into the lesion. The data suggest that despite the disrupted integrity of the BTB, efflux mechanisms appear to be intact, and may be functionally comparable to the normal BBB. The BTB is a significant hurdle to delivering drugs to brain metastasis.
End-to-End Discourse Parser Evaluation

We are interested in the problem of discourse parsing of textual documents. We present a novel end-to-end discourse parser that, given a plain text document in input, identifies the discourse relations in the text, assigns them a semantic label and detects discourse arguments spans. The parsing architecture is based on a cascade of decisions supported by Conditional Random Fields (CRF). We train and evaluate three different parsers using the PDTB corpus. The three system versions are compared to evaluate their robustness with respect to deep/shallow and automatically extracted syntactic features.
A Zoning Strategy for Uniform Deployed Chain-Type Wireless Sensor Network in Underground Coal Mine Tunnel

In order to be more suitable for underground coal mine tunnel, network models for chain-type wireless sensor network are built, and a 3D uniformed network deployment method is proposed firstly in this paper. Then, a zoning method composed of energy balance strategy and cluster head election strategy is discussed, which is quite different from the commonly used hierarchy and cluster strategy. Finally, the performances of the zoning strategy are evaluated. The results show that, there is a trade-off among number of zones, network latency and network life. It is also shows that, appropriately zoning will prolong network life and achieve the required network performances.
THE CORE AND NUCLEOLUS ALLOCATIONS IN A PUBLIC GOODS ECONOMY WITH TAXATION

In this paper, we study a public goods economy with a certain tax system to finance public goods, and show that the core is equal to the set of nucleolus allocations defined in this economy. Coalitions are allowed to levy a tax upon the complementary coalitions and to improve current allocations under a rule restricting the resulting allocations, which corresponds to the effectiveness form due to Rosenthal [13]. We also show some sufficient conditions for the core to be nonempty.
Rapid prototyping of parallel architectures using DG2VHDL: recent advancements

DG2VHDL is a tool suite which translates automatically Dependence Graphs (DGs) to high quality, ready to synthesize VHDL models for distributed memory and control processor arrays. In this paper we introduce the Optimizer, a tool recently added to the family for searching efficiently the large space of feasible solutions for optimal linear space and time mapping operators. These operators minimize a cost function provided by the designer while also meeting specified architectural constraints. All permissible linear mappings may be considered including multi-projections. Moreover, we present several added features that enhance the usefulness and flexibility of DG2VHDL. These include: (i) parameterized DG descriptions which allow multi-dimensional DGs of varying size to be explored quickly, (i) arbitrary convex polytope DG shapes that can be described with a single command line, (iii) the ability to define arbitrary non-linear space and time mapping functions.
Robust object recognition via third-party collaborative representation

A simple and effective method is proposed for object recognition via collaborative representation with ridge regression. Different from existing sparse representation and collaborative representation based approaches, the proposal does not need extensive training samples for each testing class and it is robust to localization errors and large within-class variations, thus being applicable to various real-world object recognition tasks instead of handling only the well-controlled face recognition problem. Its discriminative power is explored from a third-party dataset which can be different from the training and testing datasets, therefore, it enables using an existing dictionary for testing new data without time-consuming data annotation and model re-training. As an example, the proposal is extensively tested on the representative and very challenging task of person re-identification, defining novel state-of-the-art results on widely adopted benchmark datasets using only simple and common features.
Virtual Caregiver: An Ambient-Aware Elderly Monitoring System

The growing number of elderly population at home and abroad necessitates improved approaches to elderly care provision. Elders, often with cognitive and physical impairment, need assistance in their activities of daily living (ADLs), which is usually provided by human caregivers (HCGs). As the demand for caregiver's assistance increases, the shortage of traditional care resources becomes obvious. In this paper, we present the Virtual Caregiver (ViCare) framework that supports a HCG to monitor continuously the elderly by being aware of their surroundings. The ViCare system attempts to understand the elderly persons' activities and contexts based on the data captured by the sensors placed in their environment and dynamically decides what services to provide them or whether there is a need to interrupt HCG depending on the type of activities. It not only minimizes the cognitive load of the HCG but also provides a seamless assistance to the elderly toward their improved health and well-being in their living environment. We conducted the experiments in an instrumented home environment and obtained positive results in terms of the satisfaction of the elderly, interaction event handling, caregiver's acceptance, and their engagement.
On Modular and Fully-Abstract Compilation

Secure compilation studies compilers that generate target-level components that are as secure as their source-level counterparts. Full abstraction is the most widely-proven property when defining a secure compiler. A compiler is modular if it allows different components to be compiled independently and then to be linked together to form a whole program. Unfortunately, many existing fully-abstract compilers to untyped machine code are not modular. So, while fully-abstractly compiled components are secure from malicious attackers, if they are linked against each other the resulting component may become vulnerable to attacks. This paper studies how to devise modular, fully-abstract compilers. It first analyses the attacks arising when compiled programs are linked together, identifying security threats that are due to linking. Then, it defines a compiler from an object-based language with method calls and dynamic memory allocation to untyped assembly language extended with a memory isolation mechanism. The paper provides a proof sketch that the defined compiler is fully-abstract and modular, so its output can be linked together without introducing security violations.
Biological Treatment of Mercury Waste

A widely used method for removing mercury from polluted water is addition of sodium sulfide. Insoluble mercuric sulfide (HgS), which forms is removed as a sludge (Price et al. 1972) that is then landfilled. It has been assumed that HgS remains permanently insoluble, thus preventing movement of mercury into the surrounding environment. Mercury waste has been treated and buried in this manner for many years.
Designing Work-Integrated Learning Placements That Improve Student Employability: Six Facets of the Curriculum That Matter.

Research into work-integrated learning continues to show through a variety of small-scale and anecdotal studies, various positive impacts on student learning, work-readiness, personal and cognitive development and other outcomes. Seldom are these research findings strongly generalizable because of such factors as small sample sizes, discipline-specific case attributes, and qualitative approaches that seek richness of detail rather than generalizability of findings. Drawing on a sample of more than 3000 students, the study reported here explored the following questions: What curriculum factors can be validly measured to operationalize work-integrated learning curricula design? What measures validly operationalize the concept of ‘employment readiness’? and What predictive relationships exist between these two sets of measures? Measures are based on students self-reporting of both curriculum characteristics and employability skill acquisition. Findings indicate that robust measures of both curriculum factors and employment-readiness factors are possible and that the curriculum factors are associated with students’ employment readiness outcomes. (Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 2016, 17(2), 197-211)
Soluble Endoglin Level Increase Occurs Prior to Development of Subclinical Structural Vascular Alterations in Diabetic Adolescents

Objective: Soluble endoglin (S-endoglin) has been implicated as a potential marker of endothelial dysfunction (ED) and was reported to be elevated in diabetic adults, correlating with the severity of diabetic vasculopathy. However, circulating S-endoglin and its association with other markers of ED have not been formerly analyzed in the first decade of diabetes onset in adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Methods: Fifty-eight adolescents with moderately/poorly controlled T1DM were included in this study and twenty-nine healthy adolescents served as controls. The diabetic group was divided into two groups based on the presence of microalbuminuria, as the microalbuminuria group (n=15) and the normoalbuminuria group (n=43). Functional vascular alterations were evaluated by measuring serum S-endoglin and plasma nitric oxide (NO) concentrations, the flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) of the brachial artery. Carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) was measured for evaluation of structural vascular alterations. Results: The S-endoglin and NO levels of both microalbuminuria and normoalbuminuria groups were higher than those of the control group (for S-endoglin, p=0.047 and p<0.001; for NO, p=0.004 and p=0.006, respectively). The FMD percent was lower in the microalbuminuria group compared to the normoalbuminuria and control groups (p=0.036 and p=0.020, respectively). There were negative correlations between S-endoglin concentration and FMD percent (r=-0.213, p=0.051) and between serum S-endoglin concentration and albumin excretion rate (r=-0.361, p=0.005). No significant differences were found in CIMT among any of the groups (p=0.443). Conclusion: In adolescents with T1DM, S-endoglin concentrations might increase in parallel to the deterioration in endothelial function before subclinical structural vascular alterations become evident.