Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Spectrum Sharing in 5G Wireless Networks With Full-Duplex Technology: Recent Advances and Research Challenges

Full-duplex (FD) wireless technology enables a radio to transmit and receive on the same frequency band at the same time, and it is considered to be one of the candidate technologies for the fifth generation (5G) and beyond wireless communication systems due to its advantages, including potential doubling of the capacity and increased spectrum utilization efficiency. However, one of the main challenges of FD technology is the mitigation of strong self-interference (SI). Recent advances in different SI cancellation techniques, such as antenna cancellation, analog cancellation, and digital cancellation methods, have led to the feasibility of using FD technology in different wireless applications. Among potential applications, one important application area is dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) in wireless systems particularly 5G networks, where FD can provide several benefits and possibilities such as concurrent sensing and transmission (CST), concurrent transmission and reception, improved sensing efficiency and secondary throughput, and the mitigation of the hidden terminal problem. In this direction, first, starting with a detailed overview of FD-enabled DSS, we provide a comprehensive survey of recent advances in this domain. We then highlight several potential techniques for enabling FD operation in DSS wireless systems. Subsequently, we propose a novel communication framework to enable CST in DSS systems by employing a power control-based SI mitigation scheme and carry out the throughput performance analysis of this proposed framework. Finally, we discuss some open research issues and future directions with the objective of stimulating future research efforts in the emerging FD-enabled DSS wireless systems.
Heterogeneous volume deformation and animation authoring with density‐aware moving least squares

This paper presents a novel heterogeneous volume deformation technique and an intuitive volume animation authoring framework. Our volume deformation extends the previous technique based on moving least squares with a density‐aware weighting metric for data‐driven importance control and efficient upsampling‐based volume synthesis. For user interaction, we present an intuitive visual metaphor and interaction schemes to support effective spatiotemporal editing of volume deformation animation. Our framework is implemented fully on graphics processors and thus suitable for quick‐and‐easy prototyping of volume deformation with improved controllability.
Different in the dark: The effect of habitat characteristics on community composition and beta diversity in bromeliad microfauna

The mechanisms which structure communities have been the focus of a large body of research. Here, we address the question if habitat characteristics describing habitat quality may drive changes in community composition and beta diversity of bromeliad-inhabiting microfauna. In our system, changes in canopy cover along an environmental gradient may affect resource availability, disturbance in form of daily water temperature fluctuations and predation, and thus may lead to changes in community structure of bromeliad microfauna through differences in habitat quality along this gradient. Indeed, we observed distinct changes in microfauna community composition along the environmental gradient explained by changes in the extent of daily water temperature fluctuations. We found beta diversity to be higher under low habitat quality (low canopy cover) than under high habitat quality (high canopy cover), which could potentially be explained by a higher relative importance of stochastic processes under low habitat quality. We also partitioned beta diversity into turnover and nestedness components and we found a nested pattern of beta diversity along the environmental gradient, with communities from the lower-quality habitat being nested subsets of communities from the higher-quality habitat. However, this pattern resulted from an increase in microfauna alpha diversity with an increase in habitat quality. By providing insights into microfauna-environment relationships our results contribute to the mechanistic understanding of community dynamics in small freshwater bodies. Here, we highlight the importance of habitat characteristics representing habitat quality in structuring communities, and suggest that this information may help to improve conservation practices of small freshwater ecosystems.
A study of SU-8 photoresist in deep trenches for silicon-embedded microinductors

Epoxy-based resist SU-8 is widely used in the development and fabrication of high-aspect-ratio (HAR) MEMS structures. It has proven to be a suitable photoresist combining thick layer coating and good adhesion on silicon substrates as well as possessing good mechanical and chemical stability. However, the trend towards minia- turization and increasing packaging density has pushed the demand for challenging micro-machining processes. As an example, a novel design of a MEMS microinductor requires a dielectric permanent layer coated in deep silicon trenches in order to insulate copper windings from the magnetic material deposited in these trenches. This requires the development of a photolithography process which enables the coating of a void-free layer filling the trenches. In this paper, the use of thick SU-8 photoresist for filling deep silicon trenches is investigated. Different SU-8 formulations are analyzed, processed and results are compared. As a result, an optimized process is developed to achieve void-free filled trenches and a uniform planar layer above them, with near vertical sidewall patterns.
Gait Rhythm Fluctuation Analysis for Neurodegenerative Diseases by Empirical Mode Decomposition

Previous studies have indicated that gait rhythm fluctuations are useful for characterizing certain pathologies of neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's disease (HD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson's disease (PD). However, no previous study has investigated the properties of frequency range distributions of gait rhythms. Therefore, in our study, empirical mode decomposition was implemented for decomposing the time series of gait rhythms into intrinsic mode functions from the high-frequency component to the low-frequency component sequentially. Then, Kendall's coefficient of concordance and the ratio for energy change for different IMFs were calculated, which were denoted as Wand RE, respectively. Results revealed that the frequency distributions of gait rhythms in patients with neurodegenerative diseases are less homogeneous than healthy subjects, and the gait rhythms of the patients contain much more high-frequency components. In addition, parameters of W and RE can significantly differentiate among the four groups of subjects (HD, ALS, PD, and healthy subjects) (with the minimum p-value of 0.0000493). Finally, five representative classifiers were utilized in order to evaluate the possible capabilities of W and RE to distinguish the patients with neurodegenerative diseases from the healthy subjects. This achieved maximum area under the curve values of 0.949, 0.900, and 0.934 for PD, HD, and ALS detection, respectively. In sum, our study suggests that gait rhythm features extracted in the frequency domain should be given consideration seriously in the future neurodegenerative disease characterization and intervention.
Pyomelanin produced by Vibrio cholerae confers resistance to predation by Acanthamoeba castellanii

ABSTRACT Protozoan predation is one of the main environmental factors constraining bacterial growth in aquatic environments, and thus has led to the evolution of a number of defence mechanisms that protect bacteria from predation. These mechanisms may also function as virulence factors in infection of animal and human hosts. Whole transcriptome shotgun sequencing of Vibrio cholerae biofilms during predation by the amoebae, Acanthamoeba castellanii, revealed that 131 transcripts were significantly differentially regulated when compared to the non‐grazed control. Differentially regulated transcripts included those involved in biosynthetic and metabolic pathways. The transcripts of genes involved in tyrosine metabolism were down‐regulated in the grazed population, which indicates that the tyrosine metabolic regulon may have a role in the response of V. cholerae biofilms to A. castellanii predation. Homogentisate 1, 2‐dioxygenase (HGA) is the main intermediate of the normal L‐tyrosine catabolic pathway which is known to auto‐oxidize, leading to the formation of the pigment, pyomelanin. Indeed, a pigmented mutant, disrupted in hmgA, was more resistant to amoebae predation than the wild type. Increased grazing resistance was correlated with increased production of pyomelanin and thus reactive oxygen species (ROS), suggesting that ROS production is a defensive mechanism used by bacterial biofilms against predation by amoebae A. castellanii. &NA; Graphical Abstract Figure. Pigment production by the pathogenic bacterium that causes cholera protects the bacterium from being consumed by the natural predatory amoeba A. castellanii.
Hand model with soft skin for evaluation of human hand motion

This paper describes a hand model with soft skin. This hand model is designed to move in a dynamics simulation space according to online input of human hand motion data. It is a part of a prototype system we are developing in this research for evaluation of manipulations by a hand with soft skin deformation. The prototype evaluation system enables observation of dynamics quantities, such as contact forces, direct measurement of which are difficult to achieve with an actual hand in the real physical world.
Performance improvement of three phase rectifier by employing electronic smoothing inductor

An electronic smoothing inductor (ESI) is very attractive circuit topology to improve power factor and to reduce the total harmonic distortions (THDs) of the ac mains current in a three phase diode bridge rectifier. The ESI reduces the low frequency ripples and controls the intermediate dc-link voltage to a dc value and peak value of the mains current also reduces. The ESI performs the function of an inductor that has controlled impedance. When compared to a passive filter, the ESI offers a filtering solution that is significantly smaller in size. This, in turn, helps in increasing the power density of the rectifier. In case of an inverter connected to the output of the rectifier, peak to peak voltage ripples to the front end of the inverter reduces significantly by the ESI, and it increases lifetime of the capacitor connected to the dc link and reduces the voltage stress of the active power semiconductors of the inverter. In this paper, an average model of the ESI and its control schemes are presented.
Liraglutide repairs the infarcted heart: The role of the SIRT1/Parkin/mitophagy pathway

Liraglutide is glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist used for treating patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The present study aimed to investigate the role and mechanism of liraglutide in repairing the infarcted heart following myocardial infarction. The results of the present study demonstrated that amplification of the dose of liraglutide for ~28 days was able to reduce cardiac fibrosis, inflammatory responses and myocardial death in the post-infarcted heart. In vitro, liraglutide protected cardiomyocyte mitochondria against the chronic hypoxic damage, inhibiting the mitochondrial apoptosis pathways. Mechanistically, liraglutide elevated the expression of NAD-dependent protein deacetylase sirtuin-1 (SIRT1), which increased the expression of Parkin, leading to mitophagy activation. Protective mitophagy reversed cellular adenosine 5′-triphosphate production, reduced cellular oxidative stress and balanced the redox response, sustaining mitochondrial homeostasis. Notably, following blockade of glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor or knockdown of Parkin, the beneficial effects of liraglutide on mitochondria disappeared. In conclusion, the results of the present study illustrated the protective role of liraglutide in repairing the infarcted heart via regulation of the SIRT1/Parkin/mitophagy pathway.
Descriptor : A dataset of stereoscopic images and ground-truth disparity mimicking human fi xations in peripersonal space

Binocular stereopsis is the ability of a visual system, belonging to a live being or a machine, to interpret the different visual information deriving from two eyes/cameras for depth perception. From this perspective, the ground-truth information about three-dimensional visual space, which is hardly available, is an ideal tool both for evaluating human performance and for benchmarking machine vision algorithms. In the present work, we implemented a rendering methodology in which the camera pose mimics realistic eye pose for a fixating observer, thus including convergent eye geometry and cyclotorsion. The virtual environment we developed relies on highly accurate 3D virtual models, and its full controllability allows us to obtain the stereoscopic pairs together with the ground-truth depth and camera pose information. We thus created a stereoscopic dataset: GENUA PESTO—GENoa hUman Active fixation database: PEripersonal space STereoscopic images and grOund truth disparity. The dataset aims to provide a unified framework useful for a number of problems relevant to human and computer vision, from scene exploration and eye movement studies to 3D scene reconstruction.
Online Social Reference: A Research Agenda Through a STIN Framework

This paper suggests a research agenda for online social reference using the Socio-Technical Interaction Network (STIN) framework [21]. It addresses the need for more research on social reference, which refers to online question asking and answering services that are provided by communities of volunteers on QA 2) reference research, as it signifies a group collaborative efforts to answer questions instead of the traditional dyadic question negotiation. The proposed research agenda draws from social informatics and suggests questions that address both the social and technological factors at work on Q&A sites.
Environmental factors influencing the development and spread of antibiotic resistance

Abstract Antibiotic resistance and its wider implications present us with a growing healthcare crisis. Recent research points to the environment as an important component for the transmission of resistant bacteria and in the emergence of resistant pathogens. However, a deeper understanding of the evolutionary and ecological processes that lead to clinical appearance of resistance genes is still lacking, as is knowledge of environmental dispersal barriers. This calls for better models of how resistance genes evolve, are mobilized, transferred and disseminated in the environment. Here, we attempt to define the ecological and evolutionary environmental factors that contribute to resistance development and transmission. Although mobilization of resistance genes likely occurs continuously, the great majority of such genetic events do not lead to the establishment of novel resistance factors in bacterial populations, unless there is a selection pressure for maintaining them or their fitness costs are negligible. To enable preventative measures it is therefore critical to investigate under what conditions and to what extent environmental selection for resistance takes place. In addition, understanding dispersal barriers is not only key to evaluate risks, but also to prevent resistant pathogens, as well as novel resistance genes, from reaching humans.
Structure Based Virtual Screening Studies to Identify Novel Potential Compounds for GPR142 and Their Relative Dynamic Analysis for Study of Type 2 Diabetes

GPR142 (G protein receptor 142) is a novel orphan GPCR (G protein coupled receptor) belonging to “Class A” of GPCR family and expressed in β cells of pancreas. In this study, we reported the structure based virtual screening to identify the hit compounds which can be developed as leads for potential agonists. The results were validated through induced fit docking, pharmacophore modeling, and system biology approaches. Since, there is no solved crystal structure of GPR142, we attempted to predict the 3D structure followed by validation and then identification of active site using threading and ab initio methods. Also, structure based virtual screening was performed against a total of 1171519 compounds from different libraries and only top 20 best hit compounds were screened and analyzed. Moreover, the biochemical pathway of GPR142 complex with screened compound2 was also designed and compared with experimental data. Interestingly, compound2 showed an increase in insulin production via Gq mediated signaling pathway suggesting the possible role of novel GPR142 agonists in therapy against type 2 diabetes.
Clinical Assessments as Predictors of Primary On-Road Outcomes in Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects fitness to drive. Research that has examined clinical predictors of fitness to drive in PD, using the on-road assessment as the gold standard, has generally used a dichotomous pass/fail decision. However, on-road assessments may also result in one of two additional outcomes (pass with recommendations, or fail-remediable). Individuals within these subgroups may benefit from interventions to improve their fitness to drive abilities. This study investigated clinical predictors that could be indicative of the pass, pass with recommendations, or fail-remediable categories for drivers with PD (N = 99). Trails B, Left Finger to Nose Test, and contrast sensitivity measures were identified as significant predictors for the pass, and pass with recommendations subgroups. No significant predictors were identified for the fail-remediable subgroup. Results from this study provide a foundation for clinicians to identify drivers who can benefit from recommendations to preserve their driving abilities.
Plils: A Practical Indoor Localization System through Less Expensive Wireless Chips via Subregion Clustering

Reducing costs is a pragmatic method for promoting the widespread usage of indoor localization technology. Conventional indoor localization systems (ILSs) exploit relatively expensive wireless chips to measure received signal strength for positioning. Our work is based on a cheap and widely-used commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) wireless chip, i.e., the Nordic Semiconductor nRF24LE1, which has only several output power levels, and proposes a new power level based-ILS, called Plils. The localization procedure incorporates two phases: an offline training phase and an online localization phase. In the offline training phase, a self-organizing map (SOM) is utilized for dividing a target area into k subregions, wherein their grids in the same subregion have similar fingerprints. In the online localization phase, the support vector machine (SVM) and back propagation (BP) neural network methods are adopted to identify which subregion a tagged object is located in, and calculate its exact location, respectively. The reasonable value for k has been discussed as well. Our experiments show that Plils achieves 75 cm accuracy on average, and is robust to indoor obstacles.
The Social Media Trap -- How Knowledge Workers Learn to Deal with Constant Social Connectivity

People are connected to their colleagues, customers, family and friends almost all the time and everywhere via virtual communication channels. However, constant social connectivity is a two-edged sword bringing about positive as well as negative effects especially in the professional context. Knowledge workers suffer from pervasive interruptions, escalating engagement, ineffectiveness, but also social overload due to the increasing use of social media. Therefore, they have to learn how to deal with constant social connectivity. Based on an exploratory case study involving 41 interviews with members of a large-scale, international IS project, we found that knowledge workers develop coping measures in order to deal with the negative effects of social media use. Drawing on social learning theory, our results indicate the triggers of learning and that knowledge workers acquire and internalise connectivity skills by direct experience, modelling and self-control. We revealed that matched-dependent behavior is particularly important in the connectivity field.
Age-dependent alteration in the expression of oligodendrocyte-specific protein in the gerbil hippocampus

Oligodendrocytes are myelin-forming cells in the central nervous system. Research into the effects of aging on oligodendrocyte protein expression remains limited. The present study aimed to determine the alterations in oligodendrocyte-specific protein (OSP) expression in the gerbil hippocampus at 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 24 months of age with western blot and immunohistochemistry analyses. OSP expression levels in the hippocampus were highest at 6 months of age. OSP immunoreactivity was identified in numerous cell bodies at 1 month, although the number of OSP immunoreactive cells was different according to hippocampal subregion. The number of OSP immunoreactive cells significantly decreased at 2 months and, thereafter, numbers decreased gradually. The detection of OSP immunoreactive fibers was negligible in all layers in the hippocampal subregions until 4 months. OSP immunoreactive fibers were abundant at 6 and 24 months, although the fiber distribution patterns in the CA1-3 areas and dentate gyrus were different. The results demonstrated that OSP expression in the gerbil hippocampus was age-dependent. The detection of OSP immunoreactive cell bodies and fibers was significantly different according to the layers of hippocampal subregions, indicating that myelination may be continuously altered in the hippocampus during normal aging.
Optimum topology design of geometrically nonlinear suspended domes using ECBO

The suspended dome system is a new structural form that has become popular in the construction of long-span roof structures. Suspended dome is a kind of new pre-stressed space grid structure that has complex mechanical characteristics. In this paper, an optimum topology design algorithm is performed using the enhanced colliding bodies optimization (ECBO) method. The length of the strut, the cable initial strain, the cross-sectional area of the cables and the cross-sectional size of steel elements are adopted as design variables and the minimum volume of each dome is taken as the objective function. The topology optimization on lamella dome is performed by considering the type of the joint connections to determine the optimum number of rings, the optimum number of joints in each ring, the optimum height of crown and tubular sections of these domes. A simple procedure is provided to determine the configuration of the dome. This procedure includes calculating the joint coordinates and steel elements and cables constructions. The design constraints are implemented according to the provision of LRFD-AISC (Load and Resistance Factor Design-American Institute of Steel Constitution). This paper explores the efficiency of lamella dome with pin-joint and rigid-joint connections and compares them to investigate the performance of these domes under wind (according to the ASCE 7-05), dead and snow loading conditions. Then, a suspended dome with pin-joint single-layer reticulated shell and a suspended dome with rigid-joint single-layer reticulated shell are discussed. Optimization is performed via ECBO algorithm to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the ECBO in creating optimal design for suspended domes.