Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Photonic Crystal Fiber-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor with Selective Analyte Channels and Graphene-Silver Deposited Core

We propose a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with selectively filled analyte channels. Silver is used as the plasmonic material to accurately detect the analytes and is coated with a thin graphene layer to prevent oxidation. The liquid-filled cores are placed near to the metallic channel for easy excitation of free electrons to produce surface plasmon waves (SPWs). Surface plasmons along the metal surface are excited with a leaky Gaussian-like core guided mode. Numerical investigations of the fiber’s properties and sensing performance are performed using the finite element method (FEM). The proposed sensor shows maximum amplitude sensitivity of 418 Refractive Index Units (RIU−1) with resolution as high as 2.4 × 10−5 RIU. Using the wavelength interrogation method, a maximum refractive index (RI) sensitivity of 3000 nm/RIU in the sensing range of 1.46–1.49 is achieved. The proposed sensor is suitable for detecting various high RI chemicals, biochemical and organic chemical analytes. Additionally, the effects of fiber structural parameters on the properties of plasmonic excitation are investigated and optimized for sensing performance as well as reducing the sensor’s footprint.
Promoter methylation of MGMT, MLH1 and RASSF1A tumor suppressor genes in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Pharmacological genome demethylation reduces proliferation of head and neck squamous carcinoma cells

Promoter hypermethylation of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) is a common feature of primary cancer cells. However, to date the somatic epigenetic events that occur in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) tumorigenesis have not been well-defined. In the present study, we analyzed the promoter methylation status of the genes mutL homolog 1 (MLH1), Ras-association domain family member 1 (RASSF1A) and O-6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) in 23 HNSCC samples, three control tissues and one HNSCC cell line (UM-SCC 33) using methylation-specific PCR (MSP). The expression of the three proteins was quantified by semi-quantitative immunohistochemical analysis. The cell line was treated with the demethylating agent 5-azacytidine (5-Aza) and the methylation status after 5-Aza treatment was analyzed by MSP and DNA sequencing. Proliferation was determined by Alamar blue staining. We found that the MGMT promoter in 57% of the analyzed primary tumor samples and in the cell line was hypermethylated. The MLH promoter was found to be methylated in one out of 23 (4%) tumor samples while in the examined cell line the MLH promoter was unmethylated. The RASSF1A promoter showed methylation in 13% of the tumor samples and in the cell line. MGMT expression in the group of tumor samples with a hypermethylated promoter was statistically significantly lower compared to the group of tumors with no measured hypermethylation of the MGMT promoter. After treatment of the cell line with the demethylating agent 5-Aza no demethylation of the methylated MGMT and RASSF1A genes were determined by MSP. DNA sequencing verified the MSP results, however, increased numbers of unmethylated CpG islands in the promoter region of MGMT and RASSF1A were observed. Proliferation was significantly (p<0.05) reduced after treatment with 5-Aza. In summary, we have shown promoter hypermethylation of the tumor suppressor genes MGMT and RASSF1A in HNSCC, suggesting that this epigenetic inactivation of TSGs may play a role in the development of HNSCC. 5-Aza application resulted in partial demethylation of the MGMT and RASSF1A TSGs and reduced proliferation of the tumor cells suggesting further evaluation of 5-Aza for HNSCC treatment.
Propagation models for high sites in urban areas

Analyses of results from commonly used propagation models applied to UMTS Ultra High Sites in urban environments are presented. Differences between predicted and measured values for a site in Nuernberg are calculated as a function of the distance between base station and mobile station and as a function of the angle of incidence. An assessment of the validity range of the different propagation models is done. Furthermore, an analysis of the accuracy of the classification of building data is presented.
Comparison of access control methods in mobile ad-hoc networks

The absence of a router or a base station urges the need for a better access control mechanism in the ad-hoc networks. All the nodes in the network need to cooperate among themselves for proper functioning of the network. It is important to provide access only to the nodes, which cooperate in routing and forwarding, and to deny access to the selfish nodes. Selfish nodes send and receive their own data but fail to forward other node's data, which reduces the throughput of the network. This paper addresses the methods to allow access only to well behaving nodes. This paper compares some of the state of art methods for access control from the literature.
Similarity Analysis of Macroecology

We perform a full similarity analysis of an idealized ecosystem using Buckingham's $\Pi$ theorem to obtain dimensionless similarity parameters given that some (non- unique) method exists that can differentiate different functional groups of individuals within an ecosystem. We then obtain the relationship between the similarity parameters under the assumptions of (i) that the ecosystem is in a dynamically balanced steady state and (ii) that these functional groups are connected to each other by the flow of resource. The expression that we obtain relates the level of complexity that the ecosystem can support to intrinsic macroscopic variables such as density, diversity and characteristic length scales for foraging or dispersal, and extrinsic macroscopic variables such as habitat size and the rate of supply of resource. This expression relates these macroscopic variables to each other, generating commonly observed macroecological patterns; these broad trends simply reflect the similarity property of ecosystems. We thus find that details of the ecosystem function are not required to obtain these broad macroecological patterns this may explain why they are ubiquitous. Departures from our relationship may indicate that the ecosystem is in a state of rapid change, i.e., abundance or diversity explosion or collapse. Our result provides normalised variables that can be used to isolate the trend in one ecosystem variable from another, providing a new method for isolating macroecological patterns in data. A dimensionless control parameter for ecosystem complexity emerges from our analysis and this will be a control parameter in dynamical models for ecosystems based on energy flow and conservation and will order the emergent behaviour of these models.
Could the Galactic disc heating be due to globular cluster impacts

So far, six mechanisms have been proposed to account for the Galactic disc heating. Of these, the most important appear to be a combination of scattering of stars by molecular clouds and by spiral arms. We study a further mechanism, namely the repeated disc impact of the original Galactic globular cluster population up to the present. We find that globular clusters could have contributed at most a small fraction of the current vertical energy of the disc, as they could heat the whole disc to Sigma(z) = 5.5 km s(-1) (c.f. the observed 18 and 39 km s(-1) for the thick and thin discs, respectively). We find that the rate of rise of disc heat (alpha = 0.22 in Sigma(z) similar to t(alpha) with t being time) is close to that found for scattering by molecular clouds.
Towards the performance and energy efficiency comparison of spatial modulation with conventional single-antenna transmission over generalized fading channels

In this paper, we present a performance and energy efficiency comparison of the recently devised single RF Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) concept of Spatial Modulation (SM) with the conventional single-antenna transmission method with receive Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC), which we denote as single-antenna/MRC, for different types of fading channels. In particular, the fading channels that are examined are: i) Rayleigh, ii) Nakagami-m, and iii) Weibull. Results that are based on Monte Carlo simulations show two main findings: i) the severity of fading has a big impact on the relative signal-to-noise (SNR) difference and energy efficiency gain between these two schemes for a target average bit error probability (ABEP); ii) the more severe the fading is, the more suitable SM tends to be with respect to the single antenna/MRC, according to the energy per bit required to achieve a particular low target ABEP.
The University of Alicante systems at Senseval-3

The DLSI-UA team is currently working on several word sense disambiguation approaches, both supervised and unsupervised. These approaches are based on different ways to use both annotated and unannotated data, and several resources generated from or exploiting WordNet (Miller et al., 1993), WordNet Domains, EuroWordNet (EWN) and additional corpora. This paper presents a view of different system results for Word Sense Disambiguation in different tasks of SENSEVAL-3.
Finance and Economics Discussion Series Divisions of Research & Statistics and Monetary Aairs Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C. Distance Still Matters: The Information Revolution in Small Business Lending and the Persistent Role of Location, 1993-2003

Abstract: In a seminal article on small business lending, Petersen & Rajan (2002) argue that technological changes have revolutionized small business lending markets, weakening the reliance of small businesses on local lenders and increasing geographic distances between firms and their credit suppliers. While their data only cover through 1993, they conjecture that the pace of change accelerated after 1993. Using the 1993, 1998, and 2003 Surveys of Small Business Finances (SSBFs), we test whether the distance changes identified by Petersen and Rajan continued or accelerated during the following decade. Using a novel application of Oaxaca‐Blinder decomposition, we identify the extent to which specific observable characteristics are associated with distance changes and draw three conclusions. First, while distances increased between 1993 and 1998 at a faster rate than found by Petersen & Rajan, distance increases appear to have halted or possibly reversed between 1998 and 2003. Second, rather than increasing proportionally for all small firms, distance increases were uneven across firms over the decade, with higher credit quality firms and firms with more experienced ownership realizing greater gains in distance than other firms. Finally, distances increased faster at older firms and, regardless of firm age, increases in distance have only affected some product types, primarily those involving asset‐back loans (including mortgages). For relationships that involved the provision of either lines of credit or multiple types of credit, distances increased very little or not at all during the decade. This analysis provides a detailed and nuanced view of how the market for small business credit has evolved during a period of rapid technological change.
Constructing Conceptual Knowledge Artefacts: Activity Patterns in the Ontology Authoring Process

Ontologies are complex knowledge representation artefacts used widely across biomedical, media and industrial domains. They are used for defining terminologies and providing metadata, especially for linked open data, and as such their use is rapidly increasing, but so far development tools have not benefited from empirical research into the ontology authoring process. This paper presents the results of a study that identifies common activity patterns through analysis of eye-tracking data and the event logs of the popular authoring tool, Protégé. Informed by the activity patterns discovered, we propose design guidelines for bulk editing, efficient reasoning and increased situational awareness. Methodological implications go beyond the remit of knowledge artefacts: we establish a method for studying the usability of software designed for highly specialised complex domains.
Artificial neuron with somatic and axonal computation units: Mathematical and neuromorphic models of persistent firing neurons

The conventional view of axon as a transmission cable has been challenged by continuous progress in neuroscience discoveries, which indicate the rich functional and computational repertoire of the axon. Recent experimental findings of slow integration induced persistent firing in distal axons of interneurons have shown that the slow integration from tens of seconds to minutes in distal axon leads to persistent firing of action potentials lasting for similar duration, suggesting that the axon performs its own integration functions. In this paper, we present an artificial neuron model including both somatic and axonal computation units, which reproduces the neural behavior of persistent firing. Complementary to the classic somatic computational unit which evokes action potentials by integrating dendritic inputs in a short timescale, the axon integrates the soma evoked spikes in a longer timescale of tens of second to minutes. Consequently the persistent firing behavior of the axon is determined through toggling the axon dynamics between passive conduction mode and persistent firing mode based on the integrated axonal potential. We present and discuss in this work the mathematical and neuromorphic models of the artificial neuron, as well as their simulation results. The artificial neuron proposed, being computationally efficient yet bio-plausible, would be useful to construct and simulate the large scale models of animal or human cortex, which provides a neuromorphic platform for further investigation of the possible functions of persistent firing and their roles in animal and human brain, especially their correlations with working memory.
ZEA, A Data Management Approach for SMR

Digital data is projected to double every two years creating the need for cost effective and performant storage media [4]. Hard disk drives (HDDs) are a cost effective storage media that sit between speedy yet costly flashbased storage, and cheap but slower media such as tape drives. However, virtually all HDDs today use a technology called perpendicular magnetic recording, and the density achieved with this technology is reaching scalability limits due to physical properties of the technology [17]. While new technologies such as shingled magnetic recording (SMR) that further increase areal density are slated to enter the market [6], existing systems software is not prepared to fully utilize these devices because of the unique I/O constraints that they introduce. SMR requires systems software to conform to the shingling constraint. The shingling constraint is an I/O ordering constraint imposed at the device level, and requires that writes be sequential and contiguous within a subset of the disk, called a zone. Thus, software that requires random block updates must use a scheme to serialize writes to the drive. This scheme can be handled internally in a drive or an alternative approach is to expose the zone abstraction and shingling constraint to the host operating system. Host level solutions are challenging because the shingling constraint is not compatible with software that assumes a random-write block device model, which has been in use for decades. The shingling constraint influences all layers of the I/O stack, and each layer must be made SMR compliant. In order to manage the shingling write constraint of SMR HDDs, we have designed a zone-based extent allocator that maps ZEA logical blocks (ZBA) to LBAs of the HDD. Figure 1a depicts how ZEA is mapped onto a SMR HDD comprised of multiple types of zones, which are described in Table 1. ZEA writes logical extents, comprised of data and metadata, sequentially onto the SMR zone maintaining the shingling constraint. 2 Related Work
OASIS formal approach for distributed safety-critical real-time system design

OASIS provides an environment for real time multitasking and communication design, as well as an execution environment based on a safety oriented embedded real time kernel. The formal approach of real-time design avoids many difﬁculties: it allows implementing efﬁcient advanced real-time functionalities without any safety loss. The concepts and methodology presented in this paper ensure the most important safety properties. Within this framework, our goal is to rely on formal and algebraic tools that can automatically bring the proof of correctness for safety-critical design issues. Such a constructive approach can easily speed up the system development by the formalization of the off-line analysis.
Equivalence-Based Selection of Best-Fit Models to Support Wiki Design

A wiki is a collaborative Web site whose content can be edited by anyone who has the access. Wikis are becoming a new work tool in enterprises and are widely spreading every-where. Indeed, it is important to consider the design and evolution of a wiki. We present a methodology to help wiki designers, engineers and domain experts. In practice, from the wikis we derive formal models, which are successively used to perform equivalence checking. More precisely, in order to design a wiki p we propose a methodology for the selection of the best-fit wiki model q, among a set of candidate ones. For best fit we mean that p and q have a similar structure. To handle the complexity of finding all possible candidates processes q, a heuristic function can be used to filter the set of significant candidates, and to speed up the search of a successful one, which is the main contribution of the paper. Eventually, the elected model may be exploited to start the design process.
The Combination of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Inhibitors with Gemcitabine and Radiation in Pancreatic Cancer

Purpose: Gemcitabine-radiotherapy is a standard treatment for locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Clinical data have shown that gemcitabine plus erlotinib is superior to gemcitabine alone for advanced pancreatic cancer. Therefore, we investigated the effects of the combination of epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitors with gemcitabine and radiation on a pancreatic cancer model. Experimental Design: EGFR signaling was analyzed by measuring phosphorylated EGFR (pEGFR(Y845), (Y1173)) and AKT (pAKT(S473)) protein levels in pancreatic cancer cell lines and tumors. The effects of scheduling on gemcitabine-mediated cytotoxicity and radiosensitization combined with erlotinib were determined by clonogenic survival. In vivo, the effects of cetuximab or erlotinib in combination with gemcitabine-radiation on the growth of BxPC-3 tumor xenografts were measured. Results: We found in vitro that gemcitabine induced phosphorylation of EGFR at Y845 and Y1173 that was blocked by erlotinib. Treatment of BxPC-3 cells with gemcitabine before erlotinib enhanced gemcitabine-mediated cytotoxicity without abrogating radiosensitization. In vivo, cetuximab or erlotinib in combination with gemcitabine-radiation inhibited growth compared with gemcitabine-radiation (time to tumor doubling: gemcitabine + radiation, 19 ± 3 days; cetuximab + gemcitabine + radiation, 30 ± 3 days; P < 0.05, erlotinib + gemcitabine + radiation 28 ± 3 days; P < 0.1). Cetuximab or erlotinib in combination with gemcitabine-radiation resulted in significant inhibition of pEGFR(Y1173) and pAKT(S473) early in treatment, and pEGFR(Y845), pEGFR(Y1173), and pAKT(S473) by the end of treatment. This study shows a novel difference pEGFR(Y845) and pEGFR(Y1173) in response to EGFR inhibition. Conclusions: These results show that the EGFR inhibitors cetuximab and erlotinib increase the efficacy of gemcitabine-radiation. This work supports the integration of EGFR inhibitors with gemcitabine-radiation in clinical trials for pancreatic cancer.
Building a Process Theory of IS Alignment : The Theory of Alignment as Guided Adaptation

Our research addresses the issue of how a firm aligns its information systems (IS) with its business. We describe how a mid-sized manufacturer in the U.S. mid-west dealt with the alignment issue over the 15-year period from 1987 to 2002, and we use that knowledge to generate a new theory of alignment as guided adaptation. Our view is that changes in factors in the firm’s alignment system (business strategy, organization structure, IS strategy, and IS structure and processes) adapt in an “as needed” manner, to changed circumstances in the company and its environment. Certain of the factors may be able to adapt to changes in their environment without major changes in structure and functioning; whether they can or not will depend on the nature and magnitude of those changes.
A ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Protoplanetary Disks: The Synergy of Multi-Wavelength Observations

Abstract Recent progress in telescope development has brought us different ways to observe protoplanetary disks: interferometers, space missions, adaptive optics, polarimetry, and time- and spectrally-resolved data. While the new facilities have changed the way we can tackle open problems in disk structure and evolution, there is a substantial lack of interconnection between different observing communities. Here, we explore the complementarity of some of the state-of-the-art observing techniques, and how they can be brought together to understand disk dispersal and planet formation. This paper was born at the ‘Protoplanetary Discussions’ meeting in Edinburgh, 2016. Its goal is to clarify where multi-wavelength observations converge in unveiling disk structure and evolution, and where they challenge our current understanding. We discuss caveats that should be considered when linking results from different observations, or when drawing conclusions from limited datasets (in terms of wavelength or sample). We focus on disk properties that are currently being revolutionized, specifically: the inner disk radius, holes and gaps and their link to large-scale disk structures, the disk mass, and the accretion rate. We discuss how their connections and apparent contradictions can help us to disentangle the disk physics and to learn about disk evolution.
Security in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have attracted a lot of interest over the last decade in wireless and mobile computing research community. Applications of these networks are numerous and growing, which range from indoor deployment scenarios in the home and office to outdoor deployment in adversary's territory in a tactical battleground. However, due to distributed nature and their deployment in remote areas, these networks are vulnerable to numerous security threats that can adversely affect their performance. This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion on the state of the art in security technologies for wireless sensor networks. It identifies various possible attacks at different layers of the communication protocol stack in a typical sensor network and their possible countermeasures. A brief discussion on the future direction of research in WSN security is also included.