Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Detection-Estimation Method for Systems with Random Jumps with Application to Target Tracking and Fault Diagnosis

Methods for detection and estimation of the structure or parameters of abrupt changes in dynamic systems play an important role for solving a number of problems encountered in practice. They have an important significance in different fields of telecommunications and control applications, such as radar tracking of maneuvering targets, fault diagnosis and identification (FDI), speech analysis, signal processing in geophysics and biomedical systems. Most of these applications belong to the class of problems with nonlinear dynamics. Among them an important role is played by a wide class of systems with abrupt random jumps of parameters or structure. A dynamic system with jumps of this kind can be defined as a system in which the structure or parameters can change at any random time. Therefore, in order to describe such a system, it is convenient to introduce an unknown random vector ( ) k θ that determines the current system structure and parameters. Then the system state and observation equations are dependent on this changing vector. The general case then is described as follows:
2′-O Methylation of Internal Adenosine by Flavivirus NS5 Methyltransferase

RNA modification plays an important role in modulating host-pathogen interaction. Flavivirus NS5 protein encodes N-7 and 2′-O methyltransferase activities that are required for the formation of 5′ type I cap (m7GpppAm) of viral RNA genome. Here we reported, for the first time, that flavivirus NS5 has a novel internal RNA methylation activity. Recombinant NS5 proteins of West Nile virus and Dengue virus (serotype 4; DENV-4) specifically methylates polyA, but not polyG, polyC, or polyU, indicating that the methylation occurs at adenosine residue. RNAs with internal adenosines substituted with 2′-O-methyladenosines are not active substrates for internal methylation, whereas RNAs with adenosines substituted with N6-methyladenosines can be efficiently methylated, suggesting that the internal methylation occurs at the 2′-OH position of adenosine. Mass spectroscopic analysis further demonstrated that the internal methylation product is 2′-O-methyladenosine. Importantly, genomic RNA purified from DENV virion contains 2′-O-methyladenosine. The 2′-O methylation of internal adenosine does not require specific RNA sequence since recombinant methyltransferase of DENV-4 can efficiently methylate RNAs spanning different regions of viral genome, host ribosomal RNAs, and polyA. Structure-based mutagenesis results indicate that K61-D146-K181-E217 tetrad of DENV-4 methyltransferase forms the active site of internal methylation activity; in addition, distinct residues within the methyl donor (S-adenosyl-L-methionine) pocket, GTP pocket, and RNA-binding site are critical for the internal methylation activity. Functional analysis using flavivirus replicon and genome-length RNAs showed that internal methylation attenuated viral RNA translation and replication. Polymerase assay revealed that internal 2′-O-methyladenosine reduces the efficiency of RNA elongation. Collectively, our results demonstrate that flavivirus NS5 performs 2′-O methylation of internal adenosine of viral RNA in vivo and host ribosomal RNAs in vitro.
Information Adoption in Online Communities: Elaborating the Role of Trust

Online communities have become a common means for people with shared interests to exchange information with each other. Although several studies have been undertaken to understand individuals’ motivation to contribute to online communities, little is known about how individuals adopt the information they receive through these communities. Therefore, this study aims at addressing this gap by investigating the process of information adoption in online communities. Drawing upon the Elaboration Likelihood Model, we argue that quality of the information, information recipient’s level of trust in the online community and the information source trustworthiness are important factors in the process of information adoption in the context of online communities. Moreover, the information recipient’s expertise and involvement in the issue related to the received information determine which factor is more dominant in
The Natural History of Trachoma Infection and Disease in a Gambian Cohort with Frequent Follow-Up

Background The natural history of ocular Chlamydia trachomatis infections in endemic communities has not been well characterised and is an important determinant of the effectiveness of different mass treatment strategies to prevent blindness due to trachoma. Methodology/Principal Findings A multistate hidden Markov model was fitted to data on infection and active disease from 256 untreated villagers in The Gambia who were examined every 2 weeks over a 6-month period. Parameters defining the natural history of trachoma were estimated, and associations between these parameters, demographic and baseline immune measurements examined. The median incubation period following infection was estimated at 17 days (95% confidence interval: 11–28). Disease persisted for longer than infection (median 21 (15–32) weeks) versus 17 (12–24) weeks), with an estimated median duration of post-infection inflammation of 5 (3–8) weeks. The duration of active disease showed a significant decline with age even after accounting for lower rates of re-infection and disease at older ages (p = 0.004). Measurements of levels of baseline IgA to epitopes in the major outer membrane protein of Chlamydia trachomatis were not significantly correlated with protection or more rapid clearance of infection. Conclusions The average duration of infection with Chlamydia trachomatis especially at younger ages is long. This contributes to the persistence and gradual return of trachoma after community-wide treatment with antibiotics.
Putative Role of β-1,3 Glucans in Candida albicans Biofilm Resistance

ABSTRACT Biofilms are microbial communities, embedded in a polymeric matrix, growing attached to a surface. Nearly all device-associated infections involve growth in the biofilm life style. Biofilm communities have characteristic architecture and distinct phenotypic properties. The most clinically important phenotype involves extraordinary resistance to antimicrobial therapy, making biofilm infections very difficulty to cure without device removal. The current studies examine drug resistance in Candida albicans biofilms. Similar to previous reports, we observed marked fluconazole and amphotericin B resistance in a C. albicans biofilm both in vitro and in vivo. We identified biofilm-associated cell wall architectural changes and increased β-1,3 glucan content in C. albicans cell walls from a biofilm compared to planktonic organisms. Elevated β-1,3 glucan levels were also found in the surrounding biofilm milieu and as part of the matrix both from in vitro and in vivo biofilm models. We thus investigated the possible contribution of β-glucans to antimicrobial resistance in Candida albicans biofilms. Initial studies examined the ability of cell wall and cell supernatant from biofilm and planktonic C. albicans to bind fluconazole. The cell walls from both environmental conditions bound fluconazole; however, four- to fivefold more compound was bound to the biofilm cell walls. Culture supernatant from the biofilm, but not planktonic cells, bound a measurable amount of this antifungal agent. We next investigated the effect of enzymatic modification of β-1,3 glucans on biofilm cell viability and the susceptibility of biofilm cells to fluconazole and amphotericin B. We observed a dose-dependent killing of in vitro biofilm cells in the presence of three different β-glucanase preparations. These same concentrations had no impact on planktonic cell viability. β-1,3 Glucanase markedly enhanced the activity of both fluconazole and amphotericin B. These observations were corroborated with an in vivo biofilm model. Exogenous biofilm matrix and commercial β-1,3 glucan reduced the activity of fluconazole against planktonic C. albicans in vitro. In sum, the current investigation identified glucan changes associated with C. albicans biofilm cells, demonstrated preferential binding of these biofilm cell components to antifungals, and showed a positive impact of the modification of biofilm β-1,3 glucans on drug susceptibility. These results provide indirect evidence suggesting a role for glucans in biofilm resistance and present a strong rationale for further molecular dissection of this resistance mechanism to identify new drug targets to treat biofilm infections.
Automated Detection Method for Clustered Microcalcification in Mammogram Image Based on Statistical

Breast cancer is the most frightening cancer for women in the world. The current problem that closely related with this issue is how to deal with small calcification part inside the breast called micro calcification (MC). As a preventive way, a breast screening examination called mammogram is provided. Mammogram image with a considerable amount of MC has been a problem for the doctor and radiologist when they should determine correctly the region of interest, in this study is clustered MC. Therefore, we propose to develop an automated method to detect clustered MC utilizing two main methods, multi-branch standard deviation analysis for clustered MC detection and surrounding region dependence method for individual MC detection. Our proposed method was resulting in 70.8% of classification rate, then for the sensitivity and specificity obtained 79% and 87%, respectively. The gained results are adequately promising to be more developed in some areas.
Perceptual speech quality assessment - a review

This paper reviews the development of perceptually-motivated models for quality assessment of speech transmission/storage systems. The aim is to predict a subjective mean opinion score (MOS) for non-linear, time-variant distortions such as lossy coders, channel errors or noise reduction, particularly for telecommunications applications. Because linear methods have proven unsuitable for this purpose, many researchers have studied perceptual quality assessment using a comparison of auditory transforms to estimate quality. This work has led to several ITU standards. Non-intrusive models, arguably more suited to network monitoring, are the focus of much current interest. Intrusive, signal-based non-intrusive, and parametric non-intrusive models are discussed.
Rajiv Gandhi Son of a Dynasty

Six years ago, Rajiv Gandhi found himself at the helm of a country of 800 m people. A former airline pilot, he had never been a cabinet minister and, indeed, had never aspired to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, Jawarharlal Nehru, and his mother, Indira Gandhi. The author charts Gandhi's susbsequent stewardship of the world's largest democracy. He tells how, two months after succeeding to office, Gandhi won the largest election victory of any Indian prime minsiter, but it was a victory that brought an exaggerated expectation of his premiership. He examines Gandhi's approach to traditional Indian problems such as underdevelopment and communalism, and looks at his performance in the crucial role of India's chief diplomat. And the author investigates, too, the massive expansion of India's military capability under Rajiv - and the continuing suspicion that he was involved in the Bofors arms scandal. Rajiv Gandhi continues to be something of an enigma, a reluctant politician who had greatness thrust upon him. At the end of 1989 he fell from power, an end - even if only temporarily - to the great dynasty which has ruled India such independene in 1947. This book goes a long way towards an understanding of this surprisingly complex man and his struggle for political survival in an increasing volatile sub-continent.
An intelligent, interactive tool for exploration and visualization of time-oriented security data

The detection of known and unknown attacks usually requires the interpretation and presentation of very large amounts of time-oriented security data. Using regular means for displaying the data, such as text or tables, is often ineffective. Furthermore, displaying only raw data is not sufficient, because the security expert is still required to derive meaningful conclusions from large amounts of data. In addition, in many cases (e.g., for detecting a virus spreading in the network), an aggregated view of multiple network devices is more effective than a view of each individual device. In this paper we propose an intelligent interface used by a distributed architecture that was described in our previous work, specific to the tasks of knowledge-based interpretation, summarization, query, visualization and interactive exploration of large numbers of time-oriented data. In order to support the interpretation and computation process, we provide automated mechanisms that perform derivation of context-specific, interval-based abstract interpretations (also known as Temporal Abstractions) from raw time-stamped security data, by using a domain-specific knowledge-base (e.g., a period of 5 hours, during the night, of a high number of FTP connections within the context of No User Activity, which might indicate the existence of a Trojan in the computer). The proposed visualization tool includes several functionalities for querying, visualization and exploration of both raw and abstracted time-oriented security data regarding single and multiple network devices.
Improving the accuracy of financial time series prediction using ensemble networks and high order statistics

We apply neural network ensembles to the task of forecasting financial time series and explore the use of high order statistical information as part of network inputs. We show that the prediction accuracy of the time series can be significantly improved utilizing this methodology. Since prediction accuracy is only an estimate for the profitability on the financial market, we report good and profitable results using a profit/loss metric based on market simulations. Our simulations show an improvement of between 1.3 to 12.4% over a simple buy and hold trading strategy, and an improvement of between 6.5 to 20.9% over trading strategy using linear autoregressive models.
Both Low and High 24-Hour Diastolic Blood Pressure Are Associated With Worse Cognitive Performance in Type 2 Diabetes: The Maastricht Study

OBJECTIVE Hypertension and diabetes are both risk factors for cognitive decline, and individuals with both might have an especially high risk. We therefore examined linear and nonlinear (quadratic) associations of 24-h blood pressure (BP) with cognitive performance in participants with and without type 2 diabetes. We also tested the association of nocturnal dipping status with cognitive performance. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS This study was performed as part of the Maastricht Study, an ongoing population-based cohort study. Cross-sectional associations of 24-h BP (n = 713, of whom 201 had type 2 diabetes) and nocturnal dipping status (n = 686, of whom 196 had type 2 diabetes) with performance on tests for global cognitive functioning, information processing speed, verbal memory (immediate and delayed word recall), and response inhibition were tested using linear regression analysis and adjusted for demographics, vascular risk factors, cardiovascular disease, depression, and lipid-modifying and antihypertensive medication use. RESULTS After full adjustment, we found quadratic (inverted U-shaped) associations of 24-h diastolic blood pressure (DBP) with information processing speed (b for quadratic term = −0.0267, P < 0.01) and memory (immediate word recall: b = −0.0180, P < 0.05; delayed word recall: b = −0.0076, P < 0.01) in participants with diabetes, but not in those without. No clear pattern was found for dipping status. CONCLUSIONS This study shows that both low and high 24-h DBP are associated with poorer performance on tests of information processing speed and memory in individuals with type 2 diabetes.
Organizational Coordination with Decentralized Costly Communication ∗

Prior experimental evidence finds decentralized pre-play communication to facilitate efficient coordination among interdependent agents. However, the kind of communication in these experiments is unrealistic for most organizational contexts, as it consists of costless messages from every agent, which are sent every time a coordination game is played. We study how communication use and its effectiveness change when one considers that sending messages is often both costly and voluntary, and investigate the effectiveness of alternative communication policies employed by a firm. The policies differ in the degree to which message use is voluntary and in who bears the costs for communication. Imposing even small communication costs on employees dramatically reduces message use, but efficient coordination occurs more frequently when the proportion of message costs borne by employees is small. We conclude that under certain conditions, large but incomplete subsidies for using communication can be an optimal solution for obtaining efficient coordination in firms.
An extraction method of hyponymy based on multiple data sources fusion

Hyponymy is one of the most critical semantic relations, which contributes magnificently to semantic dictionary, information retrieval etc. In this paper, a method of extracting hyponymy is proposed based on multiple data sources fusion, which convert the extraction of hyponymy to the extraction of hypernyms for target words. First, mining candidate hypernyms for the target words based on search engine, encyclopedia resources and core suffix words. Second, fusing the candidates from the above data sources. At last, the classification algorithm is used to filter the noise and extract the hypernyms, which is a quite mature machine learning algorithm. There is hyponymy between the target words and their correctly extracted hypernyms. The experimental results show that the highest accuracy rate of hyponymy extraction reaches 0.832 using the proposed method.
Adaptive gait for dynamic rotational walking motion by ASTERISK

Adaptive gait for limb mechanism robot ASTERISK's dynamic rotational walking motion is designed. The adaptive gait is a motion where the robot can adapt itself to environment by utilizing virtual plane without any case-by-case command for each situations from user. With internal sensing and proposed method, the robot knows how to response to its environment. As all the terrains in actual world is not ground leveled, the authors also optimized robot postures for each virtualized plane inclined-angle by using Genetic Algorithms. The adaptive gait is confirmed in the dynamic simulator, Open Dynamic Engine, before testing with actual robot. The robot could walk on the terrain with approximately 6 degree in both upward and downward directions without falling down.
Wide-band SIW cavity-backed circular polarized array antennas with sequential rotation technique

A circularly-polarized (CP) array antenna based on the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology is proposed. The 2×2 linearly polarized SIW sub-arrays with 90° sequential rotation are employed as the radiating elements on the top layer. The sequential rotation technique is introduced to design SIW corporate-feed network on the bottom layer to realize wideband circular polarized characteristic. The network and the radiating elements of the array are both designed on close SIW structure with low cost printed circuit board (PCB) technology. The simulated results show that, the proposed 4×4 array has a large axial ratio (AR) bandwidth of 14% from 18.3 GHz to 21.1 GHz with a gain above 13 dBi.
Personality perception of robot avatar tele-operators

Nowadays a significant part of human-human interaction takes place over distance. Tele-operated robot avatars, in which an operator's behaviours are portrayed by a robot proxy, have the potential to improve distance interaction, e.g., improving social presence and trust. However, having communication mediated by a robot changes the perception of the operator's appearance and behaviour, which have been shown to be used alongside vocal cues in judging personality. In this paper we present a study that investigates how robot mediation affects the way the personality of the operator is perceived. More specifically, we aim to investigate if judges of personality can be consistent in assessing personality traits, can agree with one another, can agree with operators' self-assessed personality, and shift their perceptions to incorporate characteristics associated with the robot's appearance. Our experiments show that (i) judges utilise robot appearance cues along with operator vocal cues to make their judgements, (ii) operators' arm gestures reproduced on the robot aid personality judgements, and (iii) how personality cues are perceived and evaluated through speech, gesture and robot appearance is highly operator-dependent. We discuss the implications of these results for both tele-operated and autonomous robots that aim to portray personality.
Stabilization of linear systems over networks with double-sided, finite bounded, arbitrary packet loss

This paper considers state feedback stabilization of discrete-time linear systems, where network exists for transmitting the sensor and controller information, and arbitrary bounded packet loss occurs between the sensor and controller, and between the controller and actuator. The sensor and controller send information at each sampling instant. The controller and actuator may or may not receive information at each sampling instant. The stabilization of this system is transformed into the robust stabilization of a set of systems. We find a common quadratic Lyapunov function for the closed-loop system, and give novel stabilization conditions solvable via linear matrix inequality (LMI) techniques. A numerical example is given to validate the stability results.
Inculcating an innovative culture of e-learning at the UoM: The case study of a GEM module on "Educational Technology and Computer-Based Learning Environments"

This project is about the conception, design, delivery and evaluation of a blended module that is offered as a GEM (General Education Module) university-wide to undergraduate students. The blended nature of this innovative module is reflected in a 70% online, 10% printed material and 20% face-to-face component. The name of the module is "Educational Technologies and Computer-based Learning Environments" and the innovative features of the module are illustrated in the Nature of the module itself Mode of delivery Assessment modality Pedagogical conception The module has already been prototyped over two semesters and has undergone 3 version changes. Version 1.0 was released in Semester 1 of academic year 2005/06 while version 2.0 was released in Semester 2 of academic year 2005/06. Version 3.0 is currently being prototyped in this current semester (semester 1 of academic year 2006/07). This paper underlines the major phases of the courseware development process for the said module. It describes the innovative and somewhat controversial educational approaches and philosophies underlying the design rationales of the course designer and lecturer, and discusses the observations made on the field with the students. It furthermore demonstrates how feedback can be useful in an iterative process of continuing enhancement through versioning of the courseware. Finally, it demonstrates that although a more democratic, open and flexible method is adopted throughout the delivery of the module, quality is still maintained. The key lies in the redefinition of the word 'quality' to fit in the reconceptualisation of the teaching and learning process in the context of this module.