Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling the Impact of Delay Spikes on TCP Performance on a Low Bandwidth GPRS Wireless Link

We model the goodput of a single TCP source on a low bandwidth lossless GPRS link experiencing sudden increases in RTT, i.e., delay spikes. Such spikes trigger spurious timeouts that reduce the TCP goodput. Renewal reward theory is used to derive a straightforward expression for TCP goodput that depends on the bandwidth limitation, RTT and delay spike properties through average spike duration and distribution of the spike intervals. The basic model is for i.i. d. spike intervals, and correlated spike ∗corresponding author, tel:int+358-9-4515447, fax: int+358-9-4512474 1 intervals are modelled by using a modulating background Markov chain. Also a simple deterministic p-formula is given. Validation by ns2 simulations shows excellent agreement and good accuracy even when modeling assumptions are mildly violated,e.g., regarding our lossless assumption.
Scalable News Slant Measurement Using Twitter

Prior research has reported evidence of polarization in the consumption and distribution of political news in online social media. Methods to effectively measure slant of news articles at a large scale are lacking in prior literature. To fill this gap, we propose a method to measure slant of individual news articles by observing their sharing patterns on Twitter. Our method monitors tweets about a news article and a set of landmark Democrat and Republican accounts on Twitter to estimate its slant. Our results show that the slant of news articles estimated by our method matches the slant estimated by crowd sourced workers.
A distinct class of isolated intracloud lightning discharges and their associated radio emissions

Observations of radio emissions from thunderstorms were made during the summer of 1996 using two arrays of sensors located in northern New Mexico. The first array consisted of three fast electric field change meters separated by distances of 30 to 230 km. The second array consisted of three broadband (3 to 30 MHz) HF data acquisition systems separated by distances of 6 to 13 km. Differences in signal times of arrival at multiple stations were used to locate the sources of received signals. Relative times of arrival of signal reflections from the ionosphere and Earth were used to determine source heights. A distinct class of short-duration electric field change emissions was identified and characterized. The emissions have previously been termed narrow positive bipolar pulses (NPBPs). NPBPs were emitted from singular intracloud discharges that occurred in the most active regions of three thunderstorms located in New Mexico and west Texas. The discharges occurred at altitudes between 8 and 11 km above mean sea level. NEXRAD radar images show that the NPBP sources were located in close proximity to high reflectivity storm cores where reflectivity values were in excess of 40 dBZ. NPBP electric field change waveforms were isolated, bipolar, initially positive pulses with peak amplitudes comparable to those of return stroke field change waveforms. The mean FWHM (full width at half maximum) of initial NPBP field change pulses was 4.7 μs. The HF emissions associated with NPBPs were broadband noise-like radiation bursts with a mean duration of 2.8 μs and amplitudes 10 times larger than emissions from typical intracloud and cloud-to-ground lightning processes. Calculations indicate that the events represent a distinct class of singular, isolated lightning discharges that have limited spatial extents of 300 to 1000 m and occur in high electric field regions. The unique radio emissions produced by these discharges, in combination with their unprecedented physical characteristics, clearly distinguish the events from other types of previously observed thunderstorm electrical processes.
Combining search spaces of heterogeneous recognizers for improved speech recogniton

In speech recognition systems, information from multiple sources such as different feature streams or acoustic models can be combined in many different ways to yield better recognition performance. It is theoretically expected that the best performance is obtainable through the simultaneous use of all sources of information, in a system capable of using these in parallel. Such systems, however, are extremely complex and difficult to construct. In this paper we propose a simple alternative criterion for combination which can factorize the complex recognizer into several simple recognizers, each of which is based on a single source of information. We use this criterion in simple experiments which combine lattices from recognizers built with different feature streams. Experimental results obtained on five different corpora show that the proposed method is effective in improving recognition performance.
Changing Commuter Travel Behavior: Employer-Initiated Strategies

Commuter travel has certain features that make it potentially more responsive to interventions than other types of travel. However, from the perspective of the employer attempting to implement a trip reduction program, it is often difficult to determine what type of intervention (or combination of interven­ tions) would be most effective. This article reviews the literature on strategies for changing commuter behavior, with a focus on techniques that an employer might use (i.e., rather than a focus on physical or regulatory barriers to non-conserving behavior). Behavior change strategies are organized into three categories: informational approaches, positive motivational approaches, and coercive approaches. In general, research in commuter behavior change has focused on the application of external, tangible motivation (e.g., financial incentives or disincentives) to the exclusion of self-initiated, less tangible factors (e.g., commitment and self-monitoring techniques). The implications of this bias are discussed along with suggestions for future research.
The Acute Phase Protein Serum Amyloid A Induces Lipolysis and Inflammation in Human Adipocytes through Distinct Pathways

Background The acute phase response (APR) is characterized by alterations in lipid and glucose metabolism leading to an increased delivery of energy substrates. In adipocytes, there is a coordinated decrease in Free Fatty acids (FFAs) and glucose storage, in addition to an increase in FFAs mobilization. Serum Amyloid A (SAA) is an acute phase protein mainly associated with High Density Lipoproteins (HDL). We hypothesized that enrichment of HDL with SAA, during the APR, could be implicated in the metabolic changes occurring in adipocytes. Methodology/Principal Findings In vitro differentiated human adipocytes (hMADS) were treated with SAA enriched HDL or recombinant SAA and the metabolic phenotype of the cells analyzed. In hMADS, SAA induces an increased lipolysis through an ERK dependent pathway. At the molecular level, SAA represses PPARγ2, C/EBPα and SREBP-1c gene expression, three transcription factors involved in adipocyte differentiation or lipid synthesis. In addition, the activation of the NF-κB pathway by SAA leads to the induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, as in the case of immune cells. These latter findings were replicated in freshly isolated mature human adipocytes. Conclusions/Significance Besides its well-characterized role in cholesterol metabolism, SAA has direct metabolic effects on human adipocytes. These metabolic changes could be at least partly responsible for alterations of adipocyte metabolism observed during the APR as well as during pathophysiological conditions such as obesity and conditions leading to insulin resistant states.
Is Granger Causality a Viable Technique for Analyzing fMRI Data?

Multivariate neural data provide the basis for assessing interactions in brain networks. Among myriad connectivity measures, Granger causality (GC) has proven to be statistically intuitive, easy to implement, and generate meaningful results. Although its application to functional MRI (fMRI) data is increasing, several factors have been identified that appear to hinder its neural interpretability: (a) latency differences in hemodynamic response function (HRF) across different brain regions, (b) low-sampling rates, and (c) noise. Recognizing that in basic and clinical neuroscience, it is often the change of a dependent variable (e.g., GC) between experimental conditions and between normal and pathology that is of interest, we address the question of whether there exist systematic relationships between GC at the fMRI level and that at the neural level. Simulated neural signals were convolved with a canonical HRF, down-sampled, and noise-added to generate simulated fMRI data. As the coupling parameters in the model were varied, fMRI GC and neural GC were calculated, and their relationship examined. Three main results were found: (1) GC following HRF convolution is a monotonically increasing function of neural GC; (2) this monotonicity can be reliably detected as a positive correlation when realistic fMRI temporal resolution and noise level were used; and (3) although the detectability of monotonicity declined due to the presence of HRF latency differences, substantial recovery of detectability occurred after correcting for latency differences. These results suggest that Granger causality is a viable technique for analyzing fMRI data when the questions are appropriately formulated.
Toward Secure Multikeyword Top-k Retrieval over Encrypted Cloud Data

Cloud computing has emerging as a promising pattern for data outsourcing and high-quality data services. However, concerns of sensitive information on cloud potentially causes privacy problems. Data encryption protects data security to some extent, but at the cost of compromised efficiency. Searchable symmetric encryption (SSE) allows retrieval of encrypted data over cloud. In this paper, we focus on addressing data privacy issues using SSE. For the first time, we formulate the privacy issue from the aspect of similarity relevance and scheme robustness. We observe that server-side ranking based on order-preserving encryption (OPE) inevitably leaks data privacy. To eliminate the leakage, we propose a two-round searchable encryption (TRSE) scheme that supports top-k multikeyword retrieval. In TRSE, we employ a vector space model and homomorphic encryption. The vector space model helps to provide sufficient search accuracy, and the homomorphic encryption enables users to involve in the ranking while the majority of computing work is done on the server side by operations only on ciphertext. As a result, information leakage can be eliminated and data security is ensured. Thorough security and performance analysis show that the proposed scheme guarantees high security and practical efficiency.
A simple relevancy-ranking strategy for an interface to Boolean OPACs

A relevancy‐ranking algorithm for a natural language interface to Boolean online public access catalogs (OPACs) was formulated and compared with that currently used in a knowledge‐based search interface called the E‐Referencer, being developed by the authors. The algorithm makes use of seven well‐known ranking criteria: breadth of match, section weighting, proximity of query words, variant word forms (stemming), document frequency, term frequency and document length. The algorithm converts a natural language query into a series of increasingly broader Boolean search statements. In a small experiment with ten subjects in which the algorithm was simulated by hand, the algorithm obtained good results with a mean overall precision of 0.42 and mean average precision of 0.62, representing a 27 percent improvement in precision and 41 percent improvement in average precision compared to the E‐Referencer. The usefulness of each step in the algorithm was analyzed and suggestions are made for improving the algorithm.
Motion artifact suppression in ambulatory ECG with feed forward combined adaptive filter

Ambulatory electrocardiogram (AECG) is widely used for heart disease diagnosis and treatment after surgery, but the signal quality will be negatively affected by the motion artifact (MA) coupling in the AECG signal. Adaptive filter (AF) has been used to suppress MA from AECG. Unfortunately, because of the non-stationary property of AECG and MA, the distortion and the artifact suppression performance of the AF's output cannot be satisfied simultaneously, resulting in a poor diagnosis, such as: low QRS beat detection accuracy. This paper proposes a new kind of AF: Feed Forward Combine AF (FFC-AF). It is composed by two separate AFs (one fast convergence speed AF ‘FCS-AF’ and one high convergence accuracy AF ‘HCA-AF’) and one combination parameter which varies with the estimation of reference signal stationary. The performance of FFC-AF is evaluated by distortion, signal artifact ratio and QRS beat detection accuracy.
Tunable optical filters based on silicon nitride mem-branes with subwavelength gratings

We report the use of 500 nm thick silicon nitride membrane as a high reflective broad-band filter in the orange-red spectral range. The membrane is patterned into a high contrast grating with 560 nm period to act as a high-reflectivity mirror. Using electrostatic tuning, we have achieved a tunable filter based on a Fabry-Pérot cavity architecture. By applying 9 V to the MEMs device, we observe a 13 nm wavelength shift of a peak centred at 630 nm.
Broadband L-Probe Fed Patch Antenna Combined With Passive Loop Elements

A new broadband L-probe fed rectangular patch antenna electromagnetically coupled to parasitic loop elements is presented. The proposed antenna is analyzed numerically using the moment-method-based electromagnetic simulation (IE3D) and high-frequency structure simulation (HFSS) softwares. The calculated results are in a good agreement with measured data. The impedance bandwidth of a prototype manufactured using a dielectric substrate with the relative permittivity epsir = 2.55 is about 15%
The fate of 4-hydroxycarbazole metabolite: metabolism and carcinogenicity assessment of a β-adrenergic receptor modulator containing carbazole structure

LY377604 has a potential to form 4-hydroxycarbazole, which was reported in the literature as a mutagen. This safety concern led to our investigation of the metabolism and carcinogenicity of LY377604. In in vitro studies with LY377604, 4-hydroxycarbazole was detected in the presence of liver microsomes prepared from different species. When incubated with liver slices, only the conjugate of 4-hydroxycarbazole was detected. Subsequent in vivo radio-labelled studies were conducted to characterise the formation of 4-hydroxycarbazole from LY377604. Free 4-hydroxycarbazole was not detected in vivo, but the O-glucuronide conjugate was identified as a minor metabolite in urine samples, representing 0.2% and 0.9% of the radioactive dose in rats and monkeys. The low level of circulating 4-hydroxycarbazole glucuronide conjugate was also detected in plasma. LY377604 was negative in all genetic toxicology assays and was not associated with tumour induction in a 6-month carcinogenicity study using RasH2+/− mouse model. The exposure to free 4-hydroxycarbazole was not measurable after one dose and was about 0.1%−0.2% of the parent exposure at the end of the 6-month study. These data suggested that 4-hydroxycarbazole was formed as a minor metabolite in vivo, but it was primarily conjugated and excreted in urine as the glucuronide conjugate. The absence of tumours in the carcinogenicity study combined with the exposure data suggested that the low level of free 4-hydroxycarbazole did not represent a carcinogenic risk.
Validation of the Geriatric Depression Scale--Short Form among inpatients.

Little is known about the diagnostic validity of the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-SF), especially when compared to the original 30-item version (Geriatric Depression Scale-Long Form; GDS-LF). This study compared the GDS-SF and GDS-LF with a sample of depressed, demented, and thought-disordered inpatients. The GDS-SF and GDS-LF were found to be highly correlated (r = .89) and to have similar high sensitivity rates. The specificity rates for both forms were similar, but lower than desirable. Overall, the GDS-SF was found to be an adequate substitute for the GDS-LF.
Geographical Variation in the Response of Visceral Leishmaniasis to Paromomycin in East Africa: A Multicentre, Open-Label, Randomized Trial

Background Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a major health problem in developing countries. The untreated disease is fatal, available treatment is expensive and often toxic, and drug resistance is increasing. Improved treatment options are needed. Paromomycin was shown to be an efficacious first-line treatment with low toxicity in India. Methods This was a 3-arm multicentre, open-label, randomized, controlled clinical trial to compare three treatment regimens for VL in East Africa: paromomycin sulphate (PM) at 15 mg/kg/day for 21 days versus sodium stibogluconate (SSG) at 20 mg/kg/day for 30 days; and the combination of both dose regimens for 17 days. The primary efficacy endpoint was cure based on parasite-free tissue aspirates taken 6 months after treatment. Findings Overall, 135 patients per arm were enrolled at five centres in Sudan (2 sites), Kenya (1) and Ethiopia (2), when the PM arm had to be discontinued due to poor efficacy. The trial has continued with the higher dose of PM as well as the combination of PM and SSG arms. These results will be reported later. Baseline patient characteristics were similar among treatment arms. The overall cure with PM was significantly inferior to that with SSG (63.8% versus 92.2%; difference 28.5%, 95%CI 18.8% to 38.8%, p<0.001). The efficacy of PM varied among centres and was significantly lower in Sudan (14.3% and 46.7%) than in Kenya (80.0%) and Ethiopia (75.0% and 96.6%). No major safety issues with PM were identified. Conclusion The efficacy of PM at 15 mg/kg/day for 21 days was inadequate, particularly in Sudan. The efficacy of higher doses and the combination treatment warrant further studies.
Energy-Aware Priority for Tree-Based CDS Protocols

The performance of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) primitives such as routing and broadcast can be improved by the availability of a virtual backbone. It is known that computing the connected dominating set (CDS) is a viable solution to construct a virtual backbone in MANETs. Most of existing CDS protocols emphasize on the small size of CDS in which node identifier or number of neighbors is used as a node priority. Since energy constraint is the primary issue in resource-limited MANETs, the node priority should include the energy level at each node to prolong the life time of a CDS. To this end, we propose Energy-Aware Node Priority (EAP), where nodes with more energy has higher probability to be selected as backbone nodes. The proposed protocol not only prolongs the life time of CDS but also keeps the size of a CDS competitive. The simulation results validate that our scheme outperforms the existing energy-aware CDS protocols.
Negotiating Socially Optimal Allocations of Resources

A multiagent system may be thought of as an artificial society of autonomous software agents and we can apply concepts borrowed from welfare economics and social choice theory to assess the social welfare of such an agent society. In this paper, we study an abstract negotiation framework where agents can agree on multilateral deals to exchange bundles of indivisible resources. We then analyse how these deals affect social welfare for different instances of the basic framework and different interpretations of the concept of social welfare itself. In particular, we show how certain classes of deals are both sufficient and necessary to guarantee that a socially optimal allocation of resources will be reached eventually.
Membrane Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) Induced Cooperative Signaling of TNFR60 and TNFR80 Favors Induction of Cell Death Rather Than Virus Production in HIV-infected T Cells

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and lymphotoxin (LT) are highly pleiotropic cytokines that play a central role in regulating HIV-1 replication. These cytokines express their activities through two membrane receptors, TNFR60 (p55-60) and TNFR80 (p75-80). In the present study we have demonstrated by means of antagonistic and agonistic receptor-specific antibodies that in latently infected lymphocytic (ACH-2) cells the TNFR60 plays a dominant role in signaling HIV production, although selective activation of TNFR80 by receptor-specific antibodies can also induce HIV production. Unexpectedly, when both TNFRs were activated simultaneously by agonistic antibodies or coculture with cells expressing a noncleavable membrane form of TNF, HIV production was downregulated and induction of cell death was enhanced in ACH-2 cells. More relevant, in vitro HIV-infected peripheral blood lymphocytes cocultured with cells expressing membrane TNF underwent rapid induction of apoptosis with a subsequent reduced HIV production of these lymphocytes cultures. This was not observed with HIV-infected lymphocytes treated with soluble TNF. These data provide evidence for the differential trigger potential of membrane versus soluble TNF and show that TNFR80 is an important modulator of TNF responsiveness of HIV-infected T cells via cooperative signaling with TNFR60.
Regional Impacts of Climate Change and Atmospheric CO2on Future Ocean Carbon Uptake: A Multimodel Linear Feedback Analysis

The increase in atmospheric CO2 over this century depends on the evolution of the oceanic air–sea CO2 uptake, which will be driven by the combined response to rising atmospheric CO2 itself and climate change. Here, the future oceanic CO2 uptake is simulated using an ensemble of coupled climate–carbon cycle models. The models are driven by CO2 emissions from historical data and the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 high-emission scenario. A linear feedback analysis successfully separates the regional future (2010–2100) oceanic CO2 uptake into a CO2-induced component, due to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and a climate-induced component, due to global warming. The models capture the observationbased magnitude and distribution of anthropogenic CO2 uptake. The distributions of the climate-induced component are broadly consistent between the models, with reduced CO2 uptake in the subpolar Southern Ocean and the equatorial regions, owing to decreased CO2 solubility; and reduced CO2 uptake in the midlatitudes, owing to decreased CO2 solubility and increased vertical stratification. The magnitude of the climate-induced component is sensitive to local warming in the southern extratropics, to large freshwater fluxes in the extratropical North Atlantic Ocean, and to small changes in the CO2 solubility in the equatorial regions. In key anthropogenic CO2 uptake regions, the climate-induced component offsets the CO2induced component at a constant proportion up until the end of this century. This amounts to approximately 50% in the northern extratropics and 25% in the southern extratropics and equatorial regions. Consequently, the detection of climate change impacts on anthropogenic CO2 uptake may be difficult without monitoring additional tracers, such as oxygen.