Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stochastic Simulations on the Reliability of Action Potential Propagation in Thin Axons

It is generally assumed that axons use action potentials (APs) to transmit information fast and reliably to synapses. Yet, the reliability of transmission along fibers below 0.5 μm diameter, such as cortical and cerebellar axons, is unknown. Using detailed models of rodent cortical and squid axons and stochastic simulations, we show how conduction along such thin axons is affected by the probabilistic nature of voltage-gated ion channels (channel noise). We identify four distinct effects that corrupt propagating spike trains in thin axons: spikes were added, deleted, jittered, or split into groups depending upon the temporal pattern of spikes. Additional APs may appear spontaneously; however, APs in general seldom fail (<1%). Spike timing is jittered on the order of milliseconds over distances of millimeters, as conduction velocity fluctuates in two ways. First, variability in the number of Na channels opening in the early rising phase of the AP cause propagation speed to fluctuate gradually. Second, a novel mode of AP propagation (stochastic microsaltatory conduction), where the AP leaps ahead toward spontaneously formed clusters of open Na channels, produces random discrete jumps in spike time reliability. The combined effect of these two mechanisms depends on the pattern of spikes. Our results show that axonal variability is a general problem and should be taken into account when considering both neural coding and the reliability of synaptic transmission in densely connected cortical networks, where small synapses are typically innervated by thin axons. In contrast we find that thicker axons above 0.5 μm diameter are reliable.
Synchronous PI current control technique for three-phase PFC rectifier for PMSG wind generation system

For rectification of the three-phase AC voltages of permanent magnetic synchronous generator (PMSG) applied to variable speed constant frequency wind generation, a synchronous PI current control technique is proposed based on a novel topology called three-phase PFC rectifier. It consists of three single-phase power factor correction (PFC) circuits, each of which is for one phase of PMSG. The stator alternating currents, transformed to direct currents in the synchronously rotating reference frame, are controlled by PI regulators, and zero steady-state error of fundamental currents can be achieved and harmonics suppressed. Considering the specialties of the PFC circuit and the behavior of the PMSG, the current control is aimed to keep the stator phase current and voltage being in phase and the corresponding control structure is developed. Results of simulation and experiments on a 1kW prototype platform verify that the steady DC output voltage and low THD of AC currents which are in phase with the fundamental voltages of PMSG can be achieved by the proposed control technique.
A low-overhead fault tolerance scheme for TSV-based 3D network on chip links

Three-dimensional die stacking integration provides the ability to stack multiple layers of processed silicon with a large number of vertical interconnects. Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) provide a promising area- and power-efficient way to support communication between different stack layers. Unfortunately, low TSV yield significantly impacts design of three-dimensional die stacks with a large number of TSVs. This paper presents a defect-tolerance technique for TSVs-based multi-bit links through an efficient and effective use of redundancy. This technique is ideally suited for three-dimensional network-on-chip (NoC) links. Simulation results demonstrate significant yield improvement, from 66% to 98%, with a low area cost (17% on a vertical link in a NoC switch, which leads a modest 2.1% increase the total switch area) in 130 nm technology, with minimal impact of VLSI design and test flows.
Security vulnerabilities from inside and outside the Eucalyptus cloud

Cloud security becomes a hot topic in the emerging new cloud environments. Customers would like to understand what happens when they move their applications, data and information on the cloud. Probably one of the most interesting questions is what are the new challenges that cloud virtual environment produces due to multitenancy and virtualization. Security challenges addressed in this paper are vulnerabilities that may happen inside or outside the cloud environment. The security evaluation methodology uses Nessus scoring system for two target groups: physical and software parts using different scenarios. Our experiments are realized with four virtual machine instances instantiated in Eucalyptus cloud with different operating systems hosted. We also evaluate the security of the Eucalyptus cloud version.
Point-of-care procalcitonin test to reduce antibiotic exposure in patients hospitalized with acute exacerbation of COPD

Background This study was conducted to investigate whether point-of-care (POC) procalcitonin (PCT) measurement can reduce redundant antibiotic treatment in patients hospitalized with acute exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD). Methods One-hundred and twenty adult patients admitted with AECOPD were enrolled in this open-label randomized trial. Patients were allocated to either the POC PCT-guided intervention arm (n=62) or the control arm, in which antibiotic therapy followed local guidelines (n=58). Results The median duration of antibiotic exposure was 3.5 (interquartile range [IQR] 0–10) days in the PCT-arm vs 8.5 (IQR 1–11) days in the control arm (P=0.0169, Wilcoxon) for the intention-to-treat population. The proportion of patients using antibiotics for ≥5 days within the 28-day follow-up was 41.9% (PCT-arm) vs 67.2% (P=0.006, Fisher’s exact) in the intention-to-treat population. For the per-protocol population, the proportions were 21.1% (PCT-arm) vs 73.9% (P<0.00001, Fisher’s exact). Within 28-day follow-up, one patient died in the PCT-arm and two died in the control arm. A composite harm end point consisting of death, rehospitalization, or intensive care unit admission, all within 28 days, showed no apparent difference. Conclusion Our study shows that the implementation of a POC PCT-guided algorithm can be used to substantially reduce antibiotic exposure in patients hospitalized with AECOPD, with no apparent harm.
Skin Tone Emoji and Sentiment on Twitter

In 2015, the Unicode Consortium introduced five skin tone emoji that can be used in combination with emoji representing human figures and body parts. In this study, use of the skin tone emoji is analyzed geographically in a large sample of data from Twitter. It can be shown that values for the skin tone emoji by country correspond approximately to the skin tone of the resident populations, and that a negative correlation exists between tweet sentiment and darker skin tone at the global level. In an era of large-scale migrations and continued sensitivity to questions of skin color and race, understanding how new language elements such as skin tone emoji are used can help frame our understanding of how people represent themselves and others in terms of a salient personal appearance attribute.
Optimal Resource Allocation for Reliable and Energy Efficient Cooperative Communications

Cooperative communication for wireless networks has gained a lot of recent interests due to its ability to mitigate fading with exploration of spatial diversity. The objective of this paper is to design an efficient algorithm to minimize the total consumed power of the network while guaranteeing transmission reliability of multiple active transmission pairs through cooperative wireless communications. This problem has not been studied and is much more challenging than relay assignment considered in literature work which simply targets to reduce the transmission power for a single transmission pair. We achieve the objective by jointly considering transmission mode selection, relay assignment and power allocation. This requires us to solve a combinatorial optimization problem, namely Reliable and Energy Efficient Cooperative Communication problem (REECC), which is a hard problem as its complexity increases exponentially with the number of relay nodes. We propose an iterative solution framework by testing different power levels to find the optimal solution. To reduce the computational cost, we design several novel techniques in the solution framework. The simulation results demonstrate that our solution can run very efficiently to obtain the minimum total consumed power while satisfying the reliable transmission requirement.
Model Checking of Software Components: Combining Java PathFinder and Behavior Protocol Model Checker

Although there exist several software model checkers that check the code against properties specified e.g. via a temporal logic and assertions, or just verifying low-level properties (like unhandled exceptions), none of them supports checking of software components against a high-level behavior specification. We present our approach to model checking of software components implemented in Java against a high-level specification of their behavior defined via behavior protocols, which employs the Java PathFinder model checker and the protocol checker. The property checked by the Java PathFinder (JPF) tool (correctness of particular method call sequences) is validated via its cooperation with the protocol checker. We show that just the publisher/listener pattern claimed to be the key flexibility support of JPF (even though proved very useful for our purpose) was not enough to achieve this kind of checking
An Apriori-Based Approach for Teaching Evaluation

Intelligent evaluation， as an important branch in the field of artificial intelligence， is a decision-making process of simulating the domain experts to solve complex problems. In this paper, we puts forward a kind of intelligent evaluation method based on improved Apriori, which can be used to mine different levels of association rules and evaluate the teaching quality automatically. Firstly, we do some improvement on traditional Apriori algorithm due to its shortcomings. Secondly, we describe the procedure of the teaching quality evaluation based on such improved algorithm. Finally, we give an example and the results show that this method is feasible and effective.
WIP: mining Weighted Interesting Patterns with a strong weight and/or support affinity

In this paper, we present a new algorithm, Weighted Interesting Pattern mining (WIP) in which a new measure, weight-confidence, is developed to generate weighted hyperclique patterns with similar levels of weights. A weight range is used to decide weight boundaries and an h-confidence serves to identify strong support affinity patterns. WIP not only gives a balance between the two measures of weight and support, but also considers weight affinity and/or support affinity between items within patterns so more valuable patterns can be generated. A comprehensive performance study shows that WIP is efficient in weighted frequent pattern mining. Moreover, it generates fewer but more valuable patterns for users.
A THREE-YEAR LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF IN-CLASS SUSTAINED SILENT READING WITH TAIWANESE VOCATIONAL COLLEGE STUDENTS

This study examined the effects of three years of in-class sustained silent reading with a group of vocational college students in Taiwan. Readers outperformed comparisons on tests administered after one semester and increased their advantage on tests given at the end of the first year. The gap between the groups narrowed the second year, but readers maintained their superiority at the end of the second and third year. The initial gains were probably due, in part, to the Hawthorne Effect. It is likely that the progress made in the second and third year were more modest, because of external demands on students’ time, which limited the amount of reading students could do outside of class. Overall, the results clearly support the practice of in-school self-selected reading. Keywords: In-class sustained silent reading; vocational college student; Hawthorne Effect; in-school self-selected reading
Imidazole Aldoximes Effective in Assisting Butyrylcholinesterase Catalysis of Organophosphate Detoxification

Intoxication by organophosphate (OP) nerve agents and pesticides should be addressed by efficient, quickly deployable countermeasures such as antidotes reactivating acetylcholinesterase or scavenging the parent OP. We present here synthesis and initial in vitro characterization of 14 imidazole aldoximes and their structural refinement into three efficient reactivators of human butyrylcholinesterase (hBChE) inhibited covalently by nerve agent OPs, sarin, cyclosarin, VX, and the OP pesticide metabolite, paraoxon. Rapid reactivation of OP–hBChE conjugates by uncharged and nonprotonated tertiary imidazole aldoximes allows the design of a new OP countermeasure by conversion of hBChE from a stoichiometric to catalytic OP bioscavenger with the prospect of oral bioavailability and central nervous system penetration. The enhanced in vitro reactivation efficacy determined for tertiary imidazole aldoximes compared to that of their quaternary N-methyl imidazolium analogues is attributed to ion pairing of the cationic imidazolium with Asp 70, altering a reactive alignment of the aldoxime with the phosphorus in the OP–hBChE conjugate.
Robust Tracking for Real-Time Dense RGB-D Mapping with Kintinuous

This paper describes extensions to the Kintinuous [1] algorithm for spatially extended KinectFusion, incorporating the following additions: (i) the integration of multiple 6DOF camera odometry estimation methods for robust tracking; (ii) a novel GPU-based implementation of an existing dense RGB-D visual odometry algorithm; (iii) advanced fused realtime surface coloring. These extensions are validated with extensive experimental results, both quantitative and qualitative, demonstrating the ability to build dense fully colored models of spatially extended environments for robotics and virtual reality applications while remaining robust against scenes with challenging sets of geometric and visual features.
Occurrence of severe dengue in Rio de Janeiro: an ecological study.

INTRODUCTION This study aimed to analyze the relationship between the incidence of severe dengue during the 2008 epidemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and socioeconomic indicators, as well as indicators of health service availability and previous circulation of the dengue virus serotype-3 (DENV-3). METHODS In this ecological study, the units of analysis were the districts of Rio de Janeiro. The data were incorporated into generalized linear models, and the incidence of severe dengue in each district was the outcome variable. RESULTS The districts with more cases of dengue fever in the 2001 epidemic and a higher percentage of residents who declared their skin color or race as black had higher incidence rates of severe dengue in the 2008 epidemic [incidence rate ratio (IRR)= 1.21; 95% confidence interval (95%CI)= 1.05-1.40 and IRR= 1.34; 95%CI= 1.16-1.54, respectively]. In contrast, the districts with Family Health Strategy (FHS) clinics were more likely to have lower incidence rates of severe dengue in the 2008 epidemic (IRR= 0.81; 95%CI= 0.70-0.93). CONCLUSIONS At the ecological level, our findings suggest the persistence of health inequalities in this region of Brazil that are possibly due to greater social vulnerability among the self-declared black population. Additionally, the protective effect of FHS clinics may be due to the ease of access to other levels of care in the health system or to a reduced vulnerability to dengue transmission that is afforded by local practices to promote health.
Static Debugging of C Programs: Detection of Pointer Errors in Recursive Data Structures

The incorrect use of pointers is one of the most common source of bugs in imperative languages. In this context, any kind of static code checking capable of detecting potential bugs at compile time is welcome. This paper presents a static debugging technique for the detection of incorrect accesses to memory (dereferences of invalid pointers). The analysed language is a subset of C. The tool is based on a static analyser extended with assertions inserted in the body of the program. Assertions are of two kinds: static assertions automatically verified by the analyser, dynamic assertions treated as assumptions by the analyser. The technique deals with dynamically allocated data structures and it is accurate enough to handle circular structures.
Towards Understanding Weighted Bit-Flipping Decoding

A natural relationship between weighted bit-flipping (WBF) decoding and message-passing decoding is explored. This understanding can help us develop a dual WBF decoding algorithm from one type of message-passing decoding algorithm and vice versa. For min-sum decoding, one can find that its dual WBF algorithm is the algorithm proposed by Jiang et al. For belief-propagation (BP) decoding, we propose a new WBF algorithm and show its performance advantage. For some high-rate low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes of large row weight, it is shown that the WBF algorithm proposed by Liu and Pados performs extraordinarily well. However, its dual message- passing decoding does not work well. Furthermore, we propose a parallel implementation framework for various WBF algorithms. Compared to serial implementations, various WBF algorithms in their parallel form converge significantly faster and often perform better.
Prediction of the O-glycosylation by Support Vector Machines and Characteristics of the Crowded and Isolated O-glycosylation Sites

O-glycosylation of the mammalian protein is studied. It is serine or threonine specific, though any consensus sequence is still unknown. We have been applied support vector machines (SVM) for the prediction of O-glycosylation sites from various kinds of protein information, aiming to investigate a glycosylation condition and elucidate the mechanisms. In the present study, we focus on the distribution of the glycosylation sites. Many O-glycosylated sites are observed in clusters of closely spaced glycosylated sites, whereas the other sites are found sparsely or isolated. These two types of crowded and isolated sites may have different glycosylation mechanisms. We divide the whole O-glycosylation sites into the crowded and the isolated groups. For each group, SVM is trained to predict the O-glycosylation sites separately. The prediction results of two groups have different input information dependency. The results indicate that some motifs are expected for the isolated group, while the interaction between the glycosylated sites and the relative proportion of the surrounding amino acids affect the glycosylation for the crowded group. Then, we also compare the statistics of amino acid sequences around the glycosylation sites of both groups. As the results, some amino acids (proline, valine, alanine etc.) have high existence probabilities at each specific positions relative to a glycosylation site, especially for the isolated glycosylation. Moreover, independent component analysi (ICA) for the amino acid sequences elucidates position specific existences of the above amino acids, including well known proline at -1 and +3, which are found as different independent components.
Tracking and video surveillance activity analysis

The explosion in the number of cameras surveilling the environment in recent years is generating a need for systems capable of analysing video streams for important events. This paper outlines a system for detecting noteworthy behaviours (from a security or surveillance perspective) which does not involve the enumeration of the event sequences of all possible activities of interest. Instead the focus is on calculating a measure of the abnormality of the action taking place. This raises the need for a low complexity tracking algorithm robust to the noise artefacts present in video surveillance systems. The tracking technique described herein achieves this goal by using a "future history" buffer of images and so delaying the classification and tracking of objects by the time quantum which is the buffer size. This allows disambiguation of noise blobs and facilitates classification in the case of occlusions and disappearance of people due to lighting, failures in the background model etc.
Collective Vigilance in the Greater Kudu: Towards a Better Understanding of Synchronization Patterns

Collective detection of predators is one of the main advantages of living in groups in prey species. However, the mechanisms linking individual and collective vigilance remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated individual and collective vigilance in a natural population of greater kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), a gregarious ruminant living under high predation risk. Controlling for environmental, individual and group factors, we show that the proportion of time during which at least one individual was vigilant increased with group size, whereas individual investment in vigilance decreased. We also show that individuals tended to synchronize both vigilance and feeding activities. More generally, and whatever the considered group size, we demonstrate how the independent scanning assumption underestimated both the proportion of time during which no individual was vigilant and the proportion of time during which all individuals were simultaneously vigilant, but overestimated the proportion of time during which one vigilant individual only was present. Our results thus contrast with the point of view that the alternative to independent vigilance is coordinated vigilance and plead for a better description of the processes whereby reciprocal influences between individuals shape collective patterns of vigilance.
Establishment of Oxidative d-Xylose Metabolism in Pseudomonas putida S12

ABSTRACT The oxidative d-xylose catabolic pathway of Caulobacter crescentus, encoded by the xylXABCD operon, was expressed in the gram-negative bacterium Pseudomonas putida S12. This engineered transformant strain was able to grow on d-xylose as a sole carbon source with a biomass yield of 53% (based on g [dry weight] g d-xylose−1) and a maximum growth rate of 0.21 h−1. Remarkably, most of the genes of the xylXABCD operon appeared to be dispensable for growth on d-xylose. Only the xylD gene, encoding d-xylonate dehydratase, proved to be essential for establishing an oxidative d-xylose catabolic pathway in P. putida S12. The growth performance on d-xylose was, however, greatly improved by coexpression of xylXA, encoding 2-keto-3-deoxy-d-xylonate dehydratase and α-ketoglutaric semialdehyde dehydrogenase, respectively. The endogenous periplasmic glucose dehydrogenase (Gcd) of P. putida S12 was found to play a key role in efficient oxidative d-xylose utilization. Gcd activity not only contributes to d-xylose oxidation but also prevents the intracellular accumulation of toxic catabolic intermediates which delays or even eliminates growth on d-xylose.