Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Performance Analysis of Universal Distributed Estimation in Bandwidth-Constrained Sensor Networks

This letter analyzes the performance of several typical one-bit universal distributed estimation schemes (DESs) in bandwidth-constrained sensor networks. We theoretically obtain the mean and mean-square error (MSE) of the DES based on binary form (BF) of the observation along with the MSE upper bound. It is proved that in some cases, the BF-based DES has larger MSE than the DES based on the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of the observation. Moreover, performance analysis is presented for the CCDF-based and BF-based DESs employing probabilistic quantization, respectively.
Mecp2-Null Mice Provide New Neuronal Targets for Rett Syndrome

Background Rett syndrome (RTT) is a complex neurological disorder that is one of the most frequent causes of mental retardation in women. A great landmark in research in this field was the discovery of a relationship between the disease and the presence of mutations in the gene that codes for the methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2). Currently, MeCP2 is thought to act as a transcriptional repressor that couples DNA methylation and transcriptional silencing. The present study aimed to identify new target genes regulated by Mecp2 in a mouse model of RTT. Methodology/Principal Findings We have compared the gene expression profiles of wild type (WT) and Mecp2-null (KO) mice in three regions of the brain (cortex, midbrain, and cerebellum) by using cDNA microarrays. The results obtained were confirmed by quantitative real-time PCR. Subsequent chromatin immunoprecipitation assays revealed seven direct target genes of Mecp2 bound in vivo (Fkbp5, Mobp, Plagl1, Ddc, Mllt2h, Eya2, and S100a9), and three overexpressed genes due to an indirect effect of a lack of Mecp2 (Irak1, Prodh and Dlk1). The regions bound by Mecp2 were always methylated, suggesting the involvement of the methyl-CpG binding domain of the protein in the mechanism of interaction. Conclusions We identified new genes that are overexpressed in Mecp2-KO mice and are excellent candidate genes for involvement in various features of the neurological disease. Our results demonstrate new targets of MeCP2 and provide us with a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of RTT.
Effect of technology addiction on academic success and fatigue among Turkish university students

ABSTRACT Background: Technology addiction can cause certain physical, mental, and social health problems. Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the effect of technology addiction levels on academic success and fatigue in university students in Turkey. Methods: 743 students continuing their undergraduate education at a single university participated in this descriptive correlational study. Data was collected using a Student Identification Form, The Problematic Mobile Phone Use Scale, the Internet Addiction Scale, and the Piper Fatigue Scale. Results: 9.8% of the students exhibited internet addiction risk, while internet addiction was detected in 0.7%. Compared to students showing no addiction symptoms, students who scored in the internet addicts’ category were found to have lower academic success averages and higher fatigue levels. It was found that smart phone addiction of students alone explained 5.8% of the total variance in fatigue levels while the internet addiction of students alone explained 6.8% of the total variance in fatigue levels. Conclusion: Although internet addiction was relatively low in this study, academic success was negatively affected in students categorized as internet addicted and fatigue increased alongside technology addiction, suggesting that internet addiction may be a predictor of fatigue. Educational initiatives could help to raise awareness on the negative relationship between technology addiction and academic success and its effects on physical and psychological health.
Gene Selection in Terms of Performance Based Consistency

Consistency modeling for gene selection is a new topic emerging from our recent cancer bioinformatics research. We found that the result of classification or clustering on a training set was often quite different compared to using a testing set. Here, we address this as a consistency problem. In practice, the inconsistency of microarray datasets prevents many typical gene selection methods working properly for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. In an attempt to deal with this problem, we propose a new gene selection method in terms of performance based on consistency.
Effects of the protein corona on liposome–liposome and liposome–cell interactions

A thorough understanding of interactions occurring at the interface between nanocarriers and biological systems is crucial to predict and interpret their biodistribution, targeting, and efficacy, and thus design more effective drug delivery systems. Upon intravenous injection, nanoparticles are coated by a protein corona (PC). This confers a new biological identity on the particles that largely determines their biological fate. Liposomes have great pharmaceutical versatility, so, as proof of concept, their PC has recently been implicated in the mechanism and efficiency of their internalization into the cell. In an attempt to better understand the interactions between nanocarriers and biological systems, we analyzed the plasma proteins adsorbed on the surface of multicomponent liposomes. Specifically, we analyzed the physical properties and ultrastructure of liposome/PC complexes and the aggregation process that occurs when liposomes are dispersed in plasma. The results of combined confocal microscopy and flow cytometry experiments demonstrated that the PC favors liposome internalization by both macrophages and tumor cells. This work provides insights into the effects of the PC on liposomes’ physical properties and, consequently, liposome–liposome and liposome–cell interactions.
Power control in CDMA systems based on channel identification

Power control design is a critical aspect of CDMA cellular systems design. This paper develops an adaptive power controller design method for CDMA systems. The key to the power control design is on the recursive identification of the underlying wireless stochastic channel model parameters. The identification process guarantees the power controller to work well for systems in unknown or time varying network environment.
Tolerance of Ambiguity of Cadets in the Military School

Tolerance of ambiguity of the military members very often determines their professional culture, which helps them fulfil professional duties. Tackling situations that are complicated, working well in unpredictable circumstances, dealing with uncertainty in a positive and constructive manner, feeling comfortable in unfamiliar situations — all of these are components of the competence of tolerance of ambiguity, one of the twenty competences for democratic culture, suggested by the Council of Europe. Working under circumstances of uncertainty may be implemented in different situations of the professional activity such as training paratroopers for jumping with a parachute, organizing the work of the military school under different circumstances, finding a solution in extreme situations, even in speaking a foreign language, etc. The authors support the ideas of T.V. Kornilova that tolerance of ambiguity is usually analyzed in two directions: acceptance of ambiguous conditions and avoiding ambiguity, trying to achieve clearness; the second aspect is focused on the variable intolerance of ambiguity. Most of the cadets believe that they are ready for fulfilling their professional duty in unfamiliar situations. A special questionnaire was offered for selfassessment to two groups of respondents, being cadets of the 4th and 5th year of study in Ryazan Guard Higher Airborne Command School named after General of the Army V. F. Margelov. The descriptors of tolerance of ambiguity were taken from Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture. The results of the study show that the scores of self-assessment of tolerance of ambiguity of the 4th year cadets are a bit higher than the same scores of the 5th year cadets. Observation and interviews of the cadets show that the cadets of the 5th year of study are thinking about their future perspectives in professional activity and family life. The situation of uncertainty about the future influences their general scores of tolerance of ambiguity. Keywords—tolerance of ambiguity; cadets; military school; self-assessment; peer assessment
In-orbit performance of the XMM-Newton x-ray telescopes: images and spectra

The XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory was launched by an ARIANE V from Kourou, French Guiana, on 10 December 1999. First light was received by one of the three X-ray telescopes on 19 January 2000. Since then an extensive program, comprising commissioning, calibration and performance verification of the scientific payload, has been carried out, followed by regular scientific Guaranteed Time Observations which are interleaved with observations drawn from the Guest Observer (AO-1) program. I present the in-orbit performance of the three X-ray telescopes and demonstrate the excellent agreement with the ground calibration measurements. This includes the imaging characteristics both on-axis and off-axis, the effective collecting area and vignetting making use of in-orbit images and spectra. The scientific impact of a few of these observations is highlighted as well.
Validation of a scale to measure perceived residential environment quality in a Latin American setting / Validación de una escala para medir la percepción de la calidad del entorno residencial en un contexto latinoamericano

Abstract This article presents the findings of a research project that aimed to validate, in a Latin American setting, a scale to measure perceived residential environment quality (PREQ), developed principally on the basis of several studies conducted in different Italian cities in the 1990s. The instrument, a questionnaire comprising 19 sub-scales, was completed by 394 residents of Flores, in the canton of Heredia, Costa Rica. The scales were validated using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The results confirm reliability and validity for the majority of the 12 factors examined, in spite of geographical, morphological and socio-cultural dissimilarities between the different urban contexts where the studies were conducted. The scales for which a favourable result was not obtained were reconfigured and yielded good fit indices, also managing to reduce the number of factors to 11 ((1) Architecture and Urban Space; (2) Mobility, Transport and Connectivity; (3) Green Areas; (4) Socio-Relational Features; (5) Social Care; (6) Recreational Services; (7) Commercial Services; (8) Pace of Life; (9) Environmental Health; (10) Upkeep; (11) Place Attachment) along with the total number of items included on the instrument.
Generalized KYP lemma: unified frequency domain inequalities with design applications

The celebrated Kalman-Yakubovic/spl caron/-Popov (KYP) lemma establishes the equivalence between a frequency domain inequality (FDI) and a linear matrix inequality, and has played one of the most fundamental roles in systems and control theory. This paper first develops a necessary and sufficient condition for an S-procedure to be lossless, and uses the result to generalize the KYP lemma in two aspects-the frequency range and the class of systems-and to unify various existing versions by a single theorem. In particular, our result covers FDIs in finite frequency intervals for both continuous/discrete-time settings as opposed to the standard infinite frequency range. The class of systems for which FDIs are considered is no longer constrained to be proper, and nonproper transfer functions including polynomials can also be treated. We study implications of this generalization, and develop a proper interface between the basic result and various engineering applications. Specifically, it is shown that our result allows us to solve a certain class of system design problems with multiple specifications on the gain/phase properties in several frequency ranges. The method is illustrated by numerical design examples of digital filters and proportional-integral-derivative controllers.
ON THE STATE AGREEMENT PROBLEM FOR MULTIPLE NONLINEAR DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS

Abstract This paper studies the state agreement problem with the objective to ensure the asymptotic coincidence of all states of multiple nonlinear dynamical systems. The coupling structure of such systems is characterized in qualitative terms by means of a suitably defined directed graph. Under a suitable subtangentiality assumption on the vector fields of the systems, we obtain a necessary and sufficient graphical condition for their state agreement via nonsmooth analysis, with the invariance principle playing a central role. As applications, we study synchronization of coupled Kuramoto oscillators and synthesis of a rendezvous controller for a multi-agent system.
A behavioural approach to financial portfolio selection problem: an empirical study using heuristics

The behaviourally based portfolio selection problem with investor’s loss aversion and risk aversion biases in portfolio choice under uncertainty are studied. The main results of this work are developed heuristic approaches for the prospect theory and cumulative prospect theory models proposed by Kahneman and Tversky in 1979 and 1992 as well as an empirical comparative analysis of these models and the traditional mean variance and index tracking models. The crucial assumption is that behavioural features of the (cumulative) prospect theory model provide better downside protection than traditional approaches to the portfolio selection problem. In this research the large scale computational results for the (cumulative) prospect theory model have been obtained. Previously, as far as we aware, only small laboratory (2-3 artificial assets) tests has been presented in the literature. In order to investigate empirically the performance of the behaviourally based models, a differential evolution algorithm and a genetic algorithm which are capable to deal with large universe of assets have been developed. The specific breeding and mutation as well as normalisation have been implemented in the algorithms. A tabulated comparative analysis of the algorithms’ parameter choice is presented. The performance of the studied models have been tested out-of-sample in different conditions using the bootstrap method as well as simulation of the distribution of a growing market and simulation of the t-distribution with fat tails which characterises the dynamics of a decreasing or crisis market. A cardinality and CVaR constraints have been implemented to the basic mean variance and prospect theory models. The comparative analysis of the empirical results has been made using several criteria such as CPU time, ratio between mean portfolio return and standart deviation, mean portfolio return, standard deviation σ, VaR and CVaR as alternative measures of risk. The strong influence of the reference point, loss aversion and risk aversion on the prospect theory model’s results have been found. The prospect theory model with the reference point being the index is compared to the index tracking model. The portfolio diversification benefit has been found. However, the aggressive behaviour in terms of returns of the prospect theory model with the reference point being the index leads to worse performance of this model in a bearish market compared to the index tracking model. The tabulated comparative analysis of the performance of all studied models is provided in this research for in-sample and out-of-sample tests.
Can the Precautionary Principle Manage Risks Effectively ?

In the past two centuries, despite — or is it because of ? —economic growth and technological change, life threatening risks have one by one been reduced or eliminated in the world’s richer nations (Goklany 2007). The 20th century saw the United States’ population multiply by four, income by seven, carbon dioxide emissions by nine, material use by 27, and chemical use by more than 100. Yet people are living longer, and healthier. Life expectancy increased from 47 years to 77 years. The disability rate for seniors declined 28 percent between 1982 and 2004/2005 (Manton et al. 2006) and, despite quantum improvements in diagnostic tools, major diseases (e.g., cancer, and heart and respiratory diseases) now occur 8–11 years later than a century ago (Fogel 2003).
Object Feature Extraction for Image Retrieval Based on Quadtree Segmented Blocks

This study proposed a new object feature extraction method that employs the quadtree decomposition. In the proposed method, we segmented the image into variable sized blocks, named homogeneous blocks, which are the units of feature extraction process. Because the quadtree decomposition can highlight the details of images, more feature information can be extracted from the visual important objects than from the monotone areas of the image. The experimental results show the image retrieval performance is effectively improved as compared with the pixel based method.
An MDE Approach to Design Enterprise Architecture Viewpoints

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has risen as a tool to support the process of making strategic business decisions, by achieving an integral vision of business and IT elements of an enterprise. An EA approach provides a better understanding of relationships between concepts from several domains, such as strategy, process, applications, and information. However, this heterogeneous aspect makes EA modeling complex because there are many domain specific modeling languages that were not designed to be integrated. ArchiMate is an architecture description language (ADL) that provides a set of predefined viewpoints to model an EA and enhance the communication between business and IT people by establishing a common language. However, ArchiMate is not clear about the way to customize or create new viewpoints to integrate new domains. This paper describes a Model Driven Engineering (MDE) framework to support the EA modeling activity by taking the ArchiMate language as its foundation. The basis of this framework, are tools to specify ArchiMate and its future domain specific extensions. It also supports the composition and customization of these domains to define a common EA terminology. Finally, it offers tools to define customized viewpoints and to build the applications that stakeholders need to interact with the EA models.
Dynamically Reconfigurable Photonic Crystal Nanobeam Cavities

Wavelength-scale, high Q-factor photonic crystal cavities have emerged as a platform of choice for on-chip manipulation of optical signals, with applications ranging from low-power optical signal processing and cavity quantum electrodynamics, to biochemical sensing. Many of these applications, however, are limited by the fabrication tolerances and the inability to precisely control the resonant wavelength of fabricated structures. Various techniques for post-fabrication wavelength trimming and dynamical wavelength control -- using, for example, thermal effects, free carrier injection, low temperature gas condensation, and immersion in fluids -- have been explored. However, these methods are often limited by small tuning ranges, high power consumption, or the inability to tune continuously or reversibly. In this letter, by combining nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS) and nanophotonics, we demonstrate reconfigurable photonic crystal nanobeam cavities that can be continuously and dynamically tuned using electrostatic forces. A tuning of ~10 nm has been demonstrated with less than 6 V of external bias and negligible steady-state power consumption.
My favorite application using eigenvalues : partitioning and community detection in social networks

Social networks are often organized into families, friendship groups, and institutional bodies. However, this organization, functional groups of friends and acquaintances especially, may not always be apparent from the characteristics of the individuals or from global measures of network structure. Community detection methods provide a means to identify cohesive and/or inter-dependent clusters of individuals. In this paper, I review traditional methods to cluster and partition vertices, along with a recent community detection method, modularity maximization, that is more intuitively appealing in many research areas. I focus in particular on the spectral solutions to these problems that have advanced and/or expanded their use in real world applications.
A flavonol present in cocoa [(−)epicatechin] enhances snail memory

SUMMARY Dietary consumption of flavonoids (plant phytochemicals) may improve memory and neuro-cognitive performance, though the mechanism is poorly understood. Previous work has assessed cognitive effects in vertebrates; here we assess the suitability of Lymnaea stagnalis as an invertebrate model to elucidate the effects of flavonoids on cognition. (−)Epicatechin (epi) is a flavonoid present in cocoa, green tea and red wine. We studied its effects on basic snail behaviours (aerial respiration and locomotion), long-term memory (LTM) formation and memory extinction of operantly conditioned aerial respiratory behaviour. We found no significant effect of epi exposure (15 mg l−1) on either locomotion or aerial respiration. However, when snails were operantly conditioned in epi for a single 0.5 h training session, which typically results in memory lasting ~3 h, they formed LTM lasting at least 24 h. Snails exposed to epi also showed significantly increased resistance to extinction, consistent with the hypothesis that epi induces a more persistent LTM. Thus training in epi facilitates LTM formation and results in a more persistent and stronger memory. Previous work has indicated that memory-enhancing stressors (predator kairomones and KCl) act via sensory input from the osphradium and are dependent on a serotonergic (5-HT) signalling pathway. Here we found that the effects of epi on LTM were independent of osphradial input and 5-HT, demonstrating that an alternative mechanism of memory enhancement exists in L. stagnalis. Our data are consistent with the notion that dietary sources of epi can improve cognitive abilities, and that L. stagnalis is a suitable model with which to elucidate neuronal mechanisms.
Nature’s Call: Impacts of Sanitation Choices in Orissa, India

Worldwide, over 2.5 billion people lack access to basic sanitation, a situation that contributes to 2 million annual diarrhea-related child deaths and substantial morbidity. Yet rigorous evaluations of sanitation behaviors and their health and welfare impacts are rare. This article uses a randomized sanitation promotion campaign in Orissa, India, to evaluate child health and household welfare outcomes. The sanitation campaign increased households’ ownership and use of latrines and improved children’s mid-upper-arm circumference, height, and weight z-scores. Switching from open defecation to latrine use also saved time and increased satisfaction in sanitation conditions. We use our results to illustrate the cost-benefit calculus underlying this seemingly unglamorous and mundane household choice with potentially large environmental externalities.