Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Passivity Analysis for Uncertain Time-Varying Delayed Neural Networks with Neutral Type

This paper considers the problem of robust delay-dependent passivity analysis for time-varying delayed neural networks described by nonlinear delay differential equations of the neutral type, which is subject to norm-bounded time-varying parameter uncertainties. The activation functions are supposed to be bounded and globally Lipschitz continuous. Both delay-dependent and delay-independent passivity conditions are proposed by using more general Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals. These passivity conditions are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities, which can be investigated easily by recently using standard algorithms. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and the reduced conservatism of the proposed method.
Time-varying inverse filtering of range-compressed radar signals

This document presents a novel deconvolution approach that is applied to range-compressed radar signals to enhance the range resolution of the backprojection images beyond the resolution limit given by the point-spread-function. Hence, this signal processing technique has certain super-resolution capabilities. The time-varying deconvolution scheme is based on a combination of the matching pursuit decomposition (MP-) algorithm and the inverse filter. In each iteration of the MP-algorithm the signal portion with the highest local signal energy is firstly reconstructed and then deconvolved by the inverse filter.
Imported Parakeets Harbor H9N2 Influenza A Viruses That Are Genetically Closely Related to Those Transmitted to Humans in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT In 1997 and 1998, H9N2 influenza A viruses were isolated from the respiratory organs of Indian ring-necked parakeets (Psittacula Krameri manillensis) that had been imported from Pakistan to Japan. The two isolates were closely related to each other (>99% as determined by nucleotide analysis of eight RNA segments), indicating that H9N2 viruses of the same lineage were maintained in these birds for at least 1 year. The hemagglutinins and neuraminidases of both isolates showed >97% nucleotide identity with those of H9N2 viruses isolated from humans in Hong Kong in 1999, while the six genes encoding internal proteins were >99% identical to the corresponding genes of H5N1 viruses recovered during the 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong. These results suggest that the H9N2 parakeet viruses originating in Pakistan share an immediate ancestor with the H9N2 human viruses. Thus, influenza A viruses with the potential to be transmitted directly to humans may be circulating in captive birds worldwide.
LEAF AREA INDEX RETRIEVAL USING RED EDGE PARAMETERS BASED ON HYPERION HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGERY 1

Leaf area index (LAI) is an important surface bioph ysical parameter as an input to many process-orient ed ecosystem models. Remote sensing technology provide s a practical way to estimate LAI at a large spatia l scale, and hence, considerable effort has been expe nded in developing LAI estimation models from remotely sensed imagery. LAI estimation models were usually formulated using multi-spectral satellite imagery, and hyper-spectral satellite data was scar cely used because it is very difficult to acquire t h needed hyper-spectral satellite imagery. Compared t o multi-spectral imagery, hyper-spectral imagery ha s its advantage in LAI retrieving because hyper-spectral data can be used to extract red edge optical parame ters, which provides a new way to estimate LAI. In this p aper, EO-1 hyperion hyper-spectral imagery was used to estimate LAI in the forested area of Yongan coun ty, Fujian province, located in southeast of China. Two primary red edge optical parameters, red edge posit ion (REP) and red well position (RWP), were extract ed from hyperion data; and LAI estimation models for b road-leaf forest in Fujian province were formulated .
$t$-Covering Arrays Generated by a Tiling Probability Model

A t − � covering array is an mn matrix, with entries from an alphabet of size �, such that for any choice of t rows, and any ordered string of t letters of the alphabet, there exists a column such that the "values" of the rows in that column match those of the string of letters. We use the Lovasz Local Lemma in conjunction with a new tiling-based probability model to improve the upper bound on the smallest number of columns N = N(m,t,�) of a t−� covering array.
Dual-eyes vision-based docking experiment of AUV for sea bottom battery recharging

This paper presents docking experiments for AUV using stereo vision for sea bottom battery recharging application. Real-time 3D pose tracking system was installed in AUV “Tuna-Sand 2”. Underwater battery recharging unit with unidirectional docking function was simulated in a pool. 1\ma-Sand 2 approached to the docking station using other sensors and docking operation was performed by visual servoing when a 3D marker was detected. Experimental results showed the performance of the proposed system with accurate docking accuracy in a short time.
Learning web service ontologies: an automatic extraction method and its evaluation

Successful employment of semantic Web services depends on the availability of high quality ontologies to describe the domains of these services. Building such ontologies is difficult and costly, thus hampering Web service deployment. As a solution, we describe an automatic extraction method that learns domain ontologies from textual documentations attached to Web services. We evaluate our method in two different domains, that of RDF ontology storage tools and that of bioinformatics services. The quality of the extracted ontologies is verified against high quality hand-built ontologies of the corresponding domains. We conclude that our method allows extracting a considerable amount of information for a domain ontology and that it is applicable across different domains.
Dynamic trafficking of wheat γ-gliadin and of its structural domains in tobacco cells, studied with fluorescent protein fusions

Prolamins, the main storage proteins of wheat seeds, are synthesized and retained in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of the endosperm cells, where they accumulate in protein bodies (PBs) and are then exported to the storage vacuole. The mechanisms leading to these events are unresolved. To investigate this unconventional trafficking pathway, wheat γ-gliadin and its isolated repeated N-terminal and cysteine-rich C-terminal domains were fused to fluorescent proteins and expressed in tobacco leaf epidermal cells. The results indicated that γ-gliadin and both isolated domains were able to be retained and accumulated as protein body-like structures (PBLS) in the ER, suggesting that tandem repeats are not the only sequence involved in γ-gliadin ER retention and PBLS formation. The high actin-dependent mobility of γ-gliadin PBLS is also reported, and it is demonstrated that most of them do not co-localize with Golgi body or pre-vacuolar compartment markers. Both γ-gliadin domains are found in the same PBLS when co-expressed, which is most probably due to their ability to interact with each other, as indicated by the yeast two-hybrid and FRET-FLIM experiments. Moreover, when stably expressed in BY-2 cells, green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusions to γ-gliadin and its isolated domains were retained in the ER for several days before being exported to the vacuole in a Golgi-dependent manner, and degraded, leading to the release of the GFP ‘core’. Taken together, the results show that tobacco cells are a convenient model to study the atypical wheat prolamin trafficking with fluorescent protein fusions.
The sleeping policeman: understanding issues of enforcement and compliance in conservation

Rules governing human behaviour are at the heart of every system of natural resource management. Without compliance, however, rules are meaningless so effective enforcement is essential if conservation is to be successful. There is a large body of theory concerning enforcement and compliance with rules spread over several disciplines, including psychology, economics and sociology. However, there have been few attempts to extend this theory to conservation applications and there is little practical guidance for managers and conservation planners on the optimal design of enforcement programmes. We review approaches to understanding why individuals break rules and how optimal policy choices can reduce rule‐breaking, highlighting research which has specifically dealt with natural resources. Because of the difficulty of studying rule‐breaking behaviour directly, modelling approaches have been particularly important and have been used to explore behaviour at the individual, group and institutional levels. We illustrate the application of models of enforcement and compliance to conservation using the African elephant Loxodonta africana as a case study. Further work is needed to create practical tools which can be applied to the design of enforcement measures in conservation. Particular challenges include understanding the importance of violations of rationality assumptions and incorporating intertemporal choice in models of decision making. In conclusion, we argue that a new field of robust theory and practice is urgently needed to ensure that issues of enforcement and compliance do not undermine conservation initiatives.
Category Enhanced Word Embedding

Distributed word representations have been demonstrated to be effective in capturing semantic and syntactic regularities. Unsupervised representation learning from large unlabeled corpora can learn similar representations for those words that present similar co-occurrence statistics. Besides local occurrence statistics, global topical information is also important knowledge that may help discriminate a word from another. In this paper, we incorporate category information of documents in the learning of word representations and to learn the proposed models in a document-wise manner. Our models outperform several state-of-the-art models in word analogy and word similarity tasks. Moreover, we evaluate the learned word vectors on sentiment analysis and text classification tasks, which shows the superiority of our learned word vectors. We also learn high-quality category embeddings that reflect topical meanings.
Particle filters and data association for multi-target tracking

This paper presents Monte Carlo (MC) methods for multi-target tracking and data association. We focus on comparing different estimation methods based on joint and non-joint state particle filters (PF) and joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) techniques. A novel data association algorithm for PF, founded on a combination of PDA and nearest neighbour (NN) techniques, is also developed. In this method the calculation of the association probabilities for each target is simplified and especially in clutter environment the number of association hypotheses is reduced considerably. The algorithms are tested and compared in a simulation study. A challenging ground target scenario consisting of road networks and passive sensors is used to evaluate the behaviour of the tracking filters.
Opening the black box: An experimental investigation of the mediating effects of trust and value congruence on transformational and transactional leadership.

This experimental study examined the causal effects of transformational and transactional leadership and the mediating role of trust and value congruence on follower performance. A total of 194 student participants worked on a brainstorming task under transformational and transactional leadership conditions. Leadership styles were manipulated using two confederates, and followers' performance was evaluated via three measures—quantity, quality, and satisfaction. Results, based on path analyses using LISREL, indicated that transformational leadership had both direct and indirect effects on performance mediated through followers' trust in the leader and value congruence. However, transactional leadership had only indirect effects on followers' performance mediated through followers' trust and value congruence. Implications of these results for future research on leadership are provided. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Structural Estimation of Callers' Delay Sensitivity in Call Centers

We model the decision-making process of callers in call centers as an optimal stopping problem. After each waiting period, a caller decides whether to abandon a call or continue to wait. The utility of a caller is modeled as a function of her waiting cost and reward for service. We use a random-coefficients model to capture the heterogeneity of the callers and estimate the cost and reward parameters of the callers using the data from individual calls made to an Israeli call center. We also conduct a series of counterfactual analyses that explore the effects of changes in service discipline on resulting waiting times and abandonment rates. Our analysis reveals that modeling endogenous caller behavior can be important when major changes such as a change in service discipline are implemented and that using a model with an exogenously specified abandonment distribution may be misleading. This paper was accepted by Assaf Zeevi, stochastic models and simulation.
DNA Methylation Patterns in Peripheral Blood of Pregnant Women With Group B Streptococcus Colonization

The primary risk factor for neonatal Group B streptococcus (GBS) infection, which is the leading cause of infectious neonatal morbidity and mortality, is maternal colonization. However, no definitive maternal risk factors for GBS colonization have been identified and no systematic efforts have been made to prevent maternal colonization. The purpose of this exploratory secondary analysis was to evaluate genome-wide DNA methylation patterns in maternal peripheral blood early in pregnancy for association with GBS colonization status in the third trimester. Genome-wide DNA methylation was analyzed from 18 nulliparous GBS-positive and -negative women (n = 9/group) recruited for a previous study. No statistically significant differences in baseline characteristics or DNA methylation in peripheral blood were identified between GBS-positive and -negative women in early pregnancy. The results suggest that DNA methylation patterns in peripheral blood are not associated with risk for GBS colonization.
Regularized Least Squares Twin SVR for the Simultaneous Learning of a Function and its Derivative

In a recent publication, Lazaro et al. addressed the problem of simultaneously approximating a function and its derivative using support vector machines. In this paper, we propose a new approach termed as regularized least squares twin support vector regression, for the simultaneous learning of a function and its derivatives. The regressor is obtained by solving one of two related support vector machine-type problems, each of which is of a smaller size than the one obtained in Lazaro's approach. The proposed algorithm is simple and fast, as no quadratic programming problem needs to be solved. Effectively, only the solution of a pair of linear systems of equations is needed.
Videoconferencing over OpenFlow Networks: An Optimization Framework for QoS Routing

The recent emergence of OpenFlow, in the field of networks' control, marks a major evolution in networking. Indeed, Openflow comes up with a centralized control plane (real or virtual) and a remote control of the data plan, which enable network's evolution with unprecedented rapidity. This evolution, come, however, with new challenges and open issues. The data path portion still resides on networking devices, while high-level routing decisions are moved to a separate remote server, which may impact the QoS of the supported services. Particularly, there is a need to guarantee at least the QoS that was formally provided using older and classical distributed protocols. This paper focuses on an improvement of the traditional OpenFlow controllers by providing QoS Routing support for Videoconferencing over OpenFlow networks. The simulation results under Mininet clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
An in vivo doxycycline-controlled expression system for functional studies of the retina.

PURPOSE Transgenic mice were developed that express tetracycline-controlled transactivator 1 (tTA1) specifically in photoreceptor cells. In these mice the transcription of the gene of interest can be easily inactivated in the retina in a short time frame. METHODS A construct was prepared containing tTA1 under control of the murine rhodopsin regulatory region. This construct was used for the generation of transgenic mice. In situ hybridization was performed to study the distribution of the transactivator in the retina. The activity of the transactivator was analyzed by mating the lines with a luciferase reporter transgenic mouse. tTA1 activity and doxycycline's ability to block it were analyzed by luciferase assay. The effects of tTA1 on the retina were assessed by histology and electrophysiology. RESULTS Two transgenic lines were developed that specifically express tTA1 in photoreceptor cells. The time course of transgene expression replicated transcription of endogenous rhodopsin. tTA1 was not toxic to the retina. Transactivator activity was blocked readily by doxycycline. CONCLUSIONS An expression system for photoreceptor cells was generated to drive transcription in a cell-specific and time-controllable manner. This system is suitable for the study of factors involved in retinal biology and of mutant forms of genes involved in retinal diseases.
Fast Intra Mode Decision Using DCT Coefficient Distribution in H.264/AVC

he rate-distortion optimization (RDO) method in the H.264/AVC encoder is a technology that improves the coding efficiency, but increases the computational complexity. In this paper, a fast Intra mode decision algorithm using DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) coefficients distribution is proposed to reduce the H.264 encoder complexity. The proposed method reduces the encoder complexity on average 68.40%, while the coding efficiency is slightly decreased compared with the H.264/AVC encoder.
DF versus AF: Energy consumption comparison for IEEE 802.15.4 networks

IEEE 802.15. 4 refers to a standard meant for short range wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Recently, the standard has gained huge popularity due to its simplicity, scalability, and low power consumption. In this paper, we investigate the energy efficiency of relay assisted dual hop communication between two 802.15. 4 compliant wireless nodes. Novel energy consumption models for both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) selective relaying protocols have been formulated and energy efficiency of these two protocols have been assessed by comparing the respective energy requirement per successful bit transmission. Small scale fading introduces outage during transmission over 802.15. 4 links. The results show that although under moderate to high channel outage probability, DF relaying offers better energy efficiency than AF relays, when the outage is low, their performances become identical. Next, variation of energy consumption with data payload size is elaborated for both DF and AF relays. It was found that, under moderate outage, there exists an optimum value for the payload size where energy saving is maximum. For similar channel conditions, the optimum payload size is more for DF relays. When the outage value is very high energy consumption increases exponentially with payload size. The trend reverses when the outage is low.
Analysis of diurnal and seasonal cycles and trends in climatic records with arbitrary observation times

Many long‐term records of climate variables have missing data or have had changes in their times of observation. Here we present a technique to analyze such inhomogeneous records. We assume that the underlying climatic processes are nonstationary, where the observations contain a long‐term trend superimposed on periodic shorter time seasonal and diurnal cycles. The seasonal and diurnal variations are approximated using a limited number of Fourier harmonics, while the trend is represented by a monotonic function of time whose amplitude can also vary seasonally and diurnally. A least squares method is used to estimate the unknown Fourier coefficients. As an example of the technique, we present an analysis of multi‐decadal hourly observations of surface air temperature obtained from several meteorological stations within the United States.
Allosteric crosstalk between peptide-binding, transport, and ATP hydrolysis of the ABC transporter TAP

The transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP) is essential for intracellular transport of protein fragments into the endoplasmic reticulum for loading of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules. On the cell surface, these peptide–MHC complexes are monitored by cytotoxic T lymphocytes. To study the ATP hydrolysis of TAP, we developed an enrichment and reconstitution procedure, by which we fully restored TAP function in proteoliposomes. A TAP-specific ATPase activity was identified that could be stimulated by peptides and blocked by the herpes simplex virus protein ICP47. Strikingly, the peptide-binding motif of TAP directly correlates with the stimulation of the ATPase activity, demonstrating that the initial peptide-binding step is responsible for TAP selectivity. ATP hydrolysis follows Michaelis–Menten kinetics with a maximal velocity Vmax of 2 μmol/min per mg TAP, corresponding to a turnover number of approximately 5 ATP per second. This turnover rate is sufficient to account for the role of TAP in peptide loading of MHC molecules and the overall process of antigen presentation. Interestingly, sterically restricted peptides that bind but are not transported by TAP do not stimulate ATPase activity. These results point to coordinated dialogue between the peptide-binding site, the nucleotide-binding domain, and the translocation site via conformational changes within the TAP complex.