Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive distributed estimation over wireless sensor networks with packet losses

A distributed adaptive algorithm to estimate a time-varying signal, measured by a wireless sensor network, is designed and analyzed. The presence of measurement noises and of packet losses is considered. Each node of the network locally computes adaptive weights that guarantee to minimize the estimation error variance. Decentralized conditions on the weights, which ensure the stability of the estimates throughout the overall network, are also considered. A theoretical performance analysis of the scheme is carried out both in the presence of perfect and lossy links. Numerical simulations illustrate performance for various network topologies and packet loss probabilities.
Optical Antennas for Biosensing Applications

The aim of the thesis is to theoretically investigate optical/plasmonic antennas for biosensing applications. The full 3-D numerical electromagnetic simulations have been performed by using finite integration technique (FIT). The electromagnetic properties of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and the localized surface plasmons (LSPs) based devices are studied for sensing purpose. The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensors offer high refractive index sensitivity at a fixed wavelength but are not enough for the detection of low concentrations of molecules. It has been demonstrated that the sensitivity of SPR sensors can be increased by employing the transverse magneto-optic Kerr effect (TMOKE) in combination with SPPs. The sensor based on the phenomena of TMOKE and SPPs are known as magneto-optic SPR (MOSPR) sensors. The optimized MOSPR sensor is analyzed which provides 8 times higher sensitivity than the SPR sensor, which will be able to detect lower concentration of molecules. But, the range of the refractive index detection is limited, due to the rapid decay of the amplitude of the MOSPR-signal with the increase of the refractive indices. Whereas, LSPs based sensors can detect lower concentrations of molecules, but their sensitivity is small at a fixed wavelength. Therefore, another device configuration known as perfect plasmonic absorber (PPA) is investigated which is based on the phenomena of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguide. The PPA consists of a periodic array of gold nanoparticles and a thick gold film separated by a dielectric spacer. The electromagnetic modes of the PPA system are analyzed for sensing purpose. The second order mode of the PPA at a fixed wavelength has been proposed for the first time for biosensing applications. The PPA based sensor combines the properties of the LSPR sensor and the SPR sensor, for example, it illustrates increment in sensitivity of the LSPR sensor comparable to the SPR and can detect lower concentration 5
Terahertz Nanoantennas for Enhanced Spectroscopy

Terahertz spectroscopy has great potential for sensing a wide range of elementary excitations. However, terahertz studies are practically limited to macroscopic ensembles of compounds (e.g., thick pellets of crystallized molecules or highly concentrated solutions of nanomaterials) due to the long radiation wavelength (about 300 μm at 1 THz). In this chapter, we show how terahertz nanoantennas can overcome the current limitations of terahertz spectroscopy such as low sensitivity and low spatial resolution. We briefly discuss how to design the resonance characteristics of a dipole nanoantenna through a Fabry-Pérot model, and then we present the experimental characterization of the spectral response of ordered arrays of such devices. Furthermore, we demonstrate how nanoantenna arrays enable the possibility of retrieving the spectroscopic signature of a monolayer of quantum dots and, in principle, of many other organic or inorganic compounds. This technique, based on the idea of increasing the sensitivity through local field enhancement, is named nanoantenna-enhanced terahertz spectroscopy (NETS). A Fanolike interference between the fundamental mode of the nanoantennas and the phonon resonance of the quantum dots is observed, together with an enhancement of the absorption of the dots up to more than a million. Finally, we show how to extract the main spectroscopic information of the quantum dots through a simple coupled harmonic oscillator model. This novel technique can be widely applied in terahertz spectroscopic studies of nanocrystals and molecules, where extremely low concentrations are of concern.
Ontology mapping: a user survey

Ontology mapping is the key to data interoperability in the semantic web vision. Computing mappings is the first step to applications such as query rewriting, instance sharing, web-service integration, and ontology merging. This problem has received a lot of attention in recent years, but little is known about how users actually construct mappings. Several ontology-mapping tools have been developed, but which tools do users actually use? What processes are users following to discover, track, and compute mappings? How do teams coordinate when performing mappings? In this paper, we discuss the results from an online user survey where we gathered feedback from the community to help answer these important questions. We discuss the results from the survey and the implications they may have on the mapping research community.
From Trade-to-Trade in US Treasuries : Durations , Workups and News E ¤ ects

The aim of this paper is to model the trading intensity of the US Treasury bond market, which has a unique expandable limit order book, distinguishing it from other asset markets. An analysis of tick data from the eSpeed database suggests that the US bond market displays a greater degree of clustering in trade durations than is evident in other asset markets. Duration is a¤ected by the presence of news, particularly in the hour following the release of news to the markets. Finally, the length of time taken to complete a given transaction, or workup, has a measurable impact on the trade duration. Keywords: US Treasuries, trade duration, workups, news. JEL Classi cation: C22, G14. We are grateful to Ross Adams for managing the database and comments from Charlotte Christiansen and Ingrid Lo and participants at INFINITI 2008 and the 4th Central Banking Conference on Market Microstructure in Hong Kong 2008. Author contacts: Dungey, m.dungey@cerf.cam. ac.uk; Henry, oth@unimelb.edu. au; McKenzie, michael.mckenzie@rmit.edu. au.
CT Scan Merging to Enhance Navigation in Interventional Radiology Simulation

We present a method to merge two distinct CT scans acquired from different patients such that the second scan can supplement the first when it is missing necessary supporting anatomy. The aim is to provide vascular intervention simulations with full body anatomy. Often, patient CT scans are confined to a localised region so that the patient is not exposed to more radiation than necessary and to increase scanner throughput. Unfortunately, this localised scanning region may be limiting for some applications where surrounding anatomy may be required and where approximate supporting anatomy is acceptable. The resulting merged scan can enhance body navigation simulations with X-ray rendering by providing a complete anatomical reference which may be useful in training and rehearsal. An example of the use of our CT scan merging technique in the field of interventional radiology is described.
Circadian Clock Regulation of pH in the Rabbit Retina

Although it is generally accepted that the acid–base ratio of tissue, as represented by the pH, is strictly regulated to maintain normal function, recent studies in the mammalian nervous system have shown that neuronal activity can result in significant shifts in pH. In the mammalian retina, many cellular phenomena, including neuronal activity, are regulated by a circadian clock. We thus investigated whether a clock regulates retinal pH, using pH-sensitive microelectrodes to measure the extracellular pH (pHo) of the in vitro rabbit retina in the subjective day and night, that is, under conditions of constant darkness. These measurements demonstrated that a circadian clock regulates the pHo of the rabbit retina so that the pHo is lower at night than in the day. This day/night difference in retinal pHo was observed when the rabbits were maintained on a normal light/dark cycle and after they were maintained on a light/dark cycle that was phase-delayed by 9 hr. Continuous recordings of retinal pHo around subjective dusk indicated that the change from daytime to nighttime pHo is relatively fast and suggested that the clock that regulates pHo is located in the retina. The lowest pHorecorded in the retina in both the day and night was in the vicinity of the inner segments of photoreceptor cells, supporting the idea that photoreceptors serve as the primary source of protons. The circadian-induced shift in pHo was several times greater than light-induced pHo changes. These findings suggest that a circadian clock in the mammalian retina regulates retinal pH.
A Methodology for Predicting the Performance of Component-Based Applications

One of the major problems in building large-scale enterprise applications is predicting the performance of the eventual solution before the application has been built. Middleware offered by component technologies such as Sun’s Enterprise JavaBeans, Microsoft’s . NET, or OMG’s CORBA Component Model does not guarantee the fulfillment of performance requirements. These technologies support assembly of components and provide means to connect components together, but they do not provide support for predicting the quality of the assembly or an application built on assemblies. When systems are built using assemblies, an important characteristic in predicting the performance of the system is to predict the performance of a given assembly. We propose a methodology for reasoning about the performance of component based applications. Our methodology is based on creating performance profiles for each component, assembly and connection type, and groups them together in order to predict the performance of the applications. Development of a framework to implement this methodology is in progress, with the current focus on Microsoft . Net technology.
Disruption of Nuclear Lamin Organization Blocks the Elongation Phase of DNA Replication

The role of nuclear lamins in DNA replication is unclear. To address this, nuclei were assembled in Xenopus extracts containing AraC, a reversible inhibitor that blocks near the onset of the elongation phase of replication. Dominant-negative lamin mutants lacking their NH2-terminal domains were added to assembled nuclei to disrupt lamin organization. This prevented the resumption of DNA replication after the release of the AraC block. This inhibition of replication was not due to gross disruption of nuclear envelope structure and function. The organization of initiation factors was not altered by lamin disruption, and nuclei resumed replication when transferred to extracts treated with CIP, an inhibitor of the cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) 2–dependent step of initiation. This suggests that alteration of lamin organization does not affect the initiation phase of DNA replication. Instead, we find that disruption of lamin organization inhibited chain elongation in a dose-dependent fashion. Furthermore, the established organization of two elongation factors, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, and replication factor complex, was disrupted by ΔNLA. These findings demonstrate that lamin organization must be maintained in nuclei for the elongation phase of DNA replication to proceed.
The extent of labour specialization in the extended family: A theoretical and empirical analysis

Abstract. In this paper we present a simple model of labour supply that is cast within the framework of an extended family. The model emphasizes a Ricardian division of labour whereby the specialization is solely driven by marginal productivity and value of time differentials. The empirical implications of the model are derived and tested using data that was collected in France to study the extent of trade within the family network. We find evidence that the extent of specialization is sensitive to the value of time differentials.
Combining Machine Translation Output with Open Source: The Carnegie Mellon Multi-Engine Machine Translation Scheme

Combining Machine Translation Output with Open Source: The Carnegie Mellon Multi-Engine Machine Translation Scheme The Carnegie Mellon multi-engine machine translation software merges output from several machine translation systems into a single improved translation. This improvement is significant: in the recent NIST MT09 evaluation, the combined Arabic-English output scored 5.22 BLEU points higher than the best individual system. Concurrent with this paper, we release the source code behind this result consisting of a recombining beam search decoder, the combination search space and features, and several accessories. Here we describe how the released software works and its use.
Position and orientation control of robot manipulators using dual quaternion feedback

We propose in this paper a new concept of unified position/orientation control of robot manipulator by describing the end-effector motion as a dual quaternion involving both translation and rotation. The development of the forward kinematic model and Jacobian matrix in dual quaternion space is detailed as well as the stability of the controller. At last, simulation and experimental results highlight the efficiency and performance of this controller.
Tractable Learning and Inference with High-Order Representations

Representing high-order interactions in data often results in large models with an intractable number of hidden variables. In these models, inference and learning must operate without instantiating the entire set of variables. This paper presents a MetropolisHastings sampling approach to address this issue, and proposes new methods to discriminatively estimate the proposal and target distribution of the sampler using a ranking function over configurations. We demonstrate our approach on the task of paper and author deduplication, showing that our method enables complex, advantageous representations of the data while maintaining tractable learning and inference procedures.
Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence and FRET in Multilayer Core-Shell Nanoparticles

In recent years, various methods for the synthesis of fluorescent core-shell nanostructures were developed, optimized, and studied thoroughly in our research group. Metallic cores exhibiting plasmonic properties in the UV and visible regions of the electromagnetic spectrum were used to increase substantially the brightness and stability of organic fluorophores encapsulated in silica shells. Furthermore, the efficiency and range of Forster resonant energy transfer (FRET) between donor and acceptor molecules located in the vicinity of the metallic core was shown to be enhanced. Such multilayer nanoparticle architectures offer, in addition to the aforementioned advantages, excellent chemical and physical stability, solubility in aqueous media, low toxicity, and high detectability. In view of these enviable characteristics, a plethora of applications have been envisioned in biology, analytical chemistry, and medical diagnostics. In this paper, advances in the development of multilayer core-shell luminescent nanoparticle structures and selected applications to bioanalytical chemistry will be described.
Palmprint recognition using valley features

This paper presents a novel approach for palmprint recognition based on the valley features. This approach uses the Bothat operation to extract the valleys from a very low-resolution palm image in different directions to form the valley feature, and then defines a matching score to measure the similarity of the valley features. The experimental results shows that the proposed approach can effectively discriminate palm prints and can obtain about 98% accuracy in palmprint verification.
Heuristic Planning with Resources

This paper presents GRT-R, an enhanced version of the GRT planner capable of explicitly handling resources. GRT is a domain independent heuristic STRIPS planner, which works in the space of the states. The heuristic computes off-line, in a preprocessing phase, estimates for the distances between the domain's facts and the goals. These estimates are utilized during the search process, in order to obtain values for the distances between the intermediate states and the goals. We propose an explicit representation of resources in a numerical way. There are two kinds of resources: the consumable and the allocable ones. In the pre-processing phase, GRT-R assigns to the domain's facts vectors of costs. The first cost is an estimate of the distance between a fact and the goals, while the remaining costs estimate the amount of consumable resources needed to achieve that fact. GRT-R assigns each fact with a set of such vectors, each one of them corresponding to a different way of achieving the fact. During the search process, GRT-R assigns similarly each intermediate state with such a vector, based on the vectors of the state's facts, with the intention to minimize the distance between the state and the goals, without exceeding the available resources. Allocable resources are taken into account only while searching, in order to preserve the validity of the states. Performance results show that GRT-R copes well in domains that embody resources.
Isolation of Salmonella Mutants Resistant to the Inhibitory Effect of Salicylidene acylhydrazides on Flagella-Mediated Motility

Salicylidene acylhydrazides identified as inhibitors of virulence-mediating type III secretion systems (T3SSs) potentially target their inner membrane export apparatus. They also lead to inhibition of flagellar T3SS-mediated swimming motility in Salmonella enterica serovar. Typhimurium. We show that INP0404 and INP0405 act by reducing the number of flagella/cell. These molecules still inhibit motility of a Salmonella ΔfliH-fliI-fliJ/flhB (P28T) strain, which lacks three soluble components of the flagellar T3S apparatus, suggesting that they are not the target of this drug family. We implemented a genetic screen to search for the inhibitors' molecular target(s) using motility assays in the ΔfliH-fliI/flhB (P28T) background. Both mutants identified were more motile than the background strain in the absence of the drugs, although HM18 was considerably more so. HM18 was more motile than its parent strain in the presence of both drugs while DI15 was only insensitive to INP0405. HM18 was hypermotile due to hyperflagellation, whereas DI15 was not hyperflagellated. HM18 was also resistant to a growth defect induced by high concentrations of the drugs. Whole-genome resequencing of HM18 indicated two alterations within protein coding regions, including one within atpB, which encodes the inner membrane a-subunit of the FOF1-ATP synthase. Reverse genetics indicated that the alteration in atpB was responsible for all of HM18's phenotypes. Genome sequencing of DI15 uncovered a single A562P mutation within a gene encoding the flagellar inner membrane protein FlhA, the direct role of which in mediating drug insensitivity could not be confirmed. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of T3SS export apparatus function and drug target identification.
Characterizing Vocal Tract Dynamics Across Speakers Using Real-Time MRI

Real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) provides information about the dynamic shaping of the vocal tract during speech production and valuable data for creating and testing models of speech production. In this paper, we use rtMRI videos to develop a dynamical system in the framework of Task Dynamics which controls vocal tract constrictions and induces deformation of the air-tissue boundary. This is the first task dynamical system explicitly derived from speech kinematic data. Simulation identifies differences in articulatory strategy across speakers (n = 18), specifically in the relative contribution of articulators to vocal tract constrictions.
A Coordination Language for Multidisciplinary Applications

Data parallel languages, such as High Performance Fortran, can be successfully applied to a wide range of numerical applications. However, many advanced scientific and engineering applications are multidisciplinary and heterogeneous in nature, and thus do not fit well into the data parallel paradigm. In this paper we present Opus, a language designed to fill this gap. The central concept of Opus is a mechanism called ShareD Abstractions (SDA). An SDA can be used as a computation server, i.e., a locus of computational activity, or as a data repository for sharing data between asynchronous tasks. SDAs can be internally data parallel, providing support for the integration of data and task parallelism as well as nested task parallelism. They can thus be used to express multidisciplinary applications in a natural and efficient way. In this paper we describe the features of the language through a series of examples and give an overview of the runtime support required to implement these concepts in parallel and distributed environments.
Exploiting Channel Memory for Joint Estimation and Scheduling in Downlink Networks—a Whittle’s Indexability Analysis

We study opportunistic multiuser scheduling in downlink networks with Markov-modeled outage channels. We consider the scenario that the scheduler does not have full knowledge of the channel state information, but instead estimates the channel state by exploiting the memory inherent in the Markov channels along with Automatic-Repeat-reQues-styled-styled feedback from the scheduled users. Opportunistic scheduling is optimized in two stages: 1) channel estimation and rate adaptation are performed to maximize the short-term throughput, i.e., the successful transmission rate of the scheduled user in the current slot and 2) user scheduling is performed, based on the short-term throughput, to maximize the overall long-term sum-throughput of the downlink. The scheduling problem is a partially observable Markov decision process with the classic exploitation versus exploration tradeoff that is difficult to quantify. We, therefore, study the problem in the framework of restless multiarmed bandit processes, and perform a Whittle's indexability analysis. Whittle's indexability is traditionally known to be hard to establish and the index policy derived based on Whittle's indexability is known to have optimality properties in various settings. We show that the problem of downlink scheduling under imperfect channel state information is Whittle indexable and derive the Whittle's index policy in closed form. Through extensive numerical experiments, we show that the Whittle's index policy has near-optimal performance and is robust against various imperfections in channel state feedback. Our work reveals that, under incomplete channel state information, exploiting channel memory for opportunistic scheduling can result in significant system-level performance gains and that almost all of these gains can be realized using the polynomial-complexity Whittle's index policy.