Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Re-thinking water scarcity: Can science and technology solve the global water crisis?

This paper provides examples from the last fifty years of scientific and technological innovations that provide relatively easy, quick and affordable means of addressing key water management issues. Scientific knowledge and technological innovation can help open up previously closed decision-making systems. Four of these tools are discussed in this paper: a) the opportunities afforded by virtual water trade; b) the silent revolution for beneficial use of groundwater; c) salt water desalination; and finally, d) the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS). Together these advances are changing the options available to address water and food security that have been predominant for centuries in the minds of most water decision-makers.
Networked control of parallel DC/DC buck converters

Microgrids and Hybrid Electric Vehicles rely on parallel DC/DC converters for power generation. DC/DC converters are connected in parallel to share the same load. The control signals are distributed through wires. The wiring increases the complexity and reduces the reliability. The recent advances in shared wireless networks made them viable and cheap alternative to direct wiring. Distributing the control signals over shared networks reduces the complexity in the wiring and enhances the reliability. Transmitting control signals through shared network induces time delay and data loss which may destabilize the system. These imperfections make the system stochastic and in many cases these imperfection can be modeled using Markov chains. This paper presents the stabilization of parallel DC/DC converters over stochastic nondeterministic network represented by Markov chains.
CAPTCHAs based on the Principle-Hard to Separate Text from Background

CAPTCHAs have become a very popular security mechanism used to prevent automated abuse of online services intended for humans. Different flavors of CAPTCHA can be seen on Internet. However, a wide variety of CAPTCHAs have been successfully attacked by automated programs. This has made CAPTCHA design an interesting area for research. Among various flavors of CAPTCHA text based are most preferable because of its low implementation cost but this category of CAPTCHA can be attacked with very high success rate. To provide stronger and user-friendly text based CAPTCHA, in this paper, we propose three text based CAPTCHA designsBarCAPTCHA, TransparentCAPTCHA and ThreadCAPTCHA based on the design principle “hard to separate text from background”. The underlying security assumption is that if an automated program cannot locate text in CAPTCHA then it cannot do further processing to identify the characters of it. Keywords— CAPTCHA, security, automated abuse, online service, text based, design principle.
Commitment-Flexibility Trade-Off and Withdrawal Penalties

Withdrawal penalties are common features of time deposit contracts offered by commercial banks, as well as individual retirement accounts and employer-sponsored plans. Moreover, there is a significant amount of early withdrawals from these accounts, despite the associated penalties, and empirical evidence shows that liquidity shocks of depositors are a major driving force of this. Using the consumption-savings model proposed by Amador, Werning and Angeletos in their 2006 Econometrica paper (henceforth AWA), in which individuals face the trade-off between flexibility and commitment, we show that withdrawal penalties can be part of the optimal contract, despite involving money-burning from an ex ante perspective. For the case of two states (which we interpret as “normal times” and a “negative liquidity shock”), we provide a full characterization of the optimal contract, and show that within the parameter region where the first best is unattainable, the likelihood that withdrawal penalties are part of the optimal contract is decreasing in the probability of a negative liquidity shock, increasing in the severity of the shock, and it is nonmonotonic in the magnitude of present bias. We also show that contracts with the same qualitative feature (withdrawal penalties for high types) arise in continuous state spaces, too. Our conclusions differ from AWA because the analysis in the latter implicitly assumes that the optimal contract is interior (the amount withdrawn from the savings account is strictly positive in each period in every state). We show that for any utility function consistent with their framework there is an open set of parameter values for which the optimal contract is a corner solution, inducing money burning in some states.
Computer-Assisted Laparoscopic myomectomy by augmenting the uterus with pre-operative MRI data

An active research objective in Computer Assisted Intervention (CAI) is to develop guidance systems to aid surgical teams in laparoscopic Minimal Invasive Surgery (MIS) using Augmented Reality (AR). This involves registering and fusing additional data from other modalities and overlaying it onto the laparoscopic video in realtime. We present the first AR-based image guidance system for assisted myoma localisation in uterine laparosurgery. This involves a framework for semi-automatically registering a pre-operative Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) to the laparoscopic video with a deformable model. Although there has been several previous works involving other organs, this is the first to tackle the uterus. Furthermore, whereas previous works perform registration between one or two laparoscopic images (which come from a stereo laparoscope) we show how to solve the problem using many images (e.g. 20 or more), and show that this can dramatically improve registration. Also unlike previous works, we show how to integrate occluding contours as registration cues. These cues provide powerful registration constraints and should be used wherever possible. We present retrospective qualitative results on a patient with two myomas and quantitative semi-synthetic results. Our multi-image framework is quite general and could be adapted to improve registration in other organs with other modalities such as CT.
Prime-Boost Immunization of Rabbits with HIV-1 gp120 Elicits Potent Neutralization Activity against a Primary Viral Isolate

Development of a vaccine for HIV-1 requires a detailed understanding of the neutralizing antibody responses that can be experimentally elicited to difficult-to-neutralize primary isolates. Rabbits were immunized with the gp120 subunit of HIV-1 JR-CSF envelope (Env) using a DNA-prime protein-boost regimen. We analyzed five sera that showed potent autologous neutralizing activity (IC50s at ∼103 to 104 serum dilution) against pseudoviruses containing Env from the primary isolate JR-CSF but not from the related isolate JR-FL. Pseudoviruses were created by exchanging each variable and constant domain of JR-CSF gp120 with that of JR-FL or with mutations in putative N-glycosylation sites. The sera contained different neutralizing activities dependent on C3 and V5, C3 and V4, or V4 regions located on the glycan-rich outer domain of gp120. All sera showed enhanced neutralizing activity toward an Env variant that lacked a glycosylation site in V4. The JR-CSF gp120 epitopes recognized by the sera are generally distinct from those of several well characterized mAbs (targeting conserved sites on Env) or other type-specific responses (targeting V1, V2, or V3 variable regions). The activity of one serum requires specific glycans that are also important for 2G12 neutralization and this serum blocked the binding of 2G12 to gp120. Our findings show that different fine specificities can achieve potent neutralization of HIV-1, yet this strong activity does not result in improved breadth.
Matching pursuit for channel selection in cochlear implants based on an intelligibility metric

In this paper the earlier proposed short-time objective intelligibility predictor (STOI) is simplified such that it can be expressed as a weighted ℓ2 norm in the auditory domain. Due to the mathematical properties of a norm, STOI can now be used with the matching pursuit algorithm in the n-of-m channel selection technique as found in several cochlear implant (CI) coding strategies. With this technique only a subset of frequency channels (electrodes) are stimulated, such that important channels can be updated more frequently and less significant channels are omitted. Intelligibility predictions with acoustic CI-simulations for normal-hearing listeners indicate that more intelligible speech is obtained with the proposed method compared to a conventional channel selection method based on peak picking. Reasons for this difference in performance are: (1) STOI considers an analysis window of a few hundreds of milliseconds in order to account for important low temporal modulations for speech intelligibility and (2) spectral leakage per channel is accounted for in the mathematical optimization process.
Grape pomace extract exerts antioxidant effects through an increase in GCS levels and GST activity in muscle and endothelial cells

In a previous study, we demonstrated that a grape pomace extract (GPE) exerted antioxidant activity in endothelial (EA.hy926) and muscle (C2C12) cells through an increase in glutathione (GSH) levels. In the present study, in order to elucidate the mechanisms responsible for the antioxidant activity of GPE, its effects on the expression of critical antioxidant enzymes, such as catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD)1, heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) and gamma-glutamylcysteine synthetase (GCS) were assessed in EA.hy926 and C2C12 cells. Moreover, the effects of GPE on CAT, SOD and glutathione S-transferase (GST) enzymatic activity were evaluated. For this purpose, the C2C12 and EA.hy926 cells were treated with GPE at low and non-cytotoxic concentrations (2.5 and 10 µg/ml for the C2C12 cells; 0.068 and 0.250 µg/ml for the EA.hy926 cells) for 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 h. Following incubation, enzymatic expression and activity were assessed. The results revealed that treatment with GPE significantly increased GCS levels and GST activity in both the C2C12 and EA.hy926 cells. However, GPE significantly decreased CAT levels and activity, but only in the muscle cells, while it had no effect on CAT levels and activity in the endothelial cells. Moreover, treatment with GPE had no effect on HO-1 and SOD expression and activity in both cell lines. Therefore, the present results provide further evidence of the crucial role of GSH systems in the antioxidant effects exerted by GPE. Thus, GPE may prove to be effective for use as a food supplement for the treatment of oxidative stress-induced pathological conditions of the cardiovascular and skeletal muscle systems, particularly those associated with low GSH levels.
4-th Ieee International Conference on Peer-to-peer Computing 100 Million Dht Replies

—Crawling a DHT allows researchers to monitor the behaviour of peers, determine their geographic location, etc. However, it has always been an error-prone process as it is not feasible to capture a full snapshot of the Mainline DHT in a timely manner. Therefore, researchers have developed approximation methods which can run on subsets of the DHT and extrapolate those in order to reason on the size and structure of the complete DHT. However, in this paper we introduce a new method of collecting information on peers connected to a DHT. We exploit the caches present at bootstrap servers to collect information on peers which are currently connected. Originally added to the bootstrap servers in order to be able to withstand more than 20,000 requests for peers each second, we now use the same mechanism as peers bootstrapping into the DHT to discover more than 20 Million peers in less than 2 hours. Using the bootstrap servers, we discover more than twice as many peers as BitMon, which crawls a subset of the DHT and then extrapolates. Moreover, in contrast to related work which often require highly customized/tuned BitTorrent clients, our script consists of 90 lines of Python code and runs on a simple laptop.
Face recognition based on frontal views generated from non-frontal images

This paper presents a method for face recognition across large changes in viewpoint. Our method is based on a morphable model of 3D faces that represents face-specific information extracted from a dataset of 3D scans. For non-frontal face recognition in 2D still images, the morphable model can be incorporated in two different approaches: in the first, it serves as a preprocessing step by estimating the 3D shape of novel faces from the non-frontal input images, and generating frontal views of the reconstructed faces at a standard illumination using 3D computer graphics. The transformed images are then fed into state-of-the-art face recognition systems that are optimized for frontal views. This method was shown to be extremely effective in the Face Recognition Vendor Test FRVT 2002. In the process of estimating the 3D shape of a face from an image, a set of model coefficients are estimated. In the second method, face recognition is performed directly from these coefficients. In this paper we explain the algorithm used to preprocess the images in FRVT 2002, present additional FRVT 2002 results, and compare these results to recognition from the model coefficients.
Limited interaction in speech production: Chronometric, speech error, and neuropsychological evidence

Results from chronometric and speech errors studies provide convergent evidence for both lower and upper bounds on interaction within the speech production system. Some degree of cascading activation is required to account for patterns of speech errors in neurologically intact and impaired speakers as well as the results of recent chronometric studies. However, the strength of this form of interaction must be limited to account for the occurrence of selective deficits in the production system and restrictions on the conditions under which interactive effects influence reaction times. Similarly, some amount of feedback from phonological to word-level representations is necessary to account for patterns of speech errors in neurologically intact and impaired individuals as well as the influence of phonological neighbours on response latency. This interactive mechanism must also be limited to account for restrictions on the types of speech errors produced following selective deficits within the production system. Results from a variety of empirical traditions therefore converge on the same conclusion: interaction is present, but it must be crucially limited.
A highly linear LNA with noise cancellation for 5.8–10.6 GHz UWB receivers

An ultra-wideband (UWB) low-noise amplifier (LNA) with simultaneous noise and distortion cancellation is presented. This LNA utilizes a pMOS in weak inversion for second- and third-order distortion cancellation. By using two inductors, the effective bandwidth for noise/distortion cancellation and input matching are extended. This LNA has been designed in a 0.18-μm CMOS process. The noise figure is 3.8–4.45 dB, IIP3 is 15–20 dBm, IIP2 is 10–16 dBm, and S11 is lower than −15 dB over 5.8–10.6 GHz. The voltage gain is 13.8 dB while drawing 8.3 mA from 1.8 V supply voltage.
An Integrated Ecosystem Theory

The paper presents an ecosystem theory based on ten propositions. The ecosystem theory is an integration of several contributions from a number of system ecologists. It is of importance to apply this theory to explain ecological observations and use it environmental management because the alternative is to rely entirely on observations which is very time consuming, costly and cumbersome. The presented integrated ecosystem theory is consistent with a recent published book A New Ecology, A System Approach, that is using some basic ecosystem properties to explain ecological observations.
Comparison of a hybrid model to a global model of atmospheric pressure radio-frequency capacitive discharges

A one-dimensional hybrid analytical–numerical global model of atmospheric pressure radio-frequency (rf) driven capacitive discharges, previously developed, is compared with a basic global model. A helium feed gas with small admixtures of oxygen is studied. For the hybrid model, the electrical characteristics are calculated analytically as a current-driven homogeneous discharge. The electron power balance is solved analytically to determine a time-varying Maxwellian electron temperature, which oscillates on the rf timescale. Averaging over the rf period yields effective rate coefficients for gas phase activated processes. For the basic global model, the electron temperature is constant in time and the sheath physics is neglected. For both models, the particle balance relations for all species are integrated numerically to determine the equilibrium discharge parameters. Variations of discharge parameters with composition and rf power are determined and compared. The rate coefficients for electron-activated processes are strongly temperature dependent, leading to significantly larger neutral and charged particle densities for the hybrid model. For small devices, finite sheath widths limit the operating regimes to low O2 fractions. This is captured by the hybrid model but cannot be predicted from the basic global model.
Seeing Where the Stone Is Thrown by Observing a Point-Light Thrower: Perceiving the Effect of Action Is Enabled by Information, Not Motor Experience

People are very adept at perceiving biological motion (e.g., Johansson, 1973). This ability has been an essential life skill to members of this social species. The human niche during the ice age was socially coordinated hunting for big game. Being able to judge the location targeted by the throw of a conspecific would be a valuable perceptual ability that we now study to investigate 2 competing theories of biological motion perception: Common Coding (CC; Prinz, 1997) and Kinematic Specification of Dynamics (KSD; Runeson & Frykholm, 1983). The 2 theories diverge in attributing perceptual ability to either motor or visual experience, respectively. To test predictions of the CC theory, we performed 3 experiments to manipulate observers' specific motor experience while they judged the targeted location of throwing by watching point-light displays. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the identity of the thrower in the display mattered. In Experiment 2, we tested whether the motor expertise of the observer mattered. In Experiment 3, we tested whether the gender/style of throwing demonstrated by the point-light thrower mattered. The combined results failed to support CC theory, suggesting that motor experience is not required for the perception of action. Because all participants judged the target location of throwing quite well, KSD theory suggests that the kinematic information available in the displays may have enabled the perception. We performed Experiment 4 to analyze the information. We found that the judgment pattern exhibited by the observers in both Experiments 1 and 2 was well predicted by the KSD theory. Thus, we concluded that the perception of biological motion is enabled by visual information and improved by visual experience.
Widespread existence of uncorrelated probe intensities from within the same probeset on Affymetrix GeneChips

Summary We have developed a computational pipeline to analyse large surveys of A ymetrix GeneChips, for example NCBI’s Gene Expression Omnibus. GEO samples data for many organisms, tissues and phenotypes. Because of this experimental diversity, any observed correlations between probe intensities can be associated either with biology that is robust, such as common co-expression, or with systematic biases associated with the GeneChip technology. Our bioinformatics pipeline integrates the mapping of probes to exons, quality control checks on each GeneChip which identifies flaws in hybridization quality, and the mining of correlations in intensities between groups of probes. The output from our pipeline has enabled us to identify systematic biases in GeneChip data. We are also able to use the pipeline as a discovery tool for biology. We have discovered that in the majority of cases, A ymetrix probesets on Human GeneChips do not measure one unique block of transcription. Instead we see numerous examples of outlier probes. Our study has also identified that in a number of probesets the mismatch probes are an informative diagnostic of expression, rather than providing a measure of background contamination. We report evidence for systematic biases in GeneChip technology associated with probe-probe interactions. We also see signatures associated with post-transcriptional processing of RNA, such as alternative polyadenylation.
Power consumption profile analysis for security attack simulation in smart cards at high abstraction level

Smart cards are embedded systems which are used in an increasing number of secure applications. As they store and deal with confidential and secret data many attacks are performed on these cards to reveal this private information. Consequently, the security demands on smart cards are very high. It is mandatory to evaluate the security of the design but this is performed often very late in the design process or when the chip has already been manufactured. This paper presents a hierarchical security attack simulation flow for smart card designs where security attacks can be simulated in the processor specific model at transaction layer 1 in SystemC. Therefore, the power consumption profile is analyzed at this level. Preliminary results show that this analysis at high abstraction level can be used to determine vulnerabilities of the system to security attacks. Moreover, points to insert software countermeasures can easily be identified.
Mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes and graphene junction : a molecular dynamics simulation

Carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene sheet have shown promising due to their unique mechanical, electrical and thermal properties as well as plus light weight. CNT-graphene network is an interesting structure that obtained in experimental studies and can be used in many engineering disciplines. For this aim, understanding mechanical behavior of the CNT-graphene combination is necessary. In the present study, molecular dynamics simulation is used to examine mechanical properties of CNT-graphene junction. The adaptive intermolecular reactive empirical bond order potential was chosen to model C-C interaction which showed is a reliable model for carbon nanostructures and produces stable CNT and GS. The young modules, fracture strain and stressstrain curve of individual CNT and GS completely verified by previous report. Surprisingly, the junction represents minimum properties of CNT and GS that caused by stress distribution in junction.
Frequency band analysis for stress detection using a teager energy operator based feature

Studies have shown that the performance of speech recognition algorithms severely degrade due to the presence of task and emotional induced stress in adverse conditions. This paper addresses the problem of detecting the presence of stress in speech by analyzing nonlinear feature characteristics in specific frequency bands. The framework of the previously derived Teager Energy Operator(TEO) based feature TEO-CB-AutoEnv is used. A new detection scheme is proposed based on weighted TEO features derived from critical bands frequencies. The new detection framework is evaluated on a military speech corpus collected in a Soldier of the Quarter (SOQ) paradigm. Heart rate and blood pressure measurements confirm subjects were under stress. Using the traditional TEO-CB-AutoEnv feature with an HMM trained stressed speech classifier, we show error rates of 22.5% and 13% for stress and neutral speech detection. With the new weighted sub-band detection scheme, detection error rates are reduced to 4.7% and 4.6% for stress and neutral detection, a relative error reduction of 79.1% and 64.6% respectively. Finally we discuss issues related to generation of stress anchor models and speaker dependency.