Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Approach of Reliable Data Transmission With Random Redundancy for Wireless Sensors in Structural Health Monitoring

Lossy transmission is a common problem suffered from monitoring systems based on wireless sensors. Though extensive works have been done to enhance the reliability of data communication in computer networks, few of the existing methods are well tailored for the wireless sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM). These methods are generally unsuitable for resource-limited wireless sensor nodes and intensive data SHM applications. In this paper, a new data coding and transmission method is proposed that is specifically targeted at the wireless SHM systems deployed on large civil infrastructures. The proposed method includes two coding stages: 1) a source coding stage to compress the natural redundant information inherent in SHM signals and 2) a redundant coding stage to inject artificial redundancy into wireless transmission to enhance the transmission reliability. Methods with light memory and computational overheads are adopted in the coding process to meet the resource constraints of wireless sensor nodes. In particular, the lossless entropy compression method is implemented for data compression, and a simple random matrix projection is proposed for redundant transformation. After coding, a wireless sensor node transmits the same payload of coded data instead of the original sensor data to the base station. Some data loss may occur during the transmission of the coded data. However, the complete original data can be reconstructed losslessly on the base station from the incomplete coded data given that the data loss ratio is reasonably low. The proposed method is implemented into the Imote2 smart sensor platform and tested in a series of communication experiments on a cable-stayed bridge. Examples and statistics show that the proposed method is very robust against the data loss. The method is able to withstand the data loss up to 30% and still provides lossless reconstruction of the original sensor data with overwhelming probability. This result represents a significant improvement of data transmission reliability of wireless SHM systems.
Noachian and more recent phyllosilicates in impact craters on Mars

Hundreds of impact craters on Mars contain diverse phyllosilicates, interpreted as excavation products of preexisting subsurface deposits following impact and crater formation. This has been used to argue that the conditions conducive to phyllosilicate synthesis, which require the presence of abundant and long-lasting liquid water, were only met early in the history of the planet, during the Noachian period (> 3.6 Gy ago), and that aqueous environments were widespread then. Here we test this hypothesis by examining the excavation process of hydrated minerals by impact events on Mars and analyzing the stability of phyllosilicates against the impact-induced thermal shock. To do so, we first compare the infrared spectra of thermally altered phyllosilicates with those of hydrated minerals known to occur in craters on Mars and then analyze the postshock temperatures reached during impact crater excavation. Our results show that phyllosilicates can resist the postshock temperatures almost everywhere in the crater, except under particular conditions in a central area in and near the point of impact. We conclude that most phyllosilicates detected inside impact craters on Mars are consistent with excavated preexisting sediments, supporting the hypothesis of a primeval and long-lasting global aqueous environment. When our analyses are applied to specific impact craters on Mars, we are able to identify both pre- and postimpact phyllosilicates, therefore extending the time of local phyllosilicate synthesis to post-Noachian times.
Cancer Biomarkers: Are We Ready for the Prime Time?

A biomarker is a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biologic processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention. In cancer, a biomarker refers to a substance or process that is indicative of the presence of cancer in the body. A biomarker might be either a molecule secreted by a tumor or it can be a specific response of the body to the presence of cancer. Genetic, epigenetic, proteomic, glycomic, and imaging biomarkers can be used for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and epidemiology. These markers can be assayed in non-invasively collected biofluids. However, few cancer biomarkers are highly sensitive and specific for cancer detection at the present time. Consequently, biomarkers are not yet ready for routine use due to challenges in their clinical validation for early disease detection, diagnosis and monitoring to improve long-term survival of patients.
Distributed management of energy-efficient lightpaths for computational grids

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are contributing to a large amount of the global electricity consumption. Due to tremendous increase in the bandwidth demands and utilisation of non-renewable energy resources Greenhouse Gas Emissions are increasing proportionally with the increasing demand. Despite their advantages in terms of computing performance, distributed applications such as computational grids are major factors that increase the traffic volume in the Internet. In this paper, we propose a distributed framework to ensure energy savings in the optical WDM backbone which transport the traffic between nodes and several computational grids based on anycast routing. According to the proposed framework, the backbone nodes go to sleep mode and resume active mode in a distributed manner with the objective of maximum energy savings in the backbone. Each node maintains two thresholds which are adaptively adjusted based on the network performance, and these thresholds play the key role in determining the decision of a node whether to sleep or resume. Numerical results confirm that the proposed framework can ensure significant energy savings in the network when compared to the conventional energy-unaware operation mode. We further show that the adoption of the proposed network framework does not degrade significantly the network performance in terms of average blocking probability and end-to-end delay.
Occupancy Grid Mapping in Urban Environments from a Moving On-Board Stereo-Vision System

Occupancy grid map is a popular tool for representing the surrounding environments of mobile robots/intelligent vehicles. Its applications can be dated back to the 1980s, when researchers utilized sonar or LiDAR to illustrate environments by occupancy grids. However, in the literature, research on vision-based occupancy grid mapping is scant. Furthermore, when moving in a real dynamic world, traditional occupancy grid mapping is required not only with the ability to detect occupied areas, but also with the capability to understand dynamic environments. The paper addresses this issue by presenting a stereo-vision-based framework to create a dynamic occupancy grid map, which is applied in an intelligent vehicle driving in an urban scenario. Besides representing the surroundings as occupancy grids, dynamic occupancy grid mapping could provide the motion information of the grids. The proposed framework consists of two components. The first is motion estimation for the moving vehicle itself and independent moving objects. The second is dynamic occupancy grid mapping, which is based on the estimated motion information and the dense disparity map. The main benefit of the proposed framework is the ability of mapping occupied areas and moving objects at the same time. This is very practical in real applications. The proposed method is evaluated using real data acquired by our intelligent vehicle platform “SeTCar” in urban environments.
How accurate are examiners’ holistic judgements of script quality?

This research investigated the accuracy (agreement with the original marking and grading) of examiners’ holistic judgements of the quality of examination scripts that were close together in overall mark. For a History and a Physics exam, examiners considered pairs of scripts (with marks removed) and made three types of judgement: (1) Absolute – which grade each script was worth; (2) Relative – which of the pair was better in terms of overall quality; (3) Confidence – how confident they were about judgements (1) and (2). In both subjects, relative judgements were more accurate than absolute judgements, and judgements rated as ‘very confident’ were more accurate than other judgements. In Physics, the further apart the two scripts in terms of overall mark the greater was the likelihood of a correct relative judgement, but in History this expected pattern was not found. Despite differences between the research setting and the use of expert judgement in grading the live examinations, these results suggest that the current procedures do not use expert judgement in the most effective way.
HotRestore: A Fast Restore System for Virtual Machine Cluster

A common way for virtual machine cluster (VMC) to tolerate failures is to create distributed snapshot and then restore from the snapshot upon failure. However, restoring the whole VMC suffers from long restore latency due to large snapshot files. Besides, different latencies would lead to discrepancies in start time among the virtual machines. The prior started virtual machine (VM) thus cannot communicate with the VM that is still restoring, consequently leading to the TCP backoff problem. In this paper, we present a novel restore approach called HotRestore, which restores the VMC rapidly without compromising performance. Firstly, HotRestore restores a single VM through an elastic working set which prefetches the working set in a scalable window size, thereby reducing the restore latency. Second, HotRestore constructs the communication-induced restore dependency graph, and then schedules the restore line to mitigate the TCP backoff problem. Lastly, a restore protocol is proposed to minimize the backoff duration. In addition, a prototype has been implemented on QEMU/ KVM. The experimental results demonstrate that HotRestore can restore the VMC within a few seconds whilst reducing the TCP backoff duration to merely dozens of milliseconds.
The Langer-Improved Wald Test for DIF Testing With Multiple Groups

Differential item functioning (DIF) occurs when the probability of responding in a particular category to an item differs for members of different groups who are matched on the construct being measured. The identification of DIF is important for valid measurement. This research evaluates an improved version of Lord’s χ2 Wald test for comparing item response model parameter estimates between two groups. The improved version uses better approaches for computation of the covariance matrix and equating the item parameters across groups. There are two equating algorithms implemented in IRTPro and flexMIRT software: Wald-1 (one-stage) and Wald-2 (two-stage), only one of which has been studied in simulations before. The present study evaluates for the first time the Wald-1 algorithm and Wald-1 and Wald-2 for three groups simultaneously. A comparison to two-group IRT-LR-DIF is included. Results indicate that Wald-1 performs very well and is recommended, whereas Type I error is extremely inflated for Wald-2. Performance of IRT-LR-DIF and Wald-1 was similar, even for three groups.
Recognizing Depression from Twitter Activity

In this paper, we extensively evaluate the effectiveness of using a user's social media activities for estimating degree of depression. As ground truth data, we use the results of a web-based questionnaire for measuring degree of depression of Twitter users. We extract several features from the activity histories of Twitter users. By leveraging these features, we construct models for estimating the presence of active depression. Through experiments, we show that (1) features obtained from user activities can be used to predict depression of users with an accuracy of 69%, (2) topics of tweets estimated with a topic model are useful features, (3) approximately two months of observation data are necessary for recognizing depression, and longer observation periods do not contribute to improving the accuracy of estimation for current depression; sometimes, longer periods worsen the accuracy.
A reverse priority approach to multi-task control of redundant robots

A novel method to handle multiple robotic tasks with priorities is presented. The occurrence of singularities, both of the kinematic and algorithmic type, may affect the correct hierarchy in task execution. Existing methods deal with singularities either by using damped least squares solutions or by relaxing the enforcement of secondary tasks. Damped pseudo-inversion mitigates undesired effects near singularities, at the cost of non-negligible task errors and deformation even of the highest priority task. When secondary tasks are not enforced, hierarchy is preserved but these tasks are not executed accurately even when this would be possible. In our approach, joint motion contributions are added following the reverse order of task priorities and working with suitable projection operators. Higher priority tasks are processed at the end, avoiding possible deformations caused by singularities occurring in lower priority tasks. The proposed Reverse Priority (RP) method allows executing at best all tasks while still preserving the desired hierarchy. The effectiveness of the RP method is shown through numerical simulations and with experiments on a 7-dof KUKA LWR.
Hippocampal perfusion predicts impending neurodegeneration in REM sleep behavior disorder

Objectives: Patients with idiopathic REM sleep behavior disorder (IRBD) are at risk for developing Parkinson disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). We aimed to identify functional brain imaging patterns predicting the emergence of PD and DLB in patients with IRBD, using SPECT with 99mTc–ethylene cysteinate dimer (ECD). Methods: Twenty patients with IRBD were scanned at baseline during wakefulness using 99mTc-ECD SPECT. After a follow-up of 3 years on average, patients were divided into 2 groups according to whether or not they developed defined neurodegenerative disease (PD, DLB). SPECT data analysis comparing regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) between groups assessed whether specific brain perfusion patterns were associated with subsequent clinical evolution. Regression analysis between rCBF and clinical markers of neurodegeneration (motor, color vision, olfaction) looked for neural structures involved in this process. Results: Of the 20 patients with IRBD recruited for this study, 10 converted to PD or DLB during the follow-up. rCBF at baseline was increased in the hippocampus of patients who would later convert compared with those who would not (p < 0.05 corrected). Hippocampal perfusion was correlated with motor and color vision scores across all IRBD patients. Conclusions: 99mTc-ECD SPECT identifies patients with IRBD at risk for conversion to other neurodegenerative disorders such as PD or DLB; disease progression in IRBD is predicted by abnormal perfusion in the hippocampus at baseline. Perfusion within this structure is correlated with clinical markers of neurodegeneration, further suggesting its involvement in the development of presumed synucleinopathies.
Second-Language Fluency and Person Perception in China and the United States

The hypothesis that fluency of non-native speakers would affect how they were perceived by native speakers was examined. Speech samples were first collected from non-native speakers of Chinese and from non-native speakers of English. Each language sample was then rated for fluency, after which 110 native Chinese speakers and 114 native American English speakers rated the non-native speakers of the respective languages on seven personality scales. A multivariate analysis showed that more fluent non-native speakers of either language were perceived more positively by native speaking raters than less fluent speakers. Ratings were influenced by the order in which raters heard speakers. This was manifested by a main effect for order among American raters, and an interaction effect with fluency for both groups. The fluency of initially heard speakers appeared to establish a standard against which subsequently heard speakers were judged. These findings were observed using personality descriptors which have similar connotative and denotative meaning across the two languages, allowing comparability of results. Although findings were very similar for both groups, increases in fluency affected ratings more uniformly for Chinese than for American raters. Implications for contextual influences on person perception and social cognition are discussed.
Srcasm overexpression in psoriasis‐insights into pathogenesis

Background: Psoriasis is a prevalent, chronic cutaneous disorder associated with a T‐cell lymphocytic infiltrate and altered keratinocyte growth. Some of the molecular features of enhanced keratinocyte growth include increased growth factor receptor activation leading to enhanced cellular tyrosine kinase activity. Receptor tyrosine kinases, including the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor, are important regulators of keratinocyte growth, and increased activity of this receptor has been detected in psoriasis. A recently discovered, novel regulator of Src tyrosine kinases, termed Src‐activating and signaling molecule (Srcasm), has been shown to modulate EGF signaling and promote differentiation in human keratinocytes. Given the properties of Srcasm, it would be of interest to characterize its expression in psoriasis. In this study, the levels of Srcasm mRNA and protein are characterized, and the relationship of these experimental observations to the psoriasis pathogenesis is discussed.
The Auxiliary Subunit KChIP2 Is an Essential Regulator of Homeostatic Excitability*

Background: The necessity for, or redundancy of, distinctive KChIP proteins is not known. Results: Deletion of KChIP2 leads to increased susceptibility to epilepsy and to a reduction in IA and increased excitability in pyramidal hippocampal neurons. Conclusion: KChIP2 is essential for homeostasis in hippocampal neurons. Significance: Mutations in K+ channel auxiliary subunits may be loci for epilepsy. The somatodendritic IA (A-type) K+ current underlies neuronal excitability, and loss of IA has been associated with the development of epilepsy. Whether any one of the four auxiliary potassium channel interacting proteins (KChIPs), KChIP1–KChIP4, in specific neuronal populations is critical for IA is not known. Here we show that KChIP2, which is abundantly expressed in hippocampal pyramidal cells, is essential for IA regulation in hippocampal neurons and that deletion of Kchip2 affects susceptibility to limbic seizures. The specific effects of Kchip2 deletion on IA recorded from isolated hippocampal pyramidal neurons were a reduction in amplitude and shift in the V½ for steady-state inactivation to hyperpolarized potentials when compared with WT neurons. Consistent with the relative loss of IA, hippocampal neurons from Kchip2−/− mice showed increased excitability. WT cultured neurons fired only occasional single action potentials, but the average spontaneous firing rate (spikes/s) was almost 10-fold greater in Kchip2−/− neurons. In slice preparations, spontaneous firing was detected in CA1 pyramidal neurons from Kchip2−/− mice but not from WT. Additionally, when seizures were induced by kindling, the number of stimulations required to evoke an initial class 4 or 5 seizure was decreased, and the average duration of electrographic seizures was longer in Kchip2−/− mice compared with WT controls. Together, these data demonstrate that the KChIP2 is essential for physiologic IA modulation and homeostatic stability and that there is a lack of functional redundancy among the different KChIPs in hippocampal neurons.
Multiprotein complex between the GPI-anchored CyRPA with PfRH5 and PfRipr is crucial for Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte invasion

Significance Plasmodium falciparum reticulocyte binding-like homologous protein 5 (PfRH5) is a leading blood-stage malaria vaccine candidate that elicits potent strain-transcending invasion inhibitory antibodies. However, it lacks both transmembrane domains and a GPI-anchor and is thus anchored to the merozoite surface through an unknown mechanism. We have demonstrated that PfRH5 and its known partner, PfRH5-interacting protein (PfRipr), associates with a conserved GPI-anchored protein, Cysteine-rich protective antigen (CyRPA), to form a complex on the merozoite surface. CyRPA was shown to be GPI-linked, refractory to knockout, and like PfRH5, elicited potent strain-transcending invasion inhibitory antibodies. This discovery elucidates the formation of a previously unidentified PfRH5/PfRipr/CyRPA protein complex on the merozoite surface, which facilitates the PfRH5–Basigin interaction and offers another highly conserved, potent target (CyRPA) for novel antimalarial strategies that could abrogate formation of this crucial complex. Erythrocyte invasion by Plasmodium falciparum merozoites is a highly intricate process in which Plasmodium falciparum reticulocyte binding-like homologous protein 5 (PfRH5) is an indispensable parasite ligand that binds with its erythrocyte receptor, Basigin. PfRH5 is a leading blood-stage vaccine candidate because it exhibits limited polymorphisms and elicits potent strain-transcending parasite neutralizing antibodies. However, the mechanism by which it is anchored to the merozoite surface remains unknown because both PfRH5 and the PfRH5-interacting protein (PfRipr) lack transmembrane domains and GPI anchors. Here we have identified a conserved GPI-linked parasite protein, Cysteine-rich protective antigen (CyRPA) as an interacting partner of PfRH5-PfRipr that tethers the PfRH5/PfRipr/CyRPA multiprotein complex on the merozoite surface. CyRPA was demonstrated to be GPI-linked, localized in the micronemes, and essential for erythrocyte invasion. Specific antibodies against the three proteins successfully detected the intact complex in the parasite and coimmunoprecipitated the three interacting partners. Importantly, full-length CyRPA antibodies displayed potent strain-transcending invasion inhibition, as observed for PfRH5. CyRPA does not bind with erythrocytes, suggesting that its parasite neutralizing antibodies likely block its critical interaction with PfRH5-PfRipr, leading to a blockade of erythrocyte invasion. Further, CyRPA and PfRH5 antibody combinations produced synergistic invasion inhibition, suggesting that simultaneous blockade of the PfRH5–Basigin and PfRH5/PfRipr/CyRPA interactions produced an enhanced inhibitory effect. Our discovery of the critical interactions between PfRH5, PfRipr, and the GPI-anchored CyRPA clearly defines the components of the essential PfRH5 adhesion complex for P. falciparum erythrocyte invasion and offers it as a previously unidentified potent target for antimalarial strategies that could abrogate formation of the crucial multiprotein complex.