Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficiency Resource Allocation for Device-to-Device Underlay Communication Systems: A Reverse Iterative Combinatorial Auction Based Approach

Peer-to-peer communication has been recently considered as a popular issue for local area services. An innovative resource allocation scheme is proposed to improve the performance of mobile peer-to-peer, i.e., device-to-device (D2D), communications as an underlay in the downlink (DL) cellular networks. To optimize the system sum rate over the resource sharing of both D2D and cellular modes, we introduce a reverse iterative combinatorial auction as the allocation mechanism. In the auction, all the spectrum resources are considered as a set of resource units, which as bidders compete to obtain business while the packages of the D2D pairs are auctioned off as goods in each auction round. We first formulate the valuation of each resource unit, as a basis of the proposed auction. And then a detailed non-monotonic descending price auction algorithm is explained depending on the utility function that accounts for the channel gain from D2D and the costs for the system. Further, we prove that the proposed auction-based scheme is cheat-proof, and converges in a finite number of iteration rounds. We explain non-monotonicity in the price update process and show lower complexity compared to a traditional combinatorial allocation. The simulation results demonstrate that the algorithm efficiently leads to a good performance on the system sum rate.
The relationship between school belonging, sibling aggression and bullying involvement: implications for students with and without disabilities

Bullying is grounded in the interactions between an individual and complex social–ecological systems. Therefore, bullying involvement is not just confined to the classroom or school. Recent research suggests that sibling aggression may be a predictor for peer-level aggression. These findings may be more relevant for students with disabilities because studies suggest that students with disabilities are disproportionately involved in the bullying dynamic. Therefore, this study explored the intersection between sibling aggression and school belonging on bullying, victimisation and fighting for 14,508 students, including 1183 students with disabilities and 13,325 students without disabilities in grades 6 through 12. As hypothesised, students with disabilities reported higher levels of victimisation, bullying and fighting. Additionally, high levels of school belonging partially buffered fighting and bullying behaviours for students with and without disabilities. These findings demonstrate the importance of establishing an inclusive and safe environment for school-aged youth.
Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

Although scholars in the field of entrepreneurship continually increase the general understanding of why, when and how some people and not others discover and exploit opportunities, questions about its nature nevertheless persist. In this study, we seek to complement recent research on the process of opportunity recognition by revisiting the role of entrepreneurial determinants of new venture creation in directing entrepreneurs’ attentions to recognise particular types of opportunities. We aim to explain why some entrepreneurs spot and act on distant opportunities but some do not. We do this by integrating the research about the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities with cognitive research. In an inductive multiple-case study, we illustrate three types of determinants of new venture creation (technology-driven, operation-driven, and user-driven determinants) and how these determinants influence the process of opportunity recognition, evaluation, and entrepreneurial decision making. Our findings show that entrepreneurial motivations affect decision making on the means of opportunity recognition and the types of opportunities that entrepreneurs spot and eventually exploit. Those opportunities may or may not have clear connections with their prior knowledge and experience. --------------------------Acknowledgement I would like to thank for the help and support of my co-author, Prof. Bart Clarysse (also my supervisor) with this paper.
Re-sampling for statistical timing analysis of real-time systems

Guaranteeing timing constraints is the main purpose of analyses for real-time systems. The satisfaction of these constraints may be verified with probabilistic methods (relying on statistical estimations of certain task parameters) offering both hard and soft guarantees. In this paper, we address the problem of sampling applied to the distributions of worst-case execution times. The pessimism of presented sampling techniques is then evaluated at the level of response times.
A cross-sectional study of male and female C57BL/6Nia mice suggests lifespan and healthspan are not necessarily correlated

Lifespan provides a discrete metric that is intuitively appealing and the assumption has been that healthspan is extended concomitant with lifespan. Medicine has been more successful at extending life than preserving health during aging. Interventions that extend lifespan in model organisms do not always result in a corresponding increase in healthspan, suggesting that lifespan and healthspan may be uncoupled. To understand how interventions that extend life affect healthspan, we need measures that distinguish between young and old animals. Here we measured age-related changes in healthspan in male and female C57BL/6JNia mice assessed at 4 distinct ages (4 months, 20 months, 28 months and 32 months). Correlations between health parameters and age varied. Some parameters show consistent patterns with age across studies and in both sexes, others changed in one sex only and others showed no significant differences in mice of different ages. Few correlations existed among health assays, suggesting that physiological function in domains we assessed change independently in aging mice. With one exception, health parameters were not significantly associated with an increased probability of premature death. Our results show the need for more robust measures of murine health and suggest a potential disconnect between health and lifespan in mice.
Analysis of Polarity Information in Medical Text

Knowing the polarity of clinical outcomes is important in answering questions posed by clinicians in patient treatment. We treat analysis of this information as a classification problem. Natural language processing and machine learning techniques are applied to detect four possibilities in medical text: no outcome, positive outcome, negative outcome, and neutral outcome. A supervised learning method is used to perform the classification at the sentence level. Five feature sets are constructed: unigrams, bigrams, change phrases, negations, and categories. The performance of different combinations of feature sets is compared. The results show that generalization using the category information in the domain knowledge base Unified Medical Language System is effective in the task. The effect of context information is significant. Combining linguistic features and domain knowledge leads to the highest accuracy.
Monitoring Flooding in Thailand Using Earth Observing One in a Sensorweb

The Earth Observing One (EO-1) mission has been a pathfinder in demonstrating autonomous operations paradigms. In 2010-2012 (and continuing), EO-1 has been supporting sensorweb operations to enable autonomous tracking of flooding in Thailand. In this approach, the Moderate Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) is used to perform broad-scale monitoring to track flooding at the regional level (500 m/pixel) and EO-1 is autonomously tasked in response to alerts to acquire higher resolution (30 m/pixel) Advanced Land Imager (ALI) data. This data is then automatically processed to derive products such as surface water extent and volumetric water estimates. These products are then automatically pushed to relevant authorities in Thailand for use in damage estimation, relief efforts, and damage mitigation. EO-1 has served as a testbed and pathfinder to this type of sensorweb operations. Beginning with EO-1, these techniques for monitoring are being extended to other space sensors (such as Radarsat-2, Landsat, Worldview-2, TRMM) and integrated with hydrological models, and integration with in-situ sensors.
"Bactericidal" property of seawater: death or debilitation?

Coliform colony-forming units in sewage-contaminated seawater were observed to decrease rapidly with time in water that was collected from St. John's Harbour, Newfoundland, and isolated in dialysis bags; this confirms observations made in warmer climates. Adenosine 5'-triphosphate biomass, however, did not decline, nor did the particle size distribution of radioactively labeled coliforms change. It was observed that the coliforms were not killed by seawater but were debilitated to the extent that they would not form colonies on selective media. However, they recovered and grew on nutrient agar made with seawater. The adenosine 5'-triphosphate content per cell apparently did not decline during debilitation.
Salience-based modeling of discourse context

The aim in this thesis is to establish a computational model of discourse context on the basis of discourse salience. Dealing with discourse context is an important requirement for various discourse processing systems (e.g., discussion support ones and conversation ones) because the meaning of language expressions essentially depends on the discourse context. The discourse context gradually changes as the discourse progress because the targets of the participants’ attention change with each utterance unit. Hence, we have to take into account the time-series change of discourse salience (i.e., the perceptual degree of the participants’ attention to the discourse entities). This thesis consists of the technical layer and the application layer. The technical layer deals with the salience-based model of discourse context. The application layer deals with information provision systems (e.g., those that support public involvement) by using the salience-based model of discourse context. The goal for the technical layer is to establish a computational model of discourse context that takes into account the time-series change of discourse salience. It can be broken down to the three techical issues: (1) formulate discourse salience, (2) formulate referential coherence, and (3) formulate con-
Running rescues a fear-based contextual discrimination deficit in aged mice

Normal aging and exercise exert extensive, often opposing, effects on the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus altering volume, synaptic function, and behaviors. The DG is especially important for behaviors requiring pattern separation—a cognitive process that enables animals to differentiate between highly similar contextual experiences. To determine how age and exercise modulate pattern separation in an aversive setting, young, aged, and aged mice provided with a running wheel were assayed on a fear-based contextual discrimination task. Aged mice showed a profound impairment in contextual discrimination compared to young animals. Voluntary exercise rescued this deficit to such an extent that behavioral pattern separation of aged-run mice was now similar to young animals. Running also resulted in a significant increase in the number of immature neurons with tertiary dendrites in aged mice. Despite this, neurogenesis levels in aged-run mice were still considerably lower than in young animals. Thus, mechanisms other than DG neurogenesis likely play significant roles in improving behavioral pattern separation elicited by exercise in aged animals.
Empirical evidence in support of a research-informed water conservation education program

Abstract Based on results from a 2008 research study of regional citizen knowledge concerning watershed issues, a water conservation education program was designed and implemented. Findings from the initial study demonstrated program success as evidenced by knowledge gain and willingness to “commit” to water saving behaviors in 94% of students. A limitation of the research was the absence of empirical findings verifying actual behavior change. Addressing this limitation, this article outlines a follow-up study which utilized water bills for the same time period of the original study as a means to measure whether student commitments may have resulted in actual water savings.
Social Networks of International Students in Japan: Perceived Social Support and Relationship Satisfaction

Perceived social support and relationship satisfaction of international students in Japan were examined. A total of 221 international students responded to a questionnaire composed of items that questioned the demographic characteristics of their network members, type of relationship, equity in relationship and satisfaction with relationship. Contact, relationship type and nationality of supporters were critical determinants of overall perceived social support, while relationship type, contact and equity were important for determining satisfaction in the relationship. On-campus relationships were important in academic support, while offcampus relationships played vital roles in both. This study revealed the importance of taking into consideration off-campus supporters in a study of international student adjustment.
Medical Image Registration Based on Feed-forward Neural Networks and Directional Discrete Cosine Transform

Registration is used to align two or more pictures taken, for example, at different times, from different sensors, or from different viewpoints. All large systems which evaluate images require the registration of images, which considered as an intermediate step. Examples of systems where image registration is a significant component include change detection using multiple images acquired at different times, fusion of image data from multiple sensor types, environmental monitoring, image mosaicing, weather forecasting, creating super resolution images, integrating information into Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and medical image analysis. In this research, the concentration is on registration of medical images. Analysis of multi-temporal medical images requires proper geometric alignment of the image to compare corresponding regions in each image volume. The proposed image registration technique consists of two steps. In the first step the feature extraction method is performed by using Directional Discrete Cosine Transform (DDCT). Finally the feed forward neural networks based image registration technique is performed . Comparison study in registration process between Directional Discrete Cosine Transform (DDCT) and Traditional Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is performed. Experiments have shown that the proposed method provides more accurate results for registration process when using DDCT than traditional DCT.
Modular multilevel parallel converter based split battery system (M2B) for stationary storage applications

A novel battery energy storage system (BESS) based on an enhanced modular multilevel converter (M2C) with the ability to switch its modules in parallel is being presented. Compared to a full-bridge M2C equipped with batteries as energy storage elements on its submodules, the losses are reduced by 20%. The raise in efficiency is thoroughly explained as well as its reliability. Its high efficiency, its fail-safety and its fast response time to load jumps makes the M2B especially suitable for peak shaving and other stationary storage applications which are illustrated by current use cases.
Life-course influences on health in British adults: effects of socio-economic position in childhood and adulthood.

BACKGROUND Little evidence exists on the role of socio-economic position (SEP) in early life on adult disease other than for cardiovascular mortality; data is often retrospective. We assess whether childhood SEP influences disease risk in mid-life, separately from the effect of adult position, and establish how associations vary across multiple measures of disease risk. METHODS Prospective follow-up to adulthood of all born in England, Scotland and Wales during 1 week in 1958, and with medical data at age 45 years (n = 9377). Outcomes include: blood pressure, body mass index (BMI), glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c), total and high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, triglycerides, fibrinogen, total immunoglobulin E (IgE), one-second forced expiratory volume (FEV1), hearing threshold (4 kHz), visual impairment, symptoms of depression and anxiety, chronic widespread pain. RESULTS Social class in childhood was associated with blood pressure, BMI, HbA1c, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, fibrinogen, FEV1, hearing threshold, depressive symptoms and chronic widespread pain, with a general trend of deteriorating health from class I to V. Adult social class was also associated with these measures. Mutually adjusted analyses of child and adult social class suggest that both contribute to disease risk in mid-life: in general, associations for childhood class were as strong as for adult class. Individuals with a manual class at both time-points tended to have the greatest health deficits in adulthood. CONCLUSIONS Adverse SEP in childhood is associated with a poorer health profile in mid-adulthood, independently of adult social position, and across diverse measures of disease risk and physical and mental functioning.
Multimechanistic Monoclonal Antibodies (MAbs) Targeting Staphylococcus aureus Alpha-Toxin and Clumping Factor A: Activity and Efficacy Comparisons of a MAb Combination and an Engineered Bispecific Antibody Approach

ABSTRACT Secreted alpha-toxin and surface-localized clumping factor A (ClfA) are key virulence determinants in Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections. We previously demonstrated that prophylaxis with a multimechanistic monoclonal antibody (MAb) combination against alpha-toxin (MEDI4893*) and ClfA (11H10) provided greater strain coverage and improved efficacy in an S. aureus lethal bacteremia model. Subsequently, 11H10 was found to exhibit reduced affinity and impaired inhibition of fibrinogen binding to ClfA002 expressed by members of a predominant hospital-associated methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) clone, ST5. Consequently, we identified another anti-ClfA MAb (SAR114) from human tonsillar B cells with >100-fold increased affinity for three prominent ClfA variants, including ClfA002, and potent inhibition of bacterial agglutination by 112 diverse clinical isolates. We next constructed bispecific Abs (BiSAbs) comprised of 11H10 or SAR114 as IgG scaffolds and grafted anti-alpha-toxin (MEDI4893*) single-chain variable fragment to the amino or carboxy terminus of the anti-ClfA heavy chains. Although the BiSAbs exhibited in vitro potencies similar to those of the parental MAbs, only 11H10-BiSAb, but not SAR114-BiSAb, showed protective activity in murine infection models comparable to the respective MAb combination. In vivo activity with SAR114-BiSAb was observed in infection models with S. aureus lacking ClfA. Our data suggest that high-affinity binding to ClfA sequesters the SAR114-BiSAb to the bacterial surface, thereby reducing both alpha-toxin neutralization and protection in vivo. These results indicate that a MAb combination targeting ClfA and alpha-toxin is more promising for future development than the corresponding BiSAb.
Routing Aware Switch Hardware Customization for Networks on Chips

Networks on chip (NoC) has been proposed as a scalable and reusable solution for interconnecting the evergrowing number of processor/memory cores on a single silicon die. As the hardware complexity of a NoC is significant, methods for designing a NoC with low hardware overhead, matching the application requirements are essential. In this work, we present a method for reducing the hardware complexity of the NoC by automatically configuring the architecture of the NoC switches to suit the application traffic characteristics. The crossbar matrix and the arbiters of each switch in the NoC design are customized to support the traffic flows utilizing that switch. This application-specific switch customization is integrated with an existing design flow, which automates NoC topology synthesis, mapping, RTL code and physical layout generation. Several experimental studies on NoC benchmark designs are carried out, which show that the proposed switch customization technique leads to large reduction in the NoC switch area (28% on average) and power consumption (21% on average). Moreover, the critical paths of the switches reduce significantly, thereby leading to a significant speed-up of the NoC design
A Type II Protein Secretory Pathway Required for Levansucrase Secretion by Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus

ABSTRACT The endophytic diazotroph Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus secretes a constitutively expressed levansucrase (LsdA, EC 2.4.1.10) to utilize plant sucrose. LsdA, unlike other extracellular levansucrases from gram-negative bacteria, is transported to the periplasm by a signal-peptide-dependent pathway. We identified an unusually organized gene cluster encoding at least the components LsdG, -O, -E, -F, -H, -I, -J, -L, -M, -N, and -D of a type II secretory system required for LsdA translocation across the outer membrane. Another open reading frame, designated lsdX, is located between the operon promoter and lsdG, but it was not identified in BLASTX searches of the DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank databases. The lsdX, -G, and -O genes were isolated from a cosmid library of strain SRT4 by complementation of an ethyl methanesulfonate mutant unable to transport LsdA across the outer membrane. The downstream genes lsdE, -F, -H, -I, -J, -L, -M, -N, and -D were isolated through chromosomal walking. The high G+C content (64 to 74%) and the codon usage of the genes identified are consistent with the G+C content and codon usage of the standard G. diazotrophicus structural gene. Sequence analysis of the gene cluster indicated that a polycistronic transcript is synthesized. Targeted disruption of lsdG, lsdO, or lsdF blocked LsdA secretion, and the bacterium failed to grow on sucrose. Replacement of Cys162 by Gly at the C terminus of the pseudopilin LsdG abolished the protein functionality, suggesting that there is a relationship with type IV pilins. Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis revealed conservation of the type II secretion operon downstream of the levansucrase-levanase (lsdA-lsdB) locus in 14 G. diazotrophicus strains representing 11 genotypes recovered from four different host plants in diverse geographical regions. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a type II pathway for protein secretion in the Acetobacteraceae.
An adaptive decision feedback equalizer antenna array for multiuser CDMA wireless communications

In this paper we consider the use of an array of antennas to enhance reception of multiple signals in a multipath-fading, asynchronous environment. A CDMA system is assumed where the users are not jointly synchronized. An adaptive array is used to provide spatial selectivity between users while combining desired-user energy from different propagation paths. Adaptation is based on a decision feedback equalizer approach, so that neither reference signals nor array calibration is required for operation. Performance of this receiver is analyzed and simulations presented to validate the analysis.