Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Load-aware hand-offs in software defined wireless LANs

In Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), providing seamless mobility and balancing load among Access Points (APs) are challenging issues due to simple signal strength based association and hand-off mechanisms employed at wireless clients. Extensions to Software Defined Networking (SDN) framework for wireless networks could help to address theses issues in an efficient and cost-effective manner with a central view of WLAN at the SDN controller. In this work, we propose a novel load-aware hand-off algorithm for SDN based WLAN systems which considers traffic load of APs in addition to received signal strength at wireless clients to solve load imbalance among APs and offer seamless mobility. We implemented the proposed algorithm on a small-scale prototype testbed and obtained improved network throughput for mobile clients as well as static clients compared to legacy hand-off algorithms used in WLANs.
MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE DEPRESSES THE FUNCTION OF FEMALE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM IN RAT BY PROMOTING OXIDATIVE STRESS INDUCED CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF UTERUS

The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of MSG on the function of the uterus. We have observed significant degenerative changes in the endometrial and myometrial layers of the uterus in MSG exposed rats in a dose dependent manner compared to wall structure of the uterus of control rats. To elucidate the causes of MSG induced necrosis of the uterine wall structure, the activities of the cellular oxidative stress indices in MSG exposed uterus have been studied. We have found significant decrease in the activities of SOD, CAT, GR. and GPx, and significant increase in the activity of GST in MSG exposed uterine tissue homogenate. Besides, the level of MDA in MSG exposed uterine tissue homogenate has been increased significantly. The results suggest that the degeneration of MSG induced uterine tissue might be due to enhanced oxidative stress and increased lipid peroxidation in uterine tissue cells. In conclusion, MSG depresses the function of female reproductive system in rats probably by promoting oxidative stress induced changes in the wall structure of uterus.
A descriptive study of racial identity amongst University of Natal, Durban students in a post-apartheid South Africa.

It has almost been a decade since the inception of a 'New South Africa', without apartheid, which separated South Africans and classified them hierarchically according to their 'race'. The 'eradication' of apartheid has meant that South Africans have had to re-look at issues around racial identity without a dominating apartheid ideology. The purpose of the research was to describe and to look at some of the features and dynamics concerning racial identity that are prevalent in a post-apartheid South Africa. This was done by exploring the nature and type of interactions University of Natal Durban (UNO) students (doing a Human Behaviour and the Environment module) had with persons not from their own racial group, prior to coming to UNO as well as at UNO. The possible challenges, threats and opportunities students felt were afforded them because of their racial group were also explored. Literature concerning issues of racial identification in South Africa and other parts of the world was also examined. A descriptive research design, using a triangulated research methodology incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods was used in the study. A non-probability sampling method with reliance on 83 available law, community development, nursing and psychology students representing the four racial classifications in South Africa, namely black, white, coloured and Indian was used. Data were collected through observations as well as through a self administered structured questionnaire. The findings of the research suggest that issues related to racial identification in a post-apartheid South Africa, for black, white, coloured and Indian students is in turmoil and requires reconstruction. The findings further indicated that questions about affirmative action and the future of non-black South Africans in South Africa is believed to be uncertain and negative. The issue of poverty and the internalised oppression and inferiority of black students was also identified to be problematic.
Fast Traffic Sign Recognition with a Rotation Invariant Binary Pattern Based Feature

Robust and fast traffic sign recognition is very important but difficult for safe driving assistance systems. This study addresses fast and robust traffic sign recognition to enhance driving safety. The proposed method includes three stages. First, a typical Hough transformation is adopted to implement coarse-grained location of the candidate regions of traffic signs. Second, a RIBP (Rotation Invariant Binary Pattern) based feature in the affine and Gaussian space is proposed to reduce the time of traffic sign detection and achieve robust traffic sign detection in terms of scale, rotation, and illumination. Third, the techniques of ANN (Artificial Neutral Network) based feature dimension reduction and classification are designed to reduce the traffic sign recognition time. Compared with the current work, the experimental results in the public datasets show that this work achieves robustness in traffic sign recognition with comparable recognition accuracy and faster processing speed, including training speed and recognition speed.
Map-Making Informing a Framework for Effective Theory-Building

As academic scholars in an applied field our central mission is to develop theory that both contributes knowledge to the academic discipline and applies that knowledge to practice. However, our efforts in this regard are being impacted by communication deficits that in turn limit the effectiveness of our theories. The goal of this paper is twofold: a diagnostic one, which reviews the causes of the communication deficits but primarily a therapeutic one whereby we propose a course of treatment for content and presentation issues. While the 'ultimate criterion' for determining the effectiveness of theory is market acceptance this does not prevent us in this paper from putting forward principles, a model, and a method to assist the IS scholar in building effective theory. These tools are derived after considered reflection on the ancient craft and science of map-making. We finish by asking ourselves and our readers whether we need a design science of theory-building.
Remote Operation System Detection Base on Machine Learning

A machine learning method for remote operation system recognition through their detection signatures with support vector machine (SNM) is proposed. A vector space model of Nmap fingerprint database and techniques for translating the host responses to SVM input vectors are also suggested. Experimental result on identification of signatures in the fingerprint database of Nmap 4.90RC1 but not known for Nmap 4.76 show that our method is effective in the discovery of new signatures not included in current fingerprint database.
Performance analysis of circular patch antenna for breast cancer detection

Now a day wireless communication systems has becoming the master for the world. The reason behind is the major component called Antenna. Even though peoples have sophisticated life, they are suffered by several diseases. Especially women are suffered by breast cancer. In earlier days X-ray mammography technique has been applied to detect the breast cancer. But the major drawback in this technique is the ionizing radiation level from X-rays which leads to cell death, cell mutation and fetal damage within the body. So the Microwave Breast Imaging (MBI) technique has been implemented to get the information about breast tissues. It uses low power when compared to X-ray technique. But this technique also has the impediments which gets high reflection from the breast tissue. Hence to overcome this problem, a circular patch antenna has been designed using flexible FR-4 substrate with the radius of 14.5 mm. The proposed antenna is also gets combined with the skin model to get the cancer level within the body. Both the models get designed in Ansoft HFSS software over an operating frequency range of 2.5GHz. The results of the proposed antenna gets analyzed such as return loss, VSWR, gain, directivity which is achieved of about -21dB, 1.2, 4.404dB, 4.48dB. The current density parameter plays a wide role here since it only tells about the cancer level. Higher the current density parameter increases the visibility of the cancer. Here it is achieved of about 127 A/m2. For this proposed antenna a miniaturization technique called Defected Ground Structure has been applied in the ground to improve the performance of the system.
Getting on Board the Enterprise Service Bus

One of the biggest challenges facing businesses today is getting their diverse applications, often built on different platforms, to work together when necessary. To accomplish this, companies must implement effective application integration flexibly, quickly, and easily. Businesses initially turned to manual integration and then enterprise application integration (EAI) but subsequently have focused on service-oriented architectures. To leverage SOAs' benefits effectively, companies are beginning to use an approach known as the enterprise service bus, offered by a growing number of large and small vendors. ESB is the middleware glue that holds an SOA together and enables communication between Web-based enterprise applications. However, ESB also faces challenges, such as implementation costs and complex migration and management
Particle-associated retroviral RNA and tandem RGH/HERV-W copies on human chromosome 7q: possible components of a 'chain-reaction' triggered by infectious agents in multiple sclerosis?

Different groups have observed retrovirus particle (RVP) production in cell cultures from patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). This in vitro production appeared relatively specific for MS versus healthy controls, but was likely to be enhanced or activated by infectious triggers such as Herpesviruses (e.g. HSV, EBV). Independent molecular analysis of retroviral RNA associated with RVP revealed two different genetic families of endogenous retroviral elements (HERV): MSRV/HERV-W and RGH/HERV-H. Interestingly, these sequences were detected by mutually exclusive primers in RT - PCR amplifications. Surprisingly, these two HERV families both contain an ancestral proviral copy inserted in chromosome 7q21-22 region at about 1 kb of distance of each other. Another HERV-W proviral sequence is located within a T-cell alpha-delta receptor (TCR) gene in chromosome 14q11.2 region. Interestingly, these two regions correspond to genetic loci previously identified as potentially associated with 'multigenic' susceptibility to MS and TCR alpha chain genetic determinants have been reported to be statistically associated with MS. A plausible role for infectious agents triggering a co-activation of the chromosome 7q HERV tandem (replicative retrovirus and/or other virus and/or intracellular bacteria) and, eventually, other HERV copies, is discussed. The role of particular HERV polymorphism and the production of pathogenic molecules (gliotoxin and superantigen) possibly associated with retroviral expression are also evoked. An integrative concept of pathogenic 'chain-reaction' in MS involving several step-specific pathogenic 'agents' and 'products' somewhat interacting with particular genetic elements would federate most partial data obtained on MS, including retroviral expression.
Active magnetic bearing systems with standard drive technology for large turbo machines

In the Oil & Gas industry, the primary bearing is an oil sleeve bearing. Around two decades ago, active magnetic bearings (AMB) were introduced into the market but they never gained a relevant market share in large turbo machinery. This paper discusses how standard drive technology can be successfully adapted to control AMB systems. Furthermore, results of prototype testing with large turbo machinery and the advantages regarding commissioning and service are presented. The benefits of using standard drive technology for commissioning and service are discussed and results of a prototype test are presented.
Channel selection methods for Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer radiances

Advanced infrared sounders will provide thousands of radiance data at every observation location. The number of individual pieces of information is not usable in an operational numerical weather‐prediction context, and we have investigated the possibilities of choosing an ‘optimal’ subset of data. These issues have been addressed in the context of optimal linear estimation theory, using simulated Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer data. Several methods have been tried to select a set of the most useful channels for each individual atmospheric profile. These are two methods based on the data resolution matrix, one method based on the Jacobian matrix, and one iterative method selecting sequentially the channels with largest information content. The Jacobian method and the iterative method were found to be the most suitable for the problem. The iterative method was demonstrated to always produce the best results, but at a larger cost than the Jacobian method. To test the robustness of the iterative method, a variant has been tried. It consists in building a mean channel selection aimed at optimizing the results over the whole database, and then applying to each profile this ‘constant’ selection. Results show that this ‘constant’ iterative method is very promising, with results of intermediate quality between the ones obtained for the optimal iterative method and the Jacobian method. The practical advantage of this method for operational purposes is that the same set of channels can be used for various atmospheric profiles. Copyright © 2002 Royal Meteorological Society.
A Comparative Study of Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithm for Solving the Travelling Salesman Problem

Metaheuristic algorithms have proved to be good solvers for the traveling salesman problem (TSP). All metaheuristics usually encounter problems on which they perform poorly so the programmer must gain experience on which optimizers work well in different classes of problems. However due to the unique functionality of each type of meta-heuristic, comparison of metaheuristics is in many ways more difficult than other algorithmic comparisons. In this paper, solution to the traveling salesman problem was implemented using genetic algorithm and simulated annealing. These algorithms were compared based on performance and results using several benchmarks. It was observed that Simulated Annealing runs faster than Genetic Algorithm and runtime of Genetic Algorithm increases exponentially with number of cities. However, in terms of solution quality Genetic Algorithm is better than Simulated Annealing.
Model checking for survivability!

Business and social life have become increasingly dependent on large-scale communication and information systems. A partial or complete breakdown as a consequence of natural disasters or purposeful attacks might have severe impacts. Survivability refers to the ability of a system to recover from such disaster circumstances. Evaluating survivability should therefore be an important part of communication system design. In this paper we take a model checking approach toward assessing survivability. We use the logic CSL to phrase survivability in a precise manner. The system operation is modelled through a labelled CTMC. Model checking algorithms can then decide automatically whether the system is survivable. We illustrate our method by evaluating the survivability of the Google file system using stochastic Petri nets.
Linking Resource Usage Anomalies with System Failures from Cluster Log Data

Bursts of abnormally high use of resources are thought to be an indirect cause of failures in large cluster systems, but little work has systematically investigated the role of high resource usage on system failures, largely due to the lack of a comprehensive resource monitoring tool which resolves resource use by job and node. The recently developed TACC_Stats resource use monitor provides the required resource use data. This paper presents the ANCOR diagnostics system that applies TACC_Stats data to identify resource use anomalies and applies log analysis to link resource use anomalies with system failures. Application of ANCOR to first identify multiple sources of resource anomalies on the Ranger supercomputer, then correlate them with failures recorded in the message logs and diagnosing the cause of the failures, has identified four new causes of compute node soft lockups. ANCOR can be adapted to any system that uses a resource use monitor which resolves resource use by job.
A Study on Proximity-based Hand Input for One-handed Mobile Interaction

On-body user interfaces utilize the human's skin for both sensing input and displaying graphical output. In this paper, we present how the degree of freedom offered by the elbow joint, i.e., flexion and extension, can be leveraged to extend the input space of projective user interfaces. The user can move his hand towards or away from himself to browse through a multi-layer information space. We conducted a controlled experiment to investigate how accurately and efficiently users can interact in the space. The results revealed that the accuracy and efficiency of proximity-based interactions mainly depend on the traveling distance to the target layer while neither the hand side nor the direction of interaction have a significant influence. Based on our findings, we propose guidelines for designing on-body user interfaces.
Modeling and simulation of gas scheduling system in iron and steel enterprises

Considering of the practical production status of gas scheduling in iron and steel enterprises, a dynamic model of gas system is got, and a static model which can be used for further optimization analysis also derived. In the end, combined with the executive process, a simulation system about gas scheduling is established, and using this system, the practicability of this method is demonstrated.
Multi-output radial basis function interpolation of saturated steam table for full scope simulator design

Full scope simulators in nuclear or fossil power plants rely heavily on steam tables since most of their equipment operate in the saturation pressure/temperature region. The process of simulating the behavior of such plants involves trade-off between simulation cycle time and the available memory space. It is difficult to store entire steam table in the memory as they may adversely affect the computation and space complexity. This paper presents a novel approach of interpolating the steam table by radial basis function network (RBFN) that overcomes the shortcomings of storing the entire table. The paper uses multi-output RBFN architecture. The paper further shows applicability of forward bulk orthogonal least squares (OLS) algorithm for optimum center selection of RBFN. Various radial basis functions are tested for the regression purpose and their corresponding mean square errors are compared with existing ANSI standard.
Selective Adaptation in Networks of Heterogeneous Populations: Model, Simulation, and Experiment

Biological systems often change their responsiveness when subject to persistent stimulation, a phenomenon termed adaptation. In neural systems, this process is often selective, allowing the system to adapt to one stimulus while preserving its sensitivity to another. In some studies, it has been shown that adaptation to a frequent stimulus increases the system's sensitivity to rare stimuli. These phenomena were explained in previous work as a result of complex interactions between the various subpopulations of the network. A formal description and analysis of neuronal systems, however, is hindered by the network's heterogeneity and by the multitude of processes taking place at different time-scales. Viewing neural networks as populations of interacting elements, we develop a framework that facilitates a formal analysis of complex, structured, heterogeneous networks. The formulation developed is based on an analysis of the availability of activity dependent resources, and their effects on network responsiveness. This approach offers a simple mechanistic explanation for selective adaptation, and leads to several predictions that were corroborated in both computer simulations and in cultures of cortical neurons developing in vitro. The framework is sufficiently general to apply to different biological systems, and was demonstrated in two different cases.
Experimental evaluation and mathematical modeling of the pharmacokinetics of boronophenylalanine-fructose (BPA-f) in murine tumor models

With the completion of the fission converter epithermal neutron beam (FCB) at MIT, which has a higher epithermal neutron flux (1.3 x 1010 neutrons/cm 2sec) than the current m-67 beam, future BNCT irradiations conducted by the Harvard-MIT BNCT program could be reduced from approximately 3 hours per beam to just a few minutes. Therefore, it is essential to determine the optimal time after BPA administration to deliver the neutron irradiation, thereby maximizing the dose to tumor and minimizing the dose to the normal tissues. The major goal of this thesis was to gain detailed knowledge of the temporal and spatial distribution of ' 0B in normal tissues and tumors following intravenous BPA-fructose administration, and to use a three-compartment model to study the pharmacokinetics of BPA-f in these tissues. This entailed the investigation of the time-dependent biodistribution of BPA-f in normal brain and in two murine tumor models, GL261 glioma and intracranial B 16 melanoma. From the normal brain study it was shown that there were slight variations in the spatial BPA-f biodistribution in normal brain tissues. The cerebellum and the intracranial nerves consistently showed higher 1 B concentrations than the right cerebrum, the left cerebrum, and the brainstem throughout the whole time course studied. This result, if verified, has important treatment planning implications. It was observed that for GL261 glioma tumor, both the tumor to normal brain ratio and the tumor to blood ratio varied with time, and the best time for neutron irradiation was probably around 60 minutes after the bolus injection. For the B16 intracranial melanoma murine model, the neutron irradiation could be performed during the time frame between 60 and 80 minutes after the bolus injection. The three-compartment pharmacokinetic model parameters (ki through k4) for GL261 tumor were 0.14 ml/g/min, 0.12 min', 0.08 min-1 , and 0.036 min-', respectively, and
Die Zinslast des Bundes in der Schuldenkrise: Wie lukrativ ist der „sichere Hafen“?

Abstract In the aftermath of the Great Recession and during the debt crisis in the euro area yields on German federal bonds have been exceptionally low. This analysis tries to calculate the profits that the federal government makes due to these low yields. The interest payments that are due to emissions of bonds and bills made between 2009 and 2012 are approximated and compared to several benchmark scenarios. Compared to the mean yields of the years 1999-2008 profits of the federal government are quite high (68 billion euros). Application of yield curve models show that most of these profits are due to the macroeconomic conditions in the euro area and to low central bank rates. To a much smaller extend these profits are due to flight into safety, which, however, has become more relevant recently.