Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Coupling-Based Model for Wideband MIMO Channel

In this paper, a novel analytical model structure for wideband multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel is presented. It is based on the power coupling between direction of departure (DoD), direction of arrival (DoA) and delay domain. As its realizations, firstly the singular value decomposition (SVD) based model is introduced and the virtual presentation model is extended to the wideband situation. Then a hybrid model is given on basis of the power coupling between the transmit eigenmodes, receive eigenmodes and frequency steering vectors. The hybrid model can provide the tradeoff between the complexity and accuracy. At last, the novel coupling-based model structure is summarized. With a 3.52 GHz wideband MIMO sounder, measurements are carried out in different indoor scenarios. Monte Carlo simulations are used to generate the channel realizations according to these proposed wideband models. Good agreements are achieved between the discussed models and measured data.
Triple-Gene Therapy for Stroke: A Proof-of-Concept in Vivo Study in Rats

Natural brain repair after stroke is extremely limited, and current therapeutic options are even more scarce with no clinical break-through in sight. Despite restricted regeneration in the central nervous system, we have previously proved that human umbilical cord blood mono-nuclear cells (UCB-MC) transduced with adenoviral vectors carrying genes encoding vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), and neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) successfully rescued neurons in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal cord injury. This proof-of-principle project was aimed at evaluating the beneficial effects of the same triple-gene approach in stroke. Rats subjected to distal occlusion of the middle cerebral artery were treated intrathecally with a combination of these genes either directly or using our cell-based (UCB-MC) approach. Various techniques and markers were employed to evaluate brain injury and subsequent recovery after treatment. Brain repair was most prominent when therapeutic genes were delivered via adenoviral vector- or UCB-MC-mediated approach. Remodeling of brain cortex in the stroke area was confirmed by reduction of infarct volume and attenuated neural cell death, depletion of astrocytes and microglial cells, and increase in the number of oligodendroglial cells and synaptic proteins expression. These results imply that intrathecal injection of genetically engineered UCB-MC over-expressing therapeutic molecules (VEGF, GDNF, and NCAM) following cerebral blood vessel occlusion might represent a novel avenue for future research into treating stroke.
Vehicular Sensing Networks in a Smart City: Principles, Technologies and Applications

Given the escalating population across the globe, it has become paramount to construct smart cities, aiming for improving the management of urban flows relying on efficient information and communication technologies (ICT). Vehicular sensing networks (VSNs) play a critical role in maintaining the efficient operation of smart cities. Naturally, there are numerous challenges to be solved before the wide-spread introduction of VSNs, including the conception of an accurate topological analysis method and a beneficial cooperation mechanism during the process of city-wide information sharing. Hence, in this article, we construct a VSN-aided smart city model and appraise a range of intelligent applications in terms of both public services and urban flow management. Then, the information source selection algorithm of a complex network and a reinforcement learning based city information sharing mechanism are considered, complemented by a range of open challenges.
Novel Somatostatin Receptor Ligands Therapies for Acromegaly

Surgery is considered the treatment of choice in acromegaly, but patients with persistent disease after surgery or in whom surgery cannot be considered require medical therapy. Somatostatin receptor ligands (SRLs) octreotide (OCT), lanreotide, and the more recently approved pasireotide, characterized by a broader receptor ligand binding profile, are considered the mainstay in the medical management of acromegaly. However, in the attempt to offer a more efficacious and better tolerated medical approach, recent research has been aimed to override some limitations related to the use of currently approved drugs and novel SRLs therapies, with potential attractive features, have been proposed. These include both new formulation of older molecules and new molecules. Novel OCT formulations are aimed in particular to improve patients’ compliance and to reduce injection discomfort. They include an investigational ready-to-use subcutaneous depot OCT formulation (CAM2029), delivered via prefilled syringes and oral OCT that uses a “transient permeability enhancer” technology, which allows for OCT oral absorption. Another new delivery system is a long-lasting OCT implant (VP-003), which provide stable doses of OCT throughout a period of several months. Finally, a new SRL DG3173 (somatoprim) seems to be more selective for GH secretion, suggesting possible advantages in the presence of hyperglycemia or diabetes. How much these innovations will actually be beneficial to acromegaly patients in real clinical practice remains to be seen.
Linear Repairing Codes and Side-Channel Attacks

To strengthen the resistance of countermeasures based on secret sharing,several works have suggested to use the scheme introduced by Shamir in 1978, which proposes to use the evaluation of a random d-degree polynomial into n ≥ d + 1 public points to share the sensitive data. Applying the same principles used against the classical Boolean sharing, all these works have assumed that the most efficient attack strategy was to exploit the minimum number of shares required to rebuild the sensitive value; which is d + 1 if the reconstruction is made with Lagrange’s interpolation. In this paper, we highlight first an important difference between Boolean and Shamir’s sharings which implies that, for some signal-to-noise ratio, it is more advantageous for the adversary to observe strictly more than d + 1 shares. We argue that this difference is related to the existence of so-called linear exact repairing codes, which themselves come with reconstruction formulae that need (much) less information (counted in bits) than Lagrange’s interpolation. In particular, this result implies that the choice of the public points in Shamir’s sharing has an impact on the countermeasure strength, which confirms previous observations made by Wang et al. at CARDIS 2016 for the so-called inner product sharing which is a generalization of Shamir’s scheme. As another contribution, we exhibit a positive impact of the existence of linear exact repairing schemes; we indeed propose to use them to improve the state-of-the-art multiplication algorithms dedicated to Shamir’s sharing. We argue that the improvement can be effective when the multiplication operation in the sub-fields is at least two times smaller than that of the base field.
Mesothelin/mucin 16 signaling in activated portal fibroblasts regulates cholestatic liver fibrosis

Cholestatic liver fibrosis is caused by obstruction of the biliary tract and is associated with early activation of portal fibroblasts (PFs) that express Thy-1, fibulin 2, and the recently identified marker mesothelin (MSLN). Here, we have demonstrated that activated PFs (aPFs) and myofibroblasts play a critical role in the pathogenesis of liver fibrosis induced by bile duct ligation (BDL). Conditional ablation of MSLN+ aPFs in BDL-injured mice attenuated liver fibrosis by approximately 50%. Similar results were observed in MSLN-deficient mice (Msln–/– mice) or mice deficient in the MSLN ligand mucin 16 (Muc16–/– mice). In vitro analysis revealed that MSLN regulates TGF-&bgr;1–inducible activation of WT PFs by disrupting the formation of an inhibitory Thy-1–TGF&bgr;RI complex. MSLN also facilitated the FGF-mediated proliferation of WT aPFs. Therapeutic administration of anti-MSLN–blocking Abs attenuated BDL-induced fibrosis in WT mice. Liver specimens from patients with cholestatic liver fibrosis had increased numbers of MSLN+ aPFs/myofibroblasts, suggesting that MSLN may be a potential target for antifibrotic therapy.
Revised Analysis of Design Options and Minimum Subthreshold Swing in Piezoelectric FinFETs

The theoretical limit of sub-threshold swing (<italic>SS</italic>) in the n-type piezoelectric FinFET (Piezo-FinFET) is thoroughly investigated. Gate voltage modulated strain, conduction band edge shift, and the <italic>SS</italic> are evaluated utilizing physics-based modeling and numerical simulation, indicating a strong dependence of <italic>SS</italic> on the fin width, crystalline orientation, and physical properties of the piezo-material used in the gate stack. For [001] Si and [111] Ge Piezo-FinFETs with 5-nm fin width and 3-nm PZT-5H thickness, <italic>SS</italic> values down to 40 mV/decade are achievable after design optimizations. A figure of merit, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}_{\text{cr}} {d}_{z3}/{S}_{\text{pie}, 33}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, is proposed for the piezo-materials in terms of the critical electric field (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}_\text{cr}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), the piezoelectric strain constant (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${d}_{z3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), and the elastic compliance constant (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${S}_{\text{pie}, 33}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), to guide the Piezo-FinFET designs.
CRAC channel gating and its modulation by STIM1 and 2‐aminoethoxydiphenyl borate

Ca2+ release‐activated Ca2+ (CRAC) channels play an essential role in the immune system. The pore‐forming subunit, Orai1, is an important pharmacological target. Here, we summarize the recent discoveries on the structure–function relationship of Orai1, as well as its interaction with the native channel opener STIM1 and chemical modulator 2‐aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2‐APB). We first introduce the critical structural elements of Orai1, which include a Ca2+ accumulating region, ion selectivity filter, hydrophobic centre, basic region, extended transmembrane Orai1 N‐terminal (ETON) region, transmembrane (TM) regions 2 and 3, P245 bend, 263SHK265 hinge linker and L273–L276 hydrophobic patch. We then hypothesize the possible mechanisms by which STIM1 triggers the conformational transitions of TM regions and exquisitely shapes the ion conduction pathway during generation of the CRAC current (Icrac) with high Ca2+ selectivity. Finally, we propose mechanisms by which 2‐APB modulates Icrac. On the STIM1‐activated Orai1 channel, a low dose of 2‐APB acts directly, dilating its extremely narrow pore diameter from 3.8 to 4.6 Å, increasing its unitary channel conductance, and potentiating the Icrac. Further elucidation of the structure of the opened CRAC channel and a better understanding of structure–function relationship will benefit the future development of novel immune modulators.
Textually Customized Video Summaries

The best summary of a long video differs among different people due to its highly subjective nature. Even for the same person, the best summary may change with time or mood. In this paper, we introduce the task of generating customized video summaries through simple text. First, we train a deep architecture to effectively learn semantic embeddings of video frames by leveraging the abundance of image-caption data via a progressive and residual manner. Given a user-specific text description, our algorithm is able to select semantically relevant video segments and produce a temporally aligned video summary. In order to evaluate our textually customized video summaries, we conduct experimental comparison with baseline methods that utilize ground-truth information. Despite the challenging baselines, our method still manages to show comparable or even exceeding performance. We also show that our method is able to generate semantically diverse video summaries by only utilizing the learned visual embeddings.
Extending HEVC using texture synthesis

The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard provides superior coding efficiency compared to its predecessors. Nevertheless, the encoding of complex and thus hardly to predict textures either requires high bit rates or results in low quality of the reconstructed signal. To compensate for this limitation of HEVC, we propose a sophisticated texture synthesis framework which solves multiple lacks of previous texture synthesis approaches. By easing the bit rate cost for synthesizable regions and reallocating the freed bit rate resources to non-synthesizable regions, for high-value soccer content we are able to achieve average BD-rate gains of 21.9% for all-intra, 17.6% for low delay, and 16.3% for random access, respectively, while maintaining the same objective quality for the latter. Subjective tests for the synthesizable regions confirm the objectively measured convincing results. The general applicability of our method is confirmed for other types of content.
Feasibility of haemostasis in prostate using a flat trans-urethral transducer

The objective of this work is to demonstrate the feasibility of trans-urethral application of collimated high intensity ultrasound in order to coagulate blood vessels in prostate. The coagulating tool is a flat 6/spl times/10mm/sup 2/ transducer. It operates at a frequency of 10MHz. Doppler and conventional ultrasound imaging were performed before and after treatment. The effect of intensity, exposure duration and angular step between elementary exposures on therapeutic depth and thrombosed vessels density was studied. The therapeutic depth ranged from 6 to 10 mm. Hyperechoic spots were observed on sonograms for a few minutes right after treatment and a permanent hypoechoic zone remained in the treated zone. It corresponded in size to the histologically assessed zone of coagulation. A significant fall in Doppler signal amplitude immediately after treatment demonstrated the applicator's ability to achieve haemostasis. The coagulation rate obtained by dividing the vessel density of the treated sample by the vessel density of the controls ranged between 51% and 99%. We demonstrated that a miniature flat ultrasound 10MHz-transducer can be used to coagulate blood vessels with a diameter less than 1 mm and located at a distance less than 1 cm from the organ surface. This makes our transducer suitable for trans-urethral application of high intensity ultrasound to coagulate prostatic tissues and vessels.
Network Phenotyping for Network Traffic Classification and Anomaly Detection

This paper proposes a network phenotyping mechanism based on network resource usage analysis for network traffic classification and anomaly detection. The network phenotyping may use different metrics in the cyber-physical systems (CPS), including resource and network usage monitoring, physical state estimation. The set of devices will collectively decide a holistic view of the entire system through advanced image analysis and machine learning methods. In this paper, we choose the network traffic pattern as a study case to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, while the methodology may similarly apply to classification and anomaly detection for other resource metrics. We extract and recognize the spatial and temporal communication patterns based on the network resource usage. The phenotype method is testified through four real-world decentralized applications. With proper length of network resource usage, the overall recognition accuracy achieves as high as 99%. Sequentially, the recognition accuracy is used to detect the network traffic anomaly. We simulate the anomalous usage to be 10%, 20% and 30% of the normal network resource usage. The experiments show the proposed method is efficient in detecting each intensity of network resource usage anomaly.
First assessment on the molecular phylogeny and phylogeography of the species Gnaptor boryi distributed in Greece (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae)

Abstract The genus Gnaptor Brullé, 1983 (Blaptini, Gnaptorina) occurs in southeast Europe as well as in Asiatic regions. As regards its taxonomy, four morphological species have been attributed: Gnaptor boryi, G. prolixus, G. spinimanus and G. medvedevi. Here, we use two different mitochondrial genetic markers (16S and cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI)) in order to investigate the relationships between the populations of the species G. boryi in Greece, compare them with the current taxonomy and conjecture about its biogeographic history. In total, 29 specimens (28 G. boryi and one G. prolixus) were analyzed using maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods. Our results clarified the presence of three well-supported lineages: two belongs to G. boryi and one to G. prolixus. The first diversification of these lineages started in the Late Miocene at 9 Mya with the split of G. prolixus from Turkey and the second major split occurred in the Early Pliocene at 3.7 Mya between the two lineages of G. boryi distributed separately in northern Greece and Peloponnesos. According to Statistical Dispersal – Vicariance Analysis and dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis analysis analyses, vicariance seems to be the biogeographic event responsible for the divergence of the two major lineages of G. boryi.
Atorvastatin Improves Plaque Stability in ApoE-Knockout Mice by Regulating Chemokines and Chemokine Receptors

It is well documented that statins protect atherosclerotic patients from inflammatory changes and plaque instability in coronary arteries. However, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Using a previously established mouse model for vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque, we investigated the effect of atorvastatin (10 mg/kg/day) on plaque morphology. Atorvastatin did not lower plasma total cholesterol levels or affect plaque progression at this dosage; however, vulnerable plaque numbers were significantly reduced in the atorvastatin-treated group compared to control. Detailed examinations revealed that atorvastatin significantly decreased macrophage infiltration and subendothelial lipid deposition, reduced intimal collagen content, and elevated collagenase activity and expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). Because vascular inflammation is largely driven by changes in monocyte/macrophage numbers in the vessel wall, we speculated that the anti-inflammatory effect of atorvastatin may partially result from decreased monocyte recruitment to the endothelium. Further experiments showed that atorvastatin downregulated expression of the chemokines monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, chemokine (C-X3-C motif) ligand 1 (CX3CL1) and their receptors CCR2 and, CX3CR1, which are mainly responsible for monocyte recruitment. In addition, levels of the plasma inflammatory markers C-reactive protein (CRP) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α were also significantly decrease in atorvastatin-treated mice. Collectively, our results demonstrate that atorvastatin can improve plaque stability in mice independent of plasma cholesterol levels. Given the profound inhibition of macrophage infiltration into atherosclerotic plaques, we propose that statins may partly exert protective effects by modulating levels of chemokines and their receptors. These findings elucidate yet another atheroprotective mechanism of statins.
Spectral unmixing

Spectral unmixing using hyperspectral data represents a significant step in the evolution of remote decompositional analysis that began with multispectral sensing. It is a consequence of collecting data in greater and greater quantities and the desire to extract more detailed information about the material composition of surfaces. Linear mixing is the key assumption that has permitted well-known algorithms to be adapted to the unmixing problem. In fact, the resemblance of the linear mixing model to system models in other areas has permitted a significant legacy of algorithms from a wide range of applications to be adapted to unmixing. However, it is still unclear whether the assumption of linearity is sufficient to model the mixing process in every application of interest. It is clear, however, that the applicability of models and techniques is highly dependent on the variety of circumstances and factors that give rise to mixed pixels. The outputs of spectral unmixing, endmember, and abundance estimates are important for identifying the material composition of mixtures.
Double direction matrix based sparse representation for face recognition

Robust sparse representation is a well-known method in computer vision. Several sparse representation models have been proposed and perform well in face recognition. Most of them use transformed images of one dimensional vector, and such implementation ignores structural information between features. To make use of this structural information, this paper presents a novel model for face recognition, called double direction L2,1-norm based sparse representation. Unlike traditional sparse regression measuring differences between test sample and predicted response by vector norm, our model uses matrix norm, L2,1, to calculate residual. Instead of treating each pixel independently, the residual of a pixel is effected by all others in the same line and the same column by means of double direction L2,1-norm. And then, we use the alternating direction method of multipliers approach to optimize proposed model. Just as the L2,1-norm concerns, experiments show that our proposed method is more robust than other sparse methods.
Towards a Question Answering System over the Semantic Web

Thanks to the development of the Semantic Web, a lot of new structured data has become available on the Web in the form of knowledge bases (KBs). Making this valuable data accessible and usable for end-users is one of the main goals of Question Answering (QA) over KBs. Most current QA systems query one KB, in one language (namely English). The existing approaches are not designed to be easily adaptable to new KBs and languages. We first introduce a new approach for translating natural language questions to SPARQL queries. It is able to query several KBs simultaneously, in different languages, and can easily be ported to other KBs and languages. In our evaluation, the impact of our approach is proven using 5 different well-known and large KBs: Wikidata, DBpedia, MusicBrainz, DBLP and Freebase as well as 5 different languages namely English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. Second, we show how we integrated our approach, to make it easily accessible by the research community and by end-users. To summarize, we provided a conceptional solution for multilingual, KB-agnostic Question Answering over the Semantic Web. The provided first approximation validates this concept.