Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kalman-filter-based channel estimation for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems in time-varying channels

A low-complexity Kalman-filter-based channel estimation method for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing systems is proposed. This method belongs to the pilot-symbol-aided parametric channel estimation method in which the channel responses are characterised as a collection of sparse propagation paths. Because of the slow variation of the signal subspace in the channel samples' correlation matrix, the estimation of channel parameters is translated into an unconstrained minimisation problem. Then, in order to solve this optimisation problem, a subspace tracking by Kalman filter is carried out, which is characterised in that the state equation and the measurement equation are constructed upon the constant signal subspace. Further, this Kalman-filter-based method is extended to the multi-antenna scenarios efficiently. Simulation results show that the proposal can effectively track the time variations in both the block fading channels and the Doppler frequency spread channels.
Notice of RetractionThe Application of Support Vectors Regression in Chinese Forestry Economy Development Prediction

To develop forestry economy is a most watched problem recent years, to analyze the economic data and find out existing problems, will greatly help governments revise the policies and promote rapidly development of forestry ecological economy. Based on the support vector regression theory, the thesis builds the regression analysis model of our forestry ecological development, collects the development data from state statistic bureau, analyzed the correlation of the selected parameters, and trains and tests the regression model. Finally, this thesis point out that current Chinese forestry ecological economy still exists two problems: first is the rate of third industry is too low, and the second problem is that the output of primary and second industry still greatly depend on timber yield, and it lead to the regional ecological system is fragile.
Simulating of query processing on multiprocessor database systems with modern coprocessors

The modern manycore coprocessors and GPUs demonstrate very high performance on certain problems. Recent research has shown that these coprocessors can be used to accelerate database operations. But, to the best of our knowledge, there is only a little prior work on using coprocessors in multiprocessor database systems. This paper focuses on evaluation of database multiprocessor architectures with manycore coprocessors and GPUs. We implemented the emulator of parallel DBMS that uses computing cluster with NVIDIA GPUs or Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors for relational query processing. It allows to simulate simple SELECT and JOIN queries. A number of experiments have been done using this emulator. These experiments have shown that coprocessors are less efficient than CPUs for processing modeled SELECT queries, but more efficient than CPUs for processing INNER JOIN queries.
Feature Graph Architectures

In this article we propose feature graph architectures (FGA), which are deep learning systems employing a structured initialisation and training method based on a feature graph which facilitates improved generalisation performance compared with a standard shallow architecture. The goal is to explore alternative perspectives on the problem of deep network training. We evaluate FGA performance for deep SVMs on some experimental datasets, and show how generalisation and stability results may be derived for these models. We describe the effect of permutations on the model accuracy, and give a criterion for the optimal permutation in terms of feature correlations. The experimental results show that the algorithm produces robust and significant test set improvements over a standard shallow SVM training method for a range of datasets. These gains are achieved with a moderate increase in time complexity.
R. A. Fisher's Fiducial Argument and Bayes' Theorem

I am a logician and a philosopher; I have not studied statistics for very long, and so I still very quickly get out of my depth in a discussion of the technicalities of statistical inference. But I think it is important, none the less, for people whose interests lie in the area of inference as such to do the best they can in reacting to and in having an action upon -current work in that particular kind of inference called "statistical. " That this interaction is difficult for both parties is the more reason for attempting it. (p. 938)
Phylogenetics Applied to Genotype/Phenotype Association and Selection Analyses with Sequence Data from Angptl4 in Humans

Genotype/phenotype association analyses (Treescan) with plasma lipid levels and functional site prediction methods (TreeSAAP and PolyPhen) were performed using sequence data for ANGPTL4 from 3,551 patients in the Dallas Heart Study. Biological assays of rare variants in phenotypic tails and results from a Treescan analysis were used as “known” variants to assess the site prediction abilities of PolyPhen and TreeSAAP. The E40K variant in European Americans and the R278Q variant in African Americans were significantly associated with multiple lipid phenotypes. Combining TreeSAAP and PolyPhen performed well to predict “known” functional variants while reducing noise from false positives.
TubeTagger - YouTube-based Concept Detection

We present TubeTagger, a concept-based video retrieval system that exploits web video as an information source. The system performs a visual learning on YouTube clips (i. e., it trains detectors for semantic concepts like "soccer" or "windmill"), and a semantic learning on the associated tags (i.e., relations between concepts like "swimming" and "water" are discovered). This way, a text-based video search free of manual indexing is realized. We present a quantitative study on web-based concept detection comparing several features and statistical models on a large-scale dataset of YouTube content. Beyond this, we report several key findings related to concept learning from YouTube and its generalization to different domains, and illustrate certain characteristics of YouTube-learned concepts, like focus of interest and redundancy. To get a hands-on impression of web-based concept detection, we invite researchers and practitioners to test our web demo.
WiBed, a platform for commodity wireless testbeds

Testbeds are a stage between the simulation and the production stages. To this end they must be as close as possible to production environments (i.e. real hardware, on the field deployments) while also keeping the traits of experimentation facilities (i.e. fault tolerance, ease of deployment, testing and data collection). This paper presents WiBed, a FOSS platform for WiFi testbeds based on OpenWRT Linux made to run on commodity IEEE802.11 WiFi routers part of the Community-lab. net project, a global testbed for Community networks. WiBed has been designed to support realistic low layer network experiments (according to the OSI model). This work recollects the details of the architecture, design and implementation of WiBed consolidated during its operation as a testbed as well as two deployments where real experiments were performed.
‘I had some additional angel wings’: parents positioned as experts in their children’s education

ABSTRACT This article provides evidence of the ways in which Family Learning (FL) has offered opportunities for the negotiation of a culturally responsive pedagogy that positions parents as experts. Although our study is small (ten parents and six FL practitioners) its significance lies in its longitudinal perspective and in-depth analysis, which demonstrate that the benefits of learning are dynamic and can transfer across domains (education, family, community) and lead to change in parents’ sense of self and their practices. We find that the approach taken by the FL workers enabled parents to raise their horizons of possibility so that they considered new careers and ways of being. Our symbolic interactionist approach focuses on the opportunity for the negotiation of new identities afforded by these programmes and provides an explanation for their long-term positive consequences. The implications for adult learning for all professionals engaging with parents are the benefits of: forming collaborative relationships between participants and staff; using a ‘funds of knowledge’ pedagogical approach; and developing artifacts that can be shared publically.
Access and equity in higher education in Antigua and Barbuda

Across the international higher education spectrum access represents a significant issue. The literature is replete with analyses of access in various higher education systems. Low and inequitable patterns of participation in higher education are particularly prominent in developing countries. This dissertation is a case study of the higher education system of the state of Antigua and Barbuda, former British territories of the Caribbeanregion, Focusing on the issue of access and equity of access this study addresses the trends related to participation in higher education in this twin-island state of the Caribbean region, and analyzes factors that affect participation in this country. The study explores the role of government and institutional bodies in enhancing the rate and quality of participation in higher education in these territories, and seeks to determine factors affecting the state of preparedness of this country to participate and survive in the modern global social and economic order. The study finds that increased and more equitable rates of participation in higher education would be achieved by strengthening and reorganizing aspects of the primary and secondary education levels. Creating an integrated and carefully articulated higher education system, which caters to a wide cross section of the inhabitants of the twin­ island state, and which contains mechanisms for admissions for second chance candidates, would also serve to promote access to and equity in the higher education system of this country. © Copyright by Elsie Hewlett-Thomas, 2009 All Rights Reserved
Increased Tau Phosphorylation and Tau Truncation, and Decreased Synaptophysin Levels in Mutant BRI2/Tau Transgenic Mice

Familial Danish dementia (FDD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease caused by a 10-nucleotide duplication-insertion in the BRI2 gene. FDD is clinically characterized by loss of vision, hearing impairment, cerebellar ataxia and dementia. The main neuropathologic findings in FDD are the deposition of Danish amyloid (ADan) and the presence of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). Here we investigated tau accumulation and truncation in double transgenic (Tg-FDD-Tau) mice generated by crossing transgenic mice expressing human Danish mutant BRI2 (Tg-FDD) with mice expressing human 4-repeat mutant Tau-P301S (Tg-Tau). Compared to Tg-Tau mice, we observed a significant enhancement of tau deposition in Tg-FDD-Tau mice. In addition, a significant increase in tau cleaved at aspartic acid (Asp) 421 was observed in Tg-FDD-Tau mice. Tg-FDD-Tau mice also showed a significant decrease in synaptophysin levels, occurring before widespread deposition of fibrillar ADan and tau can be observed. Thus, the presence of soluble ADan/mutant BRI2 can lead to significant changes in tau metabolism and synaptic dysfunction. Our data provide new in vivo insights into the pathogenesis of FDD and the pathogenic pathway(s) by which amyloidogenic peptides, regardless of their primary amino acid sequence, can cause neurodegeneration.
Biweekly pegylated liposomal doxorubicin in patients with relapsed ovarian cancer: results of a multicenter phase-II trial.

BACKGROUND The obvious benefit of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD) for tumour control in recurrent ovarian cancer is frequently offset by severe palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia (PPE). There is evidence that dose reduction from 50 to 40 mg/m(2) reduces the incidence of PPE without compromising cytotoxic activity. We set out to investigate whether biweekly application further improves the therapeutic index of PLD. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with recurrent ovarian cancer after surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy with platinum and taxane compounds were eligible to participate in this multi-institutional phase II study. PLD was administered at a dose of 20 mg/m(2) every two weeks. Eligible patients had ECOG performance status of < or =2, and sufficient organ function. We employed an optimized two-stage design to test the hypothesis that biweekly application of PLD reduces the frequency of grade III and IV PPE from 25% to 10%. Response and survival were addressed descriptively. RESULTS Between October 2001 and February 2004, 64 patients with median age of 59 (range 38-81) years were recruited onto this trial. We evaluated 553 (median 7, range 1-25) courses of PLD treatment. Most patients were in their third or fourth line of chemotherapy. PPE was noted in 30 patients (47.6%), but only three participants progressed to grade 3 severity (4.7%, 95% confidence interval 1.0-13.1%). Partial response, stable disease, and tumour progression were observed in 5, 13, and 24 patients, respectively. Median overall and progression-free survival were 18.2 (range, 1.4-34.0) and 4.3 (range 0.5-22.3) months. CONCLUSIONS Biweekly PLD may reduce the incidence of PPE while retaining efficacy in relapsed ovarian cancer. Our data support the need for a randomized trial to strengthen these assumptions.
Community based effective social video contents placement in cloud centric CDN network

The increasing popularity of online social networks (OSNs) has been transforming the dissemination pattern of social video contents. Considering the unique features of social videos, e.g., huge volume, long-tailed, and short length, how to utilize the information propagation pattern to improve the efficiency of content distribution for social videos attracts more and more attention. In this paper, we first conduct a large scale measurement to explore the social video viewing behavior under the community classification. Based on the measurement, we investigate the community driven sharing video distribution problem under the cloud-centric content delivery network (CDN) architecture. In particular, we formulate it as a constrained optimization problem with the objective to minimize the operational cost. The constraint is the averaged transmission delay. Following that, we propose a dynamic algorithm to seek the optimal solution. Our trace-driven experiments further demonstrate our algorithm can make a better tradeoff between monetary cost and QoS, and outperforms the traditional method with less operational cost while satisfying the QoS requirement.
Political Jurisdictions in Heterogeneous Communities

We investigate whether political jurisdictions form in response to the trade‐off between economies of scale and the costs of a heterogeneous population. We consider heterogeneity in income, race, ethnicity, and religion, and we test the model using American school districts, school attendance areas, municipalities, and special districts. We find strong evidence of a trade‐off between economies of scale and racial heterogeneity; we also find evidence of a trade‐off between economies of scale and income heterogeneity. Conversely, we find little evidence that ethnic or religious heterogeneity shapes jurisdictions. To clarify the direction of causality between heterogeneity and jurisdictions, we exploit shocks to racial heterogeneity generated by the two world wars.
A RISC approach to robotics

This article describes a framework that combines simple hardware traditionally used in manufacturing with sensor-based planning and design algorithms from robotics. For repetitive assembly, the authors argue that this combination can reduce start-up and maintenance costs, increase throughput, and greatly reduce the set-up and changeover times for new products. The proposed hardware bears a close resemblance to existing "hard" automation; what is new is the application of computational methods for robust design and control of these systems, and more extensive use of (simple) sensors. Clearly this enhances the capabilities of the hardware. A less-obvious benefit is that software capability is also enhanced--algorithms for fine-motion, grasp planning and some sensing algorithms which would be intractable on a general-purpose robot work in real-time when applied to simple hardware. To describe this approach the authors chose the acronym RISC--Reduced Intricacy in Sensing and Control-by analogy with computer architecture. Analogously, the authors propose to use simple hardware elements that are coordinated by software to perform complex tasks. <<ETX>>
Nocturnal saturation and respiratory muscle function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

BACKGROUND--Nocturnal desaturations, mainly caused by hypoventilation, occur frequently in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Daytime arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide tensions (PaO2 and PaCO2) appear to predict which patients will desaturate at night. It is unknown if respiratory muscle strength, which may be decreased in these patients, plays an additional part. METHODS--Polysomnography, maximal respiratory pressures, lung function, and arterial blood gas tensions were measured in 34 patients with COPD (mean (SD) forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) 41.7 (19.9)% pred). RESULTS--Significant correlations were found between the mean nocturnal arterial oxygen saturation and maximal inspiratory mouth pressure (r = 0.65), maximal inspiratory transdiaphragmatic pressure (r = 0.53), FEV1 (r = 0.61), transfer coefficient (KCO) (r = 0.38), arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) (r = 0.75), and PaCO2 (r = -0.44). Multiple regression analysis showed that 75% of the variance in nocturnal SaO2 (70%) and FEV1 (5%). CONCLUSION--Inspiratory muscle strength and nocturnal saturation data are correlated, but daytime SaO2 and FEV1 remain the most important predictors of nocturnal saturation.
PageRank vs. Katz Status Index, a Theoretical Approach

In World Wide Web search engines, it is important to have a good ranking system. One of the most famous ranking components is the PageRank system by Google. However, PageRank is protected by patents and it is impossible for other companies to use it in their search engines. There is an old model, called Katz status index, that is reported to work very similar to PageRank. If the quality of Katz status index turns out to be similar to or better than that of PageRank, it could become a patent-free alternative to PageRank. We consider the problem of comparing Katz status index to PageRank in this paper with some preliminary results on the theoretical comparison and give a proposal for practical comparison of the two models.
Analogy as Functional Recategorization : A Perspective from HowNet

One generally accepted hallmark of creative thinking is an ability to look past conventional labels to recategorize a concept or object based on its behaviour and functional potential. So while taxonomies are useful in any domain of reasoning, they typically represent the conventional label set that creative thinking attempts to look beyond. If a linguistic taxonomy like WordNet [1] is to be useful in driving linguistic creativity, it must support some basis for recategorization, to allow an agent to reorganize its category structures in a way that unlocks the functional potential of objects, or that recognizes similarity between literally dissimilar ideas. In this paper we consider how recategorization can be used to generate analogies using the HowNet [2] ontology, a lexical resource like WordNet that in addition to being bilingual (Chinese/English) also provides explicit semantic definitions for each of the terms that it defines.
The relationship between engagement and perceived academic, personal, and social outcomes for senior international undergraduate students in research universities

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which five engagement benchmarks that encompass educationally purposeful activities namely: (i) level of academic challenge , (ii) active and collaborative learning ,(iii) student-faculty interaction , (iv) enriching educational experiences and (v) supportive campus environment predict various dimensions of selfreported or perceived academic, personal, and social development/ growth for senior international students at Research Universities. The benchmarks were regressed against the following self-reported outcomes: i) acquiring a broad general education, acquiring job or workrelated knowledge and skills, thinking critically and analytically, working effectively with others learning effectively on your own, and understanding yourself. Results indicated that for this subpopulation, a supportive campus environment and the level of academic challenge were the best predictors of the selfassessed outcomes. Students had lower means in the student-faculty interaction and enriching educational experiences indicating less engagement in these benchmarks. On average, students reported gaining more in thinking critically and analytically and acquiring a broad and general education, although their average gains were still lower compared to the grand mean for the overall NSSE 2005 sample.
Experimental comparison of optical phase conjugation and DCF aided DWDM 2x10.7Gbit/s DWPSK transmission

The performance of DWDM 2×10.7 Gbit/s-DQPSK is assessed comparing mid-link optical phase conjugation (OPC) and DCF for dispersion compensation. We report a 44%-increase in transmission distance resulting from nonlinear phase noise reduction by using mid-link OPC. (2 pages)
Role of altitude when exploring optimal placement of UAV access points

UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are candidates for serving as wireless access points in disaster or mass event scenarios. Here we elaborate on the question where to optimally place the available UAVs in space for a Poisson user distribution on the ground. Since the number of possible placement combinations is too high for a systematic search, we approach the optimal solution by a simple heuristic bio-inspired procedure. It turns out that changes in altitude contribute almost as much to increasing the average spectral efficiency as changes in horizontal directions. However, increasing the altitude requires much more energy than an equal movement in a horizontal direction. We show that restricting altitude movements by an attenuation factor can result in similar results as a procedure without such altitude restrictions. Even more intriguingly, keeping all UAVs at one favorable fixed altitude clearly outperforms the procedure with altitude flexibility. This has implications for the time UAVs can stay aloft with their on-board energy.