Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping Indoor Spaces by Adaptive Coarse-to-Fine Registration of RGB-D Data

In this letter, we present an adaptive coarse-to-fine registration method for 3-D indoor mapping using RGB-D data. We weight the 3-D points based on the theoretical random error of depth measurements and introduce a novel disparity-based model for an accurate and robust coarse-to-fine registration. Some feature extraction methods required by the method are also presented. First, our method exploits both visual and depth information to compute the initial transformation parameters. We employ scale-invariant feature transformation for extracting, detecting, and matching 2-D visual features, and their associated depth values are used to perform coarse registration. Then, we use an image-based segmentation technique for detecting regions in the RGB images. Their associated 3-D centroid and the correspondent disparity values are used to refine the initial transformation parameters. Finally, the loop-closure detection and a global adjustment of the complete sequence data are used to recognize when the camera has returned to a previously visited location and minimize the registration errors. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with the Kinect data set. The experimental results show that the proposed method can properly map the indoor environment with a relative and absolute accuracy value of around 3-5 cm, respectively.
Taste receptor T1R3 is an essential molecule for the cellular recognition of the disaccharide trehalose

SummaryRecently, a sweet taste receptor family, the T1R family, that recognizes some carbohydrates including sucrose was identified. Although the T1R3 molecule is known to participate in heterodimers that are used as sweet- and umamitasting receptors, there is no evidence that T1R3 alone recognizes similar ligands. We demonstrate for the first time that the candidate sweet taste receptor T1R3 is essential for the recognition and response to the disaccharide trehalose. Our system is a valuable tool not only for understanding the relationship between sweeteners and their receptors but also for exploring the diversities of their receptors, resulting in the design of new high-potency sweeteners.
Stochastic Online Scheduling with Precedence Constraints

We consider the preemptive and non-preemptive problems of scheduling jobs with precedence constraints on parallel machines with the objective to minimize the sum of~(weighted) completion times. We investigate an online model in which the scheduler learns about a job when all its predecessors have completed. For scheduling on a single machine, we show matching lower and upper bounds of~$\Theta(n)$ and~$\Theta(\sqrt{n})$ for jobs with general and equal weights, respectively. We also derive corresponding results on parallel machines. Our result for arbitrary job weights holds even in the more general stochastic online scheduling model where, in addition to the limited information about the job set, processing times are uncertain. For a large class of processing time distributions, we derive also an improved performance guarantee if weights are equal.
Performance Analysis of Antenna Selection in Two-Way Relay Networks

We investigate the performance of multi-antenna two-way relay networks, where both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) relaying strategies are considered. First an antenna selection scheme among all nodes is proposed based on maximizing the worse received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of two end users. Then, we derive the probability density function (PDF) and cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the received SNRs of both users. We also obtain the closed-form expressions of average bit error rates (BER) and the outage probability of our system. Furthermore, we study the asymptotic behavior of our system when transmitting SNR or the number of antennas is large. The results show that the proposed antenna selection scheme achieves full diversity, and the simulation results closely match to our theoretical analysis. To further improve the spectrum efficiency of the system, a hybrid selection antenna scheme is proposed. Finally, the numerical results show that our scheme outperforms the state of art.
Extrapolation to speed-up query-dependent link analysis ranking algorithms

Relevance is a numerical score assigned to a search result, representing how well the results meet the information needs of the user that issued the search query. Several mathematical tools and techniques have been used in research for improving the relevancy ranking models. Advanced concepts in linear algebra, such as the Singular Value Decomposition, and theory of Markov chains have also been employed for innovating relevancy ranking. This study presents the use of Extrapolation technique to speedup the convergence of query-dependent Link Analysis Ranking Algorithms. It contains a novel improvement in algorithms like HITS, SALSA and their descendants (e.g., Exponentiated and Randomized HITS) using the Extrapolation techniques. Using this approach it is possible to accelerate the algorithms in terms of reducing the number of iterations and therefore uncovered a much faster convergence. In the experiments we even got much better results than theoretically predicted. The results present a speedup to the order of 3-19 times.
The Impact of Aggregators on Internet News Consumption

A policy debate centers around the question whether news aggregators such as Google News decrease or increase traffic to online news sites. One side of the debate, typically espoused by publishers, views aggregators as substitutes for traditional news consumption because aggregators’ landing pages provide snippets of news stories and therefore reduce the incentive to click on the linked articles. Defendants of aggregators, on the other hand, view aggregators as complements because they make it easier to discover news and therefore drive traffic to publishers. This debate has received particular attention in the European Union where two countries, Germany and Spain, enacted copyright reforms that allow newspapers to charge aggregators for linking to news snippets. In this paper, we use Spain as a natural experiment because Google News shut down all together in response to the reform in December 2014. We compare the news consumption of a large number of Google News users with a synthetic control group of similar non-Google News users. We find that the shutdown of Google News reduces overall news consumption by about 20% for treatment users, and it reduces page views on publishers other than Google News by 10%. This decrease is concentrated around small publishers while large publishers do not see significant changes in their overall traffic. We further find that when Google News shuts down, its users are able to replace some but not all of the types of news they previously read. Post-shutdown, they read less breaking news, hard news, and news that is not well covered on their favorite news publishers. These news categories explain most of the overall reduction in news consumption, and shed light on the mechanisms through which aggregators interact with traditional publishers.
On the Contribution of MWE-based Features to a Readability Formula for French as a Foreign Language

This study aims to assess the usefulness of multi-word expressions (MWEs) as features for a readability formula that predicts the difficulty of texts for French as a foreign language. Using a MWE extractor combining a statistical approach with a linguistic filter, we define 11 predictors. These take into account the density and the probability of MWEs, but also their internal structure. Our experiments show that the predictive power of these 11 variables is low and that a simple approach based on the average probability of n-grams is more effective.
Security and performance challenges for user-centric wireless networking

User-centrism has emerged as a disruptive new communication paradigm. In this article, we lay out its basic principles, study the key factors that have given rise to its adoption, and focus on the new set of challenges it brings about in various aspects of wireless networking. We study user-centric solutions on a case-by-case basis, along the dimensions of wireless access, provision of communication services, and wireless network management. We tackle specific security and performance challenges by designing and implementing architectures for secure VoIP communication tailored to user-centric wireless networks, and for robust user-driven wireless topology monitoring, a critical network management task. In both cases, we quantify the tradeoff between security and performance, showcasing the potential of relying on users to carry out traditionally provider-centric tasks.
AICA riboside both activates AMP‐activated protein kinase and competes with adenosine for the nucleoside transporter in the CA1 region of the rat hippocampus

5‐Aminoimidazole‐4‐carboxamide riboside (AICA riboside; Acadesine) activates AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) in intact cells, and is reported to exert protective effects in the mammalian CNS. In rat cerebrocortical brain slices, AMPK was activated by metabolic stress (ischaemia > hypoxia > aglycaemia) and AICA riboside (0.1–10 mm). Activation of AMPK by AICA riboside was greatly attenuated by inhibitors of equilibrative nucleoside transport. AICA riboside also depressed excitatory synaptic transmission in area CA1 of the rat hippocampus, which was prevented by an adenosine A1 receptor antagonist and reversed by application of adenosine deaminase. However, AICA riboside was neither a substrate for adenosine deaminase nor an agonist at adenosine receptors. We conclude that metabolic stress and AICA riboside both stimulate AMPK activity in mammalian brain, but that AICA riboside has an additional effect, i.e. competition with adenosine for uptake by the nucleoside transporter. This results in an increase in extracellular adenosine and subsequent activation of adenosine receptors. Neuroprotection by AICA riboside could be mediated by this mechanism as well as, or instead of, by AMPK activation. Caution should therefore be exercised in ascribing an effect of AICA riboside to AMPK activation, especially in systems where inhibition of adenosine re‐uptake has physiological consequences.
Securing Enterprise Networks Using Traffic Tainting

Enterprise networks are vulnerable to attacks ranging from data leaks to the spread of malware to insider threats. Previous defenses have largely focused on securing hosts; unfortunately, when hosts are compromised, these defenses become ineffective. Rather than attempting to harden the host against every possible attack (which is impractical) or constraining the software that can run on a host (which is inconvenient), we place a small amount of trusted code on the host to assist with tracking the provenance of network traffic, moving the rest of the trust and function to the network. We present Pedigree, a system that tracks information flow across processes and hosts within a network by annotating traffic with taints that reflect the process that generated the traffic and the inputs that process has taken (we call this function traffic tainting). A tagger on the host annotates network traffic with information about the “taints” that the sending process has acquired. Network devices act as arbiters to take appropriate actions (e.g., blocking) based on the taints associated with the traffic and the enterprise network’s security policy. We have implemented Pedigree’s host-based tagger as a Linux kernel module and the arbiter using the OpenFlow platform. This demonstration presents a prototype deployment of Pedigree that identifies and prevents both sensitive data leaks and the spread of malware in a typical enterprise network setting. The demonstration will show that Pedigree can defend against these attacks without significant overhead at the host or the filtering device.
Estimation of time-lapse velocity change using repeating earthquakes with different locations and focal mechanisms

Codas of repeating earthquakes carry information about the time-varying properties of the subsurface or reservoirs. Some of the changes within a reservoir change the seismic velocity and thereby the seismic signals that travel through the reservoir. In characterizing these velocity changes, seismic signals are often influenced by changes in other properties of the reservoir such as fluid migration or the properties of the seismic sources of the signals. We investigate the impact of the perturbations in seismic source properties on time-lapse velocity estimation. We suggest a criterion for selecting seismic events that can be used in velocity analysis. This criterion depends on the dominant frequency of the signals, the centertime of the used time window in a signal, and the estimated relative velocity change. The criterion provides a consistent framework for monitoring changes in subsurface velocities using microseismic events.
Applying Pay-Burst-Only-Once Principle for Periodic Power Management in Hard Real-Time Pipelined Multiprocessor Systems

Pipelined computing is a promising paradigm for embedded system design. Designing a power management policy to reduce the power consumption of a pipelined system with nondeterministic workload is, however, nontrivial. In this article, we study the problem of energy minimization for coarse-grained pipelined systems under hard real-time constraints and propose new approaches based on an inverse use of the pay-burst-only-once principle. We formulate the problem by means of the resource demands of individual pipeline stages and propose two new approaches, a quadratic programming-based approach and fast heuristic, to solve the problem. In the quadratic programming approach, the problem is transformed into a standard quadratic programming with box constraint and then solved by a standard quadratic programming solver. Observing the problem is NP-hard, the fast heuristic is designed to solve the problem more efficiently. Our approach is scalable with respect to the numbers of pipeline stages. Simulation results using real-life applications are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods.
Cellular basis for neonatally induced T-suppressor activity. Primary B cell maturation is blocked by suppressor-helper interactions restricted by loci on chromosome 12

The cellular mechanism and genetic restriction of neonatally induced HA- specific suppressor T (Ts) cells have been examined. The in vivo effect of these Ts cells on antibody production, primary B cell proliferation, B cell surface marker changes, and helper T (Th) cell priming during primary responses to HA have been determined. The results indicate that, although antigen-induced B cell proliferative responses and surface marker changes occur in the presence of Ts cells, differentiation to Ig secretion, and long-lived memory B cell production are prevented. Further, antigen-specific Th cell priming is completely ablated by Ts cells, suggesting that Ts act by preventing the delivery of Th signals required for both the later stages of primary B cell maturation, and the formation of memory B cell populations. Finally, in vivo cell mixing experiments using congenic mice indicate that this Ts-Th interaction is restricted by loci on mouse chromosome 12.
Simultaneous in vivo spectral editing and water suppression

Water suppression is typically performed in vivo by exciting the longitudinal magnetization in combination with dephasing, or by using frequency‐selective coherence generation. MEGA, a frequency‐selective refocusing technique, can be placed into any pulse sequence element designed to generate a Hahn spin‐echo or stimulated echo, to dephase transverse water coherences with minimal spectral distortions. Water suppression performance was verified in vivo using stimulated echo acquisition mode (STEAM) localization, which provided water suppression comparable with that achieved with four selective pulses in 3,1‐DRYSTEAM. The advantage of the proposed method was exploited for editing J‐coupled resonances. Using a double‐banded pulse that selectively inverts a J‐coupling partner and simultaneously suppresses water, efficient metabolite editing was achieved in the point resolved spectroscopy (PRESS) and STEAM sequences in which MEGA was incorporated. To illustrate the efficiency of the method, the detection of γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) was demonstrated, with minimal contributions from macromolecules and overlying singlet peaks at 4 T. The estimated occipital GABA concentration was consistent with previous reports, suggesting that editing for GABA is efficient when based on MEGA at high field strengths. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Impact of group size on spatial structure understanding tasks

Co-located collaborative tasks allow teams to leverage the skills of each individual member. While numerous guidelines exist to develop visualizations for individuals working on desktops, very little is known about how groups of individuals interpret and comprehend diverse types of visual constructs on larger displays. To study whether group size impacts the collective understanding of relationships in three-dimensional (3D) spatial structures when using different types of presentation, we carried out three experiments. We compared individual performance at structure understanding tasks to performance of groups containing two or four members. We consider two alternate visualization techniques for extracting 3D structure information: a 3D view with animated rotations and a combination of one static 3D plus three static two-dimensional (2D) projection views. In general our studies suggest that as group size increases, so does accuracy but with a cost in efficiency. Our results also suggest that beyond a threshold limit in group size, performance on certain tasks begins to degrade. Regardless of group size, participants performed better when the display was presented in the animation condition instead of the multiple static views, except when large groups needed to relate the visualization to a physical counterpart. We summarize our results in terms of Steiner's model for explaining the effects of group size and task characteristics on group performance.
An application of a local version of Chang's theorem

We prove a theorem claimed in math.CA/0605519 which asserts that if A is a subset of a compact abelian group G with density of a particular (natural, although technical) form then the A(G)-norm (that is the sum of the absolute values of the Fourier transform) of the characteristic function of A cannot be too small.
Anti-VEGF receptor antagonist (VGA1155) reduces infarction in rat permanent focal brain ischemia.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a major mediator of angiogenesis and a strong vascular permeability factor. VEGF is known to open the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and induce cerebral edema. Experimental studies of VEGF antagonism have shown it reduces cerebral edema after ischemia, indicating its potential for prevention of secondary brain damage. We examined the therapeutic effect of VGA1155 (5- [N-Methyl-N- (4-octadecyloxyphenyl) acetyl] amino-2-methyl-thiobenzoic acid), a novel small molecule antagonist of VEGF, on rat permanent focal cerebral ischemia. METHODS Permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) was induced with the suture occlusion method. A single dose of VGA1155 (10mg/kg, i.p.) was administered 30 minutes before the induction of MCAO after which brain water content, Evans blue extravasation, neurological score, infarct volumes and VEGF expression determined by means of ELISA were compared with corresponding values for vehicle injected control rats. RESULTS Brain water content and Evans Blue extravasation 24 hours after ischemia were not significantly reduced, but, compared with control group, VGA1155 significantly reduced infarct volume (32.0% for VGA1155 vs. 46.7% for control; % volume of hemisphere volume) and improved neurological function 7 days after ischemia, when tissue content of the VEGF group markedly increased to nine times that of the vehicle-treated animals. CONCLUSION VGA1155 was found to protect against secondary ischemic brain damage after permanent focal cerebral ischemia, although it did not reduce vasogenic edema at 24 hours. Changes in endogenous VEGF may be related to the therapeutic effect of VGA1155.
The association of magnetic resonance imaging measures with cognitive function in a biracial population sample.

BACKGROUND White matter hyperintensity volume (WMHV), cerebral infarcts, and total brain volume (TBV) are associated with cognitive function, but few studies have examined these associations in the general population or whether they differ by race. OBJECTIVE To examine the association of WMHV, cerebral infarcts, and TBV with global cognition and cognition in 5 separate domains in a biracial population sample. SETTING A biracial community population of Chicago, Illinois. DESIGN Cross-sectional population study. PARTICIPANTS The study population comprised 575 participants from the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures of WMHV, TBV, and cerebral infarcts and detailed neuropsychological testing assessments of global cognition and 5 cognitive domains. RESULTS Overall and among those without dementia, cognition was inversely associated with WMHV and number of infarcts but was positively associated with TBV. When all 3 measures were simultaneously added to the model, the association of global cognition with WMHV and TBV remained significant and unchanged but was no longer significant with infarcts. Among subjects without dementia, all 3 MRI measures were associated with performance in multiple cognitive domains, specifically perceptual speed. However, among subjects with dementia, only TBV was associated with cognition and performance in multiple cognitive systems. Race did not significantly modify any of these associations. CONCLUSIONS In this biracial general population sample, the associations of MRI measures with cognition differed according to clinical status of subjects (stronger among subjects without dementia) and were not modified by race. These associations did not affect all cognitive domains equally but were more consistent with impairments in perceptual speed.