Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rare Event Detection and Propagation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Rarely occurring events present unique challenges to energy constrained systems designed for long term sensing of their occurrence or effect. Unlike periodic sampling or query based sensing systems, longevity cannot be achieved simply by adjusting the sensing nodes’ duty cycle until an equitable balance between data density and network lifetime is established. The low probability of occurrence and random nature of rare events makes it difficult to guarantee duty cycled battery powered sensing nodes will be energised when events occur. Equally, it is usually considered impractical to leave the sensing nodes energised at all times if the network is to have an acceptably long operational life. In the past decade and a half, wireless sensor network research has addressed this aspect of rare event sensing by investigating techniques including synchronised duty cycling of redundant nodes, passive sensing, duplicate message suppression, and energy efficient network protocols. Researchers have also demonstrated the efficacy of harvesting energy from the environment to extend operational life. Here we survey existing rare event detection and propagation techniques, and suggest areas suitable for continued research.
A Novel Fluorescent Probe That Is Brain Permeable and Selectively Binds to Myelin

Myelin is a multilayered glial cell membrane that forms segmented sheaths around large-caliber axons of both the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS). Myelin covering insures rapid and efficient transmission of nerve impulses. Direct visual assessment of local changes of myelin content in vivo could greatly facilitate diagnosis and therapeutic treatments of myelin-related diseases. Current histologic probes for the visualization of myelin are based on antibodies or charged histochemical reagents that do not enter the brain. We have developed a series of chemical compounds including (E,E)-1,4-bis(4′-aminostyryl)-2-dimethoxy-benzene termed BDB and the subject of this report, which readily penetrates the blood-brain barrier and selectively binds to the myelin sheath in brain. BDB selectively stains intact myelinated regions in wild-type mouse brain, which allows for delineation of cuprizone-induced demyelinating lesions in mouse brain. BDB can be injected IV into the brain and selectively detect demyelinating lesions in cuprizone-treated mice in situ. These studies justified further investigation of BDB as a potential myelin-imaging probe to monitor myelin pathology in vivo.
A Comparative Study of Filter Bank Spacing for Speech Recognition

Although Mel scale filter bank spacing is used extensively in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), it will be shown in this paper that it provides little benefit over other perceptually motivated frequency warping scales. An MFCC like feature based on the Bark scale is shown to yield similar performance in speech recognition experiments as MFCC. The performance of MFCC and BFCC features are also compared to Uniform Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (UFCC) where it is shown that neither the Mel or Bark scale provide significant advantage over a Uniform scale if training and test conditions are matched.
Dynamic among periodontal disease, stress, and adverse pregnancy outcomes.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine the dynamic between periodontitis and stress and the incidence of preterm birth (PTB), low birth weight (LBW) and preterm low birth weight (PLBW) in pregnant women from Pasto, Nariño, Colombia. METHODS Forty-six women who attended to "Hospital Local Civil" localized in the city were involved. Periodontal clinical evaluation, pregnancy outcome variables and a stress scale were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytic statistics. RESULTS The incidence of PTB was 13 %, of LBW was 4.3 %, and the occurrence of PLBW was 21.7 %. Our findings showed that the presence of periodontitis and stress all together increase the risk of LBW babies (OR=4.6; 95 % CI: 0.2-86.6). Regarding, periodontitis and stress interaction, the risk of PTB (OR=0.9; 95 % CI: 0.08-9.6) and PLBW (OR=1.1; 95 % CI: 0.1-7.1) decreased in the presence of these two variables, although their values were higher in the absent of stress (PTB, OR=2.3; 95 % CI: 0.3- 14.7 and PLBW, OR=10.3; 95 % CI:1.1-93.2). CONCLUSIONS The periodontal disease in this study was associated with PTB, LBW and PLBW. However, their risk depends on the physiological changes produced by stress.
The Effects of Culture and Performance on Trust in News Media in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: The Case of Serbia

This study tested the influences of cultural and performance factors on trust in news media in Serbia by conducting a survey on a stratified random sample of the population (N = 544). The results show that both factors played a significant role, but that the performance explanation was slightly more powerful. The levels of trust in news media and generalized trust in Serbia remained low, while the perceptions of news media corruption reached extremely high levels. Before testing theories, the meanings of three main variables were explored by conducting 20 in-depth interviews with a separate sample of the Serbian population.
Quantifying Uncertainties in Modeling Climate Change Impacts on Hydropower Production

Climate change will have large impacts on water resources and its predictions are fraught with uncertainties in West Africa. With the current global drive for renewable energy due to climate change, there is a need for understanding the effects of hydro-climatic changes on water resources and hydropower generation. A hydrological model was used to model runoff inflow into the largest hydroelectric dam (Kainji) in the Niger Basin (West Africa) under present and future conditions. Inflow to the reservoir was simulated using hydro-climatic data from a set of dynamically downscaled 8 global climate models (GCM) with two emission scenarios from the CORDEX-Africa regional downscaling experiment, driven with CMIP5 data. Observed records of the Kainji Lake were used to develop a hydroelectricity production model to simulate future energy production for the reservoir. Results indicate an increase in inflow into the reservoir and concurrent increases in hydropower production for the majority of the GCM data under the two scenarios. This analysis helps planning hydropower schemes for sustainable hydropower production.
Data Protection and Rapid Recovery From Attack With A Virtual Private File Server and Virtual Machine Appliances

When a personal computer is attacked, both personal data like digital photos and system configuration information like installed programs can be lost. To protect personal data, we house it in a file server virtual machine running on the same physical host and export it to other virtual machines running on the same host. We implement this private file server virtual machine using a modified version of an NFS server installed in a virtual machine under various virtualization environments such as Xen and VMware. We also demonstrate that by placing the user’s applications in a virtual machine rather than directly on the base machine we can provide near instant recovery of system configuration information. We quantify the costs of this architecture by comparing benchmarks running directly on a base operating system and accessing data in a local filesystem to those running in a guest operating system and accessing data in an NFS partition mounted from a file server virtual machine. We find that for Xen the overhead of read intensive workloads is at most 5% and for write intensive workloads the overhead is at most 24%. For system benchmarks that stress CPU and memory performance, we see no noticeable degradation.
Adaptive rejection of periodic & non-periodic disturbances for a class of nonlinearly parametrized systems

In this paper, Lyapunov-based adaptive control is presented for a class of nonlinearly parametrized systems in the presence of periodic disturbances. Through the use of an integral Lyapunov function, the controller singularity problem is elegantly solved as it avoids the nonlinear parametrization from entering into the adaptive control and repetitive control. Both global stability of the adaptive system and asymptotic convergence of the tracking error are established, and tracking error bounds are provided to quantify the control performance analytically.
A novel compressed collaborative sensing scheme using LDPC technique

Collaborative spectrum sensing (CSS) can significantly improve the performance of spectrum sensing based on the spatial diversity gain of different cognitive radio (CR). In wideband spectrum sensing scenario, since there might not be enough CRs in the network, or due to hardware limitations, each CR node can only sense a relatively narrow band of radio spectrum. Consequently, the available channel sensing information is far from being sufficient for precisely recognizing the wide range of unoccupied channels. Based on the fact that the spectrum usage information the CR nodes collect has a common sparsity pattern, in this paper, we present a compressed collaborative wideband spectrum sensing scheme in cognitive radio networks. Under the hypothesis of joint sparsity, the CRs need to randomly detect a very small number of sub-channels according to a measurement matrix and send the results to a fusion center. To make the compressed sensing more effective, the scheme uses LDPC-like measurement matrix. Then the whole channel status can be recoverd by the fusion center through a low-complexity message passing algorithm. Numerical results shows that under a joint sparsity model, using the proposed distributed compressed sensing scheme, the CRs make a small number of measurements and get a high probability of detection.
Blocking Probability Analysis for EnhancedOptical WDM Networks

Currently, the Immediate reservation (IR) and advance reservation (AR) are the two main reservation mechanisms implemented on large-scale scientific optical networks. We can also provide hybrid IR/AR scenarios. Nonetheless, such scenarios can increase the blocking of IR if no quality-of-service (QoS) policies are considered. A solution could be to quantify such blocking performance is that to implement the hybrid scenario in an optical network that provide more wavelength and speed efficiency. Hence in this paper we are considering the Enhanced WDM networks. However, current blocking analytical models are not able to deal with both IR and AR. In this paper, we propose an analytical model to compute the network-wide blocking performance of IR/AR classes. Specifically, we calculate the blocking on the network using the fixed-point approximation analysis. The performance results show that our model provides good accuracy compared to simulation results, even in a scenario with multiple reservation classes defined by different book-ahead times.
Development of a framework for Sustainable Social Housing Provision (SSHP) in England

Sustainable social housing provision (SSHP) has become very important over the last few decades for the main objective of meeting housing needs. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that SSHP has not been practiced successfully. A growing body of the literature shows that lack of an acceptable definition of social housing could contribute to the lack of political will for achieving SSHP. The overall aim of this research is to develop ‘a framework for implementing SSHP’. The aim was achieved through research objectives, including a critical review of the concept and identification of types of social housing and proposes a definition for describing it; examine the concept of sustainable development (SD) and its requirements for achieving sustainability in social housing provision (SHP); and examine the key constituents, barriers and recommendations for improving SSHP from economic, environmental and social perspectives. The methodology adopted for this research comprises a combination of the review of the extant literature, a qualitative content analysis and a quantitative questionnaire survey. The contents of the selected documents were grouped into three main categories – constituents, barriers and recommendations for implementing SSHP with economic, environmental and social key factors as sub-groups for each. Data gathered through the questionnaire survey were obtained from housing authorities (public sector) and housing associations (non-profit private sector) as social housing practitioners in England and were analysed using various statistical analysis, including ANOVA. Findings from the study assisted in ranking the key constituents, barriers and recommendations for the implementation of SSHP from economic, environmental and social perspectives, which are categorised into most critical, critical and less critical for achieving sustainability in SHP. The main factors that dominate SSHP include: affordability, adequate provision, adequate funding, economic design and planning, use of environmental friendly materials, effective land use, use of the renewable energy, reduction of waste, promotion of social cohesion, security of lives and property, etc. The outcome was used to develop a framework for improving the implementation of SSHP, which has been tested and validated. Although SD has become a dominant focus of research activities in recent years, studies undertaken for the development of a framework that tied constituents with barriers and recommendations for implementing SSHP are rare. The framework of this type can help to address various sustainability issues that militate against the achievement of sustainability in SHP. In order to achieve SSHP, the role of stakeholders, including social housing practitioners, governments/agencies, financial institutions and end-users are significant. The study concluded that there is a need to develop a framework for implementing SSHP with a strong recommendation that stakeholders should effectively address sustainability issues in SHP.
Radiographic joint space in rheumatoid glenohumeral joints. A 15-year prospective follow-up study in 74 patients.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate radiographically the glenohumeral (GH) joint space in patients with long-term rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS A cohort of 74 patients with RA were followed prospectively for 15 yr. At the end point, 148 shoulders were radiographed using a standard method. The GH joint space was examined from the radiographs using a method developed previously for population studies; the joint space was measured at three different sites and the average of the three measurements, the integral space, was calculated. Destruction of the GH joints was assessed with the Larsen method on a scale of 0-5 and compared with the joint space measurements. RESULTS The mean GH joint space in RA patients was 3. 1 (S.D. 3.3), range -17.3 to 5.7 mm; 2.7 mm (S.D. 4.5) in men and 3. 2 mm (S.D. 2.8) in women. The mean of the affected joints (Larsen grades 2-5), 1.7 mm (S.D. 4.5), was notably narrower than the mean 4. 4 mm (S.D. 0.6) of the non-affected (Larsen grades 0-1) joints. Pathological GH joint space, less than 2 mm, was found in five (15%) of 36 joints in men and in 14 (13%) of 112 joints in women. All the joints graded as Larsen 4 and 5 (n = 17) fulfilled this pathological criterion. Joint space narrowing was associated [r = - 0.66, 95% confidence interval (CI): -0.56 to -0.75] with increasing destruction (Larsen grading) of the joint. The narrowing was significant between non- (Larsen 0, 1), moderately (Larsen 2, 3) and severely (Larsen 4, 5) affected joints (P < 0.001). However, a remarkable step in this process occurred between Larsen grades 3 and 4 when the mean joint space diminished from 3.1 to 0.3 mm. CONCLUSIONS Joint space narrowing is a frequent consequence of GH joint rheumatoid affection. However, joint space narrowing is a late phenomenon occurring not until after marked erosive destruction, which should be noted when using the Larsen method for GH joints.
Sampling through time and phylodynamic inference with coalescent and birth–death models

Many population genetic models have been developed for the purpose of inferring population size and growth rates from random samples of genetic data. We examine two popular approaches to this problem, the coalescent and the birth–death-sampling model (BDM), in the context of estimating population size and birth rates in a population growing exponentially according to the birth–death branching process. For sequences sampled at a single time, we found the coalescent and the BDM gave virtually indistinguishable results in terms of the growth rates and fraction of the population sampled, even when sampling from a small population. For sequences sampled at multiple time points, we find that the birth–death model estimators are subject to large bias if the sampling process is misspecified. Since BDMs incorporate a model of the sampling process, we show how much of the statistical power of BDMs arises from the sequence of sample times and not from the genealogical tree. This motivates the development of a new coalescent estimator, which is augmented with a model of the known sampling process and is potentially more precise than the coalescent that does not use sample time information.
Climbing obstacles via bio-inspired CNN-CPG and adaptive attitude control

A control system based on the principles used by cockroaches to climb obstacles is introduced and applied to a bio-inspired hexapod robot. Cockroaches adaptively use different strategies as functions of the ground morphology and obstacle characteristics. The control system introduced in this paper consists of two parts working in parallel. Locomotion control is performed by a cellular neural network (CNN) playing the role of an artificial central pattern generator (CPG) for the robot, while a new attitude control system has been designed. In order to reproduce the adaptative capabilities of the biological model, the attitude control system is based on a motor map and is aimed at regulating the posture of the robot to allow it to overcome obstacles. In fact, high obstacles require the locomotion gait to be reorganized by changing the posture of the robot to be more effective during the overcoming of the obstacle. Both proprioceptive and exteroceptive information are needed to solve this problem, they constitute the input of the adaptive attitude control. Simulation results illustrating the suitability of the control system are also shown.
"Politics of Differentiated Integration: A Comparative Study of Enhanced Cooperation in the EU and the Pathfinder in APEC"

A large majority of studies on differentiation focus their attention on the historical development and/or institutional designs of closer or enhanced cooperation in the EU, neglecting similar developments in other regions, for example, the pathfinder in APEC. In comparing cooperation in the EU with the pathfinder in APEC, this article aims to discover conditions of development of differentiation and its impact on the integration as a whole, and to present a few theoretical insights gained from this comparison. This paper begins with a critical review of the literature on the differentiation development in Europe and Asia. Then, from the framework inspired from liberal intergovernmentalism, the author comparatively analyzes enhanced cooperation in the EU and the pathfinder in APEC, and as a conclusion, evaluate the probable contribution of this analysis to better understanding differentiation and the development of integration theory.
Curve-skeleton applications

Curve-skeletons are a 1D subset of the medial surface of a 3D object and are useful for many visualization tasks including virtual navigation, reduced-model formulation, visualization improvement, mesh repair, animation, etc. There are many algorithms in the literature describing extraction methodologies for different applications; however, it is unclear how general and robust they are. In this paper, we provide an overview of many curve-skeleton applications and compile a set of desired properties of such representations. We also give a taxonomy of methods and analyze the advantages and drawbacks of each class of algorithms.
Characterization of the Inlet Combustion Air in NIST's Reference Spray Combustion Facility: Effect of Vane Angle and Reynolds Number

The airflow through a 12-vane cascade swirl generator is examined numerically to characterize the inlet combustion air in the reference spray combustion facility at NIST. A three-dimensional model is used to simulate the aerodynamics in the swirl generator that imparts the desired degree of angular momentum to the air in the annulus leading into the reactor. A parametric study is presented in which the effects of the vane angle and Reynolds number are examined. Reynolds numbers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000, and vane angles ranging from 30 to 60, are investigated. For a vane angle of 50, which is the current operating condition of the swirl generator, a recirculation zone develops at the exit of the annulus for Reynolds number, Re ≈ 9500. The Renormalization Group method (RNG) k-e turbulence model is used to model the transport, production, and dissipation of turbulence due to its superior performance (relative to the standard k-e turbulence model) for this type of flow.
On Design of Distributed Beamforming for Two-Way Relay Networks

We consider a two-way relay network, where two source nodes, S1 and S2, exchange information through a cluster of relay nodes. The relay nodes receive the sum signal from S1 and S2 in the first time slot. In the second time slot, each relay node multiplies its received signal by a complex coefficient and retransmits the signal to the two source nodes, which leads to a distributed two-way beamforming system. By applying the principle of analog network coding, each receiver at S1 and S2 cancels the ``self-interference'' in the received signal from the relay cluster and decodes the message. This paper studies the 2-dimensional achievable rate region for such a two-way relay network with distributed beamforming. With different assumptions of channel reciprocity between the source-relay and relay-source channels, the achievable rate region is characterized under two setups. First, with reciprocal channels, we investigate the achievable rate regions when the relay cluster is subject to a sum-power constraint or individual-power constraints. We show that the optimal beamforming vectors obtained from solving the weighted sum inverse-SNR minimization (WSISMin) problems are sufficient to characterize the corresponding achievable rate region. Furthermore, we derive the closed form solutions for those optimal beamforming vectors and consequently propose the partially distributed algorithms to implement the optimal beamforming, where each relay node only needs the local channel information and one global parameter. Second, with the non-reciprocal channels, the achievable rate regions are also characterized for both the sum-power constraint case and the individual-power constraint case. Although no closed-form solutions are available under this setup, we present efficient algorithms to compute the optimal beamforming vectors, which are attained by solving SDP problems after semi-definite relaxation.