Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IEEE 802.11e EDCA Networks: Modeling, Differentiation and Optimization

Enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) is an extension of the distributed coordination function to support quality-of-service for IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks. By assigning distinct backoff parameters to each access category (AC), differentiated throughput performance can be achieved when the network is saturated. Although it has been long observed that the network throughput with the current EDCA standard setting may significantly degrade as the network size grows, how to properly tune the backoff parameters to optimize the network throughput under a certain differentiation requirement remains largely unknown. In this paper, a new analytical model is proposed to address this open issue. Specifically, we focus on an M-AC IEEE 802.11e EDCA network where nodes in the same AC have identical backoff parameters, including the initial backoff window sizeW(g), the cutoff phaseK(g), and the arbitration interframe spaces (AIFS) numberA(g), g = 1, . , M. The network steady-state operating point in saturated conditions, i.e., pA, is characterized by using the steady-state probability of successful transmission of head-of-line (HOL) packets given that the channel is idle, based on which explicit expressions of node throughput and network throughput are further obtained. For given target ratios of node throughput of ACs, the optimal initial backoff window sizes and AIFS numbers to maximize the network throughput are derived and verified by simulation results. The analysis reveals that the maximum network throughput is solely determined by the holding time of HOL packets in successful transmission and collision states. To achieve the maximum network throughput, the initial backoff window size of each AC should be linearly increased with the network size. In the meantime, the increasing rate of the initial backoff window size, or the AIFS number, of each AC should be also carefully set according to the target ratios of node throughput. Although the maximum network throughput with pre-specified target ratios of node throughput of ACs can be achieved in both ways, the backoff window size differentiation could be a more preferable option as it requires fewer tuning parameters and provides better precision than the AIFS differentiation.
Building large-scale robot systems: Distributed role assignment in dynamic, uncertain domains

For robot teams in large-scale, real-world domains, an effective approach for allocating roles to team members (role allocation) is critical. Unfortunately, role allocation is extremely challenging in such real-world domains since robots face significant uncertainties in their own capabilities and they may be faced with dynamic and continuous changes in their capabilities. Previous work in multi-robotic and multiagent systems has provided algorithms for role allocation, but these algorithms often fail to explicitly represent and reason with uncertainty in a robot’s own capabilities, and often do not address dynamic continuous changes in such capabilities. This paper presents two key contributions to address these limitations in large-scale settings. First, it presents a novel role allocation and re-allocation algorithm that explicitly reasons with uncertainty and dynamic changes in robot’s own capabilities. Second, it presents the application of a proxy-based architecture (previously applied only in agent-human settings) in large-scale robotic domains — demonstrating the application of a reusable infrastructure for multirobotic domains. Moreover this paper presents an experimental study based on simulations performed in order to evaluate the algorithm. These simulations pave the way to large real-world practical multi-robotic system involving 100s of robots.
Forest SAR tomography: A covariance matching approach

In this paper a technique to conduct tomographic analyses of forested areas through multiple, coherent SAR images is presented. This technique differs from other methods existing in literature in that it may be regarded as a natural extension of SAR interferometry to the case where several distributed targets are present within the system resolution cell. In this way, it is possible to estimate the position of each target in the resolution cell with virtually the same accuracy obtainable by a single target interferometric analysis. Furthermore, this approach is suited to both single and multi polarimetric channel data. As a validation, this paper reports the results of a tomographic analysis of the forest site of Remningstorp, Sweden, basing on a data-set of 9 P-band SAR images acquired by DLRpsilas E-SAR.
Further analysis of pemphigus autoantibodies and their use in studies on the heterogeneity, structure, and function of desmosomes

Pemphigus is an autoimmune disease that causes blistering of human epidermis. We have recently shown that autoantibodies in the serum of three pemphigus patients bind to desmosomes (Jones, J. C. R., J. Arnn, L. A. Staehelin, and R. D. Goldman, 1984, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 81:2781-2785), and we suggested that pemphigus blisters form, at least in part, from a specific antibody-induced disruption of desmosomes in the epidermis. In this paper, experiments are described that extend our initial observations. 13 pemphigus serum samples, which include four known pemphigus vulgaris (Pv) and four known pemphigus foliaceus (Pf) serum samples, have been analyzed by both immunofluorescence and by immunoblotting using cell-free desmosome preparations. Tissue sections of mouse skin processed for double indirect immunofluorescence using each of the pemphigus serum samples and a rabbit antiserum directed against a component of the desmosomal plaque (desmoplakin) show similar punctate cell surface staining patterns. This suggests that all 13 pemphigus serum samples contain autoantibodies that recognize desmosomes. These autoantibodies appear specific for stratified squamous epithelial cell desmosomes and do not recognize desmosomes of other tissues (e.g., mouse heart and mouse intestine). Cultured mouse keratinocytes, which possess well-defined desmosomes, were processed for indirect immunofluorescence using the pemphigus serum samples. Eight of the 13 sera (including the four known Pv samples but not the known Pf sera) stain desmosomes in these preparations. By double indirect immunofluorescence the desmoplakin antiserum stains a double fluorescent line along the contacting edges of cultured keratinocytes, whereas the positive pemphigus serum samples stain a single fluorescent line along this same border. We believe that these pemphigus autoantibodies recognize extracellular antigens located somewhere within the region between the two apposing membranes that comprise the desmosome. The pemphigus sera exhibit positive immunoblotting reactions with desmosome-enriched fractions obtained from bovine tongue epithelium. Three serum samples (including two of the four known Pf serum samples) react with 160- and 165-kD desmosome-associated polypeptides (Koulu, L., A. Kusimi, M. S. Steinberg, V. Klaus-Kovtun, and J. R. Stanley, 1984, J. Exp. Med., 160:1509-1518). Another eight serum samples (including the four known Pv sera) recognize a 140-kD desmosome-associated polypeptide. We propose that the antigens recognized by these human autoantibodies may play important roles in the adhesion of cells within the epidermis. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
A Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study of Coaxial Stacking in RNA

Abstract We report on unrestrained molecular dynamics simulations of an RNA tetramer binding to a tetra-nucleotide overhang at the 5′-end of an RNA hairpin (nicked structure) and of the corresponding continuous hairpin with Na+ as counterions. The simulations lead to stable structures and in this way a structural model for the coaxially stacked RNA hairpin is generated. The stacking interface in the coaxially stacked nicked hairpin structure is characterized by a reduced twist and shift and a slightly increased propeller twist as compared to the continuous system. This leads to an increased overlap between C22 and G23 in the stacking interface of the nicked structure. In the simulations the continuous RNA hairpin has an almost straight helical axis. On the other hand, the corresponding axis for the nicked structure exhibits a marked kink of 39°. The stacking interface exhibits no increased flexibility as compared to the corresponding base pair step in the continuous structure.
A New Unsupervised Approach to Word Segmentation

This article proposes ESA, a new unsupervised approach to word segmentation. ESA is an iterative process consisting of 3 phases: Evaluation, Selection, and Adjustment. In Evaluation, both certainty and uncertainty of character sequence co-occurrence in corpora are considered as the statistical evidence supporting goodness measurement. Additionally, the statistical data of character sequences with various lengths become comparable with each other by using a simple process called Balancing. In Selection, a local maximum strategy is adopted without thresholds, and the strategy can be implemented with dynamic programming. In Adjustment, a part of the statistical data is updated to improve successive results. In our experiment, ESA was evaluated on the SIGHAN Bakeoff-2 data set. The results suggest that ESA is effective on Chinese corpora. It is noteworthy that the F-measures of the results are basically monotone increasing and can rapidly converge to relatively high values. Furthermore, the empirical formulae based on the results can be used to predict the parameter in ESA to avoid parameter estimation that is usually time-consuming.
Improving Robot Mobility by Combining Downward-Looking and Frontal Cameras

This paper presents a novel attempt to combine a downward-looking camera and a forward-looking camera for terrain classification in the field of off-road mobile robots. The first camera is employed to identify the terrain beneath the robot. This information is then used to improve the classification of the forthcoming terrain acquired from the frontal camera. This research also shows the usefulness of the Gist descriptor for terrain classification purposes. Physical experiments conducted in different terrains (quasi-planar terrains) and different lighting conditions, confirm the satisfactory performance of this approach in comparison with a simple color-based classifier based only on frontal images. Our proposal substantially reduces the misclassification rate of the color-based classifier (∼10% versus ∼20%).
Implementation of safety monitoring system at the waterfront based on video analysis technique

There are many object detection and tracking algorithms and mechanisms that have been developed for various environments and for various reasons, all with their strengths and weaknesses. A real-life application of object detection should be as fast as possible, and as lightweight as possible given the circumstances of many people in a single area increasing the computational cost. The emphasized lightweight method that's been developed in this paper is composed of two stages: First, the pedestrian detection is done in two steps, initially with Haar-like features of Adaboost for full body detection, and Local Binary Patterns (LBP) for head detection. The chosen tracking algorithm is Probabilistic Data Association Filter (PDAF) for its robustness and lightweight nature. The developed system is used for coastline safety near tetrapods against emergency situations.
Corneal Graft Survival and Intraocular Pressure Control in Coexisting Penetrating Keratoplasty and Pars Plana Ahmed Glaucoma Valves

Purpose To evaluate corneal graft survival and intraocular pressure (IOP) control after penetrating keratoplasty (PK) and pars plana Ahmed Glaucoma Valve (AGV) implantation among patients with coexisting glaucoma and corneal disease. Methods Retrospective chart review at an institution of 25 eyes (24 patients) that received PK and pars plana AGV. Results The mean postoperative follow-up was 23 months (range, 2–106 months). Survival of the grafts was 89% (16 of 18 eyes) at 1 year and 63% (5 of 8) at 2 years. IOP control was 78% (15 of 19) at 1 year and 44% (4 of 9) at 2 years. By Kaplan–Meier analysis, the 50% probability of sustained graft clarity occurred at 28 months and that of sustained IOP control at 24 months. By last follow-up, best-corrected visual acuity had improved by at least 1 line in 52% (13 of 25) of eyes compared with preoperative values. Preoperative factors, including peripheral anterior synechiae, were not found to be associated with graft survival, IOP control, or visual acuity at 1 year. Conclusion Pars plana AGV can successfully control IOP in PK patients in the short and intermediate terms, but graft clarity and IOP control diminish over time. Graft decompensation, when it did occur, likely reflects the associated ocular morbidity and clinical complexity of this circumscribed cohort of eyes.
Isolation of a Calmodulin-binding Transcription Factor from Rice (Oryza sativa L.)*

Calmodulin (CaM) regulates diverse cellular functions by modulating the activities of a variety of enzymes and proteins. However, direct modulation of transcription factors by CaM has been poorly understood. In this study, we isolated a putative transcription factor by screening a rice cDNA expression library by using CaM:horse-radish peroxidase as a probe. This factor, which we have designated OsCBT (Oryza sativa CaM-binding transcription factor), has structural features similar to Arabidopsis AtSRs/AtCAMTAs and encodes a 103-kDa protein because it contains a CG-1 homology DNA-binding domain, three ankyrin repeats, a putative transcriptional activation domain, and five putative CaM-binding motifs. By using a gel overlay assay, gel mobility shift assays, and site-directed mutagenesis, we showed that OsCBT has two different types of functional CaM-binding domains, an IQ motif, and a Ca2+-dependent motif. To determine the DNA binding specificity of OsCBT, we employed a random binding site selection method. This analysis showed that OsCBT preferentially binds to the sequence 5′-TWCG(C/T)GTKKKKTKCG-3′ (W and K represent A or C and T or G, respectively). OsCBT was able to bind this sequence and activate β-glucuronidase reporter gene expression driven by a minimal promoter containing tandem repeats of these sequences in Arabidopsis leaf protoplasts. Green fluorescent protein fusions of two putative nuclear localization signals of OsCBT, a bipartite and a SV40 type, were predominantly localized in the nucleus. Most interestingly, the transcriptional activation mediated by OsCBT was inhibited by co-transfection with a CaM gene. Taken together, our results suggest that OsCBT is a transcription activator modulated by CaM.
A unified relevance model for opinion retrieval

Representing the information need is the greatest challenge for opinion retrieval. Typical queries for opinion retrieval are composed of either just content words, or content words with a small number of cue "opinion" words. Both are inadequate for retrieving opinionated documents. In this paper, we develop a general formal framework--the opinion relevance model--to represent an information need for opinion retrieval. We explore a series of methods to automatically identify the most appropriate opinion words for query expansion, including using query independent sentiment resources. We also propose a relevance feedback-based approach to extract opinion words. Both query-independent and query-dependent methods can also be integrated into a more effective mixture relevance model. Finally, opinion retrieval experiments are presented for the Blog06 and COAE08 text collections. The results show that, significant improvements can always be obtained by this opinion relevance model whether sentiment resources are available or not.
Doing thousands of hypothesis tests at the same time

The classical theory of hypothesis testing was fashioned for a scientific world of single inferences, small data sets, and slow computation. Exciting advances in scientific technology – microarrays, imaging devices, spectroscopy – have changed the equation. This article concerns the simultaneous testing of thousands of related situations. It reviews an empirical Bayes approach, encompassing both size and power calculations, based on Benjamini and Hochberg’s False Discovery Rate criterion. The discussion precedes mainly by example, with technical details deferred to the references.
A Qualitative Analysis of Conflict Types: An Intragroup Conflict

This paper provides the results of an empirical study of empirical research on of the conflict within teams.The ability to face the conflict and to resolve problems efficiently is the most important factor for the success or failure of a group. Conflict is a powerful instrument of organizational change which, if managed in an opportune way, leads to the an evolution of a working group.We conducted an experiment with 147 students in 28 working groups from the Department of Management, University of Molise, Italy. In this study we analyzed the existing correlations between the level of conflict within the group and the characteristics of the team structure in terms of: friendship of the members (1st dependent variable); level of trust in the group (2nd dependent variable); diversity (3rd dependent variable). We examined the links between diversity and conflict and how different kinds of diversity influenced group conflict. We looked at two aspects of demographic diversity, age and gender and at two aspects of background diversity, educational level and work experience.The paper is presented as follows: first we analyzed the foundations of conflict within the group, our model and hypothesis. Second we develop our hypothesis. Third we describe the methodological and qualitative approach, empirical model and econometric methods as statistical analyses. Following this, we present our results and finally we draw the principal conclusions implications and limitations of our research.
Multilayered Mapping and Navigation for Autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles

Micro aerial vehicles, such as multirotors, are particularly well suited for the autonomous monitoring, inspection, and surveillance of buildings, e.g., for maintenance or disaster management. Key prerequisites for the fully autonomous operation of micro aerial vehicles are real‐time obstacle detection and planning of collision‐free trajectories. In this article, we propose a complete system with a multimodal sensor setup for omnidirectional obstacle perception consisting of a three‐dimensional (3D) laser scanner, two stereo camera pairs, and ultrasonic distance sensors. Detected obstacles are aggregated in egocentric local multiresolution grid maps. Local maps are efficiently merged in order to simultaneously build global maps of the environment and localize in these. For autonomous navigation, we generate trajectories in a multilayered approach: from mission planning over global and local trajectory planning to reactive obstacle avoidance. We evaluate our approach and the involved components in simulation and with the real autonomous micro aerial vehicle. Finally, we present the results of a complete mission for autonomously mapping a building and its surroundings.
Incremental Clustering and Expansion for Faster Optimal Planning in Dec-POMDPs

This article presents the state-of-the-art in optimal solution methods for decentralized partially observable Markov decision processes (Dec-POMDPs), which are general models for collaborative multiagent planning under uncertainty. Building off the generalized multiagent A* (GMAA*) algorithm, which reduces the problem to a tree of one-shot collaborative Bayesian games (CBGs), we describe several advances that greatly expand the range of Dec-POMDPs that can be solved optimally. First, we introduce lossless incremental clustering of the CBGs solved by GMAA*, which achieves exponential speedups without sacrificing optimality. Second, we introduce incremental expansion of nodes in the GMAA* search tree, which avoids the need to expand all children, the number of which is in the worst case doubly exponential in the node's depth. This is particularly beneficial when little clustering is possible. In addition, we introduce new hybrid heuristic representations that are more compact and thereby enable the solution of larger Dec-POMDPs. We provide theoretical guarantees that, when a suitable heuristic is used, both incremental clustering and incremental expansion yield algorithms that are both complete and search equivalent. Finally, we present extensive empirical results demonstrating that GMAA*-ICE, an algorithm that synthesizes these advances, can optimally solve Dec-POMDPs of unprecedented size.
Prohepcidin and Hepcidin in Acute Phase Reaction Accompanying Large Cardiac Surgery

Hepcidin, a small cystein-rech peptide produced by the liver, was first described as an antimicrobial peptide (hepatic bactericidal protein) (Park et al. 2001) and subsequently discovered as a key regulator of iron homeostasis. Via regulation of ferroportin, hepcidin inhibits intestinal iron absorption and iron release from macrophages and hepatocytes (Ganz, 2006; Papanikolaou et al., 2005). Hepcidin levels are regulated by at least three independent mechanisms (Nicolas et al., 2002). Whereas both inflammation and iron loading induce hepcidin production, erythropoietic activity suppresses its production. Apart from those factors also endoplasmic reticulum stress can induce hepcidin expression (Vecchi et al., 2009). In general, the decrease of hepcidin due to the iron deficiency or enhanced erythropoiesis stimulates iron intestinal absorption. On the other hand, iron-stimulated hepcidin production prevents iron overload. Increase in hepcidin concentration due to inflammation is considered important for iron sequestration (Ganz & Nemeth, 2009). Studies of humans with severe inflammatory diseases have shown increased levels of hepcidin, suggesting that elevated hepcidin levels play a role in the anemia of inflammation (Nemeth et al., 2004; Krijt et al., 2009). Due to dominant regulation by interleukin-6 (IL-6), hepcidin was classified as a type II acute-phase protein (Nemeth et al., 2003). Increased IL-6 levels cause the binding of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) to the hepcidin promoter, increasing its activity (Wrighting & Andrews, 2006). Moreover, hepcidin itself has the potential to bind bivalent metal ions (Tselepis et al., 2010) and to mediate transcriptional changes of a wide variety of genes which can play important role in inflammatory response (De Domenico et al., 2010). That is why hepcidin can be considered as important inflammatory mediator, and its measurement can be helpful in many clinical situations. Technical problems prevented reliable and routine measurements of active 25 amino acid (aa) hepcidin in plasma until 2009. Therefore there are only limited data on hepcidin in human subjects, and much of findings come from animal and in vitro models. To evaluate the time course of plasma hepcidin and its precursor prohepcidin in relation to inflammatory parameters, authors used a specific group of patients undergoing large cardiac surgery pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) in a deep hypothermic circulatory arrest
Comprehensive assessment of gesture production: a new test of upper limb apraxia (TULIA)

Background: Only few standardized apraxia scales are available and they do not cover all domains and semantic features of gesture production. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of a newly developed test of upper limb apraxia (TULIA), which is comprehensive and still short to administer.