Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Environmental Surveillance at Los Alamos: An Independent Reassessment of Historical Data

Since 1971, a series of annual Environmental Surveillance … reports have served as the official public record of Los Alamos National Laboratory's (LANL) environmental performance. In northern New Mexico, where past LANL emissions are a public health concern, there is public skepticism over the accuracy of information contained in these reports. To test the hypothesis that LANL Environmental Surveillance … reports systematically understate past emissions, we compared the data on releases in LANL's own internal Occurrence Reports Collection (ORC) to the data reported to the public in the Environmental Surveillance … reports. A data set of 89 environmental occurrences recorded in the ORC in the time period from 1971 through 1980 was assembled. We did not find a systematic pattern of quantitative underreporting of source terms. However, 17 of the 89 (19%) environmental occurrences recorded in the ORC were not reported to the public in the Environmental Surveillance … reports. The observed discrepancies are discussed in terms of their relevance to public health concerns. Methodological caveats dictate restraint in applying these findings beyond the scope of the relative comparison performed here. Possible social origins for the rejected hypothesis are discussed. Areas for further consideration by the Centers for Disease Control's dose reconstruction study of LANL are identified.
An SMDP approach to optimal PHY configuration in wireless networks

In this work, we study the optimal configuration of the physical layer in wireless networks by means of Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) modeling. In particular, assume the physical layer is characterized by a set of potential operating points, with each point corresponding to a rate and reliability pair; for example, these pairs might be obtained through a now-standard diversity-vs-multiplexing tradeoff characterization. Given the current network state (e.g., buffer occupancies), a Decision Maker (DM) needs to dynamically decide which operating point to use. The SMDP problem formulation allows us to choose from these pairs an optimal selection, which is expressed by a decision rule as a function of the number of awaiting packets in the source's finite queue, channel state, size of the packet to be transmitted. We derive a general solution which covers various model configurations, including packet size distributions and varying channels. For the specific case of exponential transmission time, we analytically prove the optimal policy has a threshold structure. Numerical results validate this finding, as well as depict muti-threshold policies for time varying channels such as the Gilber-Elliot channel.
Free-form modelling for surface inpainting

In this paper, we describe a novel approach to 3D shape modelling, targeting at the reconstruction and repair of digitised models -- a task that is frequently encountered in particular in the fields of cultural heritage and archaeology. In these fields, faithfully digitised models are often to be restorated in order to visualise the object in its original state, reversing the effects of aging or decay. In our approach, we combine intuitive free-form modelling techniques with automatic 3D surface completion to derive a powerful modelling methodology that on the one hand is capable of including a user's expertise into the surface completion process. The automatic completion, on the other hand, reconstructs the required surface detail in the modelled region and thus frees the user from the need to model every last detail manually. The power and feasibility of our approach is demonstrated with several examples.
Flash-Aware RAID Techniques for Dependable and High-Performance Flash Memory SSD

Solid-state disks (SSDs), which are composed of multiple NAND flash chips, are replacing hard disk drives (HDDs) in the mass storage market. The performances of SSDs are increasing due to the exploitation of parallel I/O architectures. However, reliability remains as a critical issue when designing a large-scale flash storage. For both high performance and reliability, Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) storage architecture is essential to flash memory SSD. However, the parity handling overhead for reliable storage is significant. We propose a novel RAID technique for flash memory SSD for reducing the parity updating cost. To reduce the number of write operations for the parity updates, the proposed scheme delays the parity update which must accompany each data write in the original RAID technique. In addition, by exploiting the characteristics of flash memory, the proposed scheme uses the partial parity technique to reduce the number of read operations required to calculate a parity. We evaluated the performance improvements using a RAID-5 SSD simulator. The proposed techniques improved the performance of the RAID-5 SSD by 47 percent and 38 percent on average in comparison to the original RAID-5 technique and the previous delayed parity updating technique, respectively.
Quantitative evaluation of saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements. Is it reliable?

PURPOSE The authors evaluated the reliability of the coefficients of the (1) amplitude/duration and (2) amplitude/peak velocity relationships of the mean precision values and the mean latency values (saccadic eye movements) and the coefficients of the target velocity/gain relationship (smooth pursuit eye movements). They computed test-retest maximum variability limits for these parameters. METHODS After a 1-week interval, saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements were recorded twice from 20 healthy subjects; 12 of these subjects underwent a third recording session. The estimate of the intraclass coefficient of reliability, R, was adopted to evaluate the reliability of eye movement quantitative analysis. RESULTS The data demonstrated that the reliability was fairly good for the amplitude/peak velocity relationship, was good for the precision, and was excellent for the amplitude/duration, the target velocity/gain relationships, and the latency. CONCLUSIONS Quantitative analysis of both saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements is reliable. One statistic used to estimate reliability, ie, the within-subjects mean square value, also enables the determination of test-retest normal variability values for both the variances and the differences of measurements.
Effects of ascorbic acid on Chlamydia trachomatis infection and on erythromycin treatment in primary cultures of human amniotic cells

Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is an essential nutrient for humans. It may also be needed by Chlamydia trachomatis, an intracellular bacterium. We investigated the effects of vitamin C on the growth of C. trachomatis E/UW-5/Cx in a primary culture of human amniotic epithelial cells. The results showed that vitamin C enhances C. trachomatis infection at concentrations of 0.2, 0.6, and 1.2 mg/dl (P less than 0.001). These three concentrations represent the in vivo concentrations of deficiency, normal, and overload levels in serum, respectively. The enhancement was dose dependent. However, the growth of C. trachomatis was inhibited at vitamin C concentrations of 120 and 1,200 mg/dl. The inhibitory effect of erythromycin against C. trachomatis was shown to be reduced in the presence of vitamin C at the three concentrations tested (P less than 0.025-0.001), and MICs were four times greater (1.6 versus 0.4 micrograms/ml). Human amniotic cells were tolerant to vitamin C concentrations of up to 1,200 mg/dl. The results show that vitamin C may be an important nutrient for C. trachomatis and that incorporation of vitamin C in the culture medium may enhance the isolation and propagation of C. trachomatis in cell cultures.
Assessment of Medical Records Module of Health Information System According to ISO 9241-10

Introduction Hospital managers and personnel need to Hospital Information System (HIS) to increase the efficiency and effectiveness in their organization. Accurate, appropriate, precise, timely, valid information, and Suitable Information system for their tasks is required and the basis for decision making in various levels of the hospital management, since, this study was conducted to Assess of Selected HIS in Isfahan University of Medical Science Hospitals According to ISO 9241-10. Methods This paper obtained from an applied, descriptive cross sectional study, in which the medical records module of IUMS selected HIS in Isfahan University of Medical Science affiliated seven hospitals were assessed with ISO 9241-10 questionnaire contained 7 principles and 74 items. The obtained data were analyzed with SPSS software and descriptive statistics were used to examine measures of central tendencies. Results The analysis of data revealed the following about the software: Suitability for user tasks, self descriptiveness, controllability by user, Conformity with user expectations, error tolerance, suitability for individualization, and suitability for user learning, respectively, was 68, 67, 70, 74, 69, 53, and 68 percent. Total compliance with ISO 9241-10 was 67 percent. Conclusion Information is the basis for policy and decision making in various levels of the hospital management. Consequently, it seems that HIS developers should decrease HIS errors and increase its suitability for tasks, self descriptiveness, controllability, conformity with user expectations, error tolerance, suitability for individualization, suitability for user learning.
Down-Regulation of miR-101 in Endothelial Cells Promotes Blood Vessel Formation through Reduced Repression of EZH 2

Angiogenesis is a balanced process controlled by proand anti-angiogenic molecules of which the regulation is not fully understood. Besides classical gene regulation, miRNAs have emerged as post-transcriptional regulators of angiogenesis. Furthermore, epigenetic changes caused by histone-modifying enzymes were shown to modulate angiogenesis as well. However, a possible interplay between miRNAs and histone-modulating enzymes during angiogenesis has not been described. Here we show that VEGF-mediated down-regulation of miR-101 caused pro-angiogenic effects. We found that the pro-angiogenic effects are partly mediated through reduced repression by miR-101 of the histone-methyltransferase EZH2, a member of the Polycomb group family, thereby increasing methylation of histone H3 at lysine 27 and transcriptome alterations. In vitro, the sprouting and migratory properties of primary endothelial cell cultures were reduced by inhibiting EZH2 through up-regulation of miR-101, siRNA-mediated knockdown of EZH2, or treatment with 3-Deazaneplanocin-A (DZNep), a small molecule inhibitor of EZH2 methyltransferase activity. In addition, we found that systemic DZNep administration reduced the number of blood vessels in a subcutaneous glioblastoma mouse model, without showing adverse toxicities. Altogether, by identifying a pro-angiogenic VEGF/miR-101/EZH2 axis in endothelial cells we provide evidence for a functional link between growth factor-mediated signaling, post-transcriptional silencing, and histonemethylation in the angiogenesis process. Inhibition of EZH2 may prove therapeutic in diseases in which aberrant vascularization plays a role. Citation: Smits M, Mir SE, Nilsson RJA, van der Stoop PM, Niers JM, et al. (2011) Down-Regulation of miR-101 in Endothelial Cells Promotes Blood Vessel Formation through Reduced Repression of EZH2. PLoS ONE 6(1): e16282. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0016282 Editor: Robert Feil, CNRS, France Received May 26, 2010; Accepted December 22, 2010; Published January 28, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Smits et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by the Dutch Cancer Society/KWF (S.E.M.), Lions Cancer Research Foundation, Umea University, Sweden; Stichting Translational Research CCA/VU University Medical Center; Swedish Research Counsil (R.J.A.N.), National Cancer Institute (NCI) CA069246 and CA86355 (X.O.B.), and the American Brain Tumor Association (T.W.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: t.wurdinger@vumc.nl . These authors contributed equally to this work.
Toward a mathematical foundation for information flow security

A general-purpose, probabilistic state machine model which can be used to model a large class of nondeterministic (as well as deterministic) computer systems is described. The necessary probability theory to rigorously state and prove probabilistic properties of modeled systems is developed. A definition of information flow-security making use of this formalism is given. Intuitively, information flow security is the aspect of computer security concerned with how information is permitted to flow through a computer system. It is proved that the proposed definition of information flow security implies an information-theoretic definition. Finally, the author gives a verification condition for information flow security and proves that it implies the proposed definition of information flow security. <<ETX>>
Non-Pilot-Aided Sequential Monte Carlo Method to Joint Signal, Phase Noise, and Frequency Offset Estimation in Multicarrier Systems

We address the problem of phase noise (PHN) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) mitigation in multicarrier receivers. In multicarrier systems, phase distortions cause two effects: the common phase error (CPE) and the intercarrier interference (ICI) which severely degrade the accuracy of the symbol detection stage. Here, we propose a non-pilot-aided scheme to jointly estimate PHN, CFO, and multicarrier signal in time domain. Unlike existing methods, non-pilot-based estimation is performed without any decision-directed scheme. Our approach to the problem is based on Bayesian estimation using sequential Monte Carlo filtering commonly referred to as particle filtering. The particle filter is efficiently implemented by combining the principles of the Rao-Blackwellization technique and an approximate optimal importance function for phase distortion sampling. Moreover, in order to fully benefit from time-domain processing, we propose a multicarrier signal model which includes the redundancy information induced by the cyclic prefix, thus leading to a significant performance improvement. Simulation results are provided in terms of bit error rate (BER) and mean square error (MSE) to illustrate the efficiency and the robustness of the proposed algorithm.
Video coding based on pre-attentive processing

Attentive robots have visual systems with fovea-periphery distinction and saccadic motion capability. Previous work has shown that spatial and temporal redundancy thus present can be exploited in video coding/streaming algorithms and hence considerable bandwidth efficiency can be achieved. In this paper, we present a complete framework for real-time video coding with integrated pre-attentive processing and show that areas of greatest interest can be ensured of being processed in greater detail. The first step is pre-attention where the goal is to fixate on the most interesting parts of the incoming scene using a measure of saliency. The construction of the pre-attention function can vary depending on the set of visual primitives used. Here, we use Cartesian and Non-Cartesian filters and build a pre-attention function for a specific problem -- namely video coding in applications such as robot-human tracking or video-conferencing. Using the most salient and distinguishing filter responses as the input, system parameters of a neural network are trained using resilient back-propagation algorithm with supervised learning. These parameters are then used in the construction of the pre-attentive function. Comparative results indicate that even with a very limited amount of learning, performance robustness can be achieved.
UML model of a standard API for cloud computing application development

This paper proposes a model of a standard application programming interface (API) for common services used by cloud applications. It aims to homogenize the development over clouds in order to ease portability. The model includes the analysis, design and implementation using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The paper discusses also quality criteria for its evaluation.
Icsp2014 Proceedings Singing Information Processing

This paper introduces singing information processing, which is de­ fined as music information processing for singing voices. As many people listen to music with a focus on singing, singing is one of the most important elements of music. Singing information process­ ing attracts attention not only from a scientific point of view but also from the standpoint of commercial applications, such as singing syn­ thesis, automatic singing pitch correction, query-by-humming, and singing skill evaluation for karaoke. The concept of singing infor­ mation processing is broad and still emerging.
Self-organized Evolutionary Minority Game on Networks

In this work we investigate the dynamics of networked evolutionary minority game (NEMG) model wherein each agent is allowed to evolve its strategy according to the information obtained from its neighbors in the network. We investigate four kinds of networks, including star network, regular network, random network, and scale-free network. Simulation results indicate that the dynamics of the system depends crucially on the structure of the underlying network. The strategy distribution in a star network is sensitive to the precise value of the mutation magnitude, in contrast to the strategy distribution in regular, random, and scale-free networks, which is easily affected by the value of the prize-to-fine ratio. Under a simple evolutionary scheme, the networked system with suitable parameters evolves to a high level of global coordination among its agents. In particular, the performance of the system is correlated to the clustering property of the network, where larger clustering coefficient leads to better performance.
A polynomial time algorithm for computing the HNF of a module over the integers of a number field

We present a variation of the modular algorithm for computing the Hermite Normal Form of an OK-module presented by Cohen [4], where OK is the ring of integers of a number field K. An approach presented in [4] based on reductions modulo ideals was conjectured to run in polynomial time by Cohen, but so far, no such proof was available in the literature. In this paper, we present a modification of the approach of [4] to prevent the coefficient swell and we rigorously assess its complexity with respect to the size of the input and the invariants of the field K.
Legendre moments for face identification based on single image per person

One of the main challenges faced by the current face recognition techniques lies in the difficulties of collecting samples. Fewer samples per person mean less laborious effort for collecting them, lower cost for storing and processing them. Unfortunately, many reported face recognition techniques rely heavily on the size and representative of training set, and most of them will suffer serious performance drop or even fail to work if only one training sample per person is available to the systems. In this paper, a recognition algorithm based on feature vectors of Legendre moments is introduced as an attempt to solve the single image problem. Subset of 200 images from FERET database and 100 images from AR database are used in our experiments. The results reported in this paper show that the proposed method achieves 91% and 89.5% accuracy for AR and FERET, respectively.
A Study of Multiple Social Media Use in the European Parliament from an Innovation Perspective

Government agencies have started using the social media for increasing communication with citizens, and involvement of them in public policy making processes. However, most of the research in this area has technological orientation, but limited research on the use of social media in government from management and political sciences' perspectives has been conducted. This paper contributes to filling this gap, presenting a study of an advanced form of centrally managed combined use of multiple social media in the European Parliament from an innovation perspective. Our main theoretical foundation has been Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory. It has been concluded that the above approach, viewed as an innovation, has to a good extent the fundamental preconditions for a wide diffusion proposed by DOI theory: relative advantage (though some possible 'relative disadvantages' have been identified as well), low complexity (though some considerable initial effort is required), compatibility with existing values and practices(at least to some extent), trialability and observability. Furthermore, recommendations have been provided for improving the diffusion potential of the above innovation, through interventions in the above attributes.
Emotion identification in FIFA world cup tweets using convolutional neural network

Twitter has gained increasing popularity over the recent years with users generating an enormous amount of data on a variety of topics every day. Many of these posts contain real-time updates and opinions on ongoing sports games. In this paper, we present a convolutional neural network architecture for emotion identification in Twitter messages related to sporting events. The network leverages pre-trained word embeddings obtained by unsupervised learning on large text corpora. Training of the network is performed on automatically annotated tweets with 7 emotions where messages are labeled based on the presence of emotion-related hashtags on which our approach achieves 55.77% accuracy. The model is applied on Twitter messages for emotion identification during sports events on the 2014 FIFA World Cup. We also present the results of our analysis on three games that had significant impact on Twitter users.
Granulometric Analysis on Remote Sensing Images: Application to Mapping Retrospective Changes in the Sahelian Ligneous Cover

This paper illustrates how the use of mathematical morphology can be a powerful tool for the mapping of ligneous cover in semi-arid lands. Ligneous cover plays a fundamental role in Sahel semi-arid regions since this resource is vital to the resilience of rural societies and can be used as an indicator of socio-environmental conditions. Grey tone vertical images from Sahelian villages in 1975 and 2010/2011 have been selected to perform a diachronic analysis to test the method. Granulometric profiles have been calculated for each pixel and then an unsupervised classification has been performed to obtain k classes that account for ligneous patches of different sizes. This method is particularly successful when the most recent images are used, given that these have better contrast and sharpness. Nested classifications were required to accomplish the ligneous mapping of images from 1975. The accuracy assessment for the most recent images classifications shows satisfactory results. The classification of ligneous cover according to different sizes is important for a better understanding of the ligneous dynamics.