Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Formation flight control of multirotor helicopters with collision avoidance

Among the main sub-areas covering the cooperative control problem of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), formation flight has attracted great interest and has been widely investigated. The main purpose of the formation flight control is to establish a desired shape of formation for a group of vehicles by controlling the positions of each vehicle. The present paper deals with the problem of position formation flight control of a group of three multirotor helicopters with collision avoidance. In order to solve the problem, we propose a decentralized scheme based on model predictive controllers (MPC) for formation according to a virtual structure approach. For collision avoidance, a set of convex constraints on the vehicle's positions are included. The proposed method is evaluated on the basis of computational simulations considering that the vehicles are subject to disturbance forces. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the method with primary focus on treatment of anti-collision constraints.
Towards an Italian Lexicon for Polarity Classification (polarITA): a Comparative Analysis of Lexical Resources for Sentiment Analysis

English. The paper describes a preliminary study for the development of a novel lexicon for Italian sentiment analysis, i.e. where words are associated with polarity values. Given the influence of sentiment lexica on the performance of sentiment analysis systems, a methodology based on the detection and classification of errors in existing lexical resources is proposed and an extrinsic evaluation of the impact of such errors is applied. The final aim is to build a novel resource from the filtering applied to the existing lexical resources, which can integrate them with missing lexical entries and more reliable associations of polarity with entries. Italiano. L’articolo descrive uno studio preliminare per lo sviluppo di una nuova risorsa lessicale per la sentiment analysis in italiano, i.e. dove alle parole sono associati valori di polarità. Data l’influenza dei lessici di sentiment sulle performance dei sistemi di sentiment analysis, viene proposta una metodologia basata sulla rilevazione e classificazione degli errori presenti nei lessici attualmente disponibili ed una valutazione estrinseca dell’impatto di tali errori sui sistemi. L’obiettivo finale è ottenere un nuovo lessico grazie ad un filtraggio applicato alle risorse lessicali disponibili, e a un’integrazione con le voci lessicali mancanti, ottenendo una maggiore affidabilità nell’associazione delle
A survey of multi-way channels in information theory: 1961-1976

The advances in the area of multi-way channels during the period 1961-1976 are described. Shannon's two-way channel, the multiple-access channel, the interference channel, the broadcast channel, and the relay channel are treated successively. Only channel coding aspects are discussed. Thirty-nine open problems are mentioned.
Smart grids and load profiles in the GCC region

The members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), namely Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and United Arab Emirates (UAE), are facing challenges to meet the growing electricity demand and reduce the associated hydrocarbon emissions. Recently, there has been a pressing need for a shift towards smart power grids, as smart grids can reduce the stress on the grid, defer the investments for upgrades, improve the power system efficiency, and reduce emissions. Accordingly, the goal of this paper is to delineate an overview of current smart grid efforts in the GCC region. First, we present a detailed overview of the current state of the power grids. Then, we classify the efforts into three broad categories: (i) energy trading and exchange through GCC interconnection; (ii) integration of renewable resources; and (iii) demand side management technologies for shaping the demand profile. Furthermore, we provide the details of our API object level real-time GCC power demand automated program that creates the database for the load profiles of the GCC members. Accessing such information for research and development purposes is a critical step in the region, because due the conservative structure of the governing institutes, there is no publicly available dataset. Therefore, the data provided in this paper is critical and will serve as a main reference for the future research efforts.
Intrinsic Motivation as a Predictor of Work Outcome After Vocational Rehabilitation in Schizophrenia

Intrinsic motivation is a construct commonly used in explaining goal-directed behavior. In people with schizophrenia, intrinsic motivation is usually subsumed as a feature of negative symptoms or underlying neurocognitive dysfunction. A growing literature reflects an interest in defining and measuring motivational impairment in schizophrenia and in delineating the specific role of intrinsic motivation as both an independent predictor and a mediator of psychosocial functioning. This cross-sectional study examined intrinsic motivation as a predictor of vocational outcomes for 145 individuals with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder participating in a 6-month work rehabilitation trial. Correlation and mediation analyses examined baseline intrinsic motivation and negative symptoms in relation to work hours and work performance. Data support a significant relationship between intrinsic motivation and negative symptoms and significant correlations with outcome variables, such that lower negative symptoms and greater intrinsic motivation were associated with better work functioning. Moreover, in this sample, intrinsic motivation fully mediated the relationships between negative symptoms, work productivity, and work performance. These results have significant implications on the design of work rehabilitation interventions for people with schizophrenia and support a role for targeting intrinsic motivation directly to influence vocational functioning. Future directions for research and intervention are discussed.
Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering ANAEROBIC DIGESTION OF WASTEWATER WITH HIGH SULFATE CONCENTRATION USING MICRO-AERATION AND NATURAL ZEOLITES

The behavior of anaerobic digestion in batch and UASB reactors using a microaerobic process and natural zeolites was studied. Laboratory assays were carried out across 4 sets of variables: different COD/SO4 ratios, different airflow levels, with and without natural zeolites and room and mesophilic controlled temperatures. The microaerobic process demonstrated hydrogen sulfide removal levels exceeding 90% in most cases, while maintaining the flammable condition of the generated biogas. The level of COD removal exceeded 75% in UASB reactors despite their operation under very low hydraulic retention times (2.8–4.8 hours). The effectiveness of natural zeolites in accelerating UASB reactor startup was demonstrated. Results showing the positive influence of zeolites on the granulation process in UASB reactors were also achieved.
Fully automated shim mapping method for spectroscopic imaging of the mouse brain at 9.4 T

For spectroscopic imaging studies of the mouse brain, it is critical to obtain optimal B0 homogeneity over a large region of interest (ROI). In this paper, a fully automated shimming method for mouse brain at 9.4 T, based on B0 mapping, is described. B0 maps were obtained using a multislice gradient echo sequence with multiple phase evolution time delays with a novel unwrapping scheme. The unwrapping method allows phase maps with large bandwidths (±1 kHz) but with high resolution (0.3 Hz/°) to be acquired in a single acquisition, thereby minimizing the number of iterations required. The SD of the B0 over the ROI (8 × 5 × 1 mm) was less than 10 Hz after shimming. Application of this method to the in vivo mouse brain allowed reproducible, high‐quality spectroscopic data to be collected with 1‐μl voxels. Magn Reson Med, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
MPI-IO In-Memory Storage with the Kove XPD

Many scientific applications are limited by the performance offered by parallel file systems. SSD based burst buffers provide significant better performance than HDD backed storage but at the expense of capacity. Clearly, achieving wire-speed of the interconnect and predictable low latency I/O is the holy grail of storage. Throughput and latency of in-memory storage promises to provide optimal performance that exceeds performance of SSD based solutions. Kove R ©’s XPD R © offers pooled memory for cluster systems. Albeit the system offers various APIs to acess this memory such as treating it as a block device, it does not allow to expose it as a parallel file system that offers POSIX or MPI-IO semantics. In this paper, we 1) describe the XPD-MPIIO-driver which supports the scale out architecture of the XPDs. This MPI-agnostic driver enables high-level libraries (HDF5, NetCDF) to utilize the XPD’s memory as storage. 2) A thorough performance evaluation of the XPD is conducted using IOR, this includes scale-out testing of the infrastructure and ”metadata“ operations, and, finally, by comparing performance to a state-of-the art Lustre system. We show that the driver and storage architecture is able to saturate wire-speed of Infiniband (60+ GiB/s with 14 FDR links) while providing low latency and little performance variability.
No-Reference Quality Assessment of Noise-Distorted Images Based on Frequency Mapping

In this paper, we propose a no-reference image quality assessment (IQA) metric for noise-distorted images specifically based on frequency mapping (FM), namely, FMIQA index. First, we decompose the image into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) from small to large scale by using bidimensional empirical mode decomposition (BEMD), and perform the local feature analysis on the IMFs by Riesz transform. Considering that the combination of BEMD and Riesz transform can denoise the noise-distorted image, we use this method with appropriate application of visual contrast sensitivity function to get the denoised image. Then we calculate the similarity map of the Riesz transform feature maps from the distorted image and the denoised image to obtain the similarity indices. Finally, we combine these similarity indices to obtain the final index. Experimental results on three public databases show that the proposed FMIQA evaluates the noise-distorted image in consistency with subjective assessment and can obtain better performance in image quality prediction than other existing related methods.
A new ellipse fitting method and its application

Ellipse is an important feature curve usually used in image analysis, computer graphics and computer aided geometric design. In this paper, we propose a new ellipse fitting method using data normalization. Prior to the ellipse fitting, a linear normalization transformation is used to preprocess the original data. The normalization transformation can increase the computation stability in solving the linear equation system. Experiments show this method is effective.
Quantification of myocardial blood flow using non–ECG‐triggered MR imaging

MR myocardial perfusion imaging is dependent on reliable electrocardiogram (ECG) triggering for accurate measurement of myocardial blood flow (MBF). A non–ECG‐triggered method for quantitative first‐pass imaging may improve clinical feasibility in patients with poor ECG signal. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of a non–ECG‐triggered method for myocardial perfusion imaging in a single slice.
Optimization of Process Parameters for the Production of Lipase in Submerged Batch Fermentation by Fusarium specie.

Production of lipase by Fusarium sp. isolated from soil in the University of Port Harcourt was studied in submerged batch fermentation. Lipase secretion by the fungus was detected in a Rhodamin B agar medium containing olive oil. Lipase production was investigated in shake-flask culture. Culture conditions and nutrient source modification studies involving carbon sources, nitrogen sources, medium pH as well as the time course were evaluated in this study. Lipase was detected in culture filtrate. Among the carbon and nitrogen sources; sucrose at 1.5% (7.7U/ml) and ammonium chloride at 2.5% (23.6 U/ml) was found to be the best carbon and nitrogen sources respectively. Manganese sulphate (0.1%) gave optimum lipase production among other metal ions studied. Among the different lipase inducers tested, crude oil (0.9%) and olive oil(1.0%) significantly (p<0.05) enhanced lipase production by the fungus. The optimum pH ant temperature for the production of lipase were found to be 2,5 at 30 0 C after 120h of fermentation with agitation rate of 150rpm. Lipase production by Fusarium sp. followed a logarithmic pattern with maximum lipase activity of 72.35U/ml obtained on the 5 th day of fermentation. Statistical analysis revealed that the culture conditions significantly (p<0.05) influenced lipase secretion by this fungus. Generally, results obtained in this study demonstrate that
IT self-efficacy and computer competence of LIS students

Purpose – The purpose of the present study was to expand the knowledge of student computer competencies and IT self‐efficacy in two LIS departments in Greece.Design/methodology/approach – The participants in the study were students in the two LIS departments of the Technological Educational Institutes (TEI) situated in Thessaloniki and Athens, Greece. The survey was addressed to sophomores, juniors and seniors, because IT courses are taught after the first year of study. The instrument of the survey was a structured questionnaire comprising three parts, measuring a total of 48 variables.Findings – The levels of students' IT self‐efficacy is rather high, while the mean score of computer competence indicates a rather low level of perceived ability in using computers. Students were more competent in using e‐mail and Facebook, as well as using the internet for personal purposes. IT self‐efficacy and perceived computer competence were positively related to the frequency of use of certain electronic activities .
INVESTIGATION ON BER SENSITIVITY TO DESIGN SNR OF BHATTACHARRYA BOUNDS BASED CONSTRUCTION OF POLAR CODES

Advanced coding has been widely used to accomplish the high-performance requirements of wireless communications. While adhering to the perspective on energy-spectral efficiency, channel coding is still promising. To deal with such challenge, research initiatives on the linear block error correcting codes have gained accelerating momentum. In this paper we introduce polar codes which have proven to meet the typical use cases of the next generation mobile standard. Such work is motivated by the suitability of polar codes for the coming wireless era. Hence, we investigate the performance of polar codes in terms of bit error rate (BER) for several codeword lengths and code rates. We first perform a discrete search to find the best design signal to noise ratio (SNR) at two different code rates, while varying the blocklength. We find in our extensive simulations that the BER becomes more sensitive to design SNR as long as we increase the blocklength and code rate. Finally, we note that increasing blocklength achieves an SNR gain, while increasing code rate changes the operational SNR domain. This trade-off sorted out must be taken into consideration while designing polar codes for high-throughput application.
Cognitive iconicity: Conceptual spaces, meaning, and gesture in signed language

Adopting the framework of cognitive grammar, I define cognitive iconicity as a special case in which the phonological and the semantic poles of a symbolic structure reside in the same region of conceptual space. One reason for the richness of iconic representation present in signed languages is that the phonological pole of signs involves objects moving in space as viewed from a certain vantage point: hands moving in space as viewed by the signer and the observer. The study reports cross-linguistic data which provide evidence for how cognitive iconicity is extensively manifest in signed languages, not just lexically but also in morphology, grammatical classes, and autonomous–dependent relations in hand–face constructions. I also propose that cognitive iconicity illuminates the relation between gesture and language, and the process by which linguistic structures arise from gestural sources. A re-examination of arbitrariness and iconicity from a cognitive iconicity perspective suggests that the two can coexist, since both are reflections of a deeper, underlying cognitive basis of language.
Ion channel activity of influenza A virus M2 protein: characterization of the amantadine block

The influenza A virus M2 integral membrane protein has ion channel activity which can be blocked by the antiviral drug amantadine. The M2 protein transmembrane domain is highly conserved in amino acid sequence for all the human, swine, equine, and avian strains of influenza A virus, and thus, known amino acid differences could lead to altered properties of the M2 ion channel. We have expressed in oocytes of Xenopus laevis the M2 protein of human influenza virus A/Udorn/72 and the avian virus A/chicken/Germany/34 (fowl plague virus, Rostock) and derivatives of the Rostock ion channel altered in the presumed pore region. The pH of activation of the M2 ion channels and amantadine block of the M2 ion channels were investigated. The channels were found to be activated by pH in a similar manner but differed in their apparent Kis for amantadine block.
Criterion for controllability analysis of fuzzy singular model systems

The robust local regularity and controllability problem for the Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy descriptor systems is studied in this paper. Under the assumptions that the nominal TS fuzzy descriptor systems are locally regular and controllable, a sufficient criterion is proposed to preserve the assumed properties when the structured parameter uncertainties are added into the nominal TS fuzzy descriptor systems. The proposed sufficient criterion can provide the explicit relationship of the bounds on parameter uncertainties for preserving the assumed properties.
Analysis of 5‐Methylcytosine in DNA of Breast and Colon Cancer Tissues

5‐methylcytosine (m5C) can be used as a sensitive marker of progress of the tumor formation induced by the oxidative damage reactions. We have analyzed the amount of m5C in DNA of patients with breast and colon cancers. Two dimensional thin layer chromatography (TLC) has been used to monitor 5‐methylcytosine level in DNA extracted from cancer tissues. The level of methylation of cytosine at C‐5 position in DNA from breast cancer patients correlates well with the malignancy of tumors. Interestingly higher amount of m5C in DNA for the breast cancer patients treated with different chemotherapeutics was observed. It suggests an activation of DNA methyltransferase as well as a genomic suppression of the DNA repair genes expression. These differences clearly reflect the health condition of patients and support the global analysis of m5C in DNA as a good marker for diagnosis of neoplasia in clinical practice.
A non-speculative parallelization of reverse cuthill-McKee algorithm for sparse matrices reordering

This work presents a new parallel non-speculative implementation of the Unordered Reverse Cuthill-McKee algorithm. Reordering quality (bandwidth reduction) and reordering performance (CPU time) are evaluated in comparison with a serial implementation of the algorithm made available by the state-of-the-art mathematical software library HSL. The bandwidth reductions reached by our parallel RCM were more than 90% for several large matrices out of the ones tested, and the time reordering improvement was up to 57.82%. Speedups higher than 3.0X were achieved with the parallel RCM. The underlying parallelism was supported by the OpenMP framework and three strategies for reducing idle threads were incorporated into the algorithm.
Response , use and habituation to a mouse house in C 57 BL / 6 J and BALB / c mice Running Head : USE OF MOUSE HOUSE IN INBRED STRAINS

Animal welfare depends on the possibility to express species-specific behaviours and can be strongly compromised in socially and environmentally deprived conditions. Nesting materials and refuges are very important resources to express these behaviours and should be considered as housing supplementation items. We evaluated the effects of one item of housing supplementation in standard settings in laboratory mice. C57BL/6JOlaHsd (B6) and BALB/cOlaHsd (BALB) young male and female mice, upon arrival, were housed in groups of four in standard laboratory cages and after 10 days of acclimatization, a red transparent plastic triangular-shaped Mouse HouseTM was introduced into half of the home cages. Animals with or without a mouse house were observed in various contexts for more than one month. Body weight gain and food intake, home cage behaviours, emotionality and response to standard cage changing procedures were evaluated. The presence of a mouse house in the home cage did not interfere with main developmental and behavioural parameters or emotionality of BALB and B6 male and female mice compared with controls. Both strains habituated to the mouse house in about a week, but made use of it differently, with BALB mice using the house more than the B6 strain. Our results suggest that mice habituated to the mouse house rather quickly without disrupting their home cage activities. Scientists can thus be encouraged to use mouse houses, also in view of the implementation of the EU Directive (2010/63/EU).
Compact model for variability of low frequency noise due to number fluctuation effect

Variability of low frequency noise (LFN) in MOSFETs is both geometry- and bias-dependent. RTS noise prevails in smaller devices where noise deviation is mostly area-dominated. As device dimensions increase, operating conditions determine noise variability maximizing it in weak inversion and increasing it with drain voltage. This dependence is shown to be directly related with fundamental carrier number fluctuation effect. A new bias- and area-dependent, physics-based, compact model for 1/f noise variability is proposed. The model exploits the log-normal behavior of LFN. The model is shown to give consistent results for average noise, variance, and standard deviation, covering bias-dependence and scaling over a large range of geometry.
Hybridization of PMF and LSTM for Recommendation of Intelligent Resource

Nowadays, people live in an era of information explosion. People have to spend a lot of time and energy to filter their own resources every day. How to intelligently recommend resources to users is a big challenge. At the same time, the sparseness of user-to-item rating data is one of the major factors that deteriorate the quality of the recommendation system. In order to deal with the problem, several recommended techniques have been proposed, which additionally consider the auxiliary information to improve the accuracy of the rating prediction, such as textual data for comments, summaries, or summaries. However, due to the inherent limitations of the traditional word pocket model, the contextual information of the document will be difficult to be effectively utilized. Therefore, this paper presents a novel context-aware recommendation Long Short Term matrix decomposition (LstmMF) that integrates the Long Short Term neural network (LSTM) into the probability matrix factor (PMF) to capture the context information of the review document and further improve the accuracy of the rating prediction. The extensive evaluation of the movielens dataset shows that LstmMF is significantly superior to the most advanced recommendation model and has a 83.6% accuracy even if the rating data is very sparse.