Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Optimized Content Uploading Scheme for D2D Communications Underlaying Cellular Networks

Content uploading is a critical issue in cellular networks. Device-to-device (D2D) communications is a promising technology to support content uploading. In the existing solutions, they only confine to the specific scenario where all devices must upload content to Base Station (BS), and thus mobile devices can establish cooperative relationship to reduce the data uploading time. For the general scenario, their schemes are inefficiency, as mobile devices with no content uploading do not join into any cooperation considering their individual payoff, so the data uploading time is not reduced. To address this problem, we study cooperative D2D data uploading in general scenario, in which mobile devices with/without required of content uploading are deployed, and then propose an optimized data uploading scheme to decrease the data uploading time. In this scheme, we make full use of all feasible devices to built D2D cooperation for content uploading by adopting the bottom to top mode. To achieve this scheme, we design a chain formation algorithm to address the problem of D2D cooperation among mobile devices. Finally, we demonstrate that our scheme is effectively by extensive simulations.
An Efficient Algorithm for Detection of Vacant Spaces in Delimited and Non-Delimited Parking Lots

Smart parking management systems that provide drivers with real-time information about availability and location of parking spaces are high among the wish list of urban dwellers. This paper proposes a machine learning approach for automatic detection of vacant lots in delimited parking spaces where the boundaries of the individual parking lots are predefined, which is then extended to a more general scenario of non-delimited parking spaces. A bag of features (bof) representation for the lots is used with a single svm classifier to discriminate between occupied and vacant lots. For non-delimited spaces, a customized background subtraction algorithm is used to generate proposal regions where vehicles can possibly be found, which are then verified using a bof plus svm approach. When tested on public datasets with images of real parking spaces, the proposed method shows robustness against large intra-class variabilities of vehicles and wide variations in vehicle pose and scale in each parking lot. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, the major advantages of the proposed approach are that it requires fewer images to train the classifier, accepts non-rectangular, variable sized images as input and can also be applied to non-delimited parking spaces, making it suitable for practical deployment.
Progressive Control Flow Obfuscation for Android Applications

Android bytecode is easy to reverse engineer. It has been a common practice for Android application developers to protect their applications with obfuscation techniques. Control flow obfuscation aims to make it more difficult to determine the actual application control flows and thereby impede the understanding of the application logic by the attacker. Despite of the strong potency (i.e., high complexity increment), control flow obfuscation usually incurs a large overhead due to the call and return instructions inserted, which makes the application developer reluctant to use it in practice. In this paper, we present a pragmatic control-flow obfuscation approach where the application developer has more freedom to customize the trade-off between the achieved complexity and overhead. A new subset of application methods will be obfuscated by using a combination of packed-switch and try-catch constructs in different rounds, and larger methods are obfuscated by creating more code fragments in earlier rounds. After each round, the complexity increment will be automatically calculated using our implemented cyclomatic complexity based metric and checked against the target complexity increment. In other words, the obfuscation is conducted in a progressive manner until the target complexity increment is reached. The experimental results show that our method incurs averaged area overhead of 4.07% while achieving almost double complexity increment than the existing method when the same number of application methods are obfuscated.
Physiological Stress Level Estimation Based on Smartphone Logs

Recently, inferring the state of people’s mental health via passive mobile sensing has attracted significant attention. Previous studies have used the self-assessed stress levels as the ground truth; however, these are subjective measures. In this study, we use a physiologically-assessed stress metric to minimize the effect of participant subjectivity and further estimate it using behavioral features based on the smartphone usage logs. We initially requested the study participants (39 participants) to attach heart rate sensors for 8 hours per day and simultaneously collected continuous heart rate data and smartphone logs for 42 days. Further, we divided the participants into four types via clustering using the behavioral features derived from their smartphone sensor logs and trained each model via supervised learning using the heart rate data as the ground truth. Our results exhibit that the proposed method is more accurate (71%) as compared to the baseline method (54%). This demonstrates that physiologically-assessed stress levels can be estimated based on the implicit features that are gathered from the smartphone logs.
A Cascaded Zoom-In Method for Defect Detection of Solder Joints

Defect detection of solder joints plays an essential role in PCB quality control. Feature-Extraction based detection method is popular where color-histogram features and SIFT features are widely used. The histogram feature is simple but incapable of detecting all defect categories. The SIFT feature is invariant to scale and rotation and is able to detect tiny defects, but high computational complexity limits its application. With the observation that most solder joints are defect free in practice, a two-step Cascaded Zoom-In (CZI) detection method is proposed to explore the possibility of combing the merits of both the histogram and the SIFT features. The output of most defect-free solder joints is mostly with a high confidence score in the first step and avoids a costive computation in the second step. Experiments based on real-world data are implemented and demonstrate that our proposed method is not only computationally simple but also with a high detection accuracy.
Development of Cu Substrate Preparation Techniques for Graphene Synthesis

The most common technique for producing large area graphene films is by chemical vapor deposition on Cu foil substrates. Cu is used as a substrate because the solubility of carbon in Cu at the temperatures at which the chemical vapor deposition is performed is very low. This ensures a surface-mediated growth that is self-limited to a single monolayer of graphene if low precursor pressures are used. Before performing chemical vapor deposition, the surface oxide and carbon that is on the unprocessed foil need to be removed to achieve uniform graphene growth. In addition, the roughness of the surface of the Cu foil should be reduced to help prevent defects from forming in the graphene film during growth. The goal of this research project is to determine the optimal procedure for preparation of the Cu foil substrate to produce high quality graphene. Cu foils with 99.8% and 99.999% purity were used for the experiment. The Cu substrate preparation procedure involves annealing in 1 × 10−5 Torr of H2 at 850 °C to remove the native oxide and to reduce surface roughness. This is followed by annealing in 1 × 10−6 Torr of O2 at 500 °C to remove carbon from the surface of the foil by conversion to CO2 and CO. At this temperature, the solubility of oxygen in Cu is negligible, thus preventing dissolution of oxygen into the bulk. After the oxygen anneal, the foil is annealed in 1 × 10−5 Torr of H2 at 850 °C to remove chemisorbed oxygen from the Cu surface that has formed during the anneal in O2. The anneal durations in this study were varied to determine the optimal technique for graphene synthesis for each foil purity. The samples were characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and optical microscopy.
Hybrid DDPG Approach for Vehicle Motion Planning

The paper presents a motion planning solution which combines classic control techniques with machine learning. For this task, a reinforcement learning environment has been created, where the quality of the fulfilment of the designed path by a classic control loop provides the reward function. System dynamics is described by a nonlinear planar single track vehicle model with dynamic wheel mode model. The goodness of the planned trajectory is evaluated by driving the vehicle along the track. The paper shows that this encapsulated problem and environment provides a one-step reinforcement learning task with continuous actions that can be handled with Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient learning agent. The solution of the problem provides a real-time neural network-based motion planner along with a tracking algorithm, and since the trained network provides a preliminary estimate on the expected reward of the current state-action pair, the system acts as a trajectory feasibility estimator as well.
Follistatin Effects in Migration, Vascularization, and Osteogenesis in vitro and Bone Repair in vivo

The use of biomaterials and signaling molecules to induce bone formation is a promising approach in the field of bone tissue engineering. Follistatin (FST) is a glycoprotein able to bind irreversibly to activin A, a protein that has been reported to inhibit bone formation. We investigated the effect of FST in critical processes for bone repair, such as cell recruitment, osteogenesis and vascularization, and ultimately its use for bone tissue engineering. In vitro, FST promoted mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) and endothelial cell (EC) migration as well as essential steps in the formation and expansion of the vasculature such as EC tube-formation and sprouting. FST did not enhance osteogenic differentiation of MSCs, but increased committed osteoblast mineralization. In vivo, FST was loaded in an in situ gelling formulation made by alginate and recombinant collagen-based peptide microspheres and implanted in a rat calvarial defect model. Two FST variants (FST288 and FST315) with major differences in their affinity to cell-surface proteoglycans, which may influence their effect upon in vivo bone repair, were tested. In vitro, most of the loaded FST315 was released over 4 weeks, contrary to FST288, which was mostly retained in the biomaterial. However, none of the FST variants improved in vivo bone healing compared to control. These results demonstrate that FST enhances crucial processes needed for bone repair. Further studies need to investigate the optimal FST carrier for bone regeneration.
Enigmatic Ladies of the Rings: How Cohesin Dysfunction Affects Myeloid Neoplasms Insurgence

The genes of the cohesin complex exert different functions, ranging from the adhesion of sister chromatids during the cell cycle, DNA repair, gene expression and chromatin architecture remodeling. In recent years, the improvement of DNA sequencing technologies allows the identification of cohesin mutations in different tumors such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL), and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). However, the role of cohesin dysfunction in cancer insurgence remains elusive. In this regard, cells harboring cohesin mutations do not show any increase in aneuploidy that might explain their oncogenic activity, nor cohesin mutations are sufficient to induce myeloid neoplasms as they have to co-occur with other causative mutations such as NPM1, FLT3-ITD, and DNMT3A. Several works, also using animal models for cohesin haploinsufficiency, correlate cohesin activity with dysregulated expression of genes involved in myeloid development and differentiation. These evidences support the involvement of cohesin mutations in myeloid neoplasms.
An EU Perspective on Biosafety Considerations for Plants Developed by Genome Editing and Other New Genetic Modification Techniques (nGMs)

The question whether new genetic modification techniques (nGM) in plant development might result in non-negligible negative effects for the environment and/or health is significant for the discussion concerning their regulation. However, current knowledge to address this issue is limited for most nGMs, particularly for recently developed nGMs, like genome editing, and their newly emerging variations, e.g., base editing. This leads to uncertainties regarding the risk/safety-status of plants which are developed with a broad range of different nGMs, especially genome editing, and other nGMs such as cisgenesis, transgrafting, haploid induction or reverse breeding. A literature survey was conducted to identify plants developed by nGMs which are relevant for future agricultural use. Such nGM plants were analyzed for hazards associated either (i) with their developed traits and their use or (ii) with unintended changes resulting from the nGMs or other methods applied during breeding. Several traits are likely to become particularly relevant in the future for nGM plants, namely herbicide resistance (HR), resistance to different plant pathogens as well as modified composition, morphology, fitness (e.g., increased resistance to cold/frost, drought, or salinity) or modified reproductive characteristics. Some traits such as resistance to certain herbicides are already known from existing GM crops and their previous assessments identified issues of concern and/or risks, such as the development of herbicide resistant weeds. Other traits in nGM plants are novel; meaning they are not present in agricultural plants currently cultivated with a history of safe use, and their underlying physiological mechanisms are not yet sufficiently elucidated. Characteristics of some genome editing applications, e.g., the small extent of genomic sequence change and their higher targeting efficiency, i.e., precision, cannot be considered an indication of safety per se, especially in relation to novel traits created by such modifications. All nGMs considered here can result in unintended changes of different types and frequencies. However, the rapid development of nGM plants can compromise the detection and elimination of unintended effects. Thus, a case-specific premarket risk assessment should be conducted for nGM plants, including an appropriate molecular characterization to identify unintended changes and/or confirm the absence of unwanted transgenic sequences.
Continuous Flow Synthesis of High Valuable N-Heterocycles via Catalytic Conversion of Levulinic Acid

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) was successfully functionalized with a low platinum loading to give rise to an effective and stable catalytic material. The synthesized g-C3N4/Pt was fully characterized by XRD, N2 physisorption, XPS, SEM-Mapping, and TEM techniques. Remarkably, XPS analysis revealed that Pt was in a dominant metallic state. In addition, XPS together with XRD and N2 physisorption measurements indicated that the g-C3N4 preserves its native structure after the platinum deposition process. g-C3N4/Pt was applied to the catalytic conversion of levulinic acid to N-heterocycles under continuous flow conditions. Reaction parameters (temperature, pressure, and concentration of levulinic acid) were studied using 3 levels for each parameter, and the best conditions were employed for the analysis of the catalyst's stability. The catalytic system displayed high selectivity to 1-ethyl-5-methylpyrrolidin-2-one and outstanding stability after 3 h of reaction.
The First Evidence of Cryptosporidium meleagridis Infection in a Colon Adenocarcinoma From an Immunocompetent Patient

Objectives: The potential linkage between Cryptosporidium spp. infection and colorectal human cancer was suggested by limited reports showing higher prevalence of C. parvum and C. hominis in patients with colon cancer. Here we conducted research concerning presence of Cryptosporidium spp. in malignant tissue collected from patients with colorectal cancer. Methods: Cancerous colon tissue samples collected from 145 non-HIV infected patients with colorectal cancer were screened for Cryptosporidium spp. by immunofluorescence antibody test and genus-specific nested polymerase chain reaction followed by sequencing. Results: Screened pathogen was found in cancerous tissue originating from immunocompetent man with colon adenocarcinoma. Genotyping revealed presence of Cryptosporidium meleagridis. The presence of Cryptosporidium life cycle stages (oocysts and endogenous stages) in colon carcinoma tissue was confirmed by genus-specific FITC-labeling. Conclusions: Herein, we report on a C. meleagridis infection of a colon adenocarcinoma in an immunocompetent patient. This is the first report of C. meleagridis infection in the human colon and first evidence of active development of this species in cancer tissue.
Shaping of infant B cell receptor repertoires by environmental factors and infectious disease

Distinct environmental exposures are associated with the maturation of antibody types in early childhood. Teaching baby B cells Antibodies are central to immune defense. B cells can generate several antibody isotypes that fulfill different functional roles, and repeated antigen exposure induces antibody somatic hypermutation. Nielsen et al. studied a longitudinal birth cohort to determine how antigen exposure early in life affects human antibody production. Somatic hypermutation increased as the children got older, and certain IGHV genes were associated with different isotypes. They found that increased pathogen exposure was associated with IgD and IgM mutations. Children with eczema or allergies had higher rates of IgE mutation. These valuable data shed light on how human B cells grow up. Antigenic exposures at epithelial sites in infancy and early childhood are thought to influence the maturation of humoral immunity and modulate the risk of developing immunoglobulin E (IgE)–mediated allergic disease. How different kinds of environmental exposures influence B cell isotype switching to IgE, IgG, or IgA, and the somatic mutation maturation of these antibody pools, is not fully understood. We sequenced antibody repertoires in longitudinal blood samples in a birth cohort from infancy through the first 3 years of life and found that, whereas IgG and IgA show linear increases in mutational maturation with age, IgM and IgD mutations are more closely tied to pathogen exposure. IgE mutation frequencies are primarily increased in children with impaired skin barrier conditions such as eczema, suggesting that IgE affinity maturation could provide a mechanistic link between epithelial barrier failure and allergy development.
Impacts of historical warming on marine fisheries production

Accounting for a warming ocean Fisheries provide food and support livelihoods across the world. They are also under extreme pressure, with many stocks overfished and poorly managed. Climate change will add to the burden fish stocks bear, but such impacts remain largely unknown. Free et al. used temperature-specific models and hindcasting across fish stocks to determine the degree to which warming has, and will, affect fish species (see the Perspective by Plagányi). They found that an overall reduction in yield has occurred over the past 80 years. Furthermore, although some species are predicted to respond positively to warming waters, the majority will experience a negative impact on growth. As our world warms, responsible and active management of fisheries harvests will become even more important. Science, this issue p. 979; see also p. 930 Climate influences on the world’s fish populations are explored. Climate change is altering habitats for marine fishes and invertebrates, but the net effect of these changes on potential food production is unknown. We used temperature-dependent population models to measure the influence of warming on the productivity of 235 populations of 124 species in 38 ecoregions. Some populations responded significantly positively (n = 9 populations) and others responded significantly negatively (n = 19 populations) to warming, with the direction and magnitude of the response explained by ecoregion, taxonomy, life history, and exploitation history. Hindcasts indicate that the maximum sustainable yield of the evaluated populations decreased by 4.1% from 1930 to 2010, with five ecoregions experiencing losses of 15 to 35%. Outcomes of fisheries management—including long-term food provisioning—will be improved by accounting for changing productivity in a warmer ocean.
Optimal therapeutic activity of monoclonal antibodies against chikungunya virus requires Fc-FcγR interaction on monocytes

Anti–chikungunya virus antibodies require FcγR engagement but not complement activation for protection and viral clearance. Engaging monocytes to battle chikungunya Antibody-binding receptors, including Fc receptors and complement receptors, play a central role in mediating antibody-dependent immune activation. Here, Fox et al. have examined the role of Fcγ receptors and complement component 1q (C1q) in meditating the therapeutic effects of monoclonal IgG antibodies targeting chikungunya virus. Using antibody engineering in conjunction with mouse strains lacking C1q or Fcγ receptors, they report that the therapeutic effects of these antibodies are dependent on expression of Fcγ receptors. Furthermore, by depleting distinct immune cell types, they found that engagement of Fc receptors on monocytes is central in driving antibody-dependent clearance of chikungunya virus. Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is an emerging mosquito-borne virus that has caused explosive outbreaks worldwide. Although neutralizing monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against CHIKV inhibit infection in animals, the contribution of Fc effector functions to protection remains unknown. Here, we evaluated the activity of therapeutic mAbs that had or lacked the ability to engage complement and Fcγ receptors (FcγR). When administered as post-exposure therapy in mice, the Fc effector functions of mAbs promoted virus clearance from infected cells and reduced joint swelling—results that were corroborated in antibody-treated transgenic animals lacking activating FcγR. The control of CHIKV infection by antibody-FcγR engagement was associated with an accelerated influx of monocytes. A series of immune cell depletions revealed that therapeutic mAbs required monocytes for efficient clearance of CHIKV infection. Overall, our study suggests that in mice, FcγR expression on monocytes is required for optimal therapeutic activity of antibodies against CHIKV and likely other related viruses.