Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Consensus Tracking of Fractional-Order Multiagent Systems via Fractional-Order Iterative Learning Control

In this work, the consensus problem of fractional-order multiagent systems with the general linear model of fixed topology is studied. Both distributed - type and - type fractional-order iterative learning control (FOILC) algorithms are proposed. Here, a virtual leader is introduced to generate the desired trajectory, fixed communication topology is considered, and only a subset of followers can access the desired trajectory. The convergence conditions are proved using graph theory, fractional calculus, and λ norm theory. The theoretical analysis shows that the output of each agent completely tracks the expected trajectory in a limited time as the iteration number increases for both - type and - type FOILC algorithms. Extensive numerical simulations are given to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness.
Hepatic Steatosis Index Is Associated with Type 1 Diabetes Complications

Introduction Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is associated with an increased risk of complications in type 1 diabetes (T1DM) patients. To date, several biochemical indexes of NAFLD have been developed. Among these, hepatic steatosis index (HSI) strongly relates with the results of magnetic resonance. Aim The aim of the present study was to evaluate the possible association between HSI and complications in T1DM. Methods Medical records of patients with T1DM were evaluated. Macro- and micro-vascular complications were evaluated by a combination of instrumental (ECG, carotid artery echo-Doppler, fundus examination, vibration threshold at biothesiometry) and laboratory examination. HSI was calculated based on gender, body mass index and transaminases level. Results Of the 124 patients evaluated, 71 were free of complications and 53 had at least one complication. The prevalence of diabetes complications was: 27% for retinopathy, 15% for carotid atherosclerosis, 16% for neuropathy. HSI was directly correlated with age, disease duration, triglycerides, total daily insulin and inversely with HDL and eGFR. In logistic regression analysis, HSI was independently associated with diabetic complications. Conclusion These findings show that HSI is independently associated with the presence of complications in subjects with T1DM. This can be of clinical utility, allowing a better diagnostic classification of the patient and possibly guiding the therapeutic choice.
ADS: accurate decoding of RFID tags at scale

RFID tags are popular as they are inexpensive and batteryless. These tags are used for tracking and monitoring of objects within a short-range. According to recent studies, such applications can save billions of dollars in shopping malls, airports, and warehouses. However, the existing works failed to decode a large number of RFID tags due to their poor scalability and accuracy. This poor performance is the result of the estimation technique used by the existing solutions. ADS proposes an estimation technique that is highly accurate and scalable. ADS uses multiple frequencies in the excitation signal to receive packets from tags. It helps us to utilize the channel independence across several frequencies but reduces the communication range. By exploiting the channel independence, ADS reduces the number of parameters for the estimation technique, which improves the performance. ADS provides 1.6× better scalability and 1.5× higher accuracy. In our evaluations, ADS achieves 1.7× better throughput on average and a maximum of 3× better throughput than the existing methods.
Children's exposure to violence, crime, and abuse: an update

This bulletin discusses the second National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV II), which was conducted in 2011 as a followup to the original NatSCEV I survey. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sponsored both surveys. The Crimes against Children Research Center of the University of New Hampshire conducted the NatSCEV I survey between January and May 2008. NatSCEV I represented the first comprehensive national survey of children's past-year and lifetime exposure to violence, crime, and abuse in the home, school, and community across children and youth from ages 1 month to 17 years. (For more information on NatSCEV I, see "History of the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence"). Children are exposed to violence every day in their homes, schools, and communities. Such exposure can cause them significant physical, mental, and emotional harm with long-term effects that can last well into adulthood. The Attorney General launched Defending Childhood in September 2010 to unify the Department of Justice's efforts to address children's exposure to violence under one initiative. Through Defending Childhood, the Department is raising public awareness about the issue and supporting practitioners, researchers, and policymakers as they seek solutions to address it. A component of Defending Childhood, OJJDP's Safe Start Initiative continues efforts begun in 1999 to enhance practice, research, training and technical assistance, and public education about children and violence. Under Safe Start, OJJDP conducted the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence, the most comprehensive effort to date to measure the extent and nature of the violence that children endure and its consequences on their lives. This is the first study to ask children and caregivers about exposure to a range of violence, crime, and abuse in children's lives. As amply evidenced in this bulletin series, children's exposure to violence is pervasive and affects all ages. The research findings reported here and in the other bulletins in this series are critical to informing our efforts to protect children from its damaging effects. This article was adapted from Finkelhor, D. , Turner, H.A. , Shattuck, A.M., and Hamby, S.L. 2013. Violence, crime, and abuse exposure in a national sample of children and youth: An update. JAMA Pediatrics 167(7):614–621.
BRWSP: Predicting circRNA-Disease Associations Based on Biased Random Walk to Search Paths on a Multiple Heterogeneous Network

The circular RNAs (circRNAs) have significant effects on a variety of biological processes, the dysfunction of which is closely related to the emergence and development of diseases. Therefore, identification of circRNA-disease associations will contribute to analysing the pathogenesis of diseases. Here, we present a computational model called BRWSP to predict circRNA-disease associations, which searches paths on a multiple heterogeneous network based on biased random walk. Firstly, BRWSP constructs a multiple heterogeneous network by using circRNAs, diseases, and genes. Then, the biased random walk algorithm runs on the multiple heterogeneous network to search paths between circRNAs and diseases. Finally, the performance of BRWSP is significantly better than the state-of-the-art algorithms. Furthermore, BRWSP further contributes to the discovery of novel circRNA-disease associations.
Simvastatin Evokes An Unpredicted Antagonism For Tamoxifen In MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells

Purpose Tamoxifen (TAM) is a non-steroidal antiestrogen drug, used in the prevention and treatment of all stages of hormone-responsive breast cancer. Simvastatin (SIM) is a lipid-lowering agent and has been shown to inhibit cancer cell growth. The study aimed to investigate the effect of the combination of TAM and SIM in the treatment of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer cell line, MCF-7, and in mice-bearing Ehrlich solid tumors. Methods MCF-7 cells were treated with different concentrations of TAM or/and SIM for 72 hours and the effects of the combination treatment on cytotoxicity, oxidative stress markers, apoptosis, angiogenesis, and metastasis were investigated using different techniques. In addition, tumor volume, oxidative markers, and inflammatory markers of the combined therapy were explored in mice bearing solid EAC tumors. Results The results showed that treatment of MCF-7 cells with the combination of 10 µM TAM, and 2 µM SIM significantly inhibited the increase in oxidative stress markers, LDH, and NF-kB induced by TAM. In addition, there was a significant decrease in the total apoptotic ratio, caspase-3 activity, and glucose uptake, while there was a non-significant change in Bax/bcl-2 ratio compared to the TAM-treated group. Using the isobologram equation, the drug interaction was antagonistic with combination index, CI=1.18. On the other hand, the combination regimen decreased VEGF, and matrix metalloproteinases, MMP 2&9 compared to TAM-treated cells. Additionally, in vivo, the combination regimen resulted in a non-significant decrease in the tumor volume, decreased oxidative markers, and the protein expression of TNF-α, and NF-κB compared to the TAM treated group. Conclusion Although the combination regimen of TAM and SIM showed an antagonistic drug interaction in MCF-7 breast cancer, it displayed favorable antiangiogenic, anti-metastatic, and anti-inflammatory effects.
PEERING: virtualizing BGP at the edge for research

Internet routing research has long been hindered by obstacles to executing the wide class of experiments necessary to characterize problems and opportunities, and evaluate candidate solutions. Prior works proposed a platform that would provide experiments with control of an Internet-connected AS. However, because BGP does not natively support multiplexing or the requisite security policies for building such a platform, prior works were ultimately unable to realize this vision. We present Peering, a community platform that provides multiple parallel experiments with control and visibility equivalent to directly operating a production AS. Peering is built atop vBGP, our design for virtualizing the data and control planes of a BGP edge router while simultaneously enforcing security policies to prevent experiments from disrupting the Internet and each other. With Peering, experiments operate in an environment qualitatively similar to that of a cloud provider, and can exchange routes and traffic with hundreds of neighboring networks and the broader Internet at locations around the world. To date, Peering's rich connectivity and flexibility have enabled it to support over 40 experiments and 15 publications in key research areas such as security, traffic engineering, and routing policies.
Exception-Tolerant Decision Tree / Rule Based Classifiers

A plenty of classifiers had already been proposed but none of them deals with exceptions. Theories are formed by observing examples, the phenomenon being called ‘Superarticulacy’ [1] and there would certainly be instances not abiding by the theories. These had not been dealt with in machine learning till date. The challenge was to differentiate between an exception and a noise. The improvement in the performance of the classifier when exceptions are considered, however, totally depends on the data sets. But in a real life scenario, exceptions are better not to be ignored. The proposed methodology also includes features like n-fold crossvalidation, exclusion of inefficient rules, ordering the rules by weighted voting and inclusion of a default rule. This methodology has been applied on three popular classifiers C4.5, PRISM and RISE. These are old algorithms but can perform pretty well with small training sets whereas a few state-of-the-art classifiers like Random Forest [2], Xgboost [3] etc. fail to perform well without extensive training. C4.5 [4, 5] was proposed by J. Ross Quinlan which, from the training set, forms a decision tree. Decision trees come up with amazing outputs but are not easy to understand, work with, or to be manipulated. PRISM was proposed by Jazdia Cendrowska [6] which produces rule sets which are more comprehensible than a tree. The RISE algorithm was proposed by Pedro Domingos [7] which keeps on generalizing instances until a are in rule is obtained. The rule sets formed and their representation the most intelligible form amongst the three algorithms dealt with.
Rifampicin-Carbohydrate Spray-Dried Nanocomposite: A Futuristic Multiparticulate Platform For Pulmonary Delivery

Purpose Rifampicin, a first-line anti-tuberculosis drug, was loaded into a carbohydrate-based spray-dried nanocomposite with the aim to design a dry powder inhalation formulation. This strategy can enable efficient distribution of rifampicin within the lungs, localizing its action, enhancing its bioavailability and reducing its systemic exposure consequently side effects. Methods The respirable nanocomposite was developed utilizing spray drying of rifampicin nanosuspension employing a combination of mannitol, maltodextrin and leucine as microparticles matrix formers. Detailed physicochemical characterization and in-vitro inhalation properties of the nanocomposite particles were investigated. Compatibility studies were carried out using differential scanning calorimetry and Infrared spectroscopy techniques. Moreover, pulmonary in-vitro cytotoxicity on alveolar basal epithelial cells was performed and evaluated. Results Nanocomposite-based rifampicin-loaded dry inhalable powder containing maltodextrin, mannitol and leucine at a ratio of 2:1:1 was successfully formulated. Rifampicin loading efficiency into the carbohydrate nanocomposite was in the range of 89.3% to 99.2% w/w with a suitable particle size (3.47–6.80 µm) and unimodal size distribution. Inhalation efficiency of the spray-dried nanosuspension was significantly improved after transforming into an inhalable carbohydrate composite. Specifically, mannitol-based powder had higher respirable fraction (49.91%) relative to the corresponding formulation of maltodextrin. Additionally, IC50 value of rifampicin nanocomposite was statistically significantly higher than that of free drug thus providing superior safety profile on lung tissues. Conclusion The obtained results suggested that spray drying of rifampicin nanosuspension utilizing carbohydrates as matrix formers can enhance drug inhalation performance and reduce cellular toxicity. Thus, representing an effective safer pulmonary delivery of anti-tuberculosis drugs.
Patterns for innovation: 6 patterns for idea implementation

Creative thinking is a key skill in more and more domains. Creativity is required to innovate, develop new ideas, get deeper insights, address challenges and resolve conflicts. In this context, we understand creativity as the process of creating and developing new and original ideas as one step in the innovation process. The patterns in this paper are about implementing ideas. They are part of a larger language for innovation and idea generation. After finding good ideas and selecting the bests, one has to find strategies to actually implement ideas.
Design of a Reliable Current Starved Inverter Based Arbiter Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for Hardware Cryptography

Received: 16 April 2019 Accepted: 20 July 2019 For most cryptographic algorithms, the secret keys must be permanently stored in nonvolatile memories (NVNs) and used for distinct security operations. This gives rise to power constraints, location limits and security threats to hardware facilities. To solve the problems, this paper proposes a novel and reliable current starved inverter (CSI) based on a physical unclonable function (PUF) architecture (8, 16 and 32 stages), using 45nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The proposed CSI was simulated on Spectre Simulation Platform. The results show that its uniqueness, reliability and randomness were 49.26 %, 98.86 % and 86.12 %, respectively, in the temperature range of -20~80 °C. In addition, the performance of the proposed CSI was proved to outshine that of existing PUF architectures in stability and reliability. The research results are significant for the development of critical security applications.
Challenges in inferring spoofed traffic at IXPs

Ascertaining that a network will forward spoofed traffic usually requires an active probing vantage point in that network, effectively preventing a comprehensive view of this global Internet vulnerability. Recently, researchers have proposed using Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) as observatories to detect spoofed packets, by leveraging Autonomous System (AS) topology knowledge extracted from Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) data to infer which source addresses should legitimately appear across parts of the IXP switch fabric. We demonstrate that the existing literature does not capture several fundamental challenges to this approach, including noise in BGP data sources, heuristic AS relationship inference, and idiosyncrasies in IXP interconnectivity fabrics. We propose a novel method to navigate these challenges, leveraging customer cone semantics of AS relationships to guide precise classification of inter-domain traffic as in-cone, out-of-cone (spoofed), unverifiable, bogon, and unassigned. We apply our method to a mid-size IXP with approximately 200 members, and find an upper bound volume of out-of-cone traffic to be more than an order of magnitude less than the previous method inferred on the same data. Our work illustrates the subtleties of scientific assessments of operational Internet infrastructure, and the need for a community focus on reproducing and repeating previous methods.
Preparation of AS1411 Aptamer Modified Mn-MoS2 QDs for Targeted MR Imaging and Fluorescence Labelling of Renal Cell Carcinoma

Background Early diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma is extremely significant for the effective treatment of kidney cancer. The development of AS1411 aptamer modified Mn-MoS2 QDs provides a promising fluorescence/magnetic resonance (MR) dual-modal imaging probe for the precise diagnosis of renal clear cell carcinoma. Methods In this work, Mn-MoS2 QDs were synthesized through a simple “bottom-up” one-step hydrothermal method. AS1411 aptamer was modified on the Mn-MoS2 QDs to improve the specificity to renal cell carcinoma. The characteristics of Mn-MoS2 QDs were confirmed by transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscope (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS), photoluminescence (PL) emission spectra, etc. Cellular fluorescence labelling was investigated using the Mn-MoS2 QDs and AS1411-Mn-MoS2 QDs. The T1-weighted MR imaging was assessed by the in vitro MR cell imaging and in vivo MR imaging. Finally, the long-term toxicity of Mn-MoS2 QDs was investigated by the hematology and histological analysis. Results The prepared Mn-MoS2 QDs exhibited excellent aqueous property, intense fluorescence, low toxicity, high quantum yield of 41.45% and high T1 relaxivity of 16.95 mM−1s−1. After conjugated with AS1411 aptamer, the AS1411-Mn-MoS2 QDs could specifically fluorescently label the renal carcinoma cells and present a specific MRI signal enhancement in the tumor region of mice bearing renal carcinoma tumors. Furthermore, Mn-MoS2 QDs revealed low toxicity to the mice via hematology and histological analysis. Conclusion These results demonstrated the potential of AS1411-Mn-MoS2 QD as a novel nanoprobe for targeted MR imaging and fluorescence labelling of renal cell carcinoma.
Making the Invisible Audible: Sonifying Qualitative Data

We describe how Embosonic Sketching, a novel approach to qualitative data sonification, was employed in the design of a sound art installation. The method was conceived to minimise designer bias in the creation of sound artworks which seek to faithfully represent the lived experience of a sample group. The 'Her[sonifications]' project was driven by the notion that much exists beyond sight, yet remains undiscovered, and explored bringing the unseen to light through the transformative medium of sound. We ran a series of workshop and focus group sessions to engage with women from a range of backgrounds including artists, writers, designers and researchers to explore how we could harness the emotive qualities of sound to communicate the visceral experience of womanhood. We contribute insight into how Embosonic Sketching can be employed to enrich the process of qualitative data collection in group-based settings; to produce sound sketches to inform the sound design process; and most significantly, to create self-actualised sonifications of visceral and experiential phenomena. Our findings demonstrate that Embosonic Sketching is a useful and accessible tool for exchanging ideas about sound and promotes heightened participant engagement with participatory design processes.
Smartphone positioning with radio measurements from a single wifi access point

Despite the large literature on localization, there is no solution yet to localize a commercial off-the-shelf smartphone device using radio measurements from a single WiFi AP. We present SPRING, Smartphone Positioning with Radio measurements from a sINGle wifi access point. SPRING exploits Fine Time Measurements (FTM) and Angle of Arrival (AOA) extracted from commercial chipsets exploiting the specifications of the recent 802.11-2016 and the 802.11ac amendment to combine distance and direction from the AP to the client for positioning. Our system has the potential to bring indoor positioning to homes and small businesses which typically have a single access point. We exploit physical layer (PHY) information to detect the number of paths and their directions. We use this information to derive a new method for filtering ranging measurements obtained with the FTM protocol. We achieve sub-meter distance estimation accuracy eliminating the adverse effect of multipath in FTM using calibrated inputs from Channel State Information (CSI). Our evaluation in indoor scenarios in multipath rich environments demonstrates that the combination of AOA estimation and the proposed FTM refinement approach can locate a Google Pixel 3 smartphone with a median positioning error of 0.9-2.15 m through an area comparable to typical flat sizes.
Use of Ultra-Deep Sequencing in a Patient with Tuberculous Coxitis Shows Its Limitations in Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis Diagnostics: A Case Report

Abstract Unbiased metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) has been widely applied in clinical microbiology for infectious disease diagnostics. Some successful applications in central nervous system infections and respiratory tract infections have proved it to be a promising tool for pathogen detection. Here, mNGS was used to confirm the infectious etiology in a case of tuberculous coxitis, which is a common type of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB). A 77-year-old Asian male presented with hip pain and fever was diagnosed with smear- and culture-negative tuberculous coxitis based on the evidence of imaging and interferon-γ release assay. At the same time as the anti-TB therapy started, the patient underwent joint clearance surgery. Whole blood and synovial fluid sampled from surgery were kept for bacteriological confirmation using mNGS with high sequencing depth. However, only two paired-end reads from synovial fluid samples were identified as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Before leaving hospital, the patient was still receiving anti-TB treatment and began to recover. Considering the obvious escalation of the cost and analysis time as the depth of sequencing increases, although we got a positive result here, the scarce number of reads obtained through ultra-deep sequencing indicates its limitations in extrapulmonary tuberculosis.