Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selection between Radio Frequency and Visible Light Communication Bands for D2D

Device to device (D2D) communication is designed to accommodate high data rates required in future mobile networks. To maximize spectral efficiency of the communication, D2D pairs should reuse the same set of frequencies. However, this results in a strong interference among close D2D pairs or, in the worst case, even in outage. Both the interference and the outage can be reduced if highly interfered and highly interfering D2D pairs exploit a visible light communication (VLC) band instead of a common radio frequency (RF) band. This concept is known as RF-VLC D2D. In this paper, we target the problem of a selection between RF and VLC bands for each D2D pair in a multi user scenario. We define the RF and VLC selection as a multi-objective optimization problem targeting to minimize the outage and to maximize the system capacity. To solve this problem, we propose a low-complexity heuristic centralized algorithm choosing either RF or VLC for individual D2D pairs according to both the interference imposed by the D2D transmitters and the interference observed by the D2D receivers. For interpretation of the mutual interferences among the D2D pairs, we adopt graph theory. The simulations show that the proposed algorithm outperforms state of the art algorithms in both outage and capacity. Despite a very low complexity, the proposed algorithm reaches the performance close to the optimum.
Dysfunction of Sister Chromatids Separation Promotes Progression of Hepatocellular Carcinoma According to Analysis of Gene Expression Profiling

Despite studying the various molecular mechanisms of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), effective drugs and biomarkers in HCC therapy are still scarce. The present study was designed to investigate dysregulated pathways, novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for HCC. The gene expression dataset of GSE14520, which included 362 tumor and their paired non-tumor tissues of HCC, was extracted for processing by the Robust multi-array average (RMA) algorithm in the R environment. SAM methods were leveraged to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Functional analysis of DEGs was performed using DAVID. The GeneMania and Cytohubba were used to construct the PPI network. To avoid individual bias, GSEA and survival analysis were employed to verify the results. The results of these analyses indicated that separation of sister chromatids was the most aberrant phase in the progression of HCC, and the most frequently involved genes, EZH2, GINS1, TPX2, CENPF, and BUB1B, require further study to be used as drug targets or biomarkers in diagnosis and treatment of HCC.
Employment of patients with multiple sclerosis: the influence of psychosocial–structural coping and context

Patients with multiple sclerosis tend to report higher levels of work difficulties and negative outcomes, such as voluntary and involuntary work termination and reduced work participation. In this article, we discuss the complex interactions of disease, personal coping strategies, and social and structural factors that contribute to their work experiences and outcomes. An overview of the coping strategies and actions that leverage personal and context-level factors and dynamics is also provided to support the overall goal of continued work in patients with MS.
Feasibility Study of Misbehavior Detection Mechanisms in Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS)

Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) is an emerging technology that aims at improving road safety, trafﬁc efﬁciency and drivers experience. To this end, vehicles cooperate with each others and the infrastructure by exchanging Vehicle-to-X communication (V2X) messages. In such communicating systems message authentication and privacy are of paramount importance. The commonly adopted solution to cope with these issues relies on the use of a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that provides digital certiﬁcates to entities of the system. Even if the use of pseudonym certiﬁcates mitigate the privacy issues, the PKI cannot address all cyber threats. That is why we need a mechanism that enable each entity of the system to detect and report misbehaving neighbors. In this paper, we provide a state-of-the-art of misbehavior detection methods. We then discuss their feasibility with respect to current standards and law compliance as well as hardware/software requirements.
Impact of a Pharmacist-driven Spirometry Clinic Service within a Community Family Health Center: A 5-year Retrospective Review

Objective: This study was designed to describe the impact of a trained pharmacist in performing quality spirometry testing within a community family health center. Methods: This was a retrospective, cohort study of 150 physician-referred patients who attended their scheduled spirometry office appointment between November 2008 and December 2013. Information obtained included type of the disease (patients with obstructive or restrictive pulmonary disease), calculated lung age decline due to smoking history, quality of spirometry testing, and percentage of patients requiring pulmonary drug regimen alterations due to spirometry results. Pearson correlation and descriptive statistics were used to address study objectives. Findings: Spirometry testing performed by a pharmacist resulted in 87% of tests meeting guidelines for quality. Testing identified patients with reversible airway disease (39%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (21%), restrictive (11%), and mixed obstructive/restrictive (11%) lung defect. Patients with abnormal spirometry demonstrated a greater smoking pack-year history and calculated lung age than patients with normal spirometry (29.1 pack-years vs. 17 pack-years; P = 0.024 and 76.3 years vs. 54.6 years; P < 0.001, respectively). A weak correlation was found between a 29.1 smoking pack-year history and forced vital capacity (r = −0.3593, P = 0.018). The pharmacist assisted in modifying pulmonary drug regimens in 69% of patients based on evidence-based guidelines. Conclusion: A pharmacist-driven spirometry service was associated with quality testing results, identified respiratory disease abnormalities, and helped modifications of pulmonary drug regimens based on evidence-based guidelines. Future direction of this service may include collaborative practice agreements with physicians to expand services of pharmacists to include spirometry testing.
A Framework for Activity Monitoring and Fall Detection Based on the Characteristics of Indoor Channels

This paper concerns the Doppler power spectrum of three-dimensional non-stationary indoor fixed-to- fixed channels with moving people. In this paper, we model each moving person as a moving scatterer with time-variant (TV) speed, TV vertical angles of motion, and TV horizontal angles of motion of the moving scatterers. Furthermore, we derive the TV angular parameters of each moving scatterer such as the elevation angle of departure, the azimuth angle of departure, the elevation angle of arrival, and the azimuth angle of arrival. In addition, the TV unit vectors of the departure of the transmitted wave planes and unit vectors of the arrival of the received wave planes are derived. Furthermore, to present the Doppler power spectrum characteristics of such channels, we provide the closed-form solution of the spectrogram of the complex channel gain. The correctness of the analysis is approved by simulations. The contribution of this paper is an initiative for the development of device-free indoor activity monitoring and fall detection systems.
Risk factors associated with nonvaccination rabies status of dogs in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Canine rabies has been enzootic in the dog population of the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa since the mid-1970s and has been associated with high rates of human exposures and frequent transmissions to other domestic animal species. Several decades of control efforts, consisting primarily of mass vaccination programs, failed to sufficiently curb rabies in this province. For meaningful progression toward better control and elimination, the factors contributing to the persistence of this disease need to be elucidated and addressed. This paper reports evaluated observations from survey records captured through a cross-sectional observational study regarding owned canine populations in this South African province. We used logistic regression modeling to predict variables associated with risk of nonvaccination of rabies in owned dogs. The study indicated that husbandry practices, rabies knowledge, geographical area/location, and the ages of dogs were important factors associated with the risk of nonvaccination. High population turnover, together with large free roaming dog populations, compromised the levels of vaccination achieved and contributed to the persistence of dog rabies in the province. Dog owners in this study also reported that they were more likely to present their dogs for vaccination when the vaccines were free of charge (52%) and less than a kilometer from their homes (91%). It has been suggested that effective dog rabies control requires 70% or more of the dog population to be vaccinated. Our data showed that this figure was not reached in the surveyed dog population.
Towards Semantic Object Discovery for Vehicular Named Data Networks

Information-Centric Networks (ICN) ease the way to retrieve data from a network significantly by introducing content names that are independent from their physical location. However, in today's implementations, producer and consumer need to agree on these names a priori in order to allow data retrieval. This circumstance hinders the adoption of ICN in open context systems which are able to adapt to their environment over time. In this paper, the enhancement of ICN with semantic descriptors as well as a semantic discovery mechanism that could overcome these limitation are discussed. Both extension are applied to a vehicular IoT scenario. Furthermore, a first implementation using Named Data Networking (NDN) is presented.
The Application of Machine Learning in mmWave-NOMA Systems

Machine learning has been used to develop efficiently optimizing algorithms for practical communication systems. This paper investigates the user clustering and power allocation problem in the millimeter wave non- orthogonal multiple access (mmWave-NOMA) transmission scenario, where we assume that the users' locations of different clusters follows a Poisson cluster process (PCP). Specifically, we develop a machine learning based user clustering algorithm for the application of NOMA. Moreover, to investigate the performance of the proposed mmWave-NOMA system, we derive the optimal power allocation coefficients in closed-form by assuming equal power on each beam. In the simulation results, we firstly investigate the impact of the number of clusters on the system performance. We further show the validation of the proposed machine-learning based user clustering algorithm in the mmWave-NOMA system.
Simulations and measurement of 2D metamaterial aperture antenna

We proposed a metamaterial aperture antenna for computational imaging by using the metamaterial structure complementary electric-inductor-capacitor (cELC), which uses frequency diversity to avoid mechanical scanning. This aperture allows image compression to be performed on the physical hardware layer rather than in the processing stage, thus averting the cost of data storage associated with full diffraction-limited sampling of a scene. In this paper, we would show that the metamaterial aperture is fed using SMA adapter to obtain good matching and the aperture can generate random radiation patterns within the K band via randomly distributing metamaterials' resonance frequencies both in the simulation and the measurement.
Internal Defect Detection in Ferromagnetic Material Equipment Based on Low-Frequency Electromagnetic Technique in 20# Steel Plate

A ferromagnetic material equipment internal defect detection system based on low-frequency (20–50 Hz) electromagnetic technique was proposed. Direct current magnetization was used to make the ferromagnetic material sample (20# steel for instance) be in a saturation magnetization state to decrease its permeability, which is beneficial for increasing the skin depth of the sample and strengthening the signal of the magnetic flux leakage. A low-frequency alternating current source was used to excite the spatial alternating electromagnetic field and a Hall sensor was used to collect the signal of the spatial magnetic field. Experimental results showed that the 6-mm buried depth internal defect with the sensitivity of 0.05 mm can be detected in the 12-mm thick 20# steel plate or pipeline, which is almost 1.5 times higher than that of the current similar sensors.
Wake-Up Control Adapting to Destination's Active/Sleep State for On-Demand Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper focuses on on-demand wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where a wake-up receiver is installed into each node. In on-demand WSNs, each node sends a wake-up signal including a wake-up ID assigned to a specific destination node in order to remotely activate its main radio interface. This wake-up control helps each node to reduce energy consumed during idle periods, however, the wake-up signal transmitted before every data transmission results in overhead causing degradation of communication quality and increase of energy consumption at each sender node. In order to reduce the overhead for wake-up control, a scheme called Double Modulation (DM) has been proposed, where each node embeds a sensing data to be transmitted into the payload field of a wake-up signal. However, the efficiency of DM scheme becomes smaller as the size of sensing data is increased. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a scheme called Overhearing (OH) that can alleviate the negative impact of wake-up overhead for any size of sensing data. In OH scheme, each node observes frames transmitted by a destination node and suppresses the transmission of wake-up signal when detecting the active state of their destination. Furthermore, we propose a hybrid scheme that combines OH and DM schemes. Our simulation results show that the proposed hybrid scheme can effectively reduce the negative impact of wake-up overhead.
Coexistence of Decentralized Congestion Control Algorithms for V2V Communication

Channel congestion is one of the most critical issues in IEEE 802.11p-based vehicular communications as it leads to the unreliability of safety applications. As a countermeasure, many Decentralized Congestion Control (DCC) algorithms have been proposed. One of the most prominent DCC algorithms is the message-rate based LIMERIC. Recently, algorithms have also been proposed to support higher vehicle density (better scalability). One of such algorithms is the combined message-rate and data-rate based congestion control algorithm (MD-DCC). MD-DCC can support around 2.7 times higher vehicular density than LIMERIC. However, if LIMERIC has been deployed, can MD-DCC be introduced and coexist well with LIMERIC. The objective of this paper is to investigate how MD-DCC coexists with LIMERIC. Given a scenario where vehicles may use either LIMERIC or MD-DCC, we study the impact of coexistence on channel load, fairness and reliability of vehicles at different densities. Simulation studies show that there is no significant degradation of reliability both for LIMERIC and MD-DCC at different densities. On the contrary, coexistence can improve the reliability of LIMERIC vehicles. Furthermore, MD-DCC can support vehicles at large densities even when it coexists with LIMERIC retaining its scalability. However, fair allocation of resources is not guaranteed when LIMERIC and MD-DCC coexist.
Microstrip parallel-coupled line wideband bandpass filter using e-shape resonator

In this paper, a compact wideband band-pass filter based on cross resonator and E-shape resonator is proposed. The equivalent circuit of the proposed band-pass filter is presented. By using odd-even mode analytical method, the design equations are derived and the resonant frequencies are deduced. A wideband band-pass filter can be designed based on the resonant conditions. By using E-shape resonator, the proposed wideband band-pass filter has two transmission zeros. For the verification, the wideband band-pass filter is fabricated, simulated and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated ones.
Efficient global localization using vision and digital offline map

We present an efficient method that combines visual odometry and offline map data for global localization. In contrast to other approaches, no further sensor as GPS or precise information on the initial pose is needed. Rough localization information like the current city or region can be used to speed up the initialization, but is not required. The proposed method uses the observation of street signs in a twofold manner: To roughly pre-localize the vehicle and to subsequently transform the three-dimensional vehicle-to-map-alignment-task into a one-dimensional search within a closed interval. This leads to a fast matching method, that finds the proper shift and rotation angle between the planar trajectory of the visual odometry and the offline map data. The method is evaluated on a real trajectory that is computed with a state-of-the-art visual odometry system to demonstrate its performance.
Barriers to the Access and use of Health Information by Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disability IDD: A Review of the Literature

Individuals with intellectual and developmental disability remain among the most vulnerable members of society and frequently face numerous barriers to healthcare services. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature exploring health information access and use for those with intellectual and developmental disability (IDD), identifying barriers they face when using systems. A literature search was conducted to identify studies presenting experiences of individuals with IDD when accessing health information. We identified 28 studies which were published between January 2005 and October 2017. Thematic analysis of included articles resulted in identifying six major barriers: (a) communication skill, (b) patient engagement and satisfaction, (c) training/education for clients with IDD, (d) attitude and knowledge of healthcare providers, (e) clients with IDD being excluded from health promotion and research, and (f) quality of accessing healthcare services. The themes presented here provide a starting point in understanding the accessibility of health information for IDD clients. This will facilitate our future research on health interventions for IDD clients through the use of healthcare technology.
Synthesizing orbital angular momentum beam with small divergence angle

Synthesizing orbital angular momentum (OAM) beam with a small divergence angle is described in this paper. OAM beam is decomposed into plane waves with phase relationship decided by OAM mode number. Then, Maxwell fisheye lens is utilized to synthesize the OAM beam and the fundamental physics behind the phenomenon is also revealed. The simulation is carried out to demonstrate synthesizing OAM beam.
Coupled Thermal and Thermo-Mechanical Simulation for Flip-chip Component Level Copper Pillar Bump Fatigue

This paper presents a method to predict the copper-pillar solder bump fatigue in a flip-chip device under accelerated stress testing (automotive grade) involving multi-physics via commercially available FE platform. Comparative analysis between air-to-air temperature cycle (AATC) and power temperature cycle (PTC) will be discussed. Effects of modeling underfill material as thermo-linear-elastic vs. thermo-visco-elastic on bump fatigue will be explained. Effects of underfill material’s elastic modulus (E), coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and glass transition (Tg) temperature on bump fatigue will be covered in this work. Fatigue failure evolution in solder bump array due to uniform heating on entire chip surface and due to local hot spots will be explained. Finally, paper will provide few design guide-lines from mechanical stand point to mitigate Copper-pillar bump fatigue under accelerated temperature cycle conditions.
Optimum Wavelet-Based Homomorphic Medical Image Fusion Using Hybrid Genetic–Grey Wolf Optimization Algorithm

Medical image fusion techniques have been widely used in various clinical applications. Generalized homomorphic filters have Fourier domain features of input image. In multimodal medical image fusion discrete wavelet transform-based techniques provides more features and is performed over Fourier spectrum. In this paper, we proposed a homomorphic wavelet fusion which is called optimum homomorphic wavelet fusion (OHWF) using hybrid genetic–grey wolf optimization (HG-GWO) Algorithm. In OHWF, which consists of logarithmic and wavelet domain information of input images. The wavelet-based homomorphic fusion consists of multilevel decomposition features of input image. In our proposal, the approximation coefficients of modality1 (anatomical structure) and optimum scaled detailed coefficients of modality2 are given to adder1. In adder 2, the optimum scaled detailed coefficients of modality 1 and approximation coefficients of modality 2 are added together. The resultants of adder 1 and adder 2 are fused together using pixel based averaging rule. First, the proposed fusion approach is validated for MR-SPECT, MR-PET, MR-CT, and MR T1-T2 image fusion using various fusion evaluation indexes. Later, the conventional grey wolf optimization is modified with genetic operator. Experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art fusion algorithms in terms of both structural and the functional information in the fused image.
Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction with LARS Artificial Ligament—Clinical Results after a Long-Term Follow-Up

Abstract Purpose The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the subjective and functional outcome of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction with the synthetic Ligament Advanced Reinforcement System (LARS) ligament. Methods Twenty-six patients were reviewed at an average follow-up of 11.6 years. Objective clinical evaluation was performed with stability tests. Patient-reported outcomes (Visual Analogue Scale, Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, and Cincinnati Knee Rating Scale) were used to assess subjective and functional outcomes. Results Overall satisfactory results were obtained in 22 cases (84.6%). Four patients (15.4%) showed mechanical failure of the graft. No cases of synovitis or infection were reported. Conclusion LARS ligament can be considered a safe and suitable option for ACL reconstruction in carefully selected cases, especially elderly patients needing a rapid postoperative recovery. Level of Evidence Level IV, retrospective case series.
Negative Frequency-Chirped 112-Gb/s PAM-4 Using an Integrated Germanium Franz-Keldysh Modulator

Integrated germanium-on-silicon Franz–Keldysh modulators (Ge-EAMs) offer a small footprint and low-energy-per-bit performance for high-speed data communications. In this letter, we study the use of Ge-EAMs for four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4), and report on the linearity of the modulator in terms of its spurious-free dynamic range. The experimental results show that the negative frequency chirp from the modulator can improve the transmission distance of the PAM-4 signal. Using pre-equalization with a 25-GHz bandwidth-limited arbitrary waveform generator, we obtained a data rate of 112 Gb/s with a bit-error-rate of $2.5\times 10^{-3}$ under the 7% overhead hard-decision forward error correction threshold. We observed an extended transmission distance in our 112-Gb/s PAM-4 experiment on a standard single-mode fiber thanks to the negative frequency chirp of the modulator.