Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence that a Single Ti /3 V Gene Family Can Be Used in Format ion o f V Domains on Phenotypical ly and Functional ly Diverse T Cell Popula t ions BY ORESTE ACUTO,

T cell receptors for antigen and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) ~ determinants have, using anticlonotypic monoclonal antibodies (mAb), been defined on inducer, suppressor, and class I and class II MHC-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes as T3oassociated molecules of 90 kilodaltons (kD) molecular mass (1-8). These cionotypic structures, termed Ti, are comprised of one 49-54 kD a and one 43 kD/3 subunit, which are disulfide linked. Peptide mapping analysis of isolated Ti a and/3 subunits from clones of differing specificities demonstrated that clonally unique peptides as well as shared peptides existed in each subunit, thus implying that variable (V) as well as constant (C) domains existed within Ti and/3 molecules (5, 9). Subsequently, N-terminal amino acid sequencing and molecular cloning techniques led to identification of the Ti /3 gene structure, and showed that specific V-, D(diversity), J(joining), and C-like segments fuse to form an active/3 gene (10-16). These studies also indicated that the N-terminal V domains were encoded by nucleotides derived from V, D, and J segments. Similar characterization of Ti o~ subunits suggests that each contains a unique NH2 V domain created by joining dispersed germline genes (17-21). In addition to the similarities between joining processes of T cell receptor and Ig gene segments, both structures manifest distant but clearcut homology at protein and DNA levels. T cell receptors, like B cell receptors, must accommodate a myriad of different antigenic specificities in order to provide the organism with an efficient system for immunologic recognition. Moreover, since T cells generally recognize antigen in the context of polymorphic MHC determinants, it is reasonable to assume that V region structural diversity of the T cell population will be no less complex than that of B lymphocytes. In the case of B cells, five mechanisms account for Abbreviations used in this paper: C, constant region of Ig; cDNA, complementary DNA; CML, ceil-mediated lympholysis; Con A, concanavalin A; D, diversity-generating segment of Ig; FITC, fluorescein isothiocyanate; IEF, isoelectric focusing; IL-2, interleukin 2;J,joining region of Ig; mAb, monoclonal antibody; MHC, major histocompatibility complex; mRNA, messenger RNA; PAGE, polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis; PHA, phytohemagglutinin; SDS, sodium dodecyl sulfate; TdR, thymidine deoxyribose; Ti, T cell receptor; V, variable region of Ig.
Reheating in the presence of noise

Explosive particle production due to parametric resonance is a crucial feature of reheating in inflationary cosmology. Coherent oscillations of the inflaton field act as a periodically varying mass in the evolution equation for matter fields which couple to the inflaton. This in turn results in the parametric resonance instability. Thermal and quantum noise will lead to a nonperiodic perturbation in the mass. We study the resulting equation for the evolution of matter fields and demonstrate that noise (at least if it is temporally uncorrelated) will increase the rate of particle production. We also estimate the limits on the magnitude of the noise for which the resonant behavior is qualitatively unchanged.
JOINT EFFECTS OF HIGH SENSITIVE C-REACTIVE PROTEIN AND CHARACTER OF ULTRASOUND MORPHOLOGY IN CAROTID RUPTURE-PRONE PLAQUES

In most industrialized countries, stroke has become the third most common cause of death and many patients surviving a stroke often suffer permanent disabilities with regard to work or even need help for daily activities. There is mounting evidence that the sudden and often catastrophic nature of stroke is a result of embolization arising from degenerative breakdown or thrombotic occlusion of complex plaques located in the extracranial vessels which are readily accessible to ultrasound imaging. However, histological studies examining the relationship between carotid plaque morphology and clinical outcome have reported conflicting findings. Several studies found plaque components (the lipid core, the necrotic core, or calcification, etc) and complications (for example, intraplaque hemorrhage) are frequent in cases with stenosis and that most of them apparently heal without giving rise to symptoms [1,2]. Thus, not all plaque complications in B-mode ultrasonography are necessarily harmful and develop clinical events, and carotid plaque components and complications in B-mode ultrasonography for unstable plaque alone may present limited evidence to guide carotid endarterectomy or other medical therapy. Recently more and more growing evidence shows that the inflammatory mechanism may play an important role in initiating, advancing, and destabilizing human atherosclerotic lesions; hs-CRP has been a more sensitive indicator in the process. Therefore, we will discuss the evolving hypothesis regarding the association between inflammatory markers hs-CRP and the characteristic morphology of carotid plaque in B-mode ultrasonography, and the joint effect that may guide us to better describe and analyze the orientation, stability, and quantification of plaques. The findings may supply adequate evidence for clinical study in the prevention of ischemic stroke.
Measuring Regional Spillovers in Long- and Short-Run Models of Total Factor Productivity, Trade, and FDI

This article applies the novel concept of global panel cointegration to analyze the role played by trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) activity in driving regional total factor productivity (TFP). Using West German state-level data for the period 1976–2008, the approach allows us to identify the magnitude of direct trade and FDI effects as well as spatial spillovers from these variables. The author finds that the inclusion of spatial lags significantly improves the fit of the empirical model and allows us to strongly reject the null of no cointegration among the variables in the full spatial specification. For the long-run cointegration equation, the empirical results hint at export- and FDI-led growth. Additionally, outward FDI activity shows to have positive spatial spillover effects among German regions, while the spatial patterns of import and inward FDI activity indicate substitution effects of interregional input–output linkages in favor of international ones over the sample period 1976–2008. In the short run, TFP growth is predominantly affected by changes in exports, inward and outward FDI stocks, where the latter variable also provokes positive spillovers. The author uses alternative spatial weighting matrices based on geographical information as well as interregional goods transport flows to check the robustness of the obtained spillover effects in the long and short run. Here, the results turn out to be similar for the different empirical specifications employed throughout the analysis. Finally, summing over the four variables to get a direct and indirect net effect of internationalization activity, the author finds that the direct effect is always positive, while the indirect net effect is positive in the short run but slightly negative in the long-run equation.
TOWARDS ASSEMBLY-FREE METHODS FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING SIMULATION

There is significant interest today in the finite element simulation of various Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. AM simulation is time-dependent, inherently non-linear, and involves multiple physics. In addition, repeated meshing and insertion of new elements during material deposition can pose significant implementation challenges.Currently, AM simulation is handled either through a ‘quiet’ approach or an ‘inactive’ approach. In the quiet approach, all finite elements within the workspace are assembled into the global stiffness matrix, and the elements yet to be deposited are assigned ‘void’ material properties. In the inactive approach, only the elements that have been deposited are assembled into the global stiffness matrix. The advantages and disadvantages of the two methods are well documented.In this paper, we propose a voxel-based, assembly-free framework for AM simulation. This framework presents several advantages including. (1) The workspace is meshed only once at the start of the simulation, (2) addition and deletion of elements is trivial, (3) reduced memory requirement as the global stiffness matrix is never assembled and (4) the underlying linear systems of equations can be solved efficiently through assembly-free methods. We demonstrate the framework here by simulating transient non-linear thermal behaviour of a laser deposition process, with material deposition.Copyright © 2015 by ASME
A Modified Hair-Pin Resonator for the Design of Compact Bandpass Filter with Suppression of Even Harmonics

A new design consideration is explored for a hair-pin resonator. A grounding via at the mid-point of the resonator acts as a perturbation to split the resonant frequencies. The via also suppresses even harmonics of the fundamental. The principle operation of the hair-pin resonator with a via is analyzed and verified by measurement. It is shown that such a hair-pin resonator can be made more compact using stepped impedance line. A compact 4-pole bandpass filter using the modified compact hair-pin resonator with a via is demonstrated. Simulation and measured results showed good agreement.
Alfred Marshall Lecture Women, Work, and Culture

This paper discusses some recent advances in the area of culture and economics and examines the effect of culture on a key economic outcome: female labor supply. To separate the effect of market variables and institutions from culture, I use an epidemiological approach, studying second-generation American women. I use both female labor force participation (LFP) and attitudes inthe women's country of ancestry as cultural proxies and show that both cultural proxies have quantitatively significant effects on women's work outcomes. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future empirical and theoretical research topics in this area. (JEL: J13, J21, Z10) (c) 2007 by the European Economic Association.
Two-Years Follow-up Results of a Smoking Cessation Clinic in a State Hospital

Methods: A total of 251 patients, admitted to our smoking cessation clinic were retrospectively evaluated. The smoking cessation clinic was run one day every week and included a 35-min presentation on smoking cessation and face-to-face interviews with every patient who attended the clinic. Monthly control visits were conducted, and after 2 years all the patients were asked about their smoking status via a phone call.
Change detection from synthetic aperture radar images based on neighborhood-based ratio and extreme learning machine

Abstract. Change detection is of high practical value to hazard assessment, crop growth monitoring, and urban sprawl detection. A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image is the ideal information source for performing change detection since it is independent of atmospheric and sunlight conditions. Existing SAR image change detection methods usually generate a difference image (DI) first and use clustering methods to classify the pixels of DI into changed class and unchanged class. Some useful information may get lost in the DI generation process. This paper proposed an SAR image change detection method based on neighborhood-based ratio (NR) and extreme learning machine (ELM). NR operator is utilized for obtaining some interested pixels that have high probability of being changed or unchanged. Then, image patches centered at these pixels are generated, and ELM is employed to train a model by using these patches. Finally, pixels in both original SAR images are classified by the pretrained ELM model. The preclassification result and the ELM classification result are combined to form the final change map. The experimental results obtained on three real SAR image datasets and one simulated dataset show that the proposed method is robust to speckle noise and is effective to detect change information among multitemporal SAR images.
Multi-sensor data fusion techniques for the identification of activities of daily living using mobile devices

This paper presents a PhD project related to the use of multi-sensor data fusion techniques, applied to the sensors embedded in mobile devices, as a mean to identify user’s daily activities. It introduces some basic concepts, such as the definition of activities of daily living, mobile platforms/sensors, multisensor technologies, data fusion, and data imputation. These techniques have already been applied to fuse the data acquired with different sensors, but due to memory constraints, battery life and processing power of these devices, not all the techniques are suited to be used in these environments. This paper explains an overview about the state of the research in this topic, explaining the methodology to create a best effort method to recognize a large number of activities of daily living using a mobile device.
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS TECHNICAL REPORT #263 SUBSET SELECTION – EXTENDING RIZVI-SOBEL BY

This paper presents a non-parametric procedure for selecting a subset of a set of k populations, which contains the one with the largest (L) or smallest (S) αth quantile, as specified by the user, when independent samples are available from each and one population is the uniformly correct choice whatever be α. The result, an extension of a method previously proposed for the case of equal sample sizes, includes population i, if its αth sample quantile exceeds (in the case of L) the largest of all the other sample (α − β)th quantiles for the other populations, where 0 < β < α. The selection index β is specified by the user. An obvious adaptation of this rule covers S. The paper includes an asymptotic theory for the method, which gives a practical way of selecting the selection index by optimizing an objective criterion, a linear combination of the probability of correct selection, which ideally should be large, and the expected subset size, which ideally should be small. Furthermore, the criterion provides a way of selecting the sample sizes in practical situations where the cost of obtaining the samples will differ for the different populations.
Meltdown: Reading Kernel Memory from User Space

The security of computer systems fundamentally relies on memory isolation, e.g., kernel address ranges are marked as non-accessible and are protected from user access. In this paper, we present Meltdown. Meltdown exploits side effects of out-of-order execution on modern processors to read arbitrary kernel-memory locations including personal data and passwords. Out-of-order execution is an indispensable performance feature and present in a wide range of modern processors. The attack is independent of the operating system, and it does not rely on any software vulnerabilities. Meltdown breaks all security guarantees provided by address space isolation as well as paravirtualized environments and, thus, every security mechanism building upon this foundation. On affected systems, Meltdown enables an adversary to read memory of other processes or virtual machines in the cloud without any permissions or privileges, affecting millions of customers and virtually every user of a personal computer. We show that the KAISER defense mechanism for KASLR has the important (but inadvertent) side effect of impeding Meltdown. We stress that KAISER must be deployed immediately to prevent large-scale exploitation of this severe information leakage.
Microsatellite Markers Confirm Self‐Pollination and Autogamy in Wild Populations of Vanilla mexicana Mill. (syn. V. inodora) (Orchidaceae) in the Island of Guadeloupe

The study aimed at evaluating the mating system of Vanilla mexicana (Orchidaceae) in natural populations in the island of Guadeloupe. A total of 132 V. mexicana samples were collected from 12 sites in Guadeloupe (Basse-Terre). Five other samples coming from Martinique and Mexico completed our analyses. Reproductive biology experiments excluding pollinators with bagged flowers revealed 53.9% fruit set, a value identical to the natural fruit set measured in the populations. These results suggested that V. mexicana, unlike most Vanilla species, was reproducing by self‐pollination and autogamy. Due to lack of specific DNA markers for V. mexicana, microsatellite markers, previously developed in other Vanilla species, were used for the genetic analyses. Only 6 out of the 33 markers tested were transferable and polymorphic in V. mexicana. A panel of 51 V. mexicana samples genotyped with 3 polymorphic loci was finally retained for Guadeloupe population genetic analyses. A heterozygote deficiency was detected, and the selfing rate was estimated to 74%. These results confirmed the reproductive biology results as self‐pollination and autogamy were the most likely explanation for this deficit. Results were compared to those from allogamous wild Vanilla species and discussed in the light of suggested existence of a pollinator for V. mexicana in other areas (Mexico).
Nyhuis Method for Assessing Potential in Distribution Logistics

In addition to the production, which is already frequently optimized, improving the distribution logistics also opens up tremendous potential for increasing an enterprise’s competitiveness. Here too though, numerous interactions need to be taken into account, enterprises thus need to be able to identify and weigh between different potentials for economically efficient optimizations. In order to be able to assess potentials, enterprises require a suitable method. This paper first briefly presents the need for this research before introducing the procedure that will be used to develop an appropriate method that not only considers interactions but is also quickly and easily implemented. Keywords—Distribution Logistics, Evaluation of Potential, Methods, Model.
Session 1 -Keynote talk Taking up the challenge of a Co-Design approach for Networked Control Systems in a Wireless Context

The Networked Control Systems are a very important research area because of their multidisciplinary aspect ( Automatic Control, Computer Science, Communication Network). Here we only consider the aspect (Automatic Control, Communication Network) by focusing on Wireless LANs ( WLANs) based on a Collision -Free CSMA type MAC protocol ( the collision -free property is got by using priorities which allow to transform a situation, which would be a ”collision situation ” with a strict CSMA type protocol, into a ”winner-looser(s) situation”; such a protocol is called the CANlike protocol). The aim of the paper is, by considering several process control applications distributed on a WLAN, to present a co-design ,of the frame scheduling of the frames of the process control applications AND of the controllers of these applications, on the basis of a bidirectional relation between the Quality of Control (QoC) provided by the controllers and the Quality of Service(QoS) provided by the scheduling of the frames on the WLAN ( relation QoC ← QoS) i-e we have both the relation QoC → QoS ( QoS is QoC driven i-e we have a ”Application performances aware dynamic QoS adaptation”) and the relation QoS → QoC (QoC is QoS driven i-e we have a ”Network performances aware dynamic QoC adaptation” ). The relation QoC → QoS is implemented by considering hybrid priorities for the frame scheduling( it is the dynamic part of these priorities which provides this relation QoC → QoS) . The relation QoS→ QoC is implemented on the basis of the delay compensation method called dominant pole method. Finally we show the interest of the proposed co-design approach in order to have an efficient control system.
Methodological advancements for improving performance and generating ensemble ecological niche models

This study employs spatial filtering of occurrence data with the aim of reducing overfitting to sampling bias in ecological niche models (ENMs). Sampling bias in geographic space leads to localities that may also be biased in environmental space. If so, the model can overfit to those biases. As a preliminary test addressing this issue, we used Maxent, bioclimatic variables, and occurrence localities of a broadly distributed Malagasy tenrec, Microgale cowani (Family Tenrecidae: Subfamily Oryzorictinae). We modeled the abiotically suitable area of this species using three distinct datasets: unfiltered, spatially filtered, and rarefied unfiltered localities. To quantify overfitting and model performance, we calculated evaluation AUC, the difference between calibration and evaluation AUC (= AUCdiff), and omission rates. Models made with the filtered dataset showed lower overfitting and better performance than the other two suites of models, having lower omission rates and AUCdiff, and a higher AUCevaluation. Additionally, the rarefied unfiltered dataset performed better than the unfiltered one for three evaluation metrics, likely because the larger datasets reinforced the biases. These results indicate that spatial filtering of occurrence localities may allow biogeographers to produce better models. Introduction Ecological niche models (ENMs) are a correlative approach aiming to approximate the abiotically suitable area of a species by comparing environmental conditions at localities where the species occurs with the overall conditions available in the study region (see Peterson et al.,
Algorithmic Results in List Decoding

Error-correcting codes are used to cope with the corruption of data by noise during communication or storage. A code uses an encoding procedure that judiciously introduces redundancy into the data to produce an associated codeword. The redundancy built into the codewords enables one to decode the original data even from a somewhat distorted version of the codeword. The central trade-off in coding theory is the one between the data rate (amount of non-redundant information per bit of codeword) and the error rate (the fraction of symbols that could be corrupted while still enabling data recovery). The traditional decoding algorithms did as badly at correcting any error pattern as they would do for the worst possible error pattern. This severely limited the maximum fraction of errors those algorithms could tolerate. In turn, this was the source of a big hiatus between the error-correction performance known for probabilistic noise models (pioneered by Shannon) and what was thought to be the limit for the more powerful, worst-case noise models (suggested by Hamming). In the last decade or so, there has been much algorithmic progress in coding theory that has bridged this gap (and in fact nearly eliminated it for codes over large alphabets). These developments rely on an error-recovery model called "list decoding," wherein for the pathological error patterns, the decoder is permitted to output a small list of candidates that will include the original message. This book introduces and motivates the problem of list decoding, and discusses the central algorithmic results of the subject, culminating with the recent results on achieving "list decoding capacity. "
Doctoral Workshop on Distributed Systems

The Doctoral Workshop on Distributed Systems has been held at Kandersteg, Switzerland, from June 3-5, 2014. Ph.D. students from the Universities of Neuchâtel and Bern as well as the University of Applied Sciences of Fribourg presented their current research work and discussed recent research results. This technical report includes the extended abstracts of the talks given during the workshop.