Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
4 Beamforming Narrowband and Broadband Signals

The history of beamforming in sonar applications goes back many years. Perhaps Collodon and Sturm’s use of a horn receiver in their 1826 measurement of the speed of sound in water is a first example. Their 13-km range certainly required a receiver with a good beam pattern to increase the signal to a measureable level. Although receivers have changed over the years, beamforming is still an active area of interest and research. Modern sonars often utilize multiple sensors in an array configuration. More sensors yield more signal information and can help suppress noise and interference. The key to extracting information from the array is to exploit the fact that the signals arrive at the different sensors at different times due to the array geometry and signal angle. An example of the time delay for a signal incident on two sensors is shown below.
Learning and control for a compliant computer-controlled manipulator

Precise automated manipulation and assembly tasks by means of a computer-controlled manipulator with elastic drives require a model of the compliant structure. A calibration procedure based on a learning technique is used to identify the structural parameters of the model. The force reflecting performances of the cable drives make possible simple continuous active accommodations to adapt the apparent compliance in the task space during fine motions. The damping of the oscillations induced by fast transient motions is carried out by means of measurements of cable deformations and their derivatives. Experimental results with a computer-controlled slave telemanipulator show that the performances may be improved by an adaptive control.
The entirely coupled region of supercritical contact processes

We consider translation-invariant, finite range, supercritical contact processes. We show the existence of unbounded space-time cones within which the descendancy of the process from full occupancy may with positive probability be identical to that of the process from the single site at its apex. The proof comprises an argument that leans upon refinements of a successful coupling among these two processes, and is valid in $d$-dimensions.
Semantic XML Filtering on Peer-to-Peer Networks using Distributed Bloom Filters

Information filtering systems constitute a critical component in modern information seeking applications. As the number of users grows and the information available becomes even bigger it is imperative to employ scalable and efficient representation and filtering techniques. Typically the use of XML representation entails the profile representation with the use of the XPath query language and the employment of efficient heuristic techniques for constraining the complexity of the filtering mechanism. However, as the number of XML documents exchanged daily grows rapidly, the need for distributed management is becoming vital. In this paper we introduce the Distributed Bloom Filters and we propose a new distributed XML filtering system for peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The major advantage of Distributed Bloom Filters, in comparison to the classical structure is their space efficiency and improved performance. The proposed system efficiently filters the incoming XML documents using a virtual index created on top of the network. In addition, the proposed system supports semantic disambiguation of both the stored user profiles and the XML documents, thus providing better matching results.
Nonparametric inference on conditional quantile differences and linear combinations, using L-statistics

We provide novel, high-order accurate methods for nonparametric inference on quantile differences between two populations in both unconditional and conditional settings. These quantile differences identify (conditional) quantile treatment effects under (conditional) independence of a binary treatment and potential outcomes. Our methods use the probability integral transform and a Dirichlet (rather than Gaussian) reference distribution to pick appropriate L-statistics as confidence interval endpoints, achieving high-order accuracy. Using a similar approach, we also propose confidence intervals/sets for 1) vectors of quantiles, 2) interquantile ranges, and 3) differences of linear combinations of quantiles. In the conditional setting, when smoothing over continuous covariates, optimal bandwidth and coverage probability rates are derived for all methods. Simulations show the new confidence intervals to have a favorable combination of robust accuracy and short length compared with existing approaches. All code for methods, simulations, and empirical examples is provided.
Towards making better hybrid pattern classification design for speaker identification

Recent development on classify speaker data from a group of speaker is still insufficient to provide a satisfied result in achieving high performance pattern classification engine. There are two main difficulties in this field: how to maintain accuracy rate under incremental amounts of training data and how to reduce the time processing in the case embedded systems need to consider about efficient and simplicity of calculation. Recently we have proposed three difference hybrid pattern classification approach for text independent speaker identification system; in these approaches, we combined a hybrid GMM/VQ and decision Tree model. In this paper, we extend our investigations in order to select the most suitable hybrid GMM/VQ+DT model for real time application. For the first proposed hybrid modeling, both VQ model and GMM model will run parallel after signal preprocessing process; while the second type of proposed hybrid modeling, we present the use of decision tree in VQ techniques. The third method are extended from the second hybrid modeling which is using VQ decision rules for Gaussian mixture modeling in order to simplified the process. Experimental result shows that the third type of hybrid modeling should be considered for real world application due to the superior performance of time processing.
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANT BACTERIA IN BIOFILM FROM SEWERAGE

Nowadays emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment represents a serious socio-economic problem. Wastewater on the influent of wastewater treatment plant contains high number of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains, as well as many antibiotics in subinhibitory concentrations. These two factors can contribute to dissemination of antimicrobial resistance in water and consequently in whole environment. Some bacteria in water can attach to the surfaces and form biofilm, which gives bacteria advantage in fight against environmental stress and some other lethal factors. High bacterial density and diversity in biofilms from wastewater generate suitable conditions for horizontal gene transfer and for rise of resistant microorganisms. In our study we have focused on biofilms isolated from influent and effluent sewerage of wastewater treatment plant, which treats water from the biggest settlement in Eastern Europe. Bacterial composition was detected by DGGE fingerprinting coupled with the construction of 16S rRNA clone libraries. According to higher concentrations of antibiotics and different antibiotic resistant bacteria in wastewater, we were also interested in percentage of antibiotic resistant coliforms, enterococci and staphylococci in isolated biofilms. Antibiotic resistance was evaluated according to European (EUCAST) as well as to US (CLSI) resistance breakpoints.
Chagas cardiomyopathy: Europe is not spared!

Chagas’ disease was first described in 1909 by the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas, who named the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi after his mentor, Oswaldo Cruz.1 It causes more deaths in the Americas than any other parasitic disease.1 Due to the parasite distribution throughout Central and South America, it is commonly known as the ‘American trypanosomiasis’. As such, it is considered to be an ‘exotic’ disease in Europe, where it is virtually undiagnosed. However, thanks to free circulation of individuals and employment opportunities Europe is a magnet for millions of immigrants, many of whom are from South America. We will review the compelling arguments by which chagasic cardiomyopathy should be moved upfront in the mindset of European cardiologists, actively looked for, and appropriately recognized. Vectorial transmission of the disease is the most common form in endemic countries. This occurs through haematophagous insects (Triatominae), which become vectors for Trypanosoma cruzi by biting an infected animal or person; when infected triatominae bite, they transmit the parasite by defecating on the host's skin.2 The insects vector of the disease is present throughout most of South and Central America, their zone of distribution encompassing southern USA.2 In non-endemic countries, the disease is transmitted through blood transfusions, organ donations, and from mother to child at birth. However, besides possible occurrence of new cases of infection, substantial concern exists regarding the progressive development of cardiomyopathy in many individuals who had already become infected in their native country, and then move to Europe. The disease has three phases. The initial infection is characterized by an acute phase, which in most cases goes asymptomatic. Infection is followed by a long ‘indeterminate phase’. 2 The indeterminate form of chronic Chagas’ disease is defined as chronically infected patients with positive serology but no alterations of heart, oesophagus, and …
A solar energy harvesting system for a portable compact LED lamp

This paper presents a solar energy harvesting (EH) system to power a portable compact LED lamp, which can be charged during daytime and used to light during night time. The solar lamp consists of three PV panels, an EH and power management circuit, three NiMH rechargeable batteries, and an LED. A commercial off-the-shelf chip TI BQ25504 is used to prototype the EH and power management circuit for the proposed system. Experimental results show that the proposed PV system can harvest solar energy both in indoor and outdoor environments. The peak net power harvested by the proposed system is about 380 mW on a sunny day, 250 mW on a partly cloudy day, and 30 mW on a cloudy day.
High Step-Up/Down Ratio Isolated Modular Multilevel DC-DC Converter for Battery Energy Storage Systems on Microgrids

This paper presents the analysis and design ofa line interactive uninterruptible power supply (UPS) connected to a microgrid through a high step-up/down(bidirectional) dc-dc isolated modular multilevelconverter with a high input to output voltage ratio.Resonant switching is used on the MMC to improveoverall efficiency of the converter. The input source for this converter is a set of series and parallel batteries and the output of the converter is connected to a microgrid. The proposed converter steps up the input voltage with a 1:15 conversion ratio, and steps down the input voltage with a 15:1 conversion ratio. A transformer is used to both isolate the converter and to further increase the step-up/down ratio.
Progress in understanding norovirus epidemiology

Purpose of review Noroviruses are now recognized as important causes of illness, and their incidence, impact, or both appear to have changed in recent years. This review focuses on studies that provide new knowledge needed to understand their transmission, pathogenesis, evolutionary changes and options for control. Recent findings Noroviruses have become important causes of hospitalization for gastroenteritis in children worldwide, with prevalences and clinical impact in the same range as those observed for rotaviruses – contrary to earlier findings. The repertoire of viruses recognized is expanding with newly found related viruses in different animal species. Direct zoonotic transmission appears to be rare, but genetic mixing of animal and human viruses seems plausible with the finding that common human strains replicate in pigs and cattle. A major finding was the evolutionary mechanism behind the success of the GII4 strains that are dominant in outbreak based surveillance data. The studies in developing countries show that the diversity of viruses involved in these settings is broader. Summary The data described show that the success of noroviruses is determined by an intricate interplay between virus evolution and susceptibility of the host, both genetically and immunologically. The impact of noroviruses as cause of significant illness in children worldwide has been underestimated and needs to be taken seriously. Evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies are urgently needed.
On the application of the multi-agent-based robot system in book classification for library

The amount of books has been one of the important indexes to measure the libraries' level. While the books' daily management work in library such as how to classify and place books has aggravated the burden of the librarians. The rapid development of mobile-robot technology and multi-agent give a new possible method to solve this problem. therefore, this paper provides a mobile-robot model based on multi-agent technology, which can recognize, classify and place books automatically, and navigate the walk route by improved BUG algorithm which can complete the work of classify and arrange books quickly and correctly. This model can simplify the traditional manual work and lighten the heavy and repeated labor, which produces the far-reaching realistic meaning for introducing the artificial intelligence technology into daily life.
Family Background and Environment, Psychological Distress, and Juvenile Delinquency

The relationship between youth offending and family background is still unclear in the literature. This study explored the role of family factors and psychological distress in relation to delinquency and youth offending to try and explicate the relative importance of family structure, family relations, and psychological distress. The study used the Brief Symptom Inventory, the Family Environment Scale, and the Delinquency Scale in a structured interview format to measure psychological distress, family structure and relations, and levels of youth offending, in 219 older children and adolescents aged between 12-17 years living in areas associated with high levels of youth offending in the UK. Analysis involved correlations, hierarchical multiple regression and analysis of variance. Family relations were the best predictors of delinquency and were also correlated with psychological distress. The relationship between delinquency and psychological distress indicated that participants with more psychological distress were less likely to be involved in criminal behaviour. The study supports the conclusion that youth offending and psychological distress are both influenced by a range of factors in the family, but may be unrelated to each other.
Automated Data Management Workflow Generation with Ontologies and Planning

When working with data management systems, it is often required to specify and model the data within the system. Ontologies are a widely used method of defining data and its relations within a system by defining concepts, properties, and roles. In addition to the definition of the data structures, workflows are required for adding new knowledge to the ontologies. We will show how AI planning can be used to derive such workflows from the ontology, enforcing the closed world assumption required for data management systems.
Assessing Data Reliability in an Information System

Abstract:Information is valuable if it derives from reliable data. However, measurements for data reliability have not been widely established in the area of information systems (is). This paper attempts to draw some concepts of reliability from the field of quality control and to apply them to is. The paper develops three measurements for data reliability: internal reliability—reflects the “commonly accepted” characteristics of various data items; relative reliability—indicates compliance of data to user requirements; and absolute reliability—determines the level of resemblance of data items to reality.The relationships between the three measurements are discussed, and the results of a field study are displayed and analyzed. The results provide some insightful information on the “shape” of the database that was inspected, as well as on the degree of rationality of some user requirements. General conclusions and avenues for future research are suggested.
A 40-to-56 Gb/s PAM-4 Receiver With Ten-Tap Direct Decision-Feedback Equalization in 16-nm FinFET

A 40–56 Gb/s PAM-4 receiver with ten-tap decision-feedback equalization (DFE) targeting chip-to-module and board-to-board cable interconnects is designed in 16-nm FinFET. The design implements direct feedback of the first post-cursor (h1) DFE tap to reduce the number of slicers. The h1 feedback signals are directly tapped from the master latch output of the StrongArm-based slicers. A CMOS amplifier with delayed pre-charge release is used to boost and pre-condition the h1 feedback signals before being applied to current-mode logic tap cell for optimum DFE summer settling time. The receiver achieves less than 1E-12 PRBS31 bit error rate (BER) over a channel with 10-dB loss at 14-GHz consuming 230 mW. Fully adapted by off-chip software, the receiver performance demonstrates the effectiveness of direct h1 loop and the need for higher DFE taps to achieve a required BER over channels with reflections. Receiver performance over higher loss channels up to 23 dB and/or under emulated cross-talk noise injection cases are also presented.
Assessment of Correlation between Sweat Chloride Levels and Clinical Features of Cystic Fibrosis Patients.

INTRODUCTION Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disorder and the incidence of this disease is undermined in Northern India. The distinguishable salty character of the sweat belonging to individuals suffering from CF makes sweat chloride estimation essential for diagnosis of CF disease. AIM The aim of this prospective study was to elucidate the relationship of sweat chloride levels with clinical features and pattern of CF. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 182 patients, with clinical features of CF were included in this study for quantitative measurement of sweat chloride. Sweat stimulation and collection involved pilocarpine iontophoresis based on the Gibson and Cooks methodology. The quantitative estimation of chloride was done by Schales and Schales method with some modifications. Cystic Fibrosis Trans Membrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) mutation status was recorded in case of patients with borderline sweat chloride levels to correlate the results and for follow-up. RESULTS Out of 182 patients having clinical features consistent with CF, borderline and elevated sweat chloride levels were present in 9 (5%) and 41 (22.5%) subjects respectively. Elevated sweat chloride levels were significantly associated with wheeze, Failure To Thrive (FTT), history of CF in Siblings, product of Consanguineous Marriage (CM), digital clubbing and steatorrhoea on univariate analysis. On multivariate analysis only wheeze, FTT and steatorrhoea were found to be significantly associated with elevated sweat chloride levels (p<0.05). Among the nine borderline cases six cases were positive for at least two CFTR mutations and rest of the three cases were not having any mutation in CFTR gene. CONCLUSION The diagnosis is often delayed and the disease is advanced in most patients at the time of diagnosis. Sweat testing is a gold standard for diagnosis of CF patients as genetic mutation profile being heterozygous and unlikely to become diagnostic test.
An iterative knowledge‐based scoring function for protein–protein recognition

Using an efficient iterative method, we have developed a distance‐dependent knowledge‐based scoring function to predict protein–protein interactions. The function, referred to as ITScore‐PP, was derived using the crystal structures of a training set of 851 protein–protein dimeric complexes containing true biological interfaces. The key idea of the iterative method for deriving ITScore‐PP is to improve the interatomic pair potentials by iteration, until the pair potentials can distinguish true binding modes from decoy modes for the protein–protein complexes in the training set. The iterative method circumvents the challenging reference state problem in deriving knowledge‐based potentials. The derived scoring function was used to evaluate the ligand orientations generated by ZDOCK 2.1 and the native ligand structures on a diverse set of 91 protein–protein complexes. For the bound test cases, ITScore‐PP yielded a success rate of 98.9% if the top 10 ranked orientations were considered. For the more realistic unbound test cases, the corresponding success rate was 40.7%. Furthermore, for faster orientational sampling purpose, several residue‐level knowledge‐based scoring functions were also derived following the similar iterative procedure. Among them, the scoring function that uses the side‐chain center of mass (SCM) to represent a residue, referred to as ITScore‐PP(SCM), showed the best performance and yielded success rates of 71.4% and 30.8% for the bound and unbound cases, respectively, when the top 10 orientations were considered. ITScore‐PP was further tested using two other published protein–protein docking decoy sets, the ZDOCK decoy set and the RosettaDock decoy set. In addition to binding mode prediction, the binding scores predicted by ITScore‐PP also correlated well with the experimentally determined binding affinities, yielding a correlation coefficient of R = 0.71 on a test set of 74 protein–protein complexes with known affinities. ITScore‐PP is computationally efficient. The average run time for ITScore‐PP was about 0.03 second per orientation (including optimization) on a personal computer with 3.2 GHz Pentium IV CPU and 3.0 GB RAM. The computational speed of ITScore‐PP(SCM) is about an order of magnitude faster than that of ITScore‐PP. ITScore‐PP and/or ITScore‐PP(SCM) can be combined with efficient protein docking software to study protein–protein recognition. Proteins 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Pressure distribution on the body surface of swimming fish.

1. Pressures on the body surface of bluefish, swimming at 0-6 m.p.h. , compared to lateral pressure, were recorded using strain-gauge manometers. 2. While in motion, the front of the fish is subject to a head-on pressure exactly equal to that calculated using the Pitot equation. In salt water, this pressure, in cm H 2 O, is equal to the speed, in m.p.h. , divided by 0.98, all squared. 3. On the widest diameter the pressure is negative while swimming. This is attributable to the Bernoulli effect. 4. Pressure on the base of the tail is still negative, but not so negative as on the shoulder, in live swimming fish. The body and tail motion seem to draw water away from the peduncle of the tail, thereby diminishing turbulence. 5. In a dead fish the pressure at the base of the tail is positive, suggesting the possibility of boundary-layer separation and increased drag in dead fish towed through water. 6. The hydrodynamic pressures in fish swimming are often as great as the hydrostatic pressures encountered in animals of equal length subjected to gravity. We conclude that body defences against hydrodynamic pressure would also be useful against gravitational hydrostatic pressure. 7. Body structures which appear to resist hydrodynamic pressures in water and hydrostatic pressures on land are the skull, the vertebral column, and the circulatory system. 8. Transition from aquatic to terrestrial life may have been facilitated by adaptation to the pressures encountered on the body surface while swimming.