Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Hybrid Interweave–Underlay Countrywide Millimeter-Wave Spectrum Access and Reuse Technique for CR Indoor Small Cells in 5G/6G Era

In this paper, we propose a hybrid interweave–underlay spectrum access and reuse technique for the dynamic spectrum access and reuse of the countrywide 28 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum to in-building small cells of each mobile network operator (MNO) in a country. For the spectrum access, the proposed technique explores both interweave and underlay spectrum access techniques, whereas, for the spectrum reuse, it considers reusing the countrywide spectrum to each three-dimensional (3D) cluster of small cells in a building. To access the countrywide spectrum, each MNO is considered by paying a licensing fee following its number of subscribers. We present the 3D clustering of in-building of small cells and derive average capacity, spectral efficiency (SE), and energy efficiency (EE). We then perform extensive numerical and simulation results and analyses for an MNO of a country consisting of four MNOs. It is shown that, for no spectrum reuse to in-building small cells, the proposed technique improves average capacity and SE by 3.63 and 2.42 times, respectively, whereas EE improves by 72.79%. However, for vertical spatial reuse of six times (as an example) to small cells in a building, average capacity, SE, and EE improve further by 21.77 times, 14.51 times, and 95.66%, respectively. Moreover, the proposed technique can satisfy SE and EE requirements for sixth-generation (6G) mobile systems by horizontal spatial reuse of the countrywide spectrum to small cells of about 40.62%, 9.37%, and 6.25% less buildings than that required by the traditional static licensed spectrum access (SLSA) technique.
Worm-it: converting organic wastes into sustainable fish feed by using aquatic worms

Due to overfishing and the use of one-third of wild fish catches for feeding farmed fish and livestock, there is a strong need for alternative sources of suitable proteins and lipids in fish feeds. Small freshwater worms of the species Lumbriculus variegatus can be such a source based on their high protein content, variable lipid content and amino acid pattern. In addition, their production can be combined with waste reduction, as they can be grown on safe organic wastes. In this article, it was investigated whether fatty acid (FA) profile of the worms changed with feed source. Profiles of worms grown on different feeds were highly similar, but also reflected profiles of feeds. Data suggest that the worms are capable of poly-unsaturated fatty acids bioaccumulation. The worms converted different organic wastes (fish faeces and food industry sludges) with an efficient feed conversion ratio of ~1.8 (dry to wet weight) resulting in a theoretical production of 0.1-0.14 kg of fish per kg of waste. Worm composit.
Can We Store the Whole World's Data in DNA Storage?

The total amount of data in the world has been increasing rapidly. However, the increase of data storage capacity is much slower than that of data generation. How to store and archive such a huge amount of data becomes critical and challenging. Synthetic Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) storage is one of the promising candidates with high density and longterm preservation for archival storage systems. The existing works have focused on the achievable feasibility of a small amount of data when using DNA as storage. In this paper, we investigate the scalability and potentials of DNA storage when a huge amount of data, like all available data from the world, is to be stored. First, we investigate the feasible storage capability that can be achieved in a single DNA pool/tube based on current and future technologies. Then, the indexing of DNA storage is explored. Finally, the metadata overhead based on future technology trends is also investigated.
Prevalence of undiagnosed and untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in men with alcohol dependence – A case-control study

Methods: The current case-control study included 50 male patients with alcohol misuse and 50 age-matched healthy controls. Patients were assessed using the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment of Alcohol ScaleRevised, Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview scale, Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale version 1.1 screener, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria for adult ADHD, and ADHD-Rating Scale-IV. The data obtained were analyzed using EPIINFO-7 and compared using paired t-test, student’s t-test and Pearson’s chisquare test (P≤0.05).
Does Trait Plasticity of Three Boreal Nutrient-Conserving Species Relate to their Competitive Ability?

Abstract: The present study investigates potential differences in trait plasticity as an additional contributing mechanism explaining ericaceous shrub dominance during different periods after logging. Two ericaceous species (Kalmia angustifolia, Rhododendron groenlandicum), and black spruce plants (Picea mariana), were submitted to combinations of 3 light levels and 2 levels of nitrogen addition during a simulated growing season of 9 weeks under greenhouse conditions. Plant traits related to light (photosynthesis, leaf mass per unit of area, leaf and aboveground biomass allocation, foliar N concentration) and nutrient acquisition (root mass ratio, specific absorption ratio, absorption of 15N) were measured in response to the manipulation of these resources. The leaf mass per unit of area (LMA) of both ericaceous species was significantly reduced by shading; LMA of Rhododendron and Kalmia was, respectively, 54% and 31% higher in the highest light treatment. The LMA of black spruce was unchanged in response to light level. There were few differences among species in trait response to N addition. Black spruce was characterized by higher nutrient absorption rate and specific absorption rate at higher N levels compared to the 2 ericads. With the exception of LMA, plasticity to light was higher for Kalmia; in contrast, plasticity to N addition was higher for Rhododendron and black spruce. Finally, LMA appears to be a key trait explaining the competitive advantage of ericaceous species (especially Rhododendron) and potential encroachment on forested sites after disturbance.
Distributed Stochastic Optimization via Adaptive Stochastic Gradient Descent

Stochastic convex optimization algorithms are the most popular way to train machine learning models on large-scale data. Scaling up the training process of these models is crucial in many applications, but the most popular algorithm, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), is a serial algorithm that is surprisingly hard to parallelize. In this paper, we propose an efficient distributed stochastic optimization method based on adaptive step sizes and variance reduction techniques. We achieve a linear speedup in the number of machines, small memory footprint, and only a small number of synchronization rounds -- logarithmic in dataset size -- in which the computation nodes communicate with each other. Critically, our approach is a general reduction than parallelizes any serial SGD algorithm, allowing us to leverage the significant progress that has been made in designing adaptive SGD algorithms. We conclude by implementing our algorithm in the Spark distributed framework and exhibit dramatic performance gains on large-scale logistic regression problems.
A Decentralized Blockchain with High Throughput and Fast Confirmation

This paper presents Conflux, a scalable and decentralized blockchain system with high throughput and fast confirmation. Conflux operates with a novel consensus protocol which optimistically processes concurrent blocks without discarding any as forks and adaptively assigns weights to blocks based on their topologies in the Conflux ledger structure (called Tree-Graph). The adaptive weight mechanism enables Conflux to detect and thwart liveness attack by automatically switching between an optimistic strategy for fast confirmation in normal scenarios and a conservative strategy to ensure consensus progress during liveness attacks. We evaluated Conflux on Amazon EC2 clusters with up to 12k full nodes. The consensus protocol of Conflux achieves a block throughput of 9.6Mbps with 20Mbps network bandwidth limit per node. On a combined workload of payment transactions and Ethereum history transactions, the end-to-end system of Conflux achieves the throughput of up to 3480 transactions per second while confirming transactions under one minute.
Using Social Networks to Analyze the Spatiotemporal Patterns of the Rolling Stock Manufacturing Industry for Countries in the Belt and Road Initiative

The new wave of modern rail transit and the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have complicated the business patterns of the rolling stock manufacturing industry (RSMI) and the export of rolling stock products, especially in the case of countries participating in the BRI. Based on the analysis of trade patterns—which focuses on the evolution of trade links, community structures, and intraregional export competitiveness—this study aims to explore the changes in the RSMI within the BRI region from 2003 to 2017. Sequential clustering was applied to the creation of a three-phase timeline. The network models of the cumulative trade of the rolling stock products and trades of two typical categories of products were constructed in each phase for the evolution analysis. Social network analysis methods, such as the analysis of network indices and community detection, were also applied. The results show that from 2003 to 2017, the connectivity of the rolling stock trade in this region significantly increased. China was the largest exporter, with increasing trade influence and technological strength. Ukraine and Russia were less competitive and highly mutually dependent. Czechia and Austria’s competitiveness remained prominent, but compared with China they lacked expansive vitality. South Korea was also an active and competitive country with strong technological prowess. These countries accounted for the majority of the exports, and were always at the center of their own separate communities, over which they maintained a sphere of influence. The grouping of countries far from any such spheres of influence changed frequently.
FineStream: Fine-Grained Window-Based Stream Processing on CPU-GPU Integrated Architectures

Accelerating SQL queries on stream processing by utilizing heterogeneous coprocessors, such as GPUs, has shown to be an effective approach. Most works show that heterogeneous coprocessors bring signiﬁcant performance improvement because of their high parallelism and computation capacity. However, the discrete memory architectures with relatively low PCI-e bandwidth and high latency have dragged down the beneﬁts of heterogeneous coprocessors. Recently, hardware vendors propose CPU-GPU integrated architectures that integrate CPU and GPU on the same chip. This integration provides new opportunities for ﬁne-grained cooperation be-tween CPU and GPU for optimizing SQL queries on stream processing. In this paper, we propose a data stream system, called FineStream, for efﬁcient window-based stream processing on integrated architectures. Particularly, FineStream performs ﬁne-grained workload scheduling between CPU and GPU to take advantage of both architectures, and it also provides efﬁcient mechanism for handling dynamic stream queries. Our experimental results show that 1) on integrated architectures, FineStream achieves an average 52% throughput improvement and 36% lower latency over the state-of-the-art stream processing engine; 2) compared to the stream processing engine on the discrete architecture, FineStream on the integrated
Combined Economic Emission Dispatch using Novel Bat Algorithm

Electricity generation is mainly from thermal power plants, which also contribute to environmental pollutants, like SO2 (Sulphur dioxide), CO2 (Carbon dioxide), and NOx (Oxides of Nitrogen). This has made the study of Economic Emission Dispatch (EED) an important research area. This paper introduces Novel Bat Algorithm (NBA) to be applied for solving EED problem using max/max penalty factor. As a test system, a 6 generator bus having cubic cost function is considered. Simulations are performed for individual pollutant analysis, and for combined pollutant analysis, considering different load demands. The results show that NBA performs better when compared with other algorithms available in literature. Convergence graphs are also presented. Keywords— Combined Economic Emission dispatch; Novel Bat Algorithm; Cubic cost functions; Pollutant Analysis
Pre‐hibernation mating by a solitary bee, Ceratina flavipes (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Xylocopinae)

At 17 localities in Japan, 71–81% of overwintering adult females of the solitary bee Ceratina flavipes mated before hibernation. The occurrence of males with inseminated females in their natal nests suggested the possible occurrence of inbreeding. Therefore, we examined the seasonal trends of inbreeding coefficients, calculated by comparing the band patterns of microsatellite DNA between a female and her mating partners (indicated by sperm in her spermatheca). The mean coefficient of inbreeding was 0.80 on 25 August and 0.60 on 1 November versus 0.31 on 5 June and 0.38 on 28 June. These results demonstrate a tendency towards inbreeding before winter and towards outbreeding during dispersal after hibernation.
Dynamics of Newly Established Elk Populations

Abstract The dynamics of newly established elk (Cervus elaphus) populations can provide insights about maximum sustainable rates of reproduction, survival, and increase. However, data used to estimate rates of increase typically have been limited to counts and rarely have included complementary estimates of vital rates. Complexities of population dynamics cannot be understood without considering population processes as well as population states. We estimated pregnancy rates, survival rates, age ratios, and sex ratios for reintroduced elk at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota, USA; combined vital rates in a population projection model; and compared model projections with observed elk numbers and population ratios. Pregnancy rates in January (early in the second trimester of pregnancy) averaged 54.1% (SE = 5.4%) for subadults and 91.0% (SE = 1.7%) for adults, and 91.6% of pregnancies resulted in recruitment at 8 months. Annual survival rates of adult females averaged 0.96 (95% CI = 0.94–0.98) with hunting included and 0.99 (95% CI = 0.97–0.99) with hunting excluded from calculations. Our fitted model explained 99.8% of past variation in population estimates and represents a useful new tool for short-term management planning. Although we found no evidence of temporal variation in vital rates, variation in population composition caused substantial variation in projected rates of increase (λ = 1.20–1.36). Restoring documented hunter harvests and removals of elk by the National Park Service led to a potential rate of λ = 1.26. Greater rates of increase substantiated elsewhere were within the expected range of chance variation, given our model and estimates of vital rates. Rates of increase realized by small elk populations are too variable to support inferences about habitat quality or density dependence.
The Role of Animal Pollination in Plant Speciation: Integrating Ecology, Geography, and Genetics

Although animal pollination is often proposed as a major driver of floral divergence, questions remain about its importance in plant speciation. One issue is whether pollinator specialization, traditionally thought necessary for floral isolation, is prevalent enough to have played a major role in speciation. Furthermore, the ecological and geographic scenarios under which pollinator transitions occur are poorly understood, and the underlying genetic factors are just beginning to be uncovered for a few systems. Nevertheless, macroevolutionary studies consistently show that transitions to animal pollination are accompanied by an increase in diversification rate. Here we consider several models and diverse empirical data on how pollinators could influence speciation. We conclude that floral isolation is rarely, if ever, sufficient to cause speciation on its own, but that it acts synergistically with other isolating mechanisms. A more comprehensive approach is the key to an improved understanding of the role of pollinators in angiosperm speciation.
Eggshell Quality, Eggshell Structure and Small Intestinal Histology in Laying Hens Fed Dietary Pantoea-6® and Plant Extracts

The present study aims to investigate the effects of dietary Pantoea-6® (extract of fermented wheat flour with Pantoea agglomerans) and plant extracts (red clover and garlic) on eggshell quality and structure and intestinal histology. Sixty-six Boris Brown laying hens (30 weeks old) were allotted to 3 groups, each with eleven replicates of two chickens. The control group was fed a basal diet (18% crude protein, 2850 kcal/kg ME) and the other groups were fed the basal diet supplemented with 0.1% Pantoea-6® (including 0.06 g/kg lipopolysaccharide) and 0.1% plant extracts, respectively. There were no significant differences in laying performance and egg quality. However, these adverse effects occurred in the egg and albumen weight and eggshell breaking strength of the Pantoea-6® and plant extracts groups (P<0.05). Shell weight of the Pantoea-6® group was significantly higher than the other groups (P<0.05). Compared with the control, eggshell structure tended to have greater thickness in both dietary Pantoea-6® and plant extracts groups. The duodenum and jejunum of both Pantoea-6® and plant extracts groups showed higher values for cell area than those of the control (P<0.05). Moreover, cells on the villus tip surface were protuberated in both dietary Pantoea-6® and plant extracts groups, resulting in a rough surface. This study shows that Pantoea-6® and plant extracts at a 0.1% level might have a beneficial effect on egg and albumen weight, eggshell quality and structure parameters, as well as on small intestine histological parameters.
Effects of Amino Acid-enriched Ruminally Protected Fatty Acids on Plasma Metabolites, Growth Performance and Carcass Characteristics of Hanwoo Steers

This study was conducted to determine the effects of amino acid-enriched ruminally protected fatty acid (AARPFA) on plasma fatty acids and amino acids, growth performance and carcass characteristics of Korean native steers (Hanwoo) by simultaneous supply of fatty acids and limiting amino acids (methionine and lysine). Eighteen finishing Hanwoo steers, 18 months of age and weighing an average of 459.0±38.9 kg, were used for studies of the metabolism of plasma fatty acids and amino acids during supplementation of AARPFA. Also, 45 finishing Hanwoo steers, 16 months of age and weighing an average of 408.6±26.5 kg, were used for growth performance and carcass characteristics during supplemention of AARPFA. There were three treatments which comprised a basal diet supplemented with AARPFA at 0 g (T1), 50 g (T2) or 100 g (T3), respectively. Concentrations of saturated, unsaturated and total fatty acids in plasma were increased in T3 compared with other treatments (p<0.05). Concentrations of methionine and lysine in plasma were linearly increased with increasing levels of AARPFA (p<0.01). Average daily gain, dry matter intake and feed conversion ratio were not different among the treatments. Marbling score measured by ultra-sound scanning was higher in T3 than in T1 at 24 months of age (p<0.05). Rib eye area, back fat thickness, yield index and yield grade score were similar across the treatments. Marbling score and quality grade score were higher in T3 compared with other treatments (p<0.01). Thus, plasma fatty acids, methionine and lysine metabolism were affected by supplementing with 100 g of AARPFA which also had positive effects on marbling
The Impact of Corporate Supplier Diversity Programs on Corporate Purchasers’ Intention to Purchase From Women-Owned Enterprises

This doctoral thesis examines the impact of corporate supplier diversity programs on corporate purchasers’ intention to purchase from women-owned enterprises using Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior. Two hundred and seventy-two corporate purchasers across a diverse range of industries and geographical regions in the United States participated in a mail survey in which the participants responded to questions (capturing the constructs of the theory of planned behavior) related to a selected scenario. These scenarios (a 2 × 2 factorial design) manipulated two constructs: male/female of the small enterprise owner and corporate purchasers’ familiarity/unfamiliarity with the enterprise. The goal of the experimental manipulation was to ensure sufficient variance in the study constructs. The results provided general support for the theory of planned behavior in capturing how corporate purchasers make decisions. The findings of the study show that programs designed to promote women-owned enterprises may be effective in gaining acceptance from corporate purchasers. Thus, the dissertation makes a contribution to the corporate social responsibility literature as it reveals that it is possible for business to incorporate positive duty into its core economic activities without compromising its financial gains and that the economic-aligned and duty-aligned orientations can be integrated.
Is Dementia in Parkinson’ Disease Related to Chronic Stress, Anxiety, and Depression?

Objectives: Stress, anxiety, and depression are known to be associated with the development of neurodegenerative disorders through interactions with the underlying pathophysiology. We hypothesized that the presence of these symptoms contributes to cognitive disturbances and dementia in Parkinson's disease (PD). The present study aimed to investigate the levels of stress, anxiety, and depression in PD patients relative to healthy individuals. Materials and Methods: Anxiety, stress, and depression levels were assessed using standardized questionnaires in PD without dementia (PDND, n = 30), PD with dementia (PDD, n = 28), and healthy controls (HC, n = 26). Arithmetic subtraction task was used as a stressor. Galvanic skin response, heart rate and salivary cortisol, and alpha-amylase were measured during baseline and after induced stress (arithmetic task). Results: Acute anxiety, acute stress, and depression levels were significantly higher in PDND compared to HC, whereas both acute and chronic anxiety, stress, and depression levels were significantly higher in PDD compared to PDND and HC. Cortisol and alpha-amylase levels were significantly higher in PDND compared to HC during both baseline and postarithmetic task. Posttask levels of cortisol were lower in PDD compared to PDND. Conclusion: This study concludes that higher levels of salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase at baseline and poststress task with normal levels of chronic stress and anxiety were associated with no dementia in PD. Presence of higher levels of acute, chronic anxiety, and stress along with depression with lower cortisol reactivity to stressor suggests onset of dementia in Parkinson's patients.