Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BNV: Enabling Scalable Network Experimentation through Bare-metal Network Virtualization

New paradigms and architectures, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), have added an unprecedented increase in the rate of research and development conducted in the field of computer networks. With this increase, there is a rising need for platforms that can enable researchers and operators to experiment with various scenarios involving performance testing, SDN, security research, topology designs, etc. However, the available emulators fail to address fundamental needs of the experiments requiring diverse and scalable set of topologies. In this work, we propose a novel approach to embed arbitrary topologies on a substrate network of programmable ToR switches using our network virtualization technique, called Bare-metal Network Virtualization (BNV). BNV is entirely software configurable and has been implemented on open source software and unmodified OpenFlow-enabled switches. The system has been deployed and currently running in a production testbed in National Cybersecurity Laboratory (NCL) for a year. Our evaluations show that BNV can support various datacenter topologies with less number of switches which can facilitate building a high fidelity, repeatable and isolated experimentation platform for data-center, SDN and security research in computer networks.
Feasibility analysis of FMS in small and medium scale Indian industries with a hybrid approach using ISM and TOPSIS

Small and medium scale industries play an important role in Indian economy and their strength lays in the competitiveness of their products in the world market. Backed by a strong government support in India, they continue to improve their growth rate. Despite this high growth rate, huge potential amongst the Indian small and medium scale industries still remains untapped. So there is a need to upgrade these industries so that they bloom to their full potential. For achieving increased competitiveness, the manufacturing SMEs need to replace or supplement their previous methods of production with more flexible and dynamic production systems like, flexible manufacturing system (FMS) which is characterised by shorter product development and manufacturing lead-time, better quality and flexibility, team-based work organisations, low setup/changeover times, multifunctional workers. FMS as a manufacturing strategy can help a SME to improve its processes and align it to the requirements of its customers. So this paper discusses the issues of SMEs and presents the major attributes for the adoption of FMS in SMEs and further these attributes are modelled to give a structure amongst them by using two distinct, well established modelling techniques, ISM and TOPSIS.
On Minimizing Sensing Time via Data Sharing in Collaborative Internet of Things

In order to improve the utilization efficiency of Internet of Things (IoT), more collaboration is preferable in the collection and exchange of data. When multiple applications/tasks request data from a sensor, we can make use of data sharing among the tasks as long as the data meets the time-sensitive QoS requirements of the tasks. This would in turn reduce both the total sensing time and the energy consumption, which is a significant concern in IoT systems. A practical question is how to design an efficient schedule to enable more data sharing and less sensing time. This paper addresses such a problem by developing algorithms with performance guarantees, respectively, for the offline and online scenarios. Two task models are studied, respectively, <italic>first-in first-out</italic> (FIFO) task model and <italic>arbitrary deadline</italic> (AD) task model. We first provide an optimal algorithm for FIFO tasks in the offline case, and then we study the online case, in which data requests arrive dynamically without prior information. For FIFO tasks, we develop an online two-competitive algorithm that always incurs a total sensing time no more than two times of the optimal solution. For AD tasks, we devise an online algorithm that is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(\log L)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> competitive, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the maximum length of the time duration of the tasks. Simulation results validate the efficiency of our online algorithms.
Dynamic ECG Signal Quality Evaluation Based on the Generalized bSQI Index

With the fast development of wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring, real-time and dynamic signal quality assessment (SQA) become an imperious demand. Thus, many signal quality indices (SQIs) have been developed in the past several years. bSQI is a typical SQI defined from two common QRS complex detectors (‘ep_limited’ and ‘wqrs’). However, in actual application, bSQI heavily relies on the QRS complex detectors used. Therefore, if using different combination of QRS detectors can improve the performance of SQA needs to be explored. In this paper, we utilized up to ten QRS detectors to re-define bSQI from the combination of any two QRS detectors to test which combination outputs the highest performance. Then, we generalized the two QRS detector-based bSQI to multiple QRS detector-based bSQI (i.e., GbSQI), to systematically test the effects of type and number of QRS detectors on SQA performances. The results showed that for the single GbSQI feature-based classifier, the combination of six QRS detectors reported the highest classification accuracy with a mAcc of 94.03%. For the multiple GbSQI feature-based classifier, the combination of four QRS detectors showed the best classification accuracy with a mAcc of 94.76%. As a conclusion, we recommended using U3, UNSW, DOM, and OKB detectors for calculating GbSQI for the wearable ECG monitoring application.
Libro Rojo de Peces Dulceacuícolas de Colombia (2012)

En el marco del Plan Operativo Anual (2010 – 2011 - 2012) del Programa de Biologia de la Conservacion y Uso de la Biodiversidad del Instituto de Investigacion de Recursos Biologicos Alexander von Humboldt, se llevo a cabo la actualizacion del Libro Rojo de peces dulceacuicolas de Colombia o proceso de evaluacion del riesgo de extincion y evolucion del estado de conservacion de las especies de peces dulceacuicolas, como tambien es conocido. Esta iniciativa se llevo a cabo con el aval del Ministerio de Ambiente, Vivienda y Desarrollo Territorial – MAVT (hoy Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible – MADS) y la participacion del Instituto de Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, WWF Colombia, y la Universidad de Manizales. En este proceso contribuyeron mas de 50 investigadores, vinculados a unas 30 instituciones academicas, gubernamentales y no gubernamentales.
Nonlinearity and Power Handling Characterization of an Optically Reconfigurable Microwave Switch

This paper presents a highly linear optically reconfigurable microwave switch with high power handling ability. A silicon superstrate with bottom illumination is employed. A transparent substrate is used and two different microstrip gap distances are characterized by two-tone nonlinearity measurement with different tone spacings and optical powers. A maximum third order intercept point referred to input power of +78.5dBm has been obtained and the maximum microwave power tested was over 30W per tone close to 2 GHz. Thermal imaging has been used to observe the device hot-spots as a function of RF power.
A 169.6 GHz Hybrid Mode-Switching Push-Push Oscillator with 21.7% Tuning Range and 180.6dBc/Hz FoMT in 28nm CMOS Technology

A hybrid mode-switching push-push oscillator is presented in this paper. Dual-mode push-push topology is implemented to achieve wideband terahertz signal generation. A switch-less inductive coupling mode-switching technique is proposed to obtain high frequency mode-switching. By combing the inductive coupling and capacitive mode-switching, the hybrid mode-switching is utilized to relax the trade-off between tuning range and phase noise. The proposed oscillator exhibits a 21.7% tuning range with the center frequency of 169.6 GHz and a state-of-the-art FoMT of 180.6 dBc/Hz.
One Group's Historical Reflections on DNA Vaccine Development

DNA vaccines were pioneered by several groups in the early 1990s. This article presents the reflections of one of these groups on their work with retroviral vectors in chickens that contributed to the discovery and early development of DNA vaccines. Although the findings were initially met with skepticism, the work presented here combined with that of others founded a new method of vaccination: the direct inoculation of purified DNA encoding the target antigen.
Re‐view and view on maturation disorders in the placenta

Until delivery, the placenta plays an important mediator role between mother and fetus. This unit is affected by peristatic conditions, such as acute or chronic maternal diseases, malnutrition, drugs, and others. But also genetic factors and fetal malformations due to embryonic developmental disorders may contribute to macroscopically visible changes and functional disorders of the placenta. In a constantly ongoing progress of maturation, the placenta records and saves changes due to fetal distress partly as maturation disorders. Understanding of maturation disorders might, therefore, be an important contribution to a better understanding of influences on villous differentiation and might improve follow up and fetal outcome to reduce recurrence risk. However, an internationally unified classification system of maturation disorders does not exist. In this review, terminology, trials, and classifications of villous maturation disorders are summed up and compared, to pinpoint the need of agreement on an international unified and reproducible classification of maturation disorders.
A radar system for indoor human localization and breath monitoring

This paper presents the study of a radar system for indoor human localization and vital signs monitoring. The article illustrates different solutions including linear frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) mode and recently proposed hybrid schemes, combining FMCW and continuous-wave (CW) interferometry modes. A new operating modality based on the use of the phase variations of the demodulated FMCW signal is also proposed. The presented schemes have been investigated theoretically and simulations have been performed to analyse and compare different algorithms needed to extract distance and breathing information. A radar system working in the 24 GHz ISM band with a bandwidth of 250 MHz has been realised. The sensor is based on the Infineon BGT24MTR11 integrated circuit. As transmitting and receiving antennas an appropriately designed serial array of patch antennas and commercial horns have been used. A series of experiments to evaluate the ability of the radar to estimate both the position of a target and its small displacements have been carried out. Maximum registered errors are about 6 cm in range measurement and $30~\mu \mathrm {m}$ in small movements. All the obtained results are in good agreement with simulations performed with a MatlabTM code reproducing the experimental scenario.
Fishy Faces: Crafting Adversarial Images to Poison Face Authentication

Face recognition systems are becoming a prevalent authentication solution on smartphones. This work is the first to deploy a poisoning attack against an authentication system based on a state-of-the-art face recognition technique. The attack is executed against the underlying SVM learning model that classifies face templates extracted by the FaceNet deep neural network. We demonstrate how an intelligent attacker can undermine the reliability of the authentication system through injecting a single intelligently crafted adversarial image to its training data. The most successful attacks within our evaluation framework trigger an authentication error of more than 50%. Our research illustrates the urge to evaluate and protect face authentication against adversarial machine learning.
Comparative Study of GdLu2Al2Ga3O12:Ce and GdY2Al2Ga3O12:Ce Scintillation Crystals for  $\gamma$ -Ray Detection

The scintillation characteristics of Czochralski-grown GdLu<sub>2</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>Ga<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>:Ce and GdY<sub>2</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>Ga<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>:Ce single crystals were compared for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\gamma$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-ray detection. At 662-keV <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\gamma$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-rays, light yield (LY) of 30700 photons/MeV obtained for GdLu<sub>2</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>Ga<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>:Ce is higher than that of 27200 photons/MeV obtained for GdY<sub>2</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>Ga<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>:Ce, while its energy resolution is inferior (14% versus 10.6%) due to a larger nonproportionality of LY. Scintillation decays were measured using the time-correlated single photon counting technique. A fast component decay time of 48 ns with relative intensity of 71% obtained for GdLu<sub>2</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>Ga<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>:Ce is superior to that of 106 ns (57%) for GdY<sub>2</sub>Al<sub>2</sub>Ga<sub>3</sub>O<sub>12</sub>:Ce. The coincidence time spectrum was measured in reference to a fast BaF<sub>2</sub> scintillator, and coincidence time resolution was discussed.
Distributed Human Machine Interface with Localization Functionalities: A Real Test Bench

Thanks to the diffusion of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Quick Response (QR) technologies, distributed and selective Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) are appearing in industrial environments as well as in some museums and other application scenarios. By approaching a smartphone to a suitable tag or symbol, the page of a website is shown and the user can access useful information without any other action. Recently, some indoor localization tools have been proposed, based on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (BT), locating the smartphone of a user. Even if the uncertainty is quite large, knowing the user's position could allow an automatic viewing of useful information without the need of any action by the user. This paper investigates self-localizing tools with automatic displaying of application-related information about the application, with a special attention to industrial applications, energy, and smart living scenarios. Particularly, this paper investigates the use of BT and sensorized beacons to tag environments and tools. A real case of a cognitive building is presented and discussed.
Perceptual Quality and Visual Experience Analysis for Polygon Mesh on Different Display Devices

Polygon mesh models have been widely used in various areas due to its high degree of verisimilitude and interactivity. Since the mesh models usually undergo various phases of signal processing for the purpose of storage, simplification, transmission, and deformation, the perceptual quality as well as the visual experience of mesh models are often subject to distortions at every stage. Therefore, investigating the perceptual quality and the visual experience of mesh models have become one of the major tasks for both the academia and industry. In this paper, we have designed two subjective experiments to investigate the perceptual quality and the visual experience in both the virtual reality environment and the traditional 2-D environment. Experimental results showed that there is no statistically significant difference in the quality perception between the two viewing conditions, independent of the model content, the distortion type, and the distortion level. On the contrary, there exists significant difference in the visual experience between the two viewing conditions under various factors. This paper helps researchers to better understand the quality perception behavior and the visual experience toward polygon mesh models.
Acquisitional Rule-based Engine for Discovering Internet-of-Thing Devices

The rapidly increasing landscape of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices has introduced signiﬁcant technical challenges for their management and security, as these IoT devices in the wild are from different device types, vendors, and product models. The discovery of IoT devices is the pre-requisite to characterize, monitor, and protect these devices. However, manual device annotation impedes a large-scale discovery, and the device classiﬁcation based on machine learning requires large training data with labels. Therefore, automatic device discovery and annotation in large-scale remains an open problem in IoT. In this paper, we propose an Acquisitional Rule-based Engine (ARE), which can automatically generate rules for discovering and annotating IoT devices without any training data. ARE builds device rules by leveraging application-layer response data from IoT devices and product descriptions in relevant websites for device annotations. We deﬁne a transaction as a mapping between a unique response to a product description. To collect the transaction set, ARE extracts relevant terms in the response data as the search queries for crawling websites. ARE uses the association algorithm to generate rules of IoT device annotations in the form of (type, vendor, and product). We conduct experiments and three applications to validate the effectiveness of ARE.
Is Diffusion Tensor Imaging a Good Biomarker for Early Parkinson's Disease?

Objectives: To assess white matter abnormalities in Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods: A hundred and thirty-two patients with PD (mean age 60.93 years; average disease duration 7.8 years) and 137 healthy controls (HC; mean age 57.8 years) underwent the same MRI protocol. Patients were assessed by clinical scales and a complete neurological evaluation. We performed a TBSS analysis to compare patients and controls, and we divided patients into early PD, moderate PD, and severe PD and performed an ROI analysis using tractography. Results: With TBSS we found lower FA in patients in corpus callosum, internal and external capsule, corona radiata, thalamic radiation, sagittal stratum, cingulum and superior longitudinal fasciculus. Increased AD was found in the corpus callosum, fornix, corticospinal tract, superior cerebellar peduncle, cerebral peduncle, internal and external capsules, corona radiata, thalamic radiation and sagittal stratum and increased RD were seen in the corpus callosum, internal and external capsules, corona radiata, sagittal stratum, fornix, and cingulum. Regarding the ROIs, a GLM analysis showed abnormalities in all tracts, mainly in the severe group, when compared to HC, mild PD and moderate PD. Conclusions: Since major abnormalities were found in the severe PD group, we believe DTI analysis might not be the best tool to assess early alterations in PD, and probably, functional and other structural analysis might suit this purpose better. However it can be used to differentiate disease stages, and as a surrogate marker to assess disease progression, being an important measure that could be used in clinical trials. HIGHLIGHTS DTI is not the best tool to identify early PD DTI can differentiate disease stages DTI analysis may be a useful marker for disease progression
Web Application for Romanian Language Phonetic Transcription

Abstract This paper presents a Romanian language phonetic transcription web service and application built using Java technologies, on the top of the Phonetisaurus G2P, a Word Finite State Transducer (WFST)-driven Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion toolkit. We used NaviRO Romanian language pronunciation dictionary for WFST model training, and MIT Language Modeling (MITLM) toolkit to estimate the needed joint sequence n-gram language model. Dictionary evaluation tests are also included in the paper. The service can be accessed for educational, research and other non-commercial usage at http://users.utcluj. ro/~jdomokos/naviro/.
Active Sound Localization Sharpens Spatial Tuning in Human Primary Auditory Cortex

Spatial hearing sensitivity in humans is dynamic and task-dependent, but the mechanisms in human auditory cortex that enable dynamic sound location encoding remain unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed how active behavior affects encoding of sound location (azimuth) in primary auditory cortical areas and planum temporale (PT). According to the hierarchical model of auditory processing and cortical functional specialization, PT is implicated in sound location (“where”) processing. Yet, our results show that spatial tuning profiles in primary auditory cortical areas (left primary core and right caudo-medial belt) sharpened during a sound localization (“where”) task compared with a sound identification (“what”) task. In contrast, spatial tuning in PT was sharp but did not vary with task performance. We further applied a population pattern decoder to the measured fMRI activity patterns, which confirmed the task-dependent effects in the left core: sound location estimates from fMRI patterns measured during active sound localization were most accurate. In PT, decoding accuracy was not modulated by task performance. These results indicate that changes of population activity in human primary auditory areas reflect dynamic and task-dependent processing of sound location. As such, our findings suggest that the hierarchical model of auditory processing may need to be revised to include an interaction between primary and functionally specialized areas depending on behavioral requirements. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT According to a purely hierarchical view, cortical auditory processing consists of a series of analysis stages from sensory (acoustic) processing in primary auditory cortex to specialized processing in higher-order areas. Posterior-dorsal cortical auditory areas, planum temporale (PT) in humans, are considered to be functionally specialized for spatial processing. However, this model is based mostly on passive listening studies. Our results provide compelling evidence that active behavior (sound localization) sharpens spatial selectivity in primary auditory cortex, whereas spatial tuning in functionally specialized areas (PT) is narrow but task-invariant. These findings suggest that the hierarchical view of cortical functional specialization needs to be extended: our data indicate that active behavior involves feedback projections from higher-order regions to primary auditory cortex.
Diamond RF Transistor Technology with ft=41 GHz and fmax=44 GHz

Initial results for diamond RF transistor technology are presented. Field Effect Transistors (FETs) were fabricated with gate lengths <tex>$(\mathbf{L}_{\mathrm{g}})$</tex> ranging from <tex>$\mathbf{4}\pmb{\mu}\mathbf{m}$</tex> to 50nm. The FETs have total gate width <tex>$(\mathbf{W}_{\mathrm{g}})$</tex> of 40 or <tex>$\mathbf{120}\pmb{\mu}\mathbf{m}. \mathbf{L}_{\mathbf{g}}=\mathbf{100\ nm}$</tex> devices show DC drain current <tex>$\mathbf{I}_{\mathbf{D}}=\mathbf{600\ mA}/\mathbf{mm} (>\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{GS}}=-\mathbf{3V},\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{DS}}=-\mathbf{10V}$</tex>) with transconductance <tex>$\mathbf{g}_{\mathbf{m}}=\mathbf{140mS}/\mathbf{mm} (>\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{GS}}=-\mathbf{0.3V},\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{DS}}=-\mathbf{4V}$</tex>). Small signal S-parameters were measured to evaluate the high-frequency performance of the diamond FETs. Extrinsic <tex>$\mathbf{f}_{\mathbf{t}}$</tex> and <tex>$\mathbf{f}_{\mathbf{max}}$</tex> were measured to be 41GHz and 44GHz, respectively. Load pull measurements were used to characterize the devices under large signal excitation. The <tex>$\mathbf{L}_{\mathbf{g}}=\mathbf{200nm},\ \mathbf{W}_{\mathbf{g}}=\mathbf{40}\pmb{\mu}\mathbf{m}$</tex> device, tested at 2GHz, shows peak efficiency of 30.5% at <tex>$\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{DS}}=-\mathbf{5V}$</tex>. Both peak gain of 19.5dB and peak output power density of 0.66W/mm were achieved at <tex>$\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{DS}}=- \mathbf{30V}$</tex>, Biasing the device at <tex>$\mathbf{V}_{\mathbf{DS}}=-\mathbf{15V}$</tex> provides a trade off point for the large signal parameters - gain of ~15dB, efficiency of ~20%, and output power of ~0.5W/mm.