Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California Thesis Approved for Public Release; Distribution Is Unlimited Adaptive Branch-and-bound for Efficient Solution of Mixed-integer Programs Formulated with " Big-m "

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Nonminimum-phase equalization and its subjective importance in room acoustics

This paper investigates the perceptual significance of residual phase distortion due to an approximate equalization of the nonminimum-phase room response from a sound source to a microphone in a reverberant room. It is shown that disrupted phase relationships introduced by a minimum-phase equalization filter may have a detrimental effect on perceived sound quality. The subjective assessment of phase distortion on speech signals is related to an objective error criterion, newly introduced in this paper. An alternative approach to the minimum-phase/all-pass decomposition based on iterative flattening of the room transfer function (RTF) magnitude is also presented, which overcomes potential numerical problems and provides more insight into subjective aspects of magnitude and phase equalization in the reduction of acoustic reverberation. Factors contributing to the results and practical implications for equalization are discussed.
Delay analysis of STDMA in grid wireless sensor networks

TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access)) is known to be an affective method for energy saving in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, when any slot is exclusively reserved to one node, the TDMA-based protocols suffer from low-channel utilization and high data delivery delays. STDMA (Spatial reuse TDMA) avoids these drawbacks by allowing multiple nodes to access the same time slot provided that these nodes do not interfere. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the delay performance of STDMA assuming grid networks and a random ordering of the slots in the STDMA cycle. The evaluation is performed both with a stochastic analytical model and by experiments based on a known STDMA method called VCM. Results show that the random ordering performance is rather good. A framework for STDMA applied to general graphs under SINR interference model is also presented.
Sub-nyquist audio fingerprinting for music recognition

In recent years, Compressive Sampling (CS), a new research topic in signal processing, has piqued interest of a wide range of researchers in different fields. In this paper, we present a sub-Nyquist Audio Fingerprinting (AF) system for music recognition, which utilizes CS theory to generate a compact audio fingerpint, and to achieve significant reduction of the dimensionality of the input signal. The presented experimental results demonstrate that by using the CS-based sub-Nyquist AF system, when downsampling to 30%, the average accuracy is 93.43% under various distorted environments, compared to Nyquist sampling methods. The advantages of the proposed process lie in the comparable performance under the sub-Nyquist sampling rate, and more compact audio fingerprint.
Absolute Stability of Single-Input Single-Output Systems with Constant Internal Point Time Delays

This paper deals with the absolute stability of single-input single-output time-delay systems with, in general, a finite number of non commensurate constant internal point delays for any nonlinearity satisfying a time positivity inequality related to the first and third quadrants. The results are obtained based on Lyapunov's stability analysis via appropriate Lyapunov's functions and the related stability study is performed to obtain both delay independent and delay dependent results.
Estimate of the tropospherical water vapor through microwave attenuation measurements in atmosphere

The objective of this paper is to proceed, by investigating the statistics of simulated measurements based on a large dataset of radiosonde profiles, to assess the feasibility of active systems providing water vapor profile information based on Earth-satellite multifrequency differential attenuation measurements made in the 18-22-GHz range. Recently, in fact, we pointed out the potential and the advantages of such measurements, showing in particular how a spectral sensitivity parameter could be exploited to provide the total water vapor content and further information about the shape of its vertical profile. In this work, we present an in-depth statistical analysis of the relationship between the spectral sensitivity parameter and the water vapor content at different tropospheric layers. Furthermore, we discuss the performance of a simple amplitude modulation transmit-receive system that could be adopted to provide the sensitivity measurements. It is shown that a dual-frequency system can directly provide with good accuracy the columnar water vapor content separately from the content of the 3-9 km atmospheric layer.
Impact of HPV infection on the development of head and neck cancer

Human papillomavirus (HPV)-related head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is considered to be a distinct clinical entity with better prognosis than the classical tobacco- and alcohol-associated tumors. The increasing incidence of this neoplasia during the last decades highlights the need to better understand the role of HPV in the development of these cancers. Although the proportion of HNSCC attributed to HPV varies considerably according to anatomical site, overall approximately 25% of all HNSCC are HPV-DNA positive, and HPV-16 is by far the most prevalent type. In this review we discuss the existing evidence for a causal association between HPV infection and HNSCC at diverse anatomical head and neck subsites.
Nonparametric Models for Peak Identification and Quantification in Maldi-tof Mass Spectroscopy

We present a novel nonparametric Bayesian model using Lévy random field priors for identifying the presence and abundance of proteins from mass spectrometry data. Informed prior distributions, based on expert opinion and on preliminary laboratory experiments, help distinguish true peaks from background noise and help resolve uncertainty about peak multiplicity.
Indoor MIMO Optical Wireless Communication Using Spatial Modulation

In this paper, a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique for indoor optical wireless (OW) communication is proposed. The technique is referred to as \emph{optical spatial modulation (OSM)}. The key concept is based on spatial modulation (SM). At any given time instant, only one transmitter is active and the others are inactive. A transmitter in space is considered as a spatial constellation point which is assigned a unique bit sequence. Consequently, transmitters are turned on and off depending on the incoming data bits, similar to the activation of constellation points in traditional digital modulation schemes. Hence, a data rate of the base two logarithm of the number of transmit units is achieved. The active transmitter radiates a certain intensity level at a particular time instant. At the receiver side, the optimal SM detector is slightly modified and used to estimate the spatial constellation point. The estimated spatial constellation point is used to arrive at the original bit stream via de-mapping. The upper bound bit-error-ratio (BER) of OSM is analyzed for a MIMO configuration consisting of four transmit units (light emitting diodes (LEDs)) and four receive units (photo diodes (PDs)) in a room. The BER performance is determined for different transmitter and receiver separation distances and different transmitter half power semiangles. It is shown that the proposed OSM technique achieves twice and four times the data rate as compared to OOK (on-off keying) and PPM (pulse-position modulation), respectively.
THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH DEFINITE NOUN PHRASES BY MANDARIN CHINESE SPEAKERS

Abstract By replicating Cho (2017), this article investigates how second language (L2) learners with an article-less first language acquire two types of English definiteness, anaphoric and nonanaphoric. Mandarin Chinese, as an article-less language, has a demonstrative determiner that shares the same feature set as the English definite article the: [+definite, +/-anaphoric]. In the current study, the participants were 28 advanced and 25 intermediate L1-Chinese L2-English learners and the native control data were from Cho. The results from an acceptability judgment task revealed that intermediate Chinese speakers, unlike advanced speakers, had difficulties in the nonanaphoric definite condition where, without a potential antecedent, definiteness is established through pragmatic knowledge and acquisition of nonanaphoric definiteness essentially takes place at the semantics-pragmatics interface. The findings of this article suggest that accommodating presuppositions at the semantics-pragmatics interface is challenging to L2 learners, even when feature reassembly is not required.
A catalogue of galaxies in the HDF-South: Photometry and structural parameters

We describe the construction of a catalogue of galaxies in the optical eld of the Hubble Deep Field South. The HDF-S observations produced WFPC2 images inU; B; V ,a ndI, the version 1 data have been made pub- lic on 23 November 1999. The eective eld of view is 4.38 arcmin 2 ,a nd the 5 limiting magnitudes (in a FWHM aperture) are 28.87, 29.71, 30.19, 29.58 in the U; B; V and I bands, respectively. We created a catalogue for each pass-band (I814,V606,B450,U300), using simulations to ac- count for incompleteness and spurious sources contamina- tion. Along with photometry in all bands, we determined on the I814-selected catalogue (I814 < 26) structural pa- rameters, such as a metric apparent size, derived from the petrosian radius, an asymmetry index, light concen- tration indexes and the mean surface brightness within the petrosian radius.
BTV-GLUE: a new bioinformatic resource for genomic studies of Bluetongue virus

Bluetongue virus (BTV) is an arbovirus transmitted by biting midges (Culicoides pp.). BTV causes a severe disease (bluetongue) in domestic and wild ruminant species with high levels of morbidity and mortality. Bluetongue has emerged as an important disease in sheep and cattle worldwide. The BTV genome is composed by ten linear dsRNA segments, packaged within a triple-layered icosahedral protein-capsid, and encode 7 structural and 4/5 non-structural proteins. To date, there are at least 27 BTV serotypes (mainly determined by the VP2 outer capsid protein) circulating worldwide. In addition, high rates of reassortment involving all genome segments have been documented, complicating epidemiological studies and vaccination programmes. We have developed BTV-GLUE (http://btv.glue.cvr.ac.uk), a new bioinformatics sequence data resource for bluetongue virus. Sequences from the NCBI nucleotide database are curated along with complementary sequence metadata and are integrated together inside GLUE (http://tools.glue.cvr.ac.uk), a data-centric software package for capturing virus sequence data and organising it along evolutionary lines. The dataset also contains reference sequences with genome feature annotations, multiple sequence alignments, defined clades and phylogenetic trees, for each BTV segment and clade. A new automated genotyping tool for all segments has been developed. The resource may also be used as an offline bioinformatics toolkit. BTV-GLUE will help the BTV community to study varying aspects of BTV biology and evolution and will facilitate the adoption of a nomenclature that more easily distinguishes the properties of BTV strains circulating worldwide.
A non-iterative pose-graph optimization algorithm for fast 2D SLAM

This paper presents a non-iterative pose-graph optimization algorithm for fast 2D simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The graph-SLAM approach addresses the SLAM problem using a factor graph structure. For a pose-only SLAM problem, landmarks are not explicitly modeled and are not a part of the SLAM problem. Conventional pose-graph optimization methods minimize the error by an iterative local linearization process. The proposed method reformulates the pose-graph optimization problem as a combination of two linear least-squares problems. The position and angle term in a pose vector are optimized separately, and the iterative linearization process is removed. Due to an approximation in the reformulation of the pose-graph optimization problem, there is a tradeoff between the accuracy and the computational complexity. The simulation is conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. For comparison, the conventional manifold based pose-graph optimization algorithm is implemented. The results of simulations which optimized 1,079 poses show that the proposed method is more than 25 times faster than the conventional method. However, the localization accuracy is approximately 10% lower than the conventional method.
Derivation of lung epithelium from human cord blood-derived mesenchymal stem cells.

RATIONALE Recent studies have suggested that both embryonic stem cells and adult bone marrow stem cells can participate in the regeneration and repair of diseased adult organs, including the lungs. However, the extent of airway epithelial remodeling with adult marrow stem cells is low, and there are no available in vivo data with embryonic stem cells. Human umbilical cord blood contains both hematopoietic and nonhematopoietic stem cells, which have been used clinically as an alternative to bone marrow transplantation for hematologic malignancies and other diseases. OBJECTIVES We hypothesized that human umbilical cord blood stem cells might be an effective alternative to adult bone marrow and embryonic stem cells for regeneration and repair of injured airway epithelium. METHODS Human cord blood was obtained from normal deliveries at the University of Vermont. Cultured plastic adherent cells were characterized as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) by flow cytometry and differentiation assays. Cord blood-derived MSCs (CB-MSCs) were cultured in specialized airway growth media or with specific growth factors, including keratinocyte growth factor and retinoic acid. mRNA and protein expression were analyzed with PCR and immunofluorescent staining. CB-MSCs were systematically administered to immunotolerant, nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficiency (NOD-SCID) mice. Lungs were analyzed for presence of human cells. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS When cultured in specialized airway growth media or with specific growth factors, CB-MSCs differentially expressed Clara cell secretory protein (CCSP), cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), surfactant protein C, and thyroid transcription factor-1 mRNA, and CCSP and CFTR protein. Furthermore, CB-MSCs were easily transduced with recombinant lentiviral vectors to express human CFTR. After systemic administration to immunotolerant, NOD-SCID, mice, rare cells were found in the airway epithelium that had acquired cytokeratin and human CFTR expression. CONCLUSIONS CB-MSCs appear to be comparable to MSCs obtained from adult bone marrow in ability to express phenotypic markers of airway epithelium and to participate in airway remodeling in vivo.
Human autoantibody to a novel protein of the nuclear coiled body: immunological characterization and cDNA cloning of p80-coilin

Antibodies producing an unusual immunofluorescent pattern were identified in the sera of patients with diverse autoimmune features. This pattern was characterized by the presence of up to six round discrete nuclear bodies in interphase cell nuclei. Immunoblotting analysis showed that these sera recognized an 80-kD nuclear protein, and affinity-purified anti-p80 antibody from the protein band reproduced the fluorescent staining of nuclear bodies. Colloidal gold immunoelectron microscopy showed that the affinity-purified anti-p80 antibody recognized the coiled body, an ultramicroscopic nuclear structure probably first described by the Spanish cytologist Ramon y Cajal. Five cDNA clones were isolated from a MOLT-4 cell lambda gt-11 expression library using human antibody and oligonucleotide probes. The longest cDNA insert was 2.1 kb and had an open reading frame of 405 amino acids. A clone encoding a 14-kD COOH-terminal region of the protein was used for expression of a beta-galactosidase fusion protein. An epitope was present in this COOH-terminal 14-kD region, which was recognized by 18 of 20 sera with anti-p80 reactivity, and affinity- purified antibody from the recombinant protein also reacted in immunofluorescence to show specific staining of the coiled body. This is the first demonstration and molecular cloning of a protein that appears to have particular identification with the coiled body, and it was designated p80-coilin. Autoantibody to p80-coilin may be useful for the elucidation of the structure and function of the coiled body, and the availability of a cDNA sequence could be helpful in further studies to clarify the clinical significance of this autoantibody response.
Environment Recognition from Audio Using MPEG-7 Features

In this paper, we introduce a full use of MPEG-7 Audio features for environment recognition from audio for different multimedia applications. Environment recognition from audio files is a growing area of interest, however, compared to other branches of multimedia it is a less researched one. To recognize environment, we utilize total of 17 temporal and spectral MPEG-7 Audio low- level descriptors as features. The performance is compared with Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) features. Experimental results show a significant improvement of the proposed MPEG-7 based environment recognition over that of the conventional MFCC based features. Zero-crossing rate is appended with the MPEG-7 based feature to yield even better performance. The best performance is achieved with combined MFCC, MPEG-7 and zero- crossing features. Index Items: Environment recognition, MPEG-7 Audio, MFCC, multimedia.
Tau protein binds to microtubules through a flexible array of distributed weak sites

Tau protein plays a role in the extension and maintenance of neuronal processes through a direct association with microtubules. To characterize the nature of this association, we have synthesized a collection of tau protein fragments and studied their binding properties. The relatively weak affinity of tau protein for microtubules (approximately 10(-7) M) is concentrated in a large region containing three or four 18 amino acid repeated binding elements. These are separated by apparently flexible but less conserved linker sequences of 13-14 amino acids that do not bind. Within the repeats, the binding energy for microtubules is delocalized and derives from a series of weak interactions contributed by small groups of amino acids. These unusual characteristics suggest tau protein can assume multiple conformations and can pivot and perhaps migrate on the surface of the microtubule. The flexible structure of the tau protein binding interaction may allow it to be easily displaced from the microtubule lattice and may have important consequences for its function.
A particle swarm optimization for solving the one dimensional container loading problem

We address in this paper the one dimensional container loading problem (CLP), a NP-hard optimization problem of extreme economic relevance in industrial areas. The problem consists in loading items into containers, then stowing the most profitable containers in a set of compartments. The main objective is to minimize the number of used containers. We state a mathematical model as well as a modified metaheuristic namely the particle swarm optimization approach (PSO) with FFD initialization. Computational results carried out on a large test bed show the effectiveness of the denoted approach depending on the problem settings.
Importance of dynamic faults for new SRAM technologies

New memory technologies and processes introduce new defects that cause previously unknown faults. Dynamic faults are among these new faults; they can take place in the absence of the traditional static faults. This paper describes the concept of dynamic faults, based on the fault primitive concept. It further shows, based on industrial test results, the importance of such faults for the new memory technologies, and introduces a systematic way for modeling them. It concludes that current and future SRAM products need to consider testability for dynamic faults or leave substantial DPM on the table, and it sets a direction for further research.
An accelerated convergent ordered subsets algorithm for emission tomography

We propose an algorithm, E-COSEM (enhanced complete-data ordered subsets expectation-maximization), for fast maximum likelihood (ML) reconstruction in emission tomography. E-COSEM is founded on an incremental EM approach. Unlike the familiar OSEM (ordered subsets EM) algorithm which is not convergent, we show that E-COSEM converges to the ML solution. Alternatives to the OSEM include RAMLA, and for the related maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem, the BSREM and OS-SPS algorithms. These are fast and convergent, but require a judicious choice of a user-specified relaxation schedule. E-COSEM itself uses a sequence of iteration-dependent parameters (very roughly akin to relaxation parameters) to control a tradeoff between a greedy, fast but non-convergent update and a slower but convergent update. These parameters are computed automatically at each iteration and require no user specification. For the ML case, our simulations show that E-COSEM is nearly as fast as RAMLA.
Checkpoints to the Brain: Directing Myeloid Cell Migration to the Central Nervous System

Myeloid cells are a unique subset of leukocytes with a diverse array of functions within the central nervous system during health and disease. Advances in understanding of the unique properties of these cells have inspired interest in their use as delivery vehicles for therapeutic genes, proteins, and drugs, or as “assistants” in the clean-up of aggregated proteins and other molecules when existing drainage systems are no longer adequate. The trafficking of myeloid cells from the periphery to the central nervous system is subject to complex cellular and molecular controls with several ‘checkpoints’ from the blood to their destination in the brain parenchyma. As important components of the neurovascular unit, the functional state changes associated with lineage heterogeneity of myeloid cells are increasingly recognized as important for disease progression. In this review, we discuss some of the cellular elements associated with formation and function of the neurovascular unit, and present an update on the impact of myeloid cells on central nervous system (CNS) diseases in the laboratory and the clinic. We then discuss emerging strategies for harnessing the potential of site-directed myeloid cell homing to the CNS, and identify promising avenues for future research, with particular emphasis on the importance of untangling the functional heterogeneity within existing myeloid subsets.