Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of in-band and inter-band crosstalk due to multiwavelength optical cross-connect in a WDM network

An analytical approach is developed to evaluate the impact of in-band and inter-band crosstalk on the bit error rate (BER) performance due to a multi-wavelength optical cross-connect (OXC) in a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network. BER performance and power penalty results are numerically evaluated at a bit rate of 10 Gb/s and the factors that degrade the network performance are identified. The results show that for a 16times16 OXC, to achieve a BER of 10-9 at a power penalty of approximately 1 dB with a relative component crosstalk of -50 dB, the presence of in-band crosstalk allows maximum 4 wavelength channels in a fiber and the presence of inter-band crosstalk allows maximum 24 wavelength channels in a fiber for a wavelength separation of 0.01 nm.
Extensible language-aware merging

Parallel development has become standard practice in software development and maintenance. Though almost every revision control and configuration management system provides some form of merging for combining changes made in parallel, these mechanisms often yield unsatisfactory results. The authors present a new merging algorithm, that uses a fast differencing algorithm and renaming analysis to provide better merge results. The system is language aware, but not language dependent and does not require a special editor so it can be easily integrated in current development environments.
Collective Learning in Games through Social Networks

This paper argues that combining social networks communication and games can positively influence the learning behavior of players. We propose a computational model that combines features of social network learning (communication) and game-based learning (strategy reinforcement). The focus is on cooperative games, in which a coalition of players tries to achieve a common goal. We show that enriching cooperative games with social networks communication can influence learning towards the social optimum under specific conditions on the network structure and on the existing expertise in the coalition.
Modal Identification of Non-Linear Structures and the Use of Modal Model in Structural Dynamic Analysis

One of the major problems in structural dynamics is to identify nonlinearity, which is usually local in large structural systems, and to conduct dynamic analysis of the non-linear system. In this work, a new approach is suggested for modal identification of a non-linear system. Modal parameters obtained through modal identification are used in harmonic response prediction at different forcing levels. The response at only the fundamental harmonic is considered. The model can also be used to predict the response of the non-linear system coupled with a linear system and/or subjected to structural modification. An iterative solution method is used in structural dynamic analyses. The identification method proposed is for systems where nonlinearity is between a single coordinate and the ground. Response dependent modal parameters of the non-linear system are obtained via modal testing at different response levels. The method presented is verified through case studies. In the case studies presented, a subsystem with cubic stiffness type non-linearity is considered and the simulated FRFs of the subsystem generated for various response levels are used as pseudo experimental values.
Adapting mobility of observers for quick reputation assignment in a sparse post-disaster communication network

Researchers have proposed to use smart-phone based opportunistic networks for post-disaster communication where the smart-phones carried by the volunteers (also known as, nodes) are used to exchange the situational information from different corners of the disaster affected areas. In such scenario, some malicious nodes may try to intercept and manipulate the sensitive situational data with the intention of corruption and fraud. One way of preventing such corruption is to detect the malicious nodes based on their reputation and avoid them during data forwarding. In our earlier work [1], we proposed a dynamic reputation estimation technique where a group of trusted, independent, roving observer were assigned to specific affected zones. They randomly monitor, estimate the behavior of nodes in terms of their cooperation pattern as well as group-biasness and periodically publish a global node reputation matrix to help other nodes in selecting a suitable unselfish, unbiased and cooperative forwarder. In this paper, we suggested some improvement on the reputation collection mechanism proposed in our earlier work so that global reputation matrix can be generated quickly in a sparse network. In a post-disaster scenario, volunteers normally work around shelters; As a result, volunteers are found to be sparsely spread across the entire affected area. Observers, being unaware of the locations of volunteers or shelters, move around randomly within their designated zones to collect reputation of volunteers. Thus, the time taken to collect the reputation of all nodes in a specific zone is found to be quite large. Our objective, in this paper, is to adapt the mobility of an observer towards the more volunteer-rich areas in that zone so that maximum volunteers can be met in minimum time and the reputations may be collected quickly. Inspired by Ant colony based route selection algorithm we have implemented volunteer-concentration based adaptive mobility of the observers. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated using ONE simulator [13].
Impulse conduction of olfactory receptor neuron axons

Compound action potentials were recorded from rat olfactory receptor neuron axons at measured distances from the stimulation electrode along the lateral surface of the main olfactory bulb. Distances were plotted as a function of the latencies measured from stimulus onset to the prominent negative trough of the triphasic compound action potential. A straight line was fitted to these data to calculate impulse conduction velocity, 0.42 ± 0.01 m/s (n = 25). Two procedures were used to investigate whether those axons that project to caudal regions of the bulb had faster conduction velocities than axons projecting to rostral bulb. First, the stimulating electrode was moved to mid‐bulb and the recording electrode was placed on the caudal bulb. Alternatively, axons were stimulated antidromically at the caudal bulb. These two procedures stimulate those axons projecting to caudal bulb and bypass olfactory receptor neuron axons that synapse in the rostral bulb. The mean impulse conduction velocities from these caudal and antidromic recordings were 0.58 ± 0.19 m/s (n = 8) and 0.57 ± 0.19 m/s (n = 9), respectively. Though both of these means are higher than the impulse conduction velocity calculated for stimulation at the rostral bulb, the differences were not statistically significant. Microsc. Res. Tech. 58:161–167, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prevalence of Adolescents' Access to Guns and Suicide Risk

Almost half of suicides by teens in the U.S. are by firearm. These researchers used interview-based data from 2001 through 2004 to determine prevalence of psychiatric disorders and gun availability in 10,123 U.S. adolescents. Of the adolescents, 22% met criteria for one lifetime mental disorder, and 29% had two or more, including anxiety disorders (32.5%), behavior disorders (26.8%), mood disorders …
Superstitions Behavior and Decision Making in Collegiate Athletes: An Illogical Phenomenon

This study examined the superstitious behavior and decision making among individual, dual and team sport groups. To obtain required data, the investigators had selected Ninety (N = 90) male intercollege level athletes of 19 to 25 years of age to act as subjects. They were divided into three groups; Thirty (n1 = 30) Individual Sports, Thirty (n2 = 30) Dual Sports and Thirty (n3 = 30) Team Sports athletes of various games and sport. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the subjects. All the subjects, after having been informed about the objective and protocol of the study, gave their consent and volunteered to participate in this study. To measure the level of superstitions behaviors of the subjects, the superstitions beliefs and behaviour scale constructed by Buhramann et al. (2004) was administered and to measure the level of decision making by applying decision making questionnaire prepared by French et al. (1993). One way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was employed to find out the intra-group differences. To test the hypothesis, the level of significance was set at . 05. The results revealed significant intra-group differences among individual, dual and team sports on the variable superstitious behavior and decision making. It is concluded that the individual sport group has low superstitious belief and better decision making level as compared to their counterpart dual and team sport.
Positive factor networks: A graphical framework for modeling non-negative sequential data

We present a novel graphical framework for modeling non-negative sequential data with hierarchical structure. Our model corresponds to a network of coupled non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) modules, which we refer to as a positive factor network (PFN). The data model is linear, subject to non-negativity constraints, so that observation data consisting of an additive combination of individually representable observations is also representable by the network. This is a desirable property for modeling problems in computational auditory scene analysis, since distinct sound sources in the environment are often well-modeled as combining additively in the corresponding magnitude spectrogram. We propose inference and learning algorithms that leverage existing NMF algorithms and that are straightforward to implement. We present a target tracking example and provide results for synthetic observation data which serve to illustrate the interesting properties of PFNs and motivate their potential usefulness in applications such as music transcription, source separation, and speech recognition. We show how a target process characterized by a hierarchical state transition model can be represented as a PFN. Our results illustrate that a PFN which is defined in terms of a single target observation can then be used to effectively track the states of multiple simultaneous targets. Our results show that the quality of the inferred target states degrades gradually as the observation noise is increased. We also present results for an example in which meaningful hierarchical features are extracted from a spectrogram. Such a hierarchical representation could be useful for music transcription and source separation applications. We also propose a network for language modeling.
Acute Rhodiola rosea intake can improve endurance exercise performance.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of acute and 4-week Rhodiola rosea intake on physical capacity, muscle strength, speed of limb movement, reaction time, and attention. METHODS PHASE I A double blind placebo-controlled randomized study (n= 24) was performed, consisting of 2 sessions (2 days per session). Day 1: One hour after acute Rhodiola rosea intake (R, 200-mg Rhodiola rosea extract containing 3% rosavin + 1% salidroside plus 500 mg starch) or placebo (P, 700 mg starch) speed of limb movement (plate tapping test), aural and visual reaction time, and the ability to sustain attention (Fepsy Vigilance test) were assessed. Day 2: Following the same intake procedure as on day 1, maximal isometric knee-extension torque and endurance exercise capacity were tested. Following a 5-day washout period, the experimental procedure was repeated, with the treatment regimens being switched between groups (session 2). PHASE II A double blind placebo-controlled study (n = 12) was performed. Subjects underwent sessions 3 and 4, identical to Phase I, separated by a 4-week R/P intake, during which subjects ingested 200 mg R/P per day. RESULTS PHASE I Compared with P, acute R intake in Phase I increased (p <.05) time to exhaustion from 16.8 +/- 0.7 min to 17.2+/- 0.8 min. Accordingly, VO2peak (p <.05) and VCO2peak (p<.05) increased during R compared to P from 50.9 +/- 1.8 ml x min(-1) x kg(- )1 to 52.9 +/- 2.7 ml x min(-10) x kg(-1) (VO2peak) and from 60.0 +/- 2.3 ml x min(-1) x kg(-1) to 63.5+/- 2.7 ml x min(-1) x kg(-1) (VCO2peak). Pulmonary ventilation (p =.07) tended to increase more during R than during P (P: 115.9+/- 7.7 L/min; R: 124.8 +/- 7.7 L/min). All other parameters remained unchanged. PHASE II Four-week R intake did not alter any of the variables measured. CONCLUSION Acute Rhodiola rosea intake can improve endurance exercise capacity in young healthy volunteers. This response was not altered by prior daily 4-week Rhodiola intake.
Activation of the Acquired Immune Response Reduces Coupled Bone Formation in Response to a Periodontal Pathogen1

Osteoimmunolgy involves the interaction of the immune system with skeletal elements. This interaction can lead to the formation of osseous lesions. To investigate how the acquired immune response could contribute to osteolytic lesions, we injected the periodontal pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis adjacent to calvarial bone with or without prior immunization against the bacterium. Activation of the acquired immune response increased osteoclastogenesis and decreased coupled bone formation. The latter was accompanied by an increase in nuclear translocation of the transcription factor FOXO1 in vivo, increased apoptosis of bone-lining cells measured by the TUNEL assay and number of activated caspase-3 positive cells and a decrease in bone lining cell density. Further studies were conducted with MC3T3 osteoblastic cells. Apoptosis and increased FOXO1 DNA binding activity were induced when a combination of cytokines was tested, IL-β, TNF-α, and IFN-γ. Knockdown of FOXO1 by small interfering RNA significantly reduced cytokine stimulated apoptosis, cleaved caspase-3/7 activity and decreased mRNA levels of the proapoptotic genes, TNF-α, FADD, and caspase-3, -8, and -9. These results indicate that activation of the acquired immunity by a periodontal pathogen reduces the coupling of bone formation and resorption. This may occur by enhancing bone lining cell apoptosis through a mechanism that involves increased FOXO1 activation. These studies give insight into inflammatory bone diseases such as periodontal disease and arthritis were the formation of lytic lesions occurs in conjunction with deficient bone formation and activation of an acquired immune response.
A conformal antenna array with coplanar waveguide series feed configuration

A new conformal antenna array for cylindrical structure is proposed in this paper. By employing symmetrical circular slots and coplanar waveguide (CPW) series-fed, a wide bandwidth is realized. The simulation results show that the bandwidth of the conformal antenna array is 2.1 GHz-3.35 GHz (the relative bandwidth is 45.9 %) for S11<;-10 dB, which is 20.6 % wider than that of the planar structure (2.28 GHz-2.94 GHz). The maximum gain of the conformal antenna array is 5.4 dB at 2.45 GHz. Moreover, the antenna array can still meet the demand of the complex wireless communication equipment in 2.4 GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) when it is conformal on a cylindrical tube with different material.
Phase precession and phase‐locking of hippocampal pyramidal cells

We propose that the activity patterns of CA3 hippocampal pyramidal cells in freely running rats can be described as a temporal phenomenon, where the timing of bursts is modulated by the animal's running speed. With this hypothesis, we explain why pyramidal cells fire in specific spatial locations, and how place cells phase‐precess with respect to the EEG theta rhythm for rats running on linear tracks. We are also able to explain why wheel cells phase‐lock with respect to the theta rhythm for rats running in a wheel. Using biophysically minimal models of neurons, we show how the same network of neurons displays these activity patterns. The different rhythms are the result of inhibition being used in different ways by the system. The inhibition is produced by anatomically and physiologically diverse types of interneurons, whose role in controlling the firing patterns of hippocampal cells we analyze. Each firing pattern is characterized by a different set of functional relationships between network elements. Our analysis suggests a way to understand these functional relationships and transitions between them. Hippocampus 2001;11:204–215. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A systematic review of the influence of rice characteristics and processing methods on postprandial glycaemic and insulinaemic responses

Rice is an important staple food for more than half of the world's population. Especially in Asian countries, rice is a major contributor to dietary glycaemic load (GL). Sustained consumption of higher-GL diets has been implicated in the development of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes mellitus. Given that a reduction in postprandial glycaemic and insulinaemic responses is generally seen as a beneficial dietary change, it is useful to determine the variation in the range of postprandial glucose (PPG) and insulin (PPI) responses to rice and the primary intrinsic and processing factors known to affect such responses. Therefore, we identified relevant original research articles on glycaemic response to rice through a systematic search of the literature in Scopus, Medline and SciFinder databases up to July 2014. Based on a glucose reference value of 100, the observed glycaemic index values for rice varieties ranged from 48 to 93, while the insulinaemic index ranged from 39 to 95. There are three main factors that appear to explain most of the variation in glycaemic and insulinaemic responses to rice: (1) inherent starch characteristics (amylose:amylopectin ratio and rice cultivar); (2) post-harvest processing (particularly parboiling); (3) consumer processing (cooking, storage and reheating). The milling process shows a clear effect when compared at identical cooking times, with brown rice always producing a lower PPG and PPI response than white rice. However, at longer cooking times normally used for the preparation of brown rice, smaller and inconsistent differences are observed between brown and white rice.
Subblock Processing for MMSE-FDE Under Fast Fading Environments

Frequency domain equalization (FDE) has been studied for suppressing inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by frequency selective fading in single carrier systems. When a high-mobility terminal exists in the system, channel state changes within a DFT block. Then, the ISI reduction performance of FDE degrades since cyclicity of the channel matrix is lost. Here, we propose to divide received data block into multiple subblocks to decrease the channel transition within the DFT block in fast fading environments. Also, to satisfy periodicity of the received signal in each subblock, we introduce a pseudo cyclic prefix technique. The results of numerical analysis show that the proposed method provides 1.3-fold increase in tolerable Doppler frequency for FER of 0.01.
Some Applicable Methods Of Approximating Basic Trigonometric Functions And Their Inverse Value

This paper presents some applicable methods of approximating basic trigonometric functions and their inverse value. Methods are the best choice when a need arise to know first few digits after a decimal point and corresponding angle without spending time for immediate purpose. The ways of approximation are helpful for science and engineering field of study; they can be applied to get immediate solutions for practical problems which might be estimating, comparing and judging while operations of numbers. The assumption stated to carry out this work is; There exists certain function which can satisfies the condition defined as; if the sequence of some domain values within a domain of function forms an arithmetic progression, then the sequence of corresponding range values within a range of function will also forms an arithmetic progression. This assumption leads to the assumed generalized approximate equation and finally to the major findings. The major areas of study to carry out this particular work are arithmetic progression, sine function, cosine function and idea related to trigonometric functions such as trigonometric identities, co terminal angles, reference angle and co function definition. The objective is to contribute additional alternative knowledge to the Mathematical science. The findings of this paper are useful to derive general approximation formulae and other related findings that will be presented in the future. Index Term: sine function, cosine function, co function, trigonometric identities, arithmetic sequence. ————————————————————
Toward soft robots you can depend on

In this article, we performed an analysis of the dependability of an elementary yet critical robot component, i.e., the joint-level actuation subsystem. We consider robot actuators that implement the VSA paradigm, i.e., ability to change the effective transmission stiffness during motion to achieve high performance while constantly keeping injury risks by accidental impacts with humans below a given threshold. Without attempting a comprehensive review of different existing design approaches to VSA,we focused on the analysis of three different arrangements of agonistic/antagonistic actuation mechanisms for pHRI applications. Several aspects of their performance, safety, and dependability have been considered to get an indicative, though certainly not exhaustive, comparison of these alternatives. According to our results, the simple AA arrangement is more reliable (due to the simplicity of its mechanical implementation) if FM is not used. Proper FM actions can make other designs perform equally well as the simple AA concerning reliability and can perform better for steerability. Simulations of impacts in failed states (where FMis not used by a worst-case assumption) also show that the different designs have comparable safety properties. Although overall results for the bidirectional arrangements are somewhat superior, especially in terms of steerability (if FM is applied), we do not extrapolate any general claim in this regard. Indeed, many factors influence the results of similar studies, and each case should be considered in detail and very carefully. The scope of the study can become quite broad, and many of the theoretical and technical issues presented here (e.g., fault detection, supervisory control, and safety-related systems) will require further separated investigations. One of the purposes of this work was to explore and further promote dependability studies in robotics, as a means of addressing concerns in safety-critical robotic systems for physical interactions with humans. In this sense, a robot for pHRI applications is a unique benchmark for improving the state of art of fault tolerant design as well as in developing tools to master performance, dependability, and safety issues of a robotic structure.
A prospective design methodology of MMIC 2–6 GHz low noise amplifier

A wideband low noise amplifier is suitable for an emerging architecture such as a SDR and Digital RF. The gallium arsenide process has an advantage of very low noise figure at very high frequency. In this article we have taken efforts to propose a new concept for a wideband highly linear low noise amplifier. The simulations are carried out using Agilent Advanced Design System ADS to analyze the behavior of LNA in 2GHz to 6GHz band. The simulated results have shown an acceptable behavior with a maximum gain of 31 dB and low NF.