Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental large-signal performance of a dual-fed band-pass distributed amplifier

Band-pass distributed amplifiers can provide optimum power performance through the proper design of the phase shifts of the unit cells and by using the so-called dual-fed configuration. In this contribution, the experimental non-linear performance of such an amplifier is described. Measurements have been taken on a 3-stage band-pass distributed amplifier prototype at 1 GHz for two different configurations: single-fed and dual-fed. The experimental results for output power, power added efficiency and intermodulation distortion ratio are presented. The measurements taken on the dual-fed amplifier have confirmed the improvements in output power, overall gain, and power added efficiency in respect to the single-fed version. On the other hand, the single-fed amplifier exhibits a better linearity.
Effect of flaxseed fractions and sub-therapeutic antibiotic inclusion on microbial ecology in small intestine of growing pigs

2) sows receiving 1 g/kg of MOS during lactation, and dietary treatment: 1) basal diet (control), and 2) basal diet with MOS at 2 g/kg in prestarter and 1 g/kg in starter diets. The experimental design was applied in both the prestarter (28 to 44 d of age) and the starter (44 to 60 d of age) periods. Nutritive value of the diets was 2.5 Mcal NE/kg and 14.8 g/kg lysine for prestarter, and 2.5 Mcal NE/kg and 13.3 g/kg lysine for starter, and were based on barley, corn, and wheat. Data were analyzed as a completely randomized block design with piglet origin and dietary treatment as main effects and weaning weight as a covariate. For the overall period (28 to 60 d of age), piglets coming from sows eating MOS during their lactation period grew more than piglets from control sows independently from their dietary treatment after weaning (339 vs 363 g/d; P<0.05). On the other hand, piglets supplemented with MOS tended to have better feed conversion ratio than control piglets independently from their origin (1.50 vs 1.39 g feed/g gain; P=0.059). No interactions were detected between main effects for any of the parameters studied. It was concluded that: i) the supplementation of lactation diets with MOS improved growth of piglets during the post-weaning period with independence of dietary treatment within this period, and ii) addition of MOS to post-weaning piglet diets improved feed efficiency.
PAAS: Power Aware Algorithm for Scheduling in High Performance Computing

Energy consumption has become the major concern in High Performance Computing (HPC) systems as far as operational cost, reliability of systems and environmental impacts are concerned. The optimization of energy consumption in HPC systems is challenging task. The frequency/voltage used for execution of a job has a key impact in overall energy consumption. In this paper, we have implemented Power Aware Algorithm for Scheduling (PAAS), which focuses on energy reduction and load balancing aspects of HPC systems. The PAAS guides the scheduler to take intelligent decisions based on the information available in knowledge base. The Scheduler provides an optimal energy aware schedule for each node to minimize the make span across nodes and to reduce energy consumption. The knowledge base gives the optimal frequency and voltage where energy consumption is minimal for a particular job. The Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) knobs are tuned across the nodes based on predicted optimal frequency and voltage. We used hardware based power measurement device Watts up? NET meter for individual computing nodes as well as Multi-Agent framework for monitoring and analyzing energy consumption. We evaluated the algorithm on the experimental test-bed with the set of scientific applications. Our technique showed an average measured energy savings of 12.64% and a maximum of 13.5%.
Blind Deconvolution With Model Discrepancies

Blind deconvolution is a strongly ill-posed problem comprising of simultaneous blur and image estimation. Recent advances in prior modeling and/or inference methodology led to methods that started to perform reasonably well in real cases. However, as we show here, they tend to fail if the convolution model is violated even in a small part of the image. Methods based on variational Bayesian inference play a prominent role. In this paper, we use this inference in combination with the same prior for noise, image, and blur that belongs to the family of independent non-identical Gaussian distributions, known as the automatic relevance determination prior. We identify several important properties of this prior useful in blind deconvolution, namely, enforcing non-negativity of the blur kernel, favoring sharp images over blurred ones, and most importantly, handling non-Gaussian noise, which, as we demonstrate, is common in real scenarios. The presented method handles discrepancies in the convolution model, and thus extends applicability of blind deconvolution to real scenarios, such as photos blurred by camera motion and incorrect focus.
Incertidumbre en la volatilidad: una aplicación a la valoración de opciones con barrera

Some barrier options, such as the down-and-out puts, exhibit a gamma that changes sign. In this article we price this kind of options assuming that there is uncertainty regarding volatility but it is assumed to lie within a certain range. We present the partial differential equation corresponding to the derivative and solve it numerically using the finite difference method. The results show that barrier option prices are quite sensitive to the existence of uncertainty about volatility. We also show that the prices obtained using the uncertain volatility model are consistent with the prices generated under a stochastic volatility framework.
Solving Multi-agent MDPs Optimally with Conditional Return Graphs

In cooperative multi-agent sequential decision making under uncertainty, agents must coordinate in order find an optimal joint policy that maximises joint value. Typical solution al- gorithms exploit additive structure in the value function, but in the fully-observable multi-agent MDP setting (MMDP) such structure is not present. We propose a new optimal solver for so-called TI-MMDPs, where agents can only af- fect their local state, while their value may depend on the state of others. We decompose the returns into local returns per agent that we represent compactly in a conditional re- turn graph (CRG). Using CRGs the value of a joint policy as well as bounds on the value of partially specified joint policies can be efficiently computed. We propose CoRe, a novel branch-and-bound policy search algorithm building on CRGs. CoRe typically requires less runtime than the avail- able alternatives and is able to find solutions to problems previously considered unsolvable.
On the 3-Receiver Broadcast Channel with Degraded Message Sets and Confidential Messages

In this paper, bounds to the rate-equivocation region for the general 3-receiver broadcast channel (BC) with degraded message sets, are presented for confidential messages to be kept secret from one of the receivers. This model is more general than the 2-receiver BCs with confidential messages with an external wiretapper, and the recently studied 3-receiver degraded BCs with confidential messages, since in the model studied in this paper, the conditions on the receivers are general and the wiretapper receives the common message. Wyner's code partitioning combined with double-binning is used to show the achievable rate tuples. Error probability analysis and equivocation calculation are also provided. The secure coding scheme is sufficient to provide security for the 3-receiver BC with 2 or 3 degraded message sets, for the scenarios: (i) 3 degraded message sets, where the first confidential message is sent to receivers 1 and 2 and the second confidential message is sent to receiver 1, (ii) 2 degraded message sets, where one confidential message is sent to receiver 1, and (iii) 2 degraded message sets, where one confidential message is sent to receivers 1 and 2. The proof for the outer bound is shown for the cases where receiver 1 is more capable than the wiretap receiver 3, for the first two scenarios. Under the condition that both receivers 1 and 2 are less noisy than the wiretap receiver 3, the inner and outer bounds coincide, giving the rate-equivocation region for (iii). In addition, a new outer bound for the general 3-receiver BC with 3 degraded messages is obtained.
Antinociceptive Activity and Toxicity Evaluation of the Fatty Oil from Plukenetia polyadenia Mull. Arg. (Euphorbiaceae)

Seed oil (Pp-oil) of Plukenetia polyadenia is used by native people of the Brazilian Amazon against arthritis and rheumatism, spreading it on the arms and legs to reduce the pain and inflammation. Pp-oil was obtained by pressing dried seeds at room temperature to give a 47.0% yield of oil. It was then subjected to fatty acid composition analysis. The principal fatty acids were linoleic acid (46.5%), α-linolenic acid (34.4%) and oleic acid (13.9%). Then, it was evaluated for its antinociceptive activity in mice, using the acetic acid-induced abdominal writhing, hot plate and formalin test models. Additionally, its toxicity was determined. The Pp-oil proved to have no toxicological effects, showing dose-dependent antinociceptive effect under chemical stimulation. At oral doses of 25–100 mg/kg, Pp-oil significantly reduced the abdominal writhes in the writhing test. A higher oral dose of 200 mg/kg did not induce alterations in the latency time of the hot plate test when compared to the control, suggesting an analgesic activity of peripheral origin. At oral doses of 50 and 100 mg/kg, the Pp-oil significantly reduced the second phase of the algic stimulus in the formalin test. In addition, the antinociception of Pp-oil was reversed by naloxone in the evaluation of its mechanism of action. Therefore, the Pp-oil proved to be safe at very high doses and to show significant analgesic properties. The role of Pp-oil is still being investigated with respect the mechanism of action, but the results suggest that opiod receptors could be involved in the antinociception action observed for the oil of P. polyadenia.
On the (Partially) Inalienable Rights of Participants in Virtual Communities

As virtual communities become more central to the everyday activities of connected individuals, we face increasingly pressing questions about the proper allocation of power, rights and responsibilities. This paper argues that our current legal discourse is ill-equipped to provide answers that will safeguard the legitimate interests of participants and simultaneously refrain from limiting the future innovative development of these spaces. From social networking sites like Facebook to virtual worlds like World of Warcraft and Second Life, participants who are banned from these communities stand to lose their virtual property, their connections to their friends and family, and their personal expression. Because our legal system views the proprietor's interests as absolute private property rights, however, participants who are arbitrarily, capriciously or maliciously ejected have little recourse under law. This paper argues that, rather than assuming that a private property and freedom of contract model will provide the most desirable outcomes, a more critical approach is warranted. By rejecting the false dichotomy between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces, and recognising some of the absolutist and necessitarian trends in the current property debate, we may be able to craft legal rules that respect the social bonds between participants while simultaneously protecting the interests of developers.
Grid result checking

Result checking is the theory and practice of proving that the result of an execution of a program on an input is correct. Result checking has most often been envisioned in the framework of program testing or property testing, where the issue is the conformity of the program to some a-priori specification. Very large scale distributed computing systems demand to tackle the issue of computation correctness, albeit from hypothesis very different from the program testing ones. The general issues examined in this paper are the following. First, the definition of checking methods adapted to large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations; for these applications, no external criterion can be used to assess the quality of the result. Second, two result checking algorithms which minimize the overall overhead through an adaptive strategy. Finally, a specialization of this framework to a case study, the Auger astrophysics experiment. Our main contributions are: first to focus on checking Monte-Carlo simulations, which have rarely been considered previously; second to define a probabilistic checking strategy including the risk of first kind (false positive) as well as the risk of second kind (false negative) which is usually the only one considered, and which is compatible with Byzantine saboteurs; third, to exploit the probable characteristics of the behaviour of the saboteurs to optimise for the most frequent case. Finally, we show on a case study that the implementation details can be carried out
Ion channel gating: A first-passage time analysis of the Kramers type

The opening rate of voltage-gated potassium ion channels exhibits a characteristic knee-like turnover where the common exponential voltage dependence changes suddenly into a linear one. An explanation of this puzzling crossover is put forward in terms of a stochastic first passage time analysis. The theory predicts that the exponential voltage dependence correlates with the exponential distribution of closed residence times. This feature occurs at large negative voltages when the channel is predominantly closed. In contrast, the linear part of voltage dependence emerges together with a nonexponential distribution of closed dwelling times with increasing voltage, yielding a large opening rate. Depending on the parameter set, the closed-time distribution displays a power law behavior that extends over several decades.
Die Handelskosten von Deutschland

Summary The gravity equation for international trade is probably the most important tool in international economics to explain and estimate trade ﬂows. In its simplest form, it states that the exports between any two given countries are a multiplicative function of these countries’ economic size, as measured by GDP, and their bilateral trade costs. The idea and the name is going back from the similarity to Isaac Newton’s law of gravity where the attraction force between two physical bodies equals the product of their masses divided by the squared distance between the bodies. The gravity equation in international economics becomes estimable after log-linearizing and parameterizing it. Export and GDP data are broadly available in several databases. Trade costs are not directly measurable and are therefore usually proxied by geographic distance and a set of further proxy variables like: access to the sea, common border, common language, membership in a certain group of countries, membership in a country union, and others. Trade costs proxies can be subdivided into geographical and political variables. Geographical properties of a country can hardly be changed by policy. However policymakers can influence trade costs through tariff rates, currency unions, free trade agreements, membership in certain country groups and many other measures. Since trade costs are not directly measureable, we will use a novel index of comprehensive trade costs to estimate a simultaneous system, first of a gravity equation and second of a trade cost equation for Germany. In our study, we demonstrate a new way to solve the complex equation system of multilateral resistances and compute them for a set of OECD countries.
Optimization based simulation model development: Solving robustness issues

Mathematical models are becoming popular to represent biological systems. A mathematical model can be based upon existing knowledge from scientific literature, expert opinion, and field and laboratory studies. However, there are significant issues in model development including robustness. This study therefore examines how model quality can be improved automatically using optimization approaches. Specifically, we examine how a recently developed robust model of a forest pest species, with potential application in areas such as risk prediction [3], may have its robustness further increased using optimization. Digital eco-systems provide a powerful and broader methodological foundation and support for the implementation of optimization through application of the design science method1.
Abelian Duality

We show that on three–dimensional Riemannian manifolds without boundaries and with trivial ﬁrst real de Rham cohomology group (and in no other dimensions) scalar ﬁeld theory and Maxwell theory are equivalent: the ratio of the partition functions is given by the Ray– Singer torsion of the manifold. At the level of interaction with external currents, the equivalence persists provided there is a ﬁxed relation between the charges and the currents.
Nambu-Lie Groups by Izu Vaisman

We extend the Nambu bracket to 1-forms. Following the Poisson-Lie case, we define Nambu-Lie groups as Lie groups endowed with a multiplica-tive Nambu structure. A Lie group G with a Nambu structure P is a Nambu-Lie group iff P = 0 at the unit, and the Nambu bracket of left (right) invariant forms is left (right) invariant. We define a corresponding notion of a Nambu-Lie algebra. We give several examples of Nambu-Lie groups and algebras. In 1973, Nambu [14] studied a dynamical system which was defined as a Hamiltonian system with respect to a ternary, Poisson-like bracket defined by a Jacobian determinant. A few years ago, Takhtajan [15] reconsidered the subject, proposed a general, algebraic definition of a Nambu-Poisson bracket of order n which, for brevity, we call a Nambu bracket, and gave the basic properties of this operation. The Nambu bracket is an intriguing operation, in spite of its rather restrictive character, which follows from the fact conjectured in [15], and proven by several authors [6], [1], [13], [8], [11] namely, that, locally and with respect to well chosen coordinates, any nonzero Nambu bracket is just a Jacobian determinant. In this paper, we show that a Nambu bracket induces a corresponding bracket of 1-forms, and use the latter for a characterization of Nambu-Lie groups, a natural generalization of the Poisson-Lie groups (e.g, [16]). The relation with a corresponding notion of a Nambu-Lie algebra is discussed, and several examples of Nambu-Lie groups and algebras are given.
MAS 336 Computational Problem Solving Problem 3 : Eight Queens

If you play chess then you may recognize this as th e problem of placing 8 queens on a chess board such that no queen threatens any other, and I will use the chess metaphor in future. This problem is well know in computer science as the "eight queens problem" and is a classic example of a "backtracking" algorithm. See [1] for a solution using the procedural langu age Pascal, [2] for a solution using Modula-2, the successor to Pascal, which has a synt x very similar to that of Maple, [3] for a solutio n using the symbolic language Lisp, and [4] for a solution using the declarative language Prolog. However, none of these references pursues the symmetry considerations in any detail. Solutions have proba bly been published using most programming languages , although I have not seen one using Maple. Hence, for credit in this course, this problem must be solved using Maple, although you may use whatever background material you wish. According to [1], C. F. Gauss investigated this problem in 1850 but did not completely solve it, which is not too surprising since it is much easier to so lve by computer than by hand!
A pitch extraction algorithm in noise based on temporal and spectral representations

In this paper, a new algorithm for pitch extraction from noisy speech signals based on both temporal and spectral representations is presented. We derive a harmonic sinusoidal correlation (HSC) model of clean speech as a temporal representation. Given only a noisy speech frame, a noise-robust least-squares minimization technique is proposed to acquire the parameters of the HSC model which are directly employed for the accurate estimation of a pitch-harmonic (PH). Exploiting the extracted PH and based on a spectral representation which is an enhanced spectrum in the discrete cosine transform domain, a two-fold criterion is developed in order to achieve the true consecutive number corresponding to PH that is finally adopted for pitch detection in the presence of noise. Simulation results using the Keele pitch extraction reference database manifest that combining the multi cues obtained from the temporal as well as spectral representations, the proposed algorithm is able to achieve a superior efficacy in comparison to some of the existing methods from high to very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels.
Analysis of Local Binary Patterns in different color models for person independent facial expression recognition

Facial expressions are the most informative activities on the human face. Facial movements can be analyzed in order to recognize facial expressions. These movements are extracted using the facial geometry or texture. The paper addresses the facial expression recognition based on Local Binary Patterns (LBP) extracted from the texture information. The LBP operator and its extensions are applied to different color models which are gray-scale, RGB, oRGB, YCbCr and HSV. Frontal face images among six basic facial expressions which are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise are considered. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is employed as the classifier. The simulation results on BU-3DFE database shows that LBP features of different color models affects recognition performance significantly.
Coherence and sufficient sampling densities for reconstruction in compressed sensing

We give a new, very general, formulation of the compressed sensing problem in terms of coordinate projections of an analytic variety, and derive sufficient sampling rates for signal reconstruction. Our bounds are linear in the coherence of the signal space, a geometric parameter independent of the specific signal and measurement, and logarithmic in the ambient dimension where the signal is presented. We exemplify our approach by deriving sufficient sampling densities for low-rank matrix completion and distance matrix completion which are independent of the true matrix.
An energy saving cache algorithm

Traditional caches have fixed number of sets. This paper proposes cache architecture with variable number of cache sets. The cache is assumed to be of fixed size. The cache operates assuming one set. On conflict, the number of sets is doubled selectively enabling the cache sets. An algorithm for address mapping is defined. The sets that are unoccupied are put in off mode. The occupied sets operate in high power mode. The proposed model is simulated with SPEC2K benchmark. An energy saving of 10% is observed with improvement in average memory access time by 76% compared with set associative cache of same size.