Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Democratizing rendering for multiple viewers in surround VR systems

We present a new approach for how multiple users' views can be rendered in a surround virtual environment without using special multi-view hardware. It is based on the idea that different parts of the screen are often viewed by different users, so that they can be rendered from their own view point, or at least from a point closer to their view point than traditionally expected. The vast majority of 3D virtual reality systems are designed for one head-tracked user, and a number of passive viewers. Only the head tracked user gets to see the correct view of the scene, everybody else sees a distorted image. We reduce this problem by algorithmically democratizing the rendering view point among all tracked users. Researchers have proposed solutions for multiple tracked users, but most of them require major changes to the display hardware of the VR system, such as additional projectors or custom VR glasses. Our approach does not require additional hardware, except the ability to track each participating user. We propose three versions of our multi-viewer algorithm. Each of them balances image distortion and frame rate in different ways, making them more or less suitable for certain application scenarios. Our most sophisticated algorithm renders each pixel from its own, optimized camera perspective, which depends on all tracked users' head positions and orientations.
The design and implementation of FlexiMatch a learning , flexible & extendible framework for matching schemas

Automating matching schemas has been under investigation in many areas for already some decades, but matching schemas is still often done manually by domain experts. Due to the rapidly increasing number of heterogeneous and distributed data sources in enterprises and on the web, the manual matching approach is more and more a limitation and the need for automating the schema matching process is increasingly important. At the start of this report we investigate the different approaches in the schema matching world. From evaluations of implementations based on these approaches, schema matching 'trends' and problems are discerned, which are taken as the starting point of this thesis. This report describes the schema matching framework FlexiMatch, which supports the multi-strategy approach, with each strategy represented as a Validator. Key characteristics of FlexiMatch are that: • FlexiMatch and its Validator-components can learn from previous mappings. • Validators can easily be added to, or selected from the Validator repository, in order to boost future matching performance or to adapt the system to the match task at hand. The main perspective of FlexiMatch, is that the elements of schemas (relational column and table elements, or XML elements and attributes) from a certain domain share domain concepts. FlexiMatch learns these concepts from previous mappings. Schema elements belonging to a certain domain concept can have various representations. Within FlexiMatch concepts are therefore represented by interconnected subconcepts. Such an interconnected subconcept group is derived from the different schema elements representations of a certain domain concept which FlexiMatch encountered during previous schema mappings. These subconcepts and their interrelations are used as an intermediate schema to derive matches between input schema elements. Schema elements are therefore first matched with subconcepts. Schema elements that are matched with similar, interrelated subconcepts are then combined with each other. The main goal of the FlexiMatch system for this thesis is to make a learning framework in which the gained knowledge could be used in future match tasks. Although there are many aspects of FlexiMatch that could be improved or implement to enhance the performance, the evaluation of FlexiMatch shows that the main goal is achieved: subconcepts and subconcept relations are learned from previous mappings, and they help in finding new ones in later match tasks.
Salpingectomy or proximal tubal occlusion of unilateral hydrosalpinx increases the potential for spontaneous pregnancy.

BACKGROUND Studies carried out over the past 10 years have suggested that hydrosalpinges reduce the pregnancy rate in IVF. Here we report our observations of spontaneous pregnancies in patients who underwent salpingectomy (n = 18) or proximal tubal occlusion (n = 7) following diagnoses of unilateral hydrosalpinges and patent contralateral tubes. METHODS This multi-centre, retrospective study included 25 infertility patients with known unilateral hydrosalpinges with a patent contralateral Fallopian tube. Laparoscopic treatment of unilateral hydrosalpinges by either salpingectomy or tubal occlusion was performed in each patient. Rates of subsequently observed spontaneous pregnancy, and time to pregnancy, are reported. RESULTS The average duration of infertility in these patients was 3 years with a range of 1-10 years. Following laparoscopic surgical treatment, a total of 22 patients (88%) achieved intrauterine pregnancies, all without IVF treatment. Pregnancies occurred in an average of 5.6 months with a range of 1-21 months. There were no ectopic pregnancies in the study population. CONCLUSIONS Selected patients with unilateral hydrosalpinges and a patent contralateral Fallopian tube may exhibit increased cycle fecundity after salpingectomy or proximal tubal occlusion of the affected tube and conceive without the need for IVF.
Cytomegalovirus Infection Modulates Cellular Immunity in an Experimental Model for Autoimmune Diabetes

Background: Viral infections are thought to play a role in the development of autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes. In this study we investigated the effect of Rat Cytomegalovirus (RCMV) infection on cellular immunity in a well-defined animal model for diabetes, the Biobreeding (BB) rat. Methods: Diabetes prone (DP)- and Diabetes resistant (DR)-BB rats were infected with 2 × 106 plaque forming units (pfu) RCMV. Diabetes development was monitored by frequent blood-glucose analysis. Effects of RCMV on CD4+, CD8+ and Vβ-TCR+ T-cell subsets were measured in vivo, and in vitro after restimulation with RCMV-infected fibroblasts. Proliferative capacity was determined by 3H-Thymidine incorporation. Results: RCMV-infection resulted in a significant acceleration of diabetes onset in DP-BB rats ( p=0.003). Percentages CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells were not affected in vivo. In vitro, RCMV-restimulation resulted in a decreased CD4+/CD8+ blastoid T-cell ratio compared to ConA ( p=0.00028). Furthermore, RCMV-restimulation resulted in a strong RCMV-specific proliferation, which comprises about 50% of the response triggered by ConA. Vβ-TCR percentages did not change upon RCMV-infection or RCMV-restimulation. Interpretation: RCMV-restimulation of splenic T-cells in vitro resulted in a strong RCMV-specific proliferation, probably also including autoreactive T-cells. In vivo, this polyclonal response might be involved in the observed accelerated diabetes development in DP-BB rats upon RCMV-infection.
A TCP-friendly congestion control scheme for real-time packet video using prediction

In order to cope with time-varying conditions in networks with no or limited QoS support like the current Internet, schemes have been proposed for real-time applications to dynamically adjust the traffic source's transmission rate. However, employing adaptive rate control may not be sufficient to prevent or handle network congestion. As most of the real-time applications are based on RTP/UDP protocols, an issue of possibly unfair sharing of bandwidth between TCP and UDP applications has been raised. In this paper, we propose a scheme called R/sup 3/CP/sup +/ that integrates several control mechanisms to maximize the delivery performance of real-time continuous media over networks without QoS support. Simulation results show that recursive least square (RLS)-based prediction makes a good use of the past measurement in forecasting the future condition that can effectively avoid and cope with network congestion. It also shows that the scheme achieves reasonably friendly resource sharing with TCP connections.
A robust cooperative multi-robot path-planning in noisy environment

This paper suggests a robust multi-robot path-planning problem, in noisy environment, realized with particle swarm optimization. The problem has been solved by both the centralized and distributed approaches. Results show the robustness of our approaches in noisy environment. While comparing distributed approach with the centralized one, in terms of total path and number of collision, it is observed that in noisy environment former one is more sensitive than the later one.
Recent Developments on the Spatial Models

1556-6072/09/$25.00©2009IEEE IEEE VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE | JUNE 2009 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MVT.2009. 932543 The radio spectrum is a precious resource that underpins various wireless services. It is traditionally regulated by a fixed frequency assignment policy, which allocates frequency bands to license holders for exclusive use. Such a static and rigid spectrum-licensing policy eliminates interference among different radio systems in a brutal-force way but results in very inefficient spectrum utilization [1]. Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) [2], [3] has been proposed as a promising approach to improve spectrum utilization Recent Developments on the Spatial Models
Workload Synthesis for a Communications SoC

Communications processors are SoCs that contain multiple processor cores, an on-chip network, memory controllers, frame managers, encryption and pattern matching engine, etc. In early design exploration of such SoCs, it is important to have workloads as close as the final real-world workloads that the SoC will be running. However at the same time, it is often difficult to run such realistic workloads on early performance models and simulators. Under such scenarios, it is extremely useful to be able to have simplified workloads that are similar to the realistic workloads. In our recent research, we have created a benchmark synthesis process, which consists of synthesizing a proxy workload that possesses approximately the same performance and power characteristics as the original workload. The synthesis comprises of two steps: (1) profiling the real-world proprietary workload to measure its inherent behavior characteristics, and (2) modeling the measured workload attributes into a synthetic benchmark program. The set of workload characteristics can be thought of as a signature that uniquely describes the workload’s inherent behavior, independent of the microarchitecture. The cloned code in fact has no functionality and cannot be reverse engineered to create the original code or algorithms. The cloned software can be freely released to hardware developers so that they can optimize the hardware they deliver to their clients to yield improved performance. This paper describes the benchmark synthesis process as well as the status of the research. An automated synthetic benchmark generation methodology is presented first as an approach to synthesize benchmarks for early performance studies from real-world applications. The process of constructing synthetic proxies that approximately resemble the original application is explained. Experiments with generating proxy workloads for the Freescale QorIQ Communications SoC P4080 are presented.
A lifetime enhancing node deployment strategy using heterogeneous nodes in WSNs for coal mine monitoring

Continuous monitoring of the environment in coal mines is an important application area in wireless sensor networks. It is very essential to know the conditions that exist in coal mines for ensuring safe working inside the mines. Based on the characteristics of room-and-pillar mining technique and the requirements for mine safety monitoring, we propose a heterogeneous node deployment strategy. To obtain real time and comprehensive monitoring, nodes are deployed in some strategic locations of the underground coal mine. We claim that the strategic locations are chosen in such a way that the proposed deployment scheme ensures 1-coverage and 3-connectivity. The claim has been justified by supporting lemma and proof. The present work achieves enhanced network lifetime by ensuring efficient energy usage amongst the nodes thereby prolonging network lifetime. Further, exhaustive simulation is performed considering a realistic routing protocol to substantiate our claim of energy efficiency and subsequent enhancement of network lifetime. Finally the scheme is compared with two existing deployment schemes. The results confirm our scheme's supremacy over both the existing schemes in terms of the performance metrics such as energy efficiency and network lifetime.
The role and potential mechanisms of LncRNA-TATDN1 on metastasis and invasion of non-small cell lung cancer

The invasion and metastasis of malignant tumor cells lead to normal tissue destruction and are major prognostic factors for many malignant cancers. Long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) is associated with occurrence, development and prognoses of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but its mechanisms of action involved in tumor invasion and metastasis are not clear. In this study, we screened and detected the expression of LncRNA in two NSCLC lines 95D and 95C by using high throughput LncRNA chip. We found that TATDN1 (Homo sapiens TatD DNase domain containing 1, TATDN1), one of LncRNAs, was highly expressed in 95D cells and NSCLC tumor tissues compared to 95C cells. Knockdown of TATDN1–1 by shRNA significantly inhibited cell proliferation, adhesion, migration and invasion in 95D cells. Further mechanism study showed that TATDN1 knockdown suppressed the expression of E-cadherin, HER2, β-catenin and Ezrin. Moreover, knockdown TATDN1 also inhibited tumor growth and metastasis in a 95D mouse model in vivo by inhibiting β-catenin and Ezrin. These data indicate that TATDN1 expression is associated with 95D cells' higher potential of invasion and metastasis, and suggest that TATDN1 may be a potential prognostic factor and therapeutic target for NSCLCs.
Influence of amino acids on nitrogen fixation ability and growth of Azospirillum spp

The utilization of amino acids for growth and their effects on nitrogen fixation differ greatly among the several strains of each species of Azospirillum spp. that were examined. A. brasiliense grew poorly or not at all on glutamate, aspartate, serine, or histidine as the sole nitrogen and carbon sources. Nitrogen fixation by most A. brasiliense strains was inhibited only slightly even by 10 mM concentrations of these amino acids. In contrast, A. lipoferum and A. amazonense grew very well on glutamate, aspartate, serine, or histidine as the sole nitrogen and carbon sources; nitrogen fixation, which was measured in the presence of malate or sucrose, was severely inhibited by these amino acids. It was concluded that growth on histidine as the sole source of nitrogen, carbon, and energy may be used for the taxonomic characterization of Azospirillum spp. and for the selective isolation of A. lipoferum. The different utilization of various amino acids by Azospirillum spp. may be important for their establishment in the rhizosphere and for their associative nitrogen fixation with plants. The physiological basis for the different utilization of glutamate by Azospirillum spp. was investigated further. A. brasiliense and A. lipoferum exhibited a high affinity for glutamate uptake (Km values for uptake were 8 and 40 microM, respectively); the Vmax was 6 times higher in A. lipoferum than in A. brasiliense. At high substrate concentrations (10 mM), the nonsaturable component of glutamate uptake was most active in A. lipoferum and A. amazonense. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Security enhancement on BGP protocol: A literature survey

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an exterior gateway classless path vector routing protocol. It is a routing protocol operated to exchange routing information among different autonomous system over the internet. BGP hold multitudinous unprotected security, since it works with the received information from neighboring routers which could be wrong sometime. Routing is the backbone of any network, the road transport network to the Internet via telephone network. Its importance is capital itself in accentors networks (which have no center), that is to say, in networks where information is not disseminated (so known) from a single central point of the network, as Internet. A complete vision of RPKI (Resource public key infrastructure) needs several interconnected networks, dynamic routing between these networks and authentication of RPKI.
A Study on Performance Evaluation Ability of a Modified Inverted Generational Distance Indicator

The inverted generational distance (IGD) has been frequently used as a performance indicator for many-objective problems where the use of the hypervolume is difficult. However, since IGD is not Pareto compliant, it is possible that misleading Pareto incompliant results are obtained. Recently, a simple modification of IGD was proposed by taking into account the Pareto dominance relation between a solution and a reference point when their distance is calculated. It was also shown that the modified indicator called IGD+ is weakly Pareto compliant. However, actual effects of the modification on performance comparison have not been examined. Moreover, IGD+ has not been compared with other distance-based weakly Pareto compliant indicators such as the additive epsilon indicator and the D1 indicator (i.e., IGD with the weighted achievement scalarizing function). In this paper, we examine the effect of the modification by comparing IGD+ with IGD for multiobjective and many-objective problems. In computational experiments, we generate a large number of ordered pairs of non-dominated solution sets where one is better than the other. Two solution sets in each pair are compared by the above-mentioned performance indicators. We examine whether each indicator can correctly say which solution set is better between them.
A Bell state in a Penning Trap as a quantum simulator of the factorization problem

The recently introduced equivalent formulation of the integer factorization problem for N = xy, obtaining a function of the primes E(x) within the factorization ensemble, is reviewed. Here we demonstrate that this formulation can be readily translated to the physics of a quantum device in which the quantities Ek are the eigenvalues of a bounded Hamiltonian. The spectrum is solved for xk = o( √ N) leading to a super efficient probabilistic quantum factoring algorithm which only requires o((log √ N)) measurements. The state of the quantum simulator can be identified as that of a two electrons P wave in a Penning Trap. We consider the possibility to build the simulator experimentally in order to obtain, from the measured magnetron trap frequencies, the probabilistic quantum sieve for the possible factors of N . This approach is suited for large N and x = o( √ N).
Suicidal Behavior and the Serotonin Transporter Gene Polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) with Novel Subtypes, in Danish Schizophrenic Patients

Background: Literature reports a genetic component for suicidal behavior, especially of determinant/violent type. One of the candidates has been the polymorphism 5-HTTLPR in the serotonin promoter. Employing a between group design, we wished to test the association between suicidal behavior and serotonin-related polymorphisms. Method: 350 Danish patients with average 14 years' duration of illness and with well researched history of suicidal behavior participated. Three groups were identified: 1. without suicidal behavior, 2. with suicidal behavior of non- determinant/non-violent methods, and 3. suicidal behavior with determinant/violent methods. We used the common alleles S and L as well as the new aspect with allelic subtypes SA, SG, LA.LG to constitute 3 functional genotypes: SS, SL and LL. We also included duration of illness, age at onset and sex in our study as potential covariates. Results: We tested suicidal behavior types 2 and 3 versus type 1 for distribution differences as well as for possible trend. We did not find any statistical significant relations. Conclusions: We could not find support for a relevant relation between the polymorphisms in the serotonin promoter and suicidal behavior in our schizophrenic patient sample.
Comparing the traditional and Multiple Mini Interviews in the selection of post-graduate medical trainees

Background The traditional, panel style interview and the multiple mini interview (MMI) are two options to use in the selection of medical trainees with each interview format having inherent advantages and disadvantages. Our aim was to compare the traditional and MMI on the same cohort of postgraduate applicants to the Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Toronto. Method Twenty-seven applicants from the 2010 Canadian Residency Matching Service selected for interview at the University of Toronto, Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery were included in the study. Each applicant participated in both a traditional interview and MMI. Results Traditional interviews marked out of a total maximum score of 570. On the traditional interview, scores ranged from 397–543.5 (69.6 – 95.3%), the mean was 460.2. The MMI maximum score was out of 180. MMI scores ranged from 93 – 146 (51.7 – 81.1%) with a mean of 114.8. Traditional interview total scores were plotted against MMI total scores. Scores correlated reasonably well, Pearson Correlation = 0.315 and is statistically significant at p = 0.001. Inter-interview reliability for the two interview methods was 0.038, with poor overall agreement 0.07%. Conclusions MMI and traditional interview scores are correlated but do not reliably lead to the same rank order. We have demonstrated that these two interview formats measure different characteristics. One format may also be less reliable leading to greater variation in final rank. Further validation research is certainly required.
The effect of task assignments and instruction types on remote asynchronous usability testing

Remote asynchronous usability testing involves users directly in reporting usability problems. Most studies of this approach employ predefined tasks to ensure that users experience specific aspects of the system, whereas other studies use no task assignments. Yet the effect of using predefined tasks is still to be uncovered. There is also limited research on instructions for users in identifying usability problems. This paper reports from a comparative study of the effect of task assignments and instruction types on the problems identified in remote asynchronous usability testing of a website for information retrieval, involving 53 prospective users. The results show that users solving predefined tasks identified significantly more usability problems with a significantly higher level of agreement than those working on their own authentic tasks. Moreover, users that were instructed by means of examples of usability problems identified significantly more usability problems than those who received a conceptual definition of usability problems.
Externalities, growth, and regional stagnation

This paper discusses the impact of externalities on economic growth and the long term distribution of economic activities in a system of two regions. We use a standard neoclassical growth model of the Solow-type and augment it with a random process of innovation allocation. The long term behavior of this model is analyzed. As it turns out, the dynamic behavior of our model differs fundamentally from that of the standard neoclassical growth model. In the long run always one of the regions attracts all the future innovation and growth while the other region stagnates. We show that this outcome results from an externality in the process of innovation allocation and discuss its significance and sensitivity to changes in the model structure.