Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ieee Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 1 Improved Ground Subsidence Monitoring Using Small Baseline Sar Interferograms and a Weighted Least Squares Inversion Algorithm

—We present the application of a weighted least squares (WLS) method based on image mode interferometric data to monitor the spatiotemporal evolution of land surface subsidence in Mashhad valley, northeast Iran. The technique is based on an appropriate combination of differential interferograms produced by image pairs with small orbital separation to limit the spatial decorrelation phenomena. Our data consist of 17 ASAR single-look-complex images acquired from a descending orbit by the European ENVISAT satellite in image mode (I2), spanning a time interval from June 2004 to November 2007. Fifty-three reliable differential interferograms with relatively little noise and a continuous unwrapped phase are constructed from this data set and are analyzed using a WLS adjustment technique to produce time series of the displacement field. The time-series analysis suggests that the subsidence occurs within a northwest–southeast elongated elliptically shaped bowl along the axis of Mashhad valley. The maximum accumulated subsidence during the 1260-day period reaches approximately 86 cm, located northeast of Mash-had city. The comparison between SAR-interferometry time-series results with continuous Global Positioning System measurements yields an estimated root-mean-square error of ∼1.0 cm.
Machine Learning for Cognitive Network Management

Over the last decade, a significant amount of effort has been invested on architecting agile and adaptive management solutions in support of autonomic, self-managing networks. Autonomic networking calls for automated decisions for management actions. This can be realized through a set of pre-defined network management policies engineered from human expert knowledge. However, engineering sufficiently accurate knowledge considering the high complexity of today's networking environment is a difficult task. This has been a particularly limiting factor in the practical deployment of autonomic systems. ML is a powerful technique for extracting knowledge from data. However, there has been little evidence of its application in realizing practical management solutions for autonomic networks. Recent advances in network softwarization and programmability through SDN and NFV, the proliferation of new sources of data, and the availability of lowcost and seemingly infinite storage and compute resource from the cloud are paving the way for the adoption of ML to realize cognitive network management in support of autonomic networking. This article is intended to stimulate thought and foster discussion on how to defeat the bottlenecks that are limiting the wide deployment of autonomic systems, and the role that ML can play in this regard.
The spatial skyline queries

In this paper, for the first time, we introduce the concept of Spatial Skyline Queries (SSQ). Given a set of data points <i>P</i> and a set of query points <i>Q</i> each data point has a number of derived spatial attributes each of which is the point's distance to a query point. An SSQ retrieves those points of <i>P</i> which are not dominated by any other point in <i>P</i> considering their derived spatial attributes. The main difference with the regular skyline query is that this spatial domination depends on the location of the query points <i>Q</i> SSQ has application in several domains such as emergency response and online maps. The main intuition and novelty behind our approaches is that we exploit the geometric properties of the SSQ problem space to avoid the exhaustive examination of all the point pairs in <i>P</i> and <i>Q</i>. Consequently, we reduce the complexity of SSQ search from <i>O(|P|<sup>2</sup>|Q|)</i> to <i>O(|S|<sup>2</sup>|C|+√|P|)</i>, where |<i>S</i>| and |<i>C</i>| are the solution size and the number of vertices of the convex hull of <i>Q</i>, respectively.We propose two algorithms, B<sup>2</sup>S<sup>2</sup> and VS<sup>2</sup>, for static query points and one algorithm, VCS<sup>2</sup>, for streaming <i>Q</i> whose points change location over time (e.g., are mobile). VCS<sup>2</sup> exploits the pattern of change in <i>Q</i> to avoid unnecessary re-computation of the skyline and hence efficiently perform updates. Our extensive experiments using real-world datasets verify that both R-tree-based B<sup>2</sup>S<sup>2</sup> and Voronoi-based VS<sup>2</sup> out perform the best competitor approach in terms of processing time by a wide margin (4-6 times better in most cases).
Using Social Media for Collaborative Learning in Higher Education: A Case Study

This paper investigates the acceptability of using social media for collaborative learning in the context of higher education. A social media platform, Graasp, is used to support students’ learning activities in a project-based course. An evaluation of Graasp regarding its usefulness as a collaboration platform, a knowledge management site, and a gadget container, was conducted with the course participants. Quantitative and qualitative assessment methods used in the evaluation, as well as the main findings are presented.
Behavioral Activation in Rats Requires Endogenous Ascorbate Release in Striatum

Ascorbate (vitamin C) is found in high concentrations in the striatum in which it may play a role in behavioral activation. To test this hypothesis, freely behaving rats received bilateral intrastriatal infusions of ascorbate oxidase (AAO) to inactivate extracellular ascorbate. Slow-scan voltammetry was used simultaneously to assess changes in ascorbate and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC), a major dopamine metabolite, near the infusion site. Intrastriatal AAO, but not saline vehicle, caused a rapid decline in both ascorbate and behavioral activation. Within 20 min, an ascorbate loss of 50–70% led to a near-total inhibition of all recorded behavior, including open-field locomotion, approach of novel objects, and social interactions with other rats. DOPAC levels remained stable, arguing against an AAO-induced disruption of dopamine transmission. Consistent with this interpretation, subsequent injection of 1.0 mg/kgd-amphetamine, an indirect dopamine agonist, quickly restored behavioral activation, which also was accompanied by a marked rise in extracellular ascorbate. Bilateral AAO infusions into dorsal hippocampus, which also has a high level of extracellular ascorbate, failed to alter behavioral activation, indicating that a loss of brain ascorbate per se does not suppress behavior. Collectively, these results implicate ascorbate in the behavioral operations of the striatum and suggest that the extracellular level of this vitamin plays a critical role in behavioral activation.
Sexual dysfunction after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

409 E ighteen months after undergoing unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for acute myelogenous leukemia, 28-year-old E.M. was experiencing sexual difficulties. For E.M. and her husband, sexual intimacy had been an integral part of their relationship. However, since the transplantation, on the few occasions that she and her husband had attempted to reinitiate sexual intimacy, the physical discomfort E.M. experienced and her lack of desire resulted in dissatisfaction. This frustrated E.M. and her husband, neither of whom could understand this change. Although most other aspects of her life were returning to normal, E.M. ’s sexual dysfunction persisted. Prior to transplantation, E.M. had been informed that the treatment would result in premature ovarian failure, leaving her incapable of having children. Long-term side effects and complications of HSCT were discussed, but the possibility of sexual dysfunction was never addressed. The unexpected loss of her sexuality, of the intimacy that she shared with her husband, was negatively affecting her quality of life (QOL) and relationship. Upon questioning E.M. , the nurse identified that a decreased libido combined with vaginal dryness and dyspareunia (pain with intercourse) were major challenges. Treatment options were discussed, and E.M. was started on hormone replacement therapy and the use of vaginal lubricants was suggested. Although these treatments were helpful, E.M. ’s sexual responsiveness never returned to the level it was prior to HSCT. The nurse referred E.M. and her husband to couple-based therapy to facilitate behavior interventions. In therapy, E.M. and her husband were able to communicate openly with one another and discuss alternate ways for increasing sexual satisfaction. Those interventions helped E.M. and her husband to gradually return to sexual activity and, although different, they found their renewed intimacy to be rewarding. Sexual Dysfunction After Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation
A novel method for extracting entity data from Deep Web precisely

In order to make better use of the hidden information value in the Deep Web, get fast and accurate access to the embedded entity data, this paper presented a method for extracting entity data from Deep Web precisely, designed a entity extraction system, which will extract data from Deep Web automatically. Firstly, designed a web crawler based on the characteristics of Deep Web, take advantage of the web crawler to get resources from Internet; Secondly, the pretreatment of web resources, normalize the pages which are non-standard; Finally, locate and extract the entity data from Deep Web accurately, in this paper, based on the hierarchy and layout features in DOM tree, combined XPath with RegExp to locate entity data, then stored the extracted entity attributes and attribute values. Experiments show that, using this method can locate and extract the entity data from Deep Web quickly and efficiently, and achieved a higher accuracy.
Multimission Aircraft Fuel-Burn Minimization via Multipoint Aerostructural Optimization

Aerodynamic shape and aerostructural design optimizations that maximize the performance at a single flight condition may result in designs with unacceptable off-design performance. While considering multiple flight conditions in the optimization improves the robustness of the designs, there is a need to develop a way of choosing the flight conditions and their relative emphases such that multipoint optimizations reflect the true objective function. In addition, there is a need to consider uncertain missions and flight conditions. To address this, a new strategy to formulate multipoint design optimization problems is developed that can maximize the aircraft performance over a large number of different missions. This new strategy is applied to the high-fidelity aerostructural optimization of a long-range twin-aisle aircraft with the objective of minimizing the fuel burn over all the missions it performs in one year. This is accomplished by determining 25 flight conditions and their respective emphases on dr.
An Abstraction Framework for Cooperation Among Agents and People in a Virtual World

With increasing sophistication in modeling interpersonal interactions, including cultural and social factors, it is now possible and desirable to bring together state-of-the-art human behavior models (HBMs) developed through different approaches in a framework that facilitates interoperability, composability, and comparison. Such a framework is needed in order for game or simulation environments to allow heterogeneous agents (synthetic characters driven by HBMs) to interact with each other and to interact with human players, even though their information needs and operating premises may differ. An important part of such an interoperability framework is an agent message system supporting multiple levels of abstraction. To demonstrate the viability of such a framework, we created an environment that supported synthetic characters interacting with each other and a human player in a common scenario. The agents were provided by different researchers built upon different technical approaches, yet were able to communicate through messages featuring multiple levels of abstraction to describe actions and events. In this paper, we describe our choices of message abstraction levels, what we developed, and the architecture of the framework that we used to mediate the interaction among all the participants, synthetic and human.
Changes in Muscularis Propria of Anterior Vaginal Wall in Women with Pelvic Organ Prolapse

The objective of this study was to evaluate the morphological and immunohistochemical alterations of tissue removed from the upper third of anterior vaginal wall in a sample group of the female population presenting homogenous risk factors associated with pelvic organ prolapse (POP). The case study consisted of 14 patients with POP and there were 10 patients in the control group. Patient selection was carried on the basis of specific criteria and all of the patients involved in the study presented one or more of the recognized POP risk factors. Samples were taken from POP patients during vaginal plastic surgery following colpohysterectomy, and from control patients during closure of the posterior fornix following hysterectomy. Samples were processed for histological and immunohistochemical analyses for Collagen I and Collagen III, α-Smooth Muscle Actin (α-SMA), Platelet-Derived-Growth-Factor (PDGF), matrix metalloproteinase 3 (MMP3), tissue inhibitors metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP1), Caspase3. Immunofluorescence analyses for Collagen I and III and PDGF were also carried out. In prolapsed specimens our results show a disorganization of smooth muscle cells that appeared to have been displaced by an increased collagen III deposition resulting in rearrangement of the muscularis propria architecture. These findings suggest that the increase in the expression of collagen fibers in muscularis could probably be due to a phenotypic switch resulting in the dedifferentiation of smooth muscle cells into myofibroblasts. These alterations could be responsible for the compromising of the dynamic functionality of the pelvic floor.
Clinical Importance of Obesity Versus the Metabolic Syndrome in Cardiovascular Risk in Women: A Report From the Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) Study

Background—Obesity and the metabolic syndrome frequently coexist. Both are associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, the contribution of obesity to cardiovascular risk, independent of the presence of the metabolic syndrome, remains controversial. Methods and Results—From the WISE study, 780 women referred for coronary angiography to evaluate suspected myocardial ischemia were classified by body mass index (BMI; <24.9=normal, n=184; ≥25.0 to ≤29.9=overweight, n=269; ≥30.0=obese, n=327) and presence (n=451) or absence (n=329) of the metabolic syndrome, further classified by diabetes status. Prevalence of significant angiographic coronary artery disease (CAD; ≥50% stenosis) and 3-year risk of CVD were compared by BMI and metabolic status. The metabolic syndrome and BMI were strongly associated, but only metabolic syndrome was associated with significant CAD. Similarly, unit increases in BMI (normal to overweight to obese) were not associated with 3-year risk of death (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0.92, 95% CI 0.59 to 1.51) or major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE: death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, stroke, congestive heart failure; adjusted HR 0.95, 95% CI 0.71 to 1.27), whereas metabolic status (normal to metabolic syndrome to diabetes) conferred an approximate 2-fold adjusted risk of death (HR 2.01, 95% CI 1.26 to 3.20) and MACE (HR 1.88, 95% CI 1.38 to 2.57). Levels of C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) were more strongly associated with metabolic syndrome than BMI but were not independently associated with 3-year risk of death or MACE. Conclusions—The metabolic syndrome but not BMI predicts future cardiovascular risk in women. Although it remains prudent to recommend weight loss in overweight and obese women, control of all modifiable risk factors in both normal and overweight persons to prevent transition to the metabolic syndrome should be considered the ultimate goal.
Blind channel estimation with periodicity for OFDM systems without cyclic prefix

Generation of the signal and noise subspaces is a critical problem in subspace-based algorithms for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Some special characteristics, such as virtual carriers (VCs), real symbols, and/or cyclic prefix (CP), can be exploited to construct the required noise subspace in conventional subspace approaches. In this paper, a blind channel estimation algorithm with periodicity property is proposed for OFDM systems without CP. Using the time-domain periodicity, which can be obtained by inserting zeros at some positions of frequency-domain OFDM symbols, a method for constructing the noise subspace is developed based on the proposed signal model. Simulation results show that the proposed blind channel estimation method has better normalized mean-squared error (NMSE) performance than that of a conventional approach with VCs.
Image Compression in Iris-Biometric Fuzzy Commitment Schemes

Template protection targets privacy and security risks caused by unprotected storage of biometric data. Meeting properties of irreversibility and unlinkability template protection systems can be applied to secure existing records within biometric databases, i.e. without re-enrollment of registered subjects. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrated that iris recognition algorithms can maintain their accuracy and interoperability with compressed images. While template protection schemes are generally conceded highly sensitive to any sort of signal degradation, investigations on the impact of image compression on recognition accuracy have remained elusive. In this work a comprehensive study of different image compression standards applied to iris-biometric fuzzy commitment schemes is presented. It is demonstrated that compressed images, compact enough for transmission across global networks, do not drastically effect the key retrieval performance of a fuzzy commitment scheme.
Learning and Evaluating the Content and Structure of a Term Taxonomy

In this paper, we describe a weakly supervised bootstraping algorithm that reads Web texts and learns taxonomy terms. The bootstrapping algorithm starts with two seed words (a seed hypernym (Root concept) and a seed hyponym) that are inserted into a doubly anchored hyponym pattern. In alternating rounds, the algorithm learns new hyponym terms and new hypernym terms that are subordinate to the Root concept. We conducted an extensive evaluation with human annotators to evaluate the learned hyponym and hypernym terms for two categories: animals and people.
Massive Star Asteroseismology in Action

Abstract After highlighting the principle and power of asteroseismology for stellar physics, we briefly emphasize some recent progress in this research for various types of stars. We give an overview of high-precision high duty-cycle space photometry of OB-type stars. Further, we update the overview of seismic estimates of stellar parameters of OB dwarfs, with specific emphasis on convective core overshoot. We discuss connections between pulsational, rotational, and magnetic variability of massive stars and end with future prospects for asteroseismology of evolved OB stars.
Methane Seep in Shallow-Water Permeable Sediment Harbors High Diversity of Anaerobic Methanotrophic Communities, Elba, Italy

The anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) is a key biogeochemical process regulating methane emission from marine sediments into the hydrosphere. AOM is largely mediated by consortia of anaerobic methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), and has mainly been investigated in deep-sea sediments. Here we studied methane seepage at four spots located at 12 m water depth in coastal, organic carbon depleted permeable sands off the Island of Elba (Italy). We combined biogeochemical measurements, sequencing-based community analyses and in situ hybridization to investigate the microbial communities of this environment. Increased alkalinity, formation of free sulfide and nearly stoichiometric methane oxidation and sulfate reduction rates up to 200 nmol g-1 day-1 indicated the predominance of sulfate-coupled AOM. With up to 40 cm thickness the zones of AOM activity were unusually large and occurred in deeper sediment horizons (20–50 cm below seafloor) as compared to diffusion-dominated deep-sea seeps, which is likely caused by advective flow of pore water due to the shallow water depth and permeability of the sands. Hydrodynamic forces also may be responsible for the substantial phylogenetic and unprecedented morphological diversity of AOM consortia inhabiting these sands, including the clades ANME-1a/b, ANME-2a/b/c, ANME-3, and their partner bacteria SEEP-SRB1a and SEEP-SRB2. High microbial dispersal, the availability of diverse energy sources and high habitat heterogeneity might explain that the emission spots shared few microbial taxa, despite their physical proximity. Although the biogeochemistry of this shallow methane seep was very different to that of deep-sea seeps, their key functional taxa were very closely related, which supports the global dispersal of key taxa and underlines strong selection by methane as the predominant energy source. Mesophilic, methane-fueled ecosystems in shallow-water permeable sediments may comprise distinct microbial habitats due to their unique biogeochemical and physical characteristics. To link AOM phylotypes with seep habitats and to enable future meta-analyses we thus propose that seep environment ontology needs to be further specified.
Dry stiction of micro structures—theory and experiment

It is well known that compliant freestanding microstructures often stick to the underlying substrate due to capillary pull during wet processing. Hence, it is generally believed that dry processing, which involves only gases, avoids stiction. Contrary to this expectation, here we show experimentally that stiction may also occur during dry processing. We investigate both experimentally and theoretically possible origins of the force that brings the microstructures into contact leading to stiction in a dry environment. The study suggests that aerodynamic drag is the primary force that is responsible for dry stiction. It comes into play during venting or purging with nitrogen the vacuum chambers (reactive ion etcher (RIE)) with compliant microstructures. During the venting process, gases rush into the chamber through an inlet setting up local flows inside the chamber, and subjecting the freestanding microstructures to aerodynamic drag. If the structures are close to one another, such as two parallel structural beams anchored at the ends (studied in detail in this paper), the beam facing the flow shields the downstream beam from the flow. Thus, the upstream beam experiences a larger drag compared to the shielded one, and the gap between them reduces. Smaller is the gap, higher is the shielding effect. The upstream beam may contact the downstream one, and depending on the surface properties of the beams (such as pure aluminium surface prior to oxidation), they may stick to one another through a zipping action. Dry stiction may thus be avoided by slowing down the venting or purging process of RIE chambers with compliant microstructures.