Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A low-complexity unequal error protection of H.264/AVC video using adaptive hierarchical QAM

In this paper, a low-complexity unequal error protection (UEP) of H.264/AVC coded video using adaptive hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation (HQAM), which takes into consideration the non-uniformly distributed importance of intracoded frame (I-frame) and predictive coded frame (P-frame) is proposed. Simulation results show that in terms of average peak signal-to-noise ratio (average PSNR), our proposed (EEP) scheme outperforms the equal error protection (EEP) by up to 5 dB
Estimating dynamic cortical connectivity from motor imagery EEG using KALMAN smoother & EM algorithm

This paper considers identifying effective cortical connectivity from scalp EEG. Recent studies use time-varying multivariate autoregressive (TV-MAR) models to better describe the changing connectivity between cortical regions where the TV coefficients are estimated by Kalman filter (KF) within a state-space framework. We extend this approach by incorporating Kalman smoothing (KS) to improve the KF estimates, and the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to infer the unknown model parameters from EEG. We also consider solving the volume conduction problem by modeling the induced instantaneous correlations using a full noise covariate. Simulation results show the superiority of KS in tracking the coefficient changes. We apply two derived frequency domain measures i.e. TV partial directed coherence (TV-PDC) and TV directed transfer function (TV-DTF), to investigate dynamic causal interactions between motor areas in discriminating motor imagery (MI) of left and right hand. Event-related changes of information flows around beta-band, in a unidirectional way between left and right hemispheres are observed during MI. A difference in inter-hemispheric connectivity patterns is found between left and right-hand movements, implying potential usage for BCI.
Low Probability of Initiating nirS Transcription Explains Observed Gas Kinetics and Growth of Bacteria Switching from Aerobic Respiration to Denitrification

In response to impending anoxic conditions, denitrifying bacteria sustain respiratory metabolism by producing enzymes for reducing nitrogen oxyanions/-oxides (NOx) to N2 (denitrification). Since denitrifying bacteria are non-fermentative, the initial production of denitrification proteome depends on energy from aerobic respiration. Thus, if a cell fails to synthesise a minimum of denitrification proteome before O2 is completely exhausted, it will be unable to produce it later due to energy-limitation. Such entrapment in anoxia is recently claimed to be a major phenomenon in batch cultures of the model organism Paracoccus denitrificans on the basis of measured e−-flow rates to O2 and NOx. Here we constructed a dynamic model and explicitly simulated actual kinetics of recruitment of the cells to denitrification to directly and more accurately estimate the recruited fraction (). Transcription of nirS is pivotal for denitrification, for it triggers a cascade of events leading to the synthesis of a full-fledged denitrification proteome. The model is based on the hypothesis that nirS has a low probability (, h−1) of initial transcription, but once initiated, the transcription is greatly enhanced through positive feedback by NO, resulting in the recruitment of the transcribing cell to denitrification. We assume that the recruitment is initiated as [O2] falls below a critical threshold and terminates (assuming energy-limitation) as [O2] exhausts. With = 0.005 h−1, the model robustly simulates observed denitrification kinetics for a range of culture conditions. The resulting (fraction of the cells recruited to denitrification) falls within 0.038–0.161. In contrast, if the recruitment of the entire population is assumed, the simulated denitrification kinetics deviate grossly from those observed. The phenomenon can be understood as a ‘bet-hedging strategy’: switching to denitrification is a gain if anoxic spell lasts long but is a waste of energy if anoxia turns out to be a ‘false alarm’.
Cardiovascular Risk of Celecoxib in 6 Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials: The Cross Trial Safety Analysis

Background— Observational studies and randomized trials have reported increased cardiovascular risk associated with cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors. Prior placebo-controlled randomized studies had limited ability to assess the relationship of either celecoxib dose or pretreatment cardiovascular status to risk associated with celecoxib. Our aim was to assess the cardiovascular risk associated with celecoxib in 3 dose regimens and to assess the relationship between baseline cardiovascular risk and effect of celecoxib on cardiovascular events. Methods and Results— We performed a patient-level pooled analysis of adjudicated data from 7950 patients in 6 placebo-controlled trials comparing celecoxib with placebo for conditions other than arthritis with a planned follow-up of at least 3 years. Patients were administered celecoxib in 3 dose regimens: 400 mg QD, 200 mg BID, or 400 mg BID. From the pooled data, we calculated a hazard ratio for all dose regimens combined and individual hazard ratios for each dose regimen and examined whether celecoxib-related risk was associated with baseline cardiovascular risk. The primary end point was the combination of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure, or thromboembolic event. With 16 070 patient-years of follow-up, the hazard ratio for the composite end point combining the tested doses was 1.6 (95% CI, 1.1 to 2.3). The risk, which increased with dose regimen (P=0.0005), was lowest for the 400-mg-QD dose (hazard ratio, 1.1; 95% CI, 0.6 to 2.0), intermediate for the 200-mg-BID dose (hazard ratio, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.1), and highest for the 400-mg-BID dose (hazard ratio, 3.1; 95% CI, 1.5 to 6.1). Patients at highest baseline risk demonstrated disproportionately greater risk of celecoxib-related adverse events (P for interaction=0.034). Conclusions— We observed evidence of differential cardiovascular risk as a function of celecoxib dose regimen and baseline cardiovascular risk. By further clarifying the extent of celecoxib-related cardiovascular risk, these findings may help guide treatment decisions for patients who derive clinical benefit from selective cyclooxygenase-2 inhibition.
The society of our “out of Africa” ancestors (I)

The “out of Africa” hypothesis proposes that a small group of Homo sapiens left Africa 80,000 years ago, spreading the mitochondrial haplotype L3 throughout the Earth.1-10 Little effort has been made to try to reconstruct the society and culture of the tribe that left Africa to populate the rest of the world.1 Here, I find that hunter-gatherers that belong to mitochondrial haplotypes L0, L1 and L2 do not have a culture of ritualized fights. In contrast to this, almost all L3 derived hunter-gatherers have a more belligerent culture that includes ritualized fights such as wrestling, stick fights or headhunting expeditions. This appears to be independent of their environment because ritualized fights occur in all climates, from the tropics to the arctic. There is also a correlation between mitochondrial haplotypes and warfare propensity or the use of murder and suicide to resolve conflicts. The data implicate that the original human population outside Africa is descended from only two closely related sub-branches that practiced ritual fighting and had a higher propensity towards warfare and the use of murder for conflict resolution. This warfare culture may have given the out of Africa migrants a competitive advantage to colonize the world. But it could also have crucially influenced the subsequent history of The Earth. In the future, it would be interesting to see how we could further reconstruct the society and culture of the “Out of Africa Tribe. ”
Routing and Spectrum Assignment in Elastic Filterless Optical Networks

Elastic optical networking is considered a promising candidate to improve the spectral efficiency of optical networks. One of the most important planning challenges of elastic optical networks is the NP-hard routing and spectrum assignment (RSA) problem. In this paper, we investigate offline RSA in elastic filterless optical networks, which use a passive broadcast-and-select architecture to offer network agility. Here, an elastic optical network is referred to as the optical network that can adapt the channel bandwidth, data rate, and transmission format for each traffic demand in order to offer maximum throughput. In elastic filterless networks, the presence of unfiltered signals resulting from the drop-and-continue node architecture must be considered as an additional constraint in the RSA problem. In this paper, first, the RSA problem in elastic filterless networks is formulated by using an integer linear program to obtain optimal solutions for small networks. Due to the problem complexity, two efficient RSA heuristics are also proposed to achieve suboptimal solutions for larger networks in reasonable time. Simulation results show that significant bandwidth savings in elastic filterless networks can be achieved compared with the fixed-grid filterless solutions. The proposed approach is further tested in multi-period traffic scenarios and combined with periodical spectrum defragmentation, leading to additional improvement in spectrum utilization of elastic filterless optical networks.
Visualization of Geo-spatial Point Sets via Global Shape Transformation and Local Pixel Placement

In many applications, data is collected and indexed by geo-spatial location. Discovering interesting patterns through visualization is an important way of gaining insight about such data. A previously proposed approach is to apply local placement functions such as PixelMaps that transform the input data set into a solution set that preserves certain constraints while making interesting patterns more obvious and avoid data loss from overplotting. In experience, this family of spatial transformations can reveal fine structures in large point sets, but it is sometimes difficult to relate those structures to basic geographic features such as cities and regional boundaries. Recent information visualization research has addressed other types of transformation functions that make spatially-transformed maps with recognizable shapes. These types of spatial-transformation are called global shape functions. In particular, cartogram-based map distortion has been studied. On the other hand, cartogram-based distortion does not handle point sets readily. In this study, we present a framework that allows the user to specify a global shape function and a local placement function. We combine cartogram-based layout (global shape) with PixelMaps (local placement), obtaining some of the benefits of each toward improved exploration of dense geo-spatial data sets
Mars Weather and Predictability: Modeling and Ensemble Data Assimilation of Spacecraft Observations

Title of Document: MARS WEATHER AND PREDICTABILITY: MODELING AND ENSEMBLE DATA ASSIMILATION OF SPACECRAFT OBSERVATIONS Steven J. Greybush, Ph.D., 2011 Directed By: Professor Eugenia Kalnay, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, The University of Maryland, College Park Combining the perspectives of spacecraft observations and the GFDL Mars General Circulation Model (MGCM) in the framework of ensemble data assimilation leads to an improved understanding of the weather and climate of Mars and its atmospheric predictability. The bred vector (BV) technique elucidates regions and seasons of instability in the MGCM, and a kinetic energy budget reveals their physical origins. Instabilities prominent in the late autumn through early spring seasons of each hemisphere along the polar temperature front result from baroclinic conversions from BV potential to BV kinetic energy, whereas barotropic conversions dominate along the westerly jets aloft. Low level tropics and the northern hemisphere summer are relatively stable. The bred vectors are linked to forecast ensemble spread in data assimilation and help explain the growth of forecast errors. Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) temperature profiles are assimilated into the MGCM using the Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter (LETKF) for a 30-sol evaluation period during the northern hemisphere autumn. Short term (0.25 sol) forecasts compared to independent observations show reduced error (3–4 K global RMSE) and bias compared to a free running model. Several enhanced techniques result in further performance gains. Spatially-varying adaptive inflation and varying the dust distribution among ensemble members improve estimates of analysis uncertainty through the ensemble spread, and empirical bias correction using time mean analysis increments help account for model biases. With bias correction, we estimate a predictability horizon of about 5 sols during which temperature, wind, and surface pressure forecasts initialized from an assimilation analysis are superior to a free running model forecast. LETKF analyses, when compared with the UK reanalysis, show a superior correspondence to independent radio science temperature profiles. Traveling waves in both hemispheres share a correspondence in phase, and temperature differences between the analyses are generally less than 5 K. Assimilation of Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) temperature profiles reveals the importance of vertical distributions of dust and water ice aerosol in reducing model bias. A strategy for assimilation of TES and MCS aerosol products is outlined for future work. MARS WEATHER AND PREDICTABILITY: MODELING AND ENSEMBLE DATA ASSIMILATION OF SPACECRAFT OBSERVATIONS
Modelling two‐dimensional steady‐state groundwater flow and flow sensitivity to boundary conditions in blanket peat complexes

This study used a two‐dimensional steady‐state finite‐element groundwater flow model to simulate groundwater flow in two Newfoundland blanket peat complexes and to examine flow system sensitivity to changes in water table recharge and aquifer properties. The modelling results were examined within the context of peat‐forming processes in the two complexes. Modelled flow compared favourably with observed flow. The sensitivity analyses suggested that more highly decomposed bog peat along bog margins probably has/had a positive impact on net peat accumulation within bog interiors. Peat with lower hydraulic conductivity along bog margins effectively impedes lateral drainage, localizes water table drawdown to extreme bog margins, and elevates water tables along bog interiors. Peat formation and elevated water tables in adjacent poor fens/laggs currently rely on placic and ortstein horizons impeding vertical drainage and water flow inputs from adjacent bogs. Modest reductions in atmospheric recharge were found to govern bog‐flow‐system geometries in a way that would adversely affect paludification processes in adjacent fens/laggs. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Sybil-resilient Contribution Transaction Protocol

Present indirect contribution transaction protocols are vulnerable to sybil attacks where one or more attackers can forge a large number of fictitious nodes. In this paper, we propose a decentralized sybil-resilient contribution transaction protocol. It allows nodes to obtain service for use from remote nodes, while restricting the amount of service which sybil nodes receive from honest nodes even in the face of a large number of attack edges. We verify this property by running it on random graphs with differen lengths of contribution transaction chains.
What Role Does Knowledge of Wildlife Play In Providing Support For Species' Conservation?

Conservation of biodiversity is a complex issue. Apart from the creation of nature reserves, there is a plethora of other factors that are part of this complex web. One such factor is the public knowledge of species. Since public funding is imperative for the conservation of species and creation of reserves for them it is important to determine the public’s awareness of species and their knowledge about them. In the absence of such awareness and knowledge, it is possible that the public may misallocate their support. In other words, resources may be provided for species that do not need support urgently. We show how availability of balanced information about species helps the public to make rational decisions and to allocate support (e.g. monetary) to species that need it most. Other implications of a ‘wildlife knowledgeable’ public are also discussed.
Analysis Domain Model for Shared Virtual Environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model.
When is enough enough? Modeling the information-seeking and stopping behavior of senior arts administrators

Among managers, those who are responsible for nonprofit organizations in general and arts organizations in particular have been an understudied group. These managers have much in common with their for-profit counterparts, but their environment also differs in significant ways. The goal of this exploratory research effort was to identify how senior administrators in fine arts museums and symphony orchestras go about identifying and acquiring the information they want to complete a range of management tasks. Deciding when and where to look for information, obtaining the “right” information at the time it is needed, evaluating its credibility and utility, and determining when “enough” information has been collected are challenges facing this group of information users every day. A multiple-case studies design involving a replication strategy was selected to structure the research process. Data were collected from 12 arts administrators using a pretested interview protocol that included the Critical Incident Technique. Patterns in the data were identified, and the data were further reviewed for disconfirming evidence. The study resulted in a list of the types and sources of information that arts administrators use as well as a list of the factors or “stopping criteria” that influence them to end their informationseeking process. A model describing the way in which arts administrators go about acquiring the information they want was also developed. The main findings of the study are (a) arts administrators do not consider information seeking to be a discrete management task, (b) they rely heavily on direct personal experience to fill their information-seeking needs, and (c) they are “satisficers” when it comes to seeking information. Based on Simon’s alternative to rational choice theory, satisficers are people who are willing to pursue a “good enough” option rather than the best possible option (maximizers) (Simon, 1956). Since arts administrators have not been studied in the context of LIS research before, understanding more about where they go for information, what factors influence the level of effort they are willing to invest in seeking information, and how they decide when they have “enough” information provides insights into the information-seeking behavior of a new user group. Furthermore, although this research effort is focused on specific users in a specific field, the results from this study may be compared to what we already know about other user groups to confirm and expand existing models of information-seeking behavior.
Detailed Behavioral Analysis as a Window Into Cross-Situational Word Learning

Recent research has demonstrated that word learners can determine word-referent mappings by tracking co-occurrences across multiple ambiguous naming events. The current study addresses the mechanisms underlying this capacity to learn words cross-situationally. This replication and extension of Yu and Smith (2007) investigates the factors influencing both successful cross-situational word learning and mis-mappings. Item analysis and error patterns revealed that the co-occurrence structure of the learning environment as well as the context of the testing environment jointly affected learning across observations. Learners also adopted an exclusion strategy, which contributed conjointly with statistical tracking to performance. Implications for our understanding of the processes underlying cross-situational word learning are discussed.
Electromechanical Dyssynchrony and Resynchronization of the Failing Heart

Patients with heart failure and decreased function frequently develop discoordinate contraction because of electric activation delay. Often termed dyssynchrony, this further decreases systolic function and chamber efficiency and worsens morbidity and mortality. In the mid- 1990s, a pacemaker-based treatment termed cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) was developed to restore mechanical synchrony by electrically activating both right and left sides of the heart. It is a major therapeutic advance for the new millennium. Acute chamber effects of CRT include increased cardiac output and mechanical efficiency and reduced mitral regurgitation, whereas reduction in chamber volumes ensues more chronically. Patient candidates for CRT have a prolonged QRS duration and discoordinate wall motion, although other factors may also be important because ≈30% of such selected subjects do not respond to the treatment. In contrast to existing pharmacological inotropes, CRT both acutely and chronically increases cardiac systolic function and work, yet it also reduces long-term mortality. Recent studies reveal unique molecular and cellular changes from CRT that may also contribute to this success. Heart failure with dyssynchrony displays decreased myocyte and myofilament function, calcium handling, &bgr;-adrenergic responsiveness, mitochondrial ATP synthase activity, cell survival signaling, and other changes. CRT reverses many of these abnormalities often by triggering entirely new pathways. In this review, we discuss chamber, circulatory, and basic myocardial effects of dyssynchrony and CRT in the failing heart, and we highlight new research aiming to better target and implement CRT, as well as leverage its molecular effects.