Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
End-to-End Bandwidth Estimation in TCP to Improve Wireless Link Utilization

TCP Westwood (TCPW) is a sender-side only modification of TCP Reno congestion control that exploits an end-to-end bandwidth estimation mechanism to set the values of Slow-Start-Threshold and Congestion-Window after a congestion episode, that is after three duplicate acknowledgments or a timeout. TCP Westwood represents an innovative variant of the AIMD mechanism that we call Additive Increase Adaptive Decrease (AIAD). The aim of this paper is to investigate TCP Westwood performances in the most common wireless scenarios. We will focus on utilization of wireless links by comparing Westwood vs Reno throughput. Moreover we study the friendliness between TCP Westwood and TCP Reno in wireless scenarios. Simulations and measurements show that Westwood utilizes wireless links much better than Reno. We choose three common scenarios including respectively a mobile client, a mobile server and a GEO satellite link. Simulation results show that Westwood obtains a remarkable throughput improvement up to 578% with respect to Reno over wireless links. Moreover, TCPW does not degrade TCP Reno performances. Finally, measurements carried out across a NASA high-sped network test-bed show an improvement of TCPW throughput up to 185% with respect to Reno.
Computational intelligence techniques to detect toxic gas presence

The detection of toxic gas in industrial environments (performed by means of an array of low-cost on-chip chemical sensors) is a valuable approach to increase daily safety. The aim of this paper is to critically discuss the use of a-priori knowledge in the design of gas sensor systems implementing computational intelligence techniques for signal processing and gas presence detection. The availability of a-priori information about the probability density function of the considered classes as well as about the class separation boundary (Bayes boundary) allow the classifier designer for selecting appropriate condensing and editing techniques to keep under control the computational complexity
Leukotriene B4 Strongly Increases Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein-1 in Human Monocytes

Objective—Leukotriene B4 (LTB4), a product of the 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) pathway of arachidonic acid metabolism, has been implicated in atherosclerosis. However, the molecular mechanisms for the atherogenic effect of LTB4 are not well understood. This study is to determine candidate mechanisms. Method and Results—Primary human monocytes were treated with LTB4 and the supernatant was analyzed for cytokine/chemokine production by an immuno-protein array. This analysis revealed a strong increase of the monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), a proinflammatory cytokine. Follow-up analyses with MCP-1 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (for quantitation of MCP-1 protein) and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (for MCP-1 mRNA) demonstrated that LTB4 strongly induced expression of MCP-1 protein and mRNA in a time-dependent and dose-dependent fashion. This induction was effectively abolished by CP-105,696, an antagonist for the LTB4 receptor BLT1. Selective inhibitors of ERK1/2 or JNK MAPK effectively blocked the LTB4-induced MCP-1 production. Furthermore, LTB4 increased NF-&kgr;B DNA binding activity, which was blocked by CP-105,696. Conclusions—LTB4 strongly induces MCP-1 production in primary human monocytes. This induction is mediated through the BLT1 pathway increasing MCP-1 transcription. Activation of ERK1/2 or JNK MAPK is essential for this induction. The NF-&kgr;B activation may be involved in LTB4-increased MCP-1 expression. The LTB4-induced MCP-1 in human monocytes may play a critical role in the atherogenicity of LTB4.
Liderazgo multicultural: estudio comparativo India-México

This article presents a case study of a company where managers from two cultures collaborate: Mexico and India; research questions that are posed: what are the values, attitudes and skills that both cultures expect from their leaders? What are the leader's skills and leadership styles? And what is the distance and dimension of the power of the leaders of both cultures? An instrument was designed with the five characteristics of personality description listed by Goldberg (1990), Madrigal's leadership style approach (2009), and uncertainty´s dimension and power´s distance with Northouse's theory (2012). In order to carry out this study 102 managers from the Indian and Mexican culture were surveyed in different aspects related to the perception of leadership. The results show that both Mexicans and Indians tend to prefer a style of democratic leadership. Finally differences that exist in the institutional collectivism and in the orientation towards the future of both cultures are presented as findings.
Socioeconomic and sex differentials in reason for sickness absence from the Whitehall II Study.

OBJECTIVES: Large socioeconomic differences exist in disease and mortality. This paper describes the distribution of specific medical reasons for sickness absence by grade of employment in the Whitehall II study and validates the medical reason by comparison with general practitioners' records. METHODS: Analysis of sickness absence data on 5620 male and female civil servants aged 35-55 years. Data have been collected from 12 of the 20 London based civil service departments participating in the Whitehall II study, where medical reason for absence was available. Rates and distributions of reasons for absence for short spells (< or = 7 days) and long spells (> 7 days) were analysed. RESULTS: Respiratory disorders and gastroenteritis accounted for over half of all spells of absence, with headache and migraine, musculoskeletal disorders, injury, and neurosis accounting for a further 20%-30% of absences. There was an inverse association with employment grade, the lower the grade the higher the rate of absence for both short spells (< or = 7 days) and long spells (> 7 days). In general, women had higher rates of absence than men. Comparison of reason for very long spells of absence (> 21 days) showed moderate agreement between civil service and general practitioner. CONCLUSION: There is a lack of national comprehensive data on sickness absence and medical reason for absence, in particular for women and for spells of different duration. Data from the Whitehall II study show large employment grade and sex differences in the distribution of medical reasons for absence that are similar to socioeconomic differences in morbidity documented in other studies. Possible explanations include the subjective nature of illness and disease; the work/family interface; and the influence of the absence culture. Longer term follow up will provide information on whether sickness absence relates to serious morbidity and mortality.
Air-mass Origin in the Arctic. Part II: Response to Increases in Greenhouse Gases

AbstractFuture changes in transport from Northern Hemisphere (NH) midlatitudes into the Arctic are examined using rigorously defined air-mass fractions that partition air in the Arctic according to where it last had contact with the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Boreal winter (December–February) and summer (June–August) air-mass fraction climatologies are calculated for the modeled climate of the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry–Climate Model (GEOSCCM) forced with the end-of-twenty-first century greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances. The modeled projections indicate that the fraction of air in the Arctic that last contacted the PBL over NH midlatitudes (or air of “midlatitude origin”) will increase by about 10% in both winter and summer. The projected increases during winter are largest in the upper and middle Arctic troposphere, where they reflect an upward and poleward shift in the transient eddy meridional wind, a robust dynamical response among comprehensive climate models. The bor.
Patterns of weber magnitude and orientation for face recognition

Feature extraction is vital for a successful face recognition system. In this paper, we propose a computationally efficient, discriminative and robust feature descriptor for face images, named Patterns of Weber magnitude and orientation (PWMO), which encodes Weber magnitude and orientation with patch-based local binary pattern (p-LBP) and patch-based local XOR pattern (p-LXP), respectively. Furthermore, whitened PCA is introduced to reduce the feature dimensionality and select the most discriminative feature sets, and the block-based scheme is incorporated to address the small sample size problem. The effectiveness and robustness of our proposed approach has been demonstrated experimentally on the well-known FERET database.
Medication Related Osteonecrosis of the Jaw: 2015 Position Statement of the Korean Society for Bone and Mineral Research and the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons

Bisphosphonates are the most widely prescribed drugs for the treatment of osteoporosis, and are also used in malignant bone metastases, multiple myeloma, and Paget's disease, and provide therapeutic efficacy on those diseases. However, it was reported that occurrence of osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) could be related with bisphosphonate exposures, and there have been many cases regarding this issue. Therefore, a clearer definition and treatment guidelines were needed for this disease. The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) and American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) reported statements on bisphosphonate-related ONJ (BRONJ), and a revised version was recently presented. In the revised edition, the diagnosis BRONJ was changed to medication-related ONJ (MRONJ), which reflects a consideration of the fact that ONJ also occurs for denosumab, a bone resorption inhibitor of the receptor activator of nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL) antibody family, and bevacizumab, an anti-angiogenesis inhibitor. In 2009, a statement on ONJ was also reported locally by a relevant organization, which has served as basis for clinical treatment in Korea. In addition to the new official stance of the AAOMS and ASBMR, with an increasing pool of ONJ clinical experience, a revised version of the 2009 local statement is needed. As such, the Korean Society for Bone and Mineral Research (KSBMR) and the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (KAOMS) have collectively formed a committee for the preparation of an official statement on MRONJ, and have reviewed recent local and international data to propose guidelines customized for the local Korean situation.
Scale-free correlations in starling flocks

From bird flocks to fish schools, animal groups often seem to react to environmental perturbations as if of one mind. Most studies in collective animal behavior have aimed to understand how a globally ordered state may emerge from simple behavioral rules. Less effort has been devoted to understanding the origin of collective response, namely the way the group as a whole reacts to its environment. Yet, in the presence of strong predatory pressure on the group, collective response may yield a significant adaptive advantage. Here we suggest that collective response in animal groups may be achieved through scale-free behavioral correlations. By reconstructing the 3D position and velocity of individual birds in large flocks of starlings, we measured to what extent the velocity fluctuations of different birds are correlated to each other. We found that the range of such spatial correlation does not have a constant value, but it scales with the linear size of the flock. This result indicates that behavioral correlations are scale free: The change in the behavioral state of one animal affects and is affected by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how large the group is. Scale-free correlations provide each animal with an effective perception range much larger than the direct interindividual interaction range, thus enhancing global response to perturbations. Our results suggest that flocks behave as critical systems, poised to respond maximally to environmental perturbations.
Through the Haze: A Non-Convex Approach to Blind Calibration for Linear Random Sensing Models

Computational sensing strategies often suffer from calibration errors in the physical implementation of their ideal sensing models. Such uncertainties are typically addressed by using multiple, accurately chosen training signals to recover the missing information on the sensing model, an approach that can be resource-consuming and cumbersome. Conversely, blind calibration does not employ any training signal, but corresponds to a bilinear inverse problem whose algorithmic solution is an open issue. We here address blind calibration as a non-convex problem for linear random sensing models, in which we aim to recover an unknown signal from its projections on sub-Gaussian random vectors, each subject to an unknown positive multiplicative factor (or gain). To solve this optimisation problem we resort to projected gradient descent starting from a suitable, carefully chosen initialisation point. An analysis of this algorithm allows us to show that it converges to the exact solution provided a sample complexity requirement is met, i.e., relating convergence to the amount of information collected during the sensing process. Interestingly, we show that this requirement grows linearly (up to log factors) in the number of unknowns of the problem. This sample complexity is found both in absence of prior information, as well as when subspace priors are available for both the signal and gains, allowing a further reduction of the number of observations required for our recovery guarantees to hold. Moreover, in the presence of noise we show how our descent algorithm yields a solution whose accuracy degrades gracefully with the amount of noise affecting the measurements. Finally, we present some numerical experiments in an imaging context, where our algorithm allows for a simple solution to blind calibration of the gains in a sensor array.
The effect of exchanger inhibitory peptide (XIP) on sodium-calcium exchange current in guinea pig ventricular cells.

We investigated the effect of exchanger inhibitory peptide (XIP) on Na-Ca exchange current (INa-Ca) in guinea pig ventricular cells. Cells were voltage-clamped with microelectrodes containing 20 mM Na+ and 14.0 mM EGTA ([Ca]i = 100 nM). An outward putative exchange current was stimulated when extracellular Na+ was reduced from 144 mM to zero (Li+ replaced Na+). This outward current showed a significant dependence on extracellular Ca2+. When Na+ removal was delayed for up to 40 minutes (in the absence of extracellular K+ or the presence of 3.0 mM ouabain to block the Na+ pump), outward INa-Ca increased presumably because [Na]i increased. Time-dependent increases of outward current in the absence of K+ could be abolished by reapplication of K+, which presumably reactivates the Na+ pump and reduces intracellular Na+. This effect is blocked in the presence of 3.0 mM ouabain. The dependence of this current on extracellular Ca2+, its dependence on intracellular Na+, and activation by extracellular Na+ reduction, together with its resistance to ouabain all suggest that it is a Na-Ca exchange current. After dialyzing the cell with 10 microM XIP, outward INa-Ca was largely abolished. This indicates that XIP, which is a rather large molecule, can enter the heart cell via the microelectrode in sufficient quantities to inhibit exchange. Inward INa-Ca was blocked secondary to the blockade of outward INa-Ca. L-type Ca2+ current (ICa) was not measurably affected by XIP. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 Automatic Detection of Potentially Illegal Online Sales of Elephant Ivory via Data Mining

In this work, we developed an automated system to detect potentially illegal elephant ivory items for sale on eBay. Two law enforcement experts, with specific knowledge of elephant ivory identification, manually classified items on sale in the Antiques section of eBay UK over an 8 week period. This set the " Gold Standard " that we aim to emulate using data-mining. We achieved close to 93% accuracy with less data than the experts, as we relied entirely on metadata, but did not employ item descriptions or associated images, thus proving the potential and generality of our approach. The reported accuracy may be improved with the addition of text mining techniques for the analysis of the item description, and by applying image classification for the detection of Schreger lines, indicative of elephant ivory. However, any solution relying on images or text description could not be employed on other wildlife illegal markets where pictures can be missing or misleading and text absent (e.g., Instagram). In our setting, we gave human experts all available information while only using minimal information for our analysis. Despite this, we succeeded at achieving a very high accuracy. This work is an important first step in speeding up the laborious, tedious and expensive task of expert discovery of illegal trade over the internet. It will also allow for faster reporting to law enforcement and better accountability. We hope this will also contribute to reducing poaching, by making this illegal trade harder and riskier for those involved.
Segmenting Internal Brain Nuclei in MRI Brain Image Using Morphological Operators

We present a new technique for segmenting brain nuclei from MRI brain images. Our method performs the segmentation using a combination approach of thresholding with morphological operators. The MRI brain image contains skull and noisy background. The latter have to be removed for further analysis. Elimination of any obstacles and noise from the image is the primary function of the morphological operators. We use simple morphological operators like dilation, erosion, opening and closing to the binarized MRI brain image. The results of skull stripped MR image with the use of disk shaped structuring elements are presented in the paper. The proposed method has been applied to a large number of MR images showing promising results for various image qualities, encouraging for future.
AGC of a three area thermal system using MLPNN controller: A preliminary study

This paper deals with automatic generation control (AGC) of a three unequal area thermal system. The performance of a multilayer perception neural network (MLPNN) controller using reinforcement learning is evaluated. Bacterial foraging (BF) technique is used to simultaneously optimize the integral gains (KIi) and speed regulation parameter (Ri) keeping frequency bias fixed at frequency response characteristics. Investigations reveal that MLPNN controller with four numbers of hidden neurons (HN) provides better dynamic performance than any other numbers of HN for this system. The comparison of performances of Integral and MLPNN controller reveals that MLPNN controller gives better performance than Integral.
Dietary antioxidants and exercise

Muscular exercise promotes the production of radicals and other reactive oxygen species in the working muscle. Growing evidence indicates that reactive oxygen species are responsible for exercise-induced protein oxidation and contribute to muscle fatigue. To protect against exercise-induced oxidative injury, muscle cells contain complex endogenous cellular defence mechanisms (enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants) to eliminate reactive oxygen species. Furthermore, exogenous dietary antioxidants interact with endogenous antioxidants to form a cooperative network of cellular antioxidants. Knowledge that exercise-induced oxidant formation can contribute to muscle fatigue has resulted in numerous investigations examining the effects of antioxidant supplementation on human exercise performance. To date, there is limited evidence that dietary supplementation with antioxidants will improve human performance. Furthermore, it is currently unclear whether regular vigorous exercise increases the need for dietary intake of antioxidants. Clearly, additional research that analyses the antioxidant requirements of individual athletes is needed.
Power, Discretion and Strategy

This essay starts with a brief review of some of the main approaches to power, and identifies four: ‘power to’, ‘power over’, ‘power/storage’ and ‘power discretion’. It argues that these are all viable, but that they should be linked to a fifth — that of ‘power/effects' — with its stress on the continued performance of social relations. But how are such relations stabilised? It is argued, in answer to this question, that social relations are never purely social in character: rather they are heterogeneous, being embodied in a series of corporeal, textual, natural and technical materials. Finally, certain strategies for ordering these relations and their power effects are examined for the case of a formal organisation, and it is argued that such strategies are always, and necessarily, discursively impure.
A deep VLA survey at 6 cm in the Lockman Hole

We have obtained a deep radio image with the Very Large Array at 6 cm in the Lockman Hole. The noise level in the central part of the field is about 11 µJy. From these data we have extracted a catalogue of 63 radio sources. The analysis of the radio spectral index suggests a flattening of the average radio spectra and an increase of the population of flat spectrum radio sources in the faintest flux bin. Cross correlation with the ROSAT/XMM X-ray sources list yields 13 reliable radio/X-ray associations, corresponding to ~21% of the radio sample. Most of these associations (8 out of 13) are classified as Type II AGN. Using optical CCD (V and I) and K' band data we found an optical identification for 58 of the 63 radio sources. This corresponds to an identification rate of ~92%, one of the highest percentages so far available. From the analysis of the colour-colour diagram and of the radio flux - optical magnitude diagram we have been able to select a subsample of radio sources whose optical counterparts are likely to be high redshift (z>0.5) early-type galaxies, hosting an Active Galactic Nucleus responsible of the radio activity. We also find evidence that at these faint radio limits a large fraction (~60%) of the faintest optical counterparts (i.e. sources in the magnitude range 22.5 4 and combining our radio data with existing ISO data we conclude that these EROs sources are probably associated with high redshift, passively evolving elliptical galaxies. The six radio selected EROs represent only ~2% of the optically selected EROs present in the field. If their luminosity is indeed a sign of AGN activity, the small number of radio detections suggests that a small fraction of the EROS population contains an active nucleus.
Output-Sensitive Algorithms for Enumerating and Counting Simplices Containing a Given Point in the Plane

Given a set of n points S ⊆ R2, a specified point Z ∈ R2, it is shown that finding k minimal simplices from S, each of which contains Z, can be done in O(n+k) time. It is also shown that counting the number of all such simplices can be done in O(n + n log (k/n+ 1)) time, when the number of simplices is k.