Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distributed Optimal Consensus Filter for Target Tracking in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

This paper is concerned with the problem of filter design for target tracking over sensor networks. Different from most existing works on sensor networks, we consider the heterogeneous sensor networks with two types of sensors different on processing abilities (denoted as type-I and type-II sensors, respectively). However, questions of how to deal with the heterogeneity of sensors and how to design a filter for target tracking over such kind of networks remain largely unexplored. We propose in this paper a novel distributed consensus filter to solve the target tracking problem. Two criteria, namely, unbiasedness and optimality, are imposed for the filter design. The so-called sequential design scheme is then presented to tackle the heterogeneity of sensors. The minimum principle of Pontryagin is adopted for type-I sensors to optimize the estimation errors. As for type-II sensors, the Lagrange multiplier method coupled with the generalized inverse of matrices is then used for filter optimization. Furthermore, it is proven that convergence property is guaranteed for the proposed consensus filter in the presence of process and measurement noise. Simulation results have validated the performance of the proposed filter. It is also demonstrated that the heterogeneous sensor networks with the proposed filter outperform the homogenous counterparts in light of reduction in the network cost, with slight degradation of estimation performance.
EFFICACY OF SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE AND CHLORHEXIDINE AGAINST Enterococcus faecalis – A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

The efficacy of the sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) and chlorhexidine (CHX) on Enterococcus faecalis was evaluated by systematic review and meta-analysis. The search strategies included search in electronic biomedical journal databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CENTRAL) and handsearching records, using different matches of keywords for NaOCl, CHX and Enterococcus faecalis. From 41 in vivo studies, 5 studies met the inclusion criteria. In a sample containing 159 teeth, E. faecalis was detected initially in 16 (10%) teeth by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and 42 (26.4%) teeth by microbial culture techniques. After root canal disinfection, this species was observed in 11 (6.9%) teeth by PCR and 12 (7.5%) teeth by culture. Risk differences of included studies were combined as generic inverse variance data type (Review Manager Version 5.0 – Cochrane Collaboration, http://www.cc-ims.net, accessed 15 May 2008), taking into account the separate tracking of positive and negative cultures/PCR. The level of statistical significance was set at p<0.05. In conclusion, NaOCl or CHX showed low ability to eliminate E. faecalis when evaluated by either PCR or culture techniques.
Speech Perception in Older Listeners with Normal Hearing:Conditions of Time Alteration, Selective Word Stress, and Length of Sentences

Background and Objectives Deficits of the aging auditory system negatively affect older listeners in terms of speech communication, resulting in limitations to their social lives. To improve their perceptual skills, the goal of this study was to investigate the effects of time alteration, selective word stress, and varying sentence lengths on the speech perception of older listeners. Subjects and Methods Seventeen older people with normal hearing were tested for seven conditions of different time-altered sentences (i.e., ±60%, ±40%, ±20%, 0%), two conditions of selective word stress (i.e., no-stress and stress), and three different lengths of sentences (i.e., short, medium, and long) at the most comfortable level for individuals in quiet circumstances. Results As time compression increased, sentence perception scores decreased statistically. Compared to a natural (or no stress) condition, the selectively stressed words significantly improved the perceptual scores of these older listeners. Long sentences yielded the worst scores under all time-altered conditions. Interestingly, there was a noticeable positive effect for the selective word stress at the 20% time compression. Conclusions This pattern of results suggests that a combination of time compression and selective word stress is more effective for understanding speech in older listeners than using the time-expanded condition only.
Adaptive Wiener denoising using a Gaussian scale mixture model in the wavelet domain

We describe a statistical model for images decomposed in an overcomplete wavelet pyramid. Each coefficient of the pyramid is modeled as the product of two independent random variables: an element of a Gaussian random field, and a hidden multiplier with a marginal log-normal prior. The latter modulates the local variance of the coefficients. We assume subband coefficients are contaminated with additive Gaussian noise of known covariance, and compute a MAP estimate of each multiplier variable based on observation of a local neighborhood of coefficients. Conditioned on this multiplier, we then estimate the subband coefficients with a local Wiener estimator. Unlike previous approaches, we (a) empirically motivate our choice for the prior on the multiplier; (b) use the full covariance of signal and noise in the estimation; (c) include adjacent scales in the conditioning neighborhood. To our knowledge, the results are the best in the literature, both visually and in terms of squared error.
Control parameters self-adaptation in differential evolution based on intrisic structure information

In this paper, A self-adaptive strategy to determine the control parameters of Differential Evolution (DE) is proposed based on the elaborate analysis of intrinsic structure. The projection information of fitness function in differential direction is used to get the scale factor, while the difference between the local distance and global search range is applied to determine the crossover rate. This approach named as ITDE is tested by the benchmark functions including unconstrained uni-Modal, multi-Modal and bound-constrained ones, and the test results indicate the ITDE has good performance to balance the explorative and exploitative capability of algorithm than standard DE and easy to be implemented widely with many variants of DE algorithm.
Alcohol-related aggression during the college years: theories, risk factors and policy implications.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the research literature on alcohol-related aggression with a focus on college students. METHOD Data from both survey studies and experimental laboratory investigations conducted on college students are reviewed. Various methodological approaches to studying the alcohol-aggression relation, and their associated limitations, are then presented and discussed. RESULTS The literature indicates that alcohol consumption facilitates aggressive behavior and increases the risk of being the victim of a violent act, particularly in heavy drinkers. Results from these studies are then placed into a context by reviewing 12 influential theories of aggression and alcohol-related aggression. On the basis of these theories and empirical data, a preliminary risk profile is presented to help identify which factors are likely to be important in predicting who will and who will not become aggressive after drinking alcohol. CONCLUSIONS Although much research is still needed to elucidate the intricate causes of alcohol-related aggression, current prevention efforts might focus on modifying key risk factors such as poor cognitive functioning and inaccurate expectations about the effects of alcohol. Other prevention efforts directed specifically at college students might focus on helping them to identify risky situations that might facilitate the expression of intoxicated aggression.
Constitutive Display of Cryptic Translation Products by MHC Class I Molecules

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules display tens of thousands of peptides on the cell surface, derived from virtually all endogenous proteins, for inspection by cytotoxic T cells (CTLs). We show that, in normal mouse cells, MHC I molecules present a peptide encoded in the 3′ “untranslated” region. Despite its rarity, the peptide elicits CTL responses and induces self-tolerance, establishing that immune surveillance extends well beyond conventional polypeptides. Furthermore, translation of this cryptic peptide occurs by a previously unknown mechanism that decodes the CUG initiation codon as leucine rather than the canonical methionine.
An integrative framework of value

Originality/value of chapter – This chapter extends existing literature on value through reconciliation of various theoretical literatures in management, marketing, philosophy and economics. Notably, it highlights implicit assumptions in philosophy, chronology and consciousness of value and their potential limitations. It proposes an integrative framework that can be used for understanding the future of marketing and new business models.
Energy-Minimized Design for IP Over WDM Networks

As the Internet expands in reach and capacity, the energy consumption of network equipment increases. To date, the cost of transmission and switching equipment has been considered to be the major barrier to growth of the Internet. But energy consumption rather than cost of the component equipment may eventually become a barrier to continued growth. Research efforts on ldquogreening the Internetrdquo have been initiated in recent years, aiming to develop energy-efficient network architectures and operational strategies so as to reduce the energy consumption of the Internet. The direct benefits of such efforts are to reduce the operational costs in the network and cut the greenhouse footprint of the network. Second, from an engineering point of view, energy efficiency will assist in reducing the thermal issues associated with heat dissipation in large data centers and switching nodes. In the present research, we concentrate on minimizing the energy consumption of an IP over WDM network. We develop efficient approaches ranging from mixed integer linear programming (MILP) models to heuristics. These approaches are based on traditional virtual-topology and traffic grooming designs. The novelty of the framework involves the definition of an energy-oriented model for the IP over WDM network, the incorporation of the physical layer issues such as energy consumption of each component and the layout of optical amplifiers in the design, etc. Extensive optimization and simulation studies indicate that the proposed energy-minimized design can significantly reduce energy consumption of the IP over WDM network, ranging from 25% to 45%. Moreover, the proposed designs can also help equalize the power consumption at each network node. This is useful for real network deployment, in which each node location may be constrained by a limited electricity power supply. Finally, it is also interesting and useful to find that an energy-efficient network design is also a cost-efficient design because of the fact that IP router ports play a dominating role in both energy consumption and network cost in the IP over WDM network.
Detection of binaurally masked tones by the cat.

Detection of diotic and dichotic tones partially masked by noise was studied in the cat. The continuous noise masker was always diotic (N0). The single gated tone burst had a frequency of 0.5, 1.0, or 1.5 kHz, and was presented in phase (S0), 180° out of phase (Sπ), and monaurally (SM). The transducers were held in a fixed spatial relation to the auditory canal by means of “pinna inserts” and leather helmets. An avoidance response in a shuttle box was used to measure detectability. The cats displayed as large a release from masking in the Sπ condition at 1.0 and 1.5 kHz as at 0.5 kHz. At 1.5 kHz, the cats showed a greater release from masking than did the human observers studied under comparable conditions.
Thymic stromal lymphopoietin, IL-33, and periostin in hospitalized infants with viral bronchiolitis

Abstract Much attention has recently been focused on thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), IL-33, and periostin in allergic disease, but less is known about their role in viral bronchiolitis. The aim of the study was to investigate whether infants exhibit enhanced nasal airway secretion of TSLP, IL-33, and periostin during natural respiratory viral bronchiolitis compared to healthy controls. In total, 213 infants < 2 years of age, hospitalized with bronchiolitis from October/2013 to April/2016 were enrolled alongside 45 healthy infants. Nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPA) were screened for respiratory viruses by the polymerase chain reaction. TSLP, IL-33, and periostin were measured in NPAs. Clinical data were recorded. At least 1 virus was detected in 186 (87.3%) hospitalized infants: 149 (70%) respiratory syncytial virus (RSV); 42 (19.7%) rhinovirus (HRV); 16 (7.5%) parainfluenza virus (PIV); 9 (4.2%) adenovirus; 10 (4.7%) bocavirus; and 7 (3.3%) metapneumovirus (hMPV). Infants with bronchiolitis had higher levels of TSLP (P = .02), IL-33 (P<.001), and periostin (P = .003) than healthy controls. Detectable levels of TSLP and periostin were more frequent in virus-positive than in virus-negative patients (P = .05). TSLP and IL-33 were also more common in coinfections, mainly RSV and HRV, than in single-infections (P < .05). No patient with bronchiolitis but with negative viral detection had detectable levels of nasal TSLP or IL-33. Infants with hospital stay ≥5 days were more likely to have detectable levels of nasal TSLP and periostin after adjusting by age (P = .01). Bronchiolitis by common respiratory viruses is associated with elevated nasal levels of TSLP, IL-33, and periostin, factors known to be important in the development of Th2-response. Respiratory viruses in early life might shift immune responses toward Th2, involving asthma, and allergic diseases.
C-Set: a Commutative Replicated Data Type for Semantic Stores

Web 2.0 tools are currently evolving to embrace semantic web technologies. Blogs, CMS, Wikis, social networks and real-time notifications, integrate ways to provide semantic annotations and therefore contribute to the linked data and more generally to the semantic web vision. This evolution generates a lot of semantic datasets of different qualities, different trust levels and partially replicated. This raises the issue of managing the consistency among these replicas. This issue is challenging because semantic data-spaces can be very large, they can be managed by autonomous participants and the number of replicas is unknown. A new class of algorithms called Commutative Replicated Data Type are emerging for ensuring eventual consistency of highly dynamic content on P2P networks. In this paper, we define C-Set a CRDT specifically designed to be integrated in Triple-stores. C-Set allows efficient P2P synchronisation of an arbitrary number of autonomous semantic stores.
Real-Time Simulation and Interaction of Percussion Gestures with Sound Synthesis

Virtual characters playing virtual musical instruments must interact in real-time with the sounding environment. Dynamic simulation is a promising approach to finely represent and modulate this interaction. Moreover, captured human motion can provide a database covering a large variety of gestures with various levels of expressivity. We propose in this paper a physics-based environment in which a virtual percussionist is dynamically controlled and interacts with a physics-based sound synthesis algorithm. We show how an asynchronous architecture, including motion and sound simulation, as well as visual and sound outputs can take advantage of the parameterization of both gesture and sound that influence the resulting virtual instrumental performance.
Mixed GABA–glycine synapses delineate a specific topography in the nucleus tractus solitarii of adult rat

Using combined morphological and electrophysiological approaches, we have determined the composition of inhibitory synapses of the nucleus tractus solitarii (NTS), a brainstem structure that is a gateway for many visceral sensory afferent fibres. Immunohistochemical experiments demonstrate that, in adult rat, GABA axon terminals are present throughout the NTS while mixed GABA–glycine axon terminals are strictly located to the lateral part of the NTS within subnuclei surrounding the tractus solitarius. Purely glycine axon terminals are rare in the lateral part of the NTS and hardly detected in its medial part. Electrophysiological experiments confirm the predominance of GABA inhibition throughout the NTS and demonstrate the existence of a dual inhibition involving the co‐release of GABA and glycine restricted to the lateral part of NTS. Since GABAA and glycine receptors are co‐expressed postsynaptically in virtually all the inhibitory axon terminals throughout the NTS, it suggests that the inhibition phenotype relies on the characteristics of the axon terminals. Our results also demonstrate that glycine is mostly associated with GABA within axon terminals and raise the possibility of a dynamic regulation of GABA/glycine release at the presynaptic level. Our data provide new information for understanding the mechanisms involved in the processing of visceral information by the central nervous system in adult animals.
Mapping bovine herpesvirus type 1 latency-related RNA in trigeminal ganglia of latently infected rabbits

Here we have used the bovine herpesvirus type 1 (BHV-1) rabbit model together with in situ nucleic acid hybridization to identify and map viral RNA present in latently infected neurons. Radioactively labeled cloned HindIII fragments representing most of the BHV-1 genome (Cooper strain) were individually hybridized to sections of trigeminal ganglia taken from rabbits during acute and latent stages of infection. Whereas all viral genomic fragments hybridized to lytically infected tissue culture cells and to acutely infected ganglia, only HindIII fragment D (map units 0.734 to 0.842) hybridized to latently infected ganglionic neurons. Additional in situ hybridization experiments using subcloned fragments of HindIII-D further mapped the latency-related viral RNA to a 1.9-kilobase region (map units 0.734 to 0.748) of the viral genome. These results indicate that BHV-1 gene transcription is restricted during the latent phase of infection; further, they suggest that specific viral transcription may be involved in establishment or maintenance of latent BHV-1 infection.
Research on A Carrier Synchronization Method for Digital Radio Compass

Radio compass called automatic direction finder (ADF) is a basic navigation equipment. The traditional radio compasses were implemented with analog circuit, which suffered low precision. The development of software radio technology and DSP technology has made the software radio compass (SRC) possible. The existed SRC needs to convert three input signals to a fixed frequency at the same time and it's hard to synchronize. In this paper, a new method to implement the carrier synchronization is presented and simulated. The simulation results shown the proposed approach can meet the specified radio compass performance.
Are We Compensating for the Lack of Physical Activity in Our Diabetic Patients with Treatment Intensification?

Background: We studied the association between leisure time physical activity (LTPA) and glycemic control, body mass index (BMI), and hypoglycemic incidents in type 1 (T1DM) and type 2 diabetes patients (T2DM). Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 198 diabetic patients (60 with type 1 diabetes, 138 with type 2 diabetes). LTPA was assessed by a validated 12-month questionnaire. Patients were grouped as sedentary and moderately to vigorously active. Outcome measures were Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), BMI, and hypoglycemic episodes. Results: LTPA effect on the HbA1c reduction was present in diabetes type 1 patients. Patients who were involved in the moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity had a greater decrease in the HbA1c (p = 0.048) than patients with low physical activity (p = 0.085). Level of LTPA was neither associated with increased number of hypoglycemic episodes, nor BMI. After an average of 4 years of diabetes, the number of patients requiring more than one antidiabetic agent increased, although the observed difference did not correlate with LTPA level. Conclusions: LTPA has an influence on the regulation of diabetes type 1, and intensification of medical treatment is compensating for the lack of lifestyle change—especially in type 2 diabetics.
Iron line profiles in strong gravity

We describe a new code which can accurately calculate the relativistic effects which distort the emission from an accretion disc around a black hole. We compare our results for a disk which extends from the innermost stable orbit to 20rg in both Schwarzschild and maximal (a = 0.998) Kerr spacetimes with the two line profile codes which are on general release in the XSPEC spectral fitting package. These models generally give a very good description of the relativistic smearing of the line for this range of radii. However, these models have some limitations. In particular we show that the assumed form of the angular emissivity law (limb darkening or brightening) can make significant changes to the derived line profile where lightbending is important. This is always the case for extreme Kerr spacetimes or high inclination systems, where the observed line is produced from a very large range of different emitted angles. In these situations the assumed angular emissivity can affect the derived radial emissivity. The line profile is not simply determined by the well defined (but numerically difficult) physical effects of strong gravity, but is also dependent on the poorly known astrophysics of the disc emission.
Learning about being critical

Abstract. This short paper is a response to the article by McGrath in this issue which argues that information systems (IS) researchers need to be more explicit about ‘being critical’. I accept her point, and I use this paper to offer a sketch of my personal journey in learning about criticality, and some thoughts from where I am now on various aspects of carrying out critical IS research.
Poisson Hypothesis for Information Networks (A study in non-linear Markov processes) I. Domain of Validity

In this paper we study the Poisson Hypothesis, which is a device to analyze approximately the behavior of large queueing networks. We prove it in some simple limiting cases. We show in particular that the corresponding dynamical system, defined by the non-linear Markov process, has a line of fixed points which are global attractors. To do this we derive the corresponding non-linear equation and we explore its self-averaging properties. We also argue that in cases of havy-tail service times the PH can be violated.
RAIDP: replication with intra-disk parity

Distributed storage systems often triplicate data to reduce the risk of permanent data loss, thereby tolerating at least two simultaneous disk failures at the price of 2/3 of the capacity. To reduce this price, some systems utilize erasure coding. But this optimization is usually only applied to cold data, because erasure coding might hinder performance for warm data. We propose RAIDP---a new point in the distributed storage design space between replication and erasure coding. RAIDP maintains only two replicas, rather than three or more. It increases durability by utilizing small disk "add-ons" for storing intra-disk erasure codes that are local to the server but fail independently from the disk. By carefully laying out the data, the add-ons allow RAIDP to recover from simultaneous disk failures (add-ons can be stacked to withstand an arbitrary number of failures). RAIDP retains much of the benefits of replication, trading off some performance and availability for substantially reduced storage requirements, networking overheads, and their related costs. We implement RAIDP in HDFS, which triplicates by default. We show that baseline RAIDP achieves performance close to that of HDFS with only two replicas, and performs within 21% of the default triplicating HDFS with an update-oriented variant, while halving the storage and networking overheads and providing similar durability.